For 2300 years the Chinese have lived with the nomadic tribes from the north ( Hsiungnu, Xianbei, Turks, Mongols, and Manchus) and get invaded by them. The invaders sometimes blend in and disappear (leaving a mark in China's culture and memory), or get expelled by indigenous uprisings.
The Chinese do fight back, and sometimes they win. But a key difference between the conquerors from the north and the invaders from the south is that the later never adopt the formers' lifestyle and stay in the lands of the defeated.
The trend of immigration is always from north to south.
How Can We, and What If, we reverse this trend (maybe only temporarily), and have a bunch of Chinese farmers going on horseback and become nomads? (With their identity remain clearly Chinese).
The POD should be no earlier than 771BC.
*They cannot be absorbed by any Mongol or Turkic tribe. Forming alliances with or submitting to a stronger tribe is OK.
Notice that I'm not talking about modern and early modern migration to Inner Mongolia and Outer Mongolia, the Chinese people who do this generally remain merchants and farmers as they did in their place of origin. (I mean
Zhouxikou, for those who know what I'm talking about. )
The closest we can get seems to be semi-nomadic lifestyle in certain regions of north China, like
The State of Zhao did.