Naturally, they did not accept everything from the Han people wholesale. For instance, they were deeply dissatisfied with certain aspects of Han culture.
These minority peoples all had their own cultural customs. They accepted some and resisted others.
And what the Han people were best at was learning and integration.
They learned others' strengths, then found ways to make them change their own weaknesses.
Take the Daur people, for example. They respected the elderly and cherished the young. At meals, the elders had to lift their chopsticks first; when young people encountered elders on the road, they had to dismount and bow; while traveling, the elders had to walk in front...
Such strict etiquette was founded upon patriarchy, and these rites in turn reinforced the patriarchal order.
Among the Daur people, the division of labor between men and women was clear. Men handled heavy labor such as farming, herding, and hunting; women were confined to a limited sphere, responsible for household chores, child-rearing, and courtyard planting, providing men with steady support from the rear.
Thus, among the Daur people, women were explicitly placed in a subordinate position and had to strictly observe rules of conduct toward elders and men. At meals, for example, women not only had to add dishes and serve rice, but also ate last.
Yet the equally populous Oroqen people and Hezhe people were comparatively egalitarian, their culture closer to that of the Han people of the Ming Dynasty.
Men and women of both peoples worked together, merely with different duties, each doing what they could. Therefore, women did not hold a low status.
For that reason, after Heilongjiang developed at high speed, the people of those two groups were the quickest to integrate into it. Large numbers entered workshops: men went into steel mills, while women