The Xibe for generations used to live by fishing and hunting on the vast Songhua-Nenjiang Plain and in the Greater and Lesser Xing'an Mountains in northeast China. In 764, the Qing government drafted large numbers of the Xibe and people of some other ethnic minorities from northeast China, and stationed them as guards and cultivators on the northwestern frontier. The ancestors of these people reside in the Xibe Autonomous County of Qapqal and Huocheng and Gongliu counties along the Ili River in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. They retain their traditional customs and spoken and written languages, while the Xibe who remain in northeast China, dispersed in different places, are similar to the local Han and Manchu people in language and customs.