alternatehistory.com

Located in South-East China with Tibet to the West and Bruma to the South lay the multi-ethnic province of Yunnan. The province in the preceding decades faced tensions between the Confucian Han and the Islamic Hui population, encouraged by the ruling Manchu government. These tensions led to an uprising by the Hui population, once news of the fall of Beijing to the Taiping was received. Despite the tensions with the Confucian Han and the Islamic beliefs of the Hui, the uprising was non-religious and aimed at the Qing government as opposed to the local Han population. Blaming the Manchu government for China's problems and calling for their expulsion from China, the rebellion united the Han and Hui along with the other ethnic groups of the province against the Qing government.

The rebellion would come to be led by Du Wenxiu, a Han Chinese convert to Islam after his capture of the city of Dali in mid 1856. Qing overextended thanks to other rebellions in China was forced from the rest of the Yunnan by the end of 1856 following the capture of Kunming. Under Du Wenxiu's leadership, the rebels would declare themselves as an independent state from China with a capital at Dali, the nation of Pingnan Guo or the Pacified Southern State in English. This new nation was a sultanate that blended Chinese administration and Islam with the use of the Arabic language and a ban on pork but however would continue to use a Chinese bureaucracy. Despite the Islamic nature of the Pingnan Guo: Animism, Confucianism, and all other manners of religions were allowed and included within the state.