stirringwind:

drunkasianhistory:

First, understand the provinces of China:

When people think of China, they all assume that everyone in China is Chinese, speaks Chinese, looks and live like this:

Now let’s look at the Ethnic Make-Up of China!

Look how many Han Chinese there are? But first things first! All the Han Chinese do not speak the same language! Chinese is probably as useful as saying the “Europeans”.

Let’s pretend that Europe is combined into a single country! But with London as the Capital City, and everyone is officially, “European” and they all speak “European”, with European English as the official language of Europe! The French, German, Spanish and Russians? They are their own entire language, culture and ethnicity.

Same goes with China. China is much larger than Europe, speaking different languages, eating different foods, practicing different religions, wearing different clothing. Beijing is the capital, with Mandarin Chinese as the official language of the entire country. However, Chinese languages are considered “Dialects”, but not their own distinct language, culture or ethnicity.

Now let’s look at the Han Chinese languages:

Mandarin Chinese not only has it’s “Northern, Eastern, Southwestern” dialects, but they even break up into more different dialects and accents from different region, city and province. There’s a difference between London accent, Welsh accent, Scottish and Irish accents. To simplify it, the government simply grouped everyone together.

Southern Chinese languages cannot mutually understand with any other Chinese. That’s like an Englishman trying to communicate with a German, a Dutch, or a Danish. They all belong from the same language group, but they cannot understand one another mutually.

But what about the other Non-Han Chinese?

See where Han is at? (Look where Beijing would be!) That is the original homeland of all Han Chinese people.

There are officially 56 Ethnic Groups in China, but there are hundreds and even more that are unofficial and undocumented. It’s the Chinese government way of saying, “Meh. Saffron, Violet and Pink are the same thing. Let’s just call it “Red”.

But how did Han Chinese became the major language and ethnic group of China?

Through conquest! Very much like how the Romans of today Italy killed, pillaged, raped and took over the Gauls of France, the Germania of Central Europe and the Britannia’s of the British Isles, and turned them “Roman citizens” through colonization and expansion!

But what makes China a unique case, is that the surviving natives of the Northern Han conquest, is that they still retain much of their native cultures. They survived, because most of the ethnic groups lived up in the mountains, where the ancient Han Chinese were too lazy to bring their armies up mountains:

Those who were colonized and assimilated into Chinese culture?

The Vietnamese were colonized by the Chinese more than three times.

Korea was colonized/tributing state for the longest time ever.

And Southern China! They would be influenced and assimilated strongest to Northern Chinese culture and language!

But why is everyone considered Chinese?

Same bullshit as your government saying that you’re an American, Canadian, British, Australian, etc. etc. citizen. It’s like a rich White straight male, taking control of the government and dictating how you live, under his life style. The Han Chinese says that everyone in China is all Chinese.

And mostly the blatent ignorance and education on the diversity of China. 

Chinese Dialects?

It’s another bullshit ideology.

Is French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese a dialect of Europe? No. They are their own distinct languages. They may come from the same Roman history, the same Romance language family, but they are their own language. Teochow, Hakka, Minnan, Cantonese, Mandarin, etc. etc. are their own distinct language and ethnicity.

Unified China?

To unify Germany, Hitler said that the German Race was the greatest race! Germans from all over Europe, the German Swiss, the Austrian Germans, etc. etc. united as a single “Race” and rose to power.

To unify China, Northern Chinese Emperors said that they were the greatest race! And attempted to conquer everyone else, killing anyone who wasn’t “Chinese”. This was done for more than 3,000 years, resulting in many extinct native cultures and ethnicities in China, and resulting many cultures (like Korea, Vietnam and even Taiwan) to assimilate into Northern Han Chinese culture.

Conclusion:

Not everyone in China are Mandarin Han Chinese, the major ethnic and language speaking group of China. Three different dialects of Mandarin and 6 different languages of Southern Chinese (Hakka, Min, Wu, etc.).

There is an official recognized 56 ethnic groups, but hundreds that are unrecognized. Such as Tibetans, Miao, Manchu and even Koreans and Mongolians!

China is very diverse in language, culture, religion and ethnicity. Not everyone is ethnically Chinese, nor speak Mandarin Chinese.

Good post. This gives a much more diverse view of China, and the thing is the view outsiders often have of China is that of Han Chinese ethnic group.

Just some things I would like to add on/correct:

1. The term “Chinese” and name “China” is of Iranian origin -the Farsi word “Chin”, and that was the term that got passed to the Western world, just as for Iran itself, “Persia” came from the Greek name for Iran.

• The local name for China basically means “Middle Kingdom” and is pronounced “zhong guo” in the Mandarin dialect. “Han” became a term to refer to our ethnic group after the Han dynasty. We are also called “hua ren” because the ancestral groups of people that would band together and identify as “Han Chinese” are called the Huaxia tribes. In English usage, many people just say “Chinese” not Han Chinese (even myself, admittedly). “Chinese” is also a nationality today and in Mandarin term used is “zhong guo ren” and generally I understand this applies to anyone with citizenship in the People’s Republic of China even if they are not Han.

• The conflation of the Han people and our culture with “Chinese” as a whole is an intersection of several issues. Firstly, the imperialism and domination of our ethnic group as the post pointed out- which has led to Han culture becoming synonymous with the entirety of China and that’s why the other ethnic groups get erased. Think of this as similar to how “Englishness” is often conflated with “Britishness”, when the UK is also made up of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. Further, the Chinese government today has very often tried to further Sinicise other non-Han ethnic groups. The English usage of “Chinese” also doesn’t always capture all the nuances. The fact that Han Chinese are such a dominant majority of the population further feeds this perception.

• There is nothing inherently wrong with using the term “Chinese” but the problem with this is that elements of Han culture are far more explicitly treated as being the totality of the culture of modern China.
  

2. The thing about the non-Han ethnic groups mostly living in the mountainous regions where the imperial army didn’t bother conquering- I’d say that’s not an entirely accurate characterisation.

• There were a lot of other indigenous ethnic groups in the plains and low lying areas who got massacred or forcefully absorbed too. For example, Austronesian-speaking peoples lived in much of the territory that is now modern China. Malays in Southeast Asia are an example of an Austronesian people. A lot of them got assimilated or probably suffered genocide so nothing remains of their history today. Another people assimilated are what we know as the Baiyue tribes, which is a loose term used by the ancient Han to denote several tribes they portrayed as “savages” and “barbarians”. Many non-Han people still survive today as China’s ethnic minorities but a lot more did get completely erased.

• Another interesting (and slightly disturbing fact) is that the DNA within Han Chinese shows a lot more variation in the maternal line than the paternal line. Maternal DNA is passed from mother to child, so that implies a lot Han Chinese men fathered children with local women. Were they there as peaceful migrants? Or soldiers who raped or forced local women into marriages? Imo, it’s likely the second scenario was not uncommon even if the first scenario was the case in some instances. This is when you take into consideration how the Han ethnic group and various Chinese emperors had a very strong notion that our culture and civilisation was superior. Ergo, Sinicisation of diverse ethnic groups in a manner not dissimilar to how European colonialism forced its traditions on and erased local cultures in the Americas.