86 replies to this topic

[YuenKamSiu]

Chinese supremacists are no different than any other kind, they are all irrational and dangerous.

[Spooner]

It is a very comfortable illusion that a persons own personal value comes from accidents of birth or from simply being alive in one geographical region for a long time. It removes any need to advance on the merits of your own life experiences and analaysis. Emporers and Kings have always sought to set themselves apart from the unwashed masses by the preminance of which vigina they dropped out of.

Similarly, a person can attempt to give themselves value by the location of their birth or even their grandparents birth. And citizens of location X have always felt superior to people from location Y. In some places a person born to a region is not considered "local" if their parents came form a different location. "If a cat has kittens in the oven, that doesn't make them biscuits." Manchu can't be Chinese because they aren't Han.

All of this removes from the individual the need to examine themselves and succeed on the basis of their own merits. It is the lazys man to live a life. Heritage is wonderfull and benefical in many regards, but it is not determinative in life. Growth depends on the ability to adapt to and profit from integrating external forces into existing models.

This is true of Societys as well as individuals. It is all a matter of balance. Value what you start with, but also value what is foreign to you. Change can be annoying in life, but without it there is no growth. Thank you for providing ChineseHistoryForum as a place where people can learn from the wealth of past Chinese knowledge as well as to be exposed to new ideas. It helps us forge a new future on a firm foundation of the past.

[mohistManiac]

Spooner's speech deserves a standing moment's applause.

[TheAznValedictorian]

*clap**clap* Well said, Mr. Spooner

[baybal]

> a history of Qing dynasty with "Han-Chinese" under "oppression" by the Manchu.

Like there were no oppression...



It's an interesting thing ongoing in CCP controled part of China nowadays.

When I was young and was living in a city of Yakutsk in Russia, there were some Japanese people living around, who of course never advertised themselves as such and usually tried to pass on as "Koreans" or "Chinese" (In Soviet times, being known as Japanese was a GULAG ticket up to "perestroika" times. After USSR collapsed, this practice was still going on for few years). We, ethnic Chinese at that time were not anyhow against them. Even when everybody knew the history, we even had some sense of solidarity for them as both being a part of East Asian culture living within hostile to it environment. Most of people thought of such relationship as normal.

When the first "new" mainland immigrants began to arrive we were so much shocked by their attitudes towards other ethnicities and especially Japanese. New immigrants were full of hatred for them up to a point they began orginising KKK style attacks to combat "Japanese colonialist aggression" in face of mostly 80+ year old people. Such attitude was so in contrast even to that of people who were coming from PRC in eighties. Probably, they got that much of hatred thanks to party's brainwashing machine that started nationalism spin in nineties, besides that I'm failing to attribute that kind of extreme aggression to anything rational.

[bloodmerchant]

It's simply amazing how blind nationalism is at the root of the discord between East Asians. Within a mere decade, there was so much difference between mainlanders of the 80's and mainlanders of the 90's+. I doubt the older generation cares much, but it's mostly coming from the younger generations, along with their attitudes towards overseas Chinese in general. It's simply boils down to a case of individuals hating on other individuals simply because 'they are not us', even if they have never met them personally. Also of note, mainlanders and overseas Chinese can tell each other apart. Mostly because how diet and environment influences the physical features and in general, an individual's physiology. Maybe that's why they thought I was a 'foreigner' even if both my parents are natives and have typical 'mainlander' features. It's the magic of genetics at work, that simply genes just show how people respond to their environment. I guess I could understand why they would say such things.

[vorbei]

I think just blaming Han supremacism isn't very fair.
If u wanted to find some one to blame, then first u should blame the miniority plicy of CCP.
From 1980s till now, CCP carry on "reverse discrimination" policy, miniorities can get special benefit in a lot of field. The most famous miniority policy of PRC is "两少一宽“,which means if miniorities violated the law, then they would get special treatment.For example, if an ethnic uighur beated a ethnic han, then the ethnic uighur would get 0 punishment.
And this miniority policy has strong influenced the history study of china. According to those "experts", a lot of famous ethnic han became miniority.
For example, 李世民 became 鲜卑,朱元璋 became ethnic Hui and so on.

That's why han nationalism is high on the internet.


And I think a lot of chinese ppl can not distinguish two concept "ethnic" and "nationality".

BTW there r two kinds of nationalism.
1 china nationalism, those people feel all oversea chinese r betrayers.
2 chinese nationalism, or u can call them han nationalism, they have no problem with oversea chinese.

Edited by vorbei, 06 March 2011 - 07:20 AM.

[mohistManiac]

I think just blaming Han supremacism isn't very fair.
If u wanted to find some one to blame, then first u should blame the miniority plicy of CCP.
From 1980s till now, CCP carry on "reverse discrimination" policy, miniorities can get special benefit in a lot of field. The most famous miniority policy of PRC is "两少一宽“,which means if miniorities violated the law, then they would get special treatment.For example, if an ethnic uighur beated a ethnic han, then the ethnic uighur would get 0 punishment.
And this miniority policy has strong influenced the history study of china. According to those "experts", a lot of famous ethnic han became miniority.
For example, 李世民 became 鲜卑,朱元璋 became ethnic Hui and so on.

That's why han nationalism is high on the internet.


And I think a lot of chinese ppl can not distinguish two concept "ethnic" and "nationality".

BTW there r two kinds of nationalism.
1 china nationalism, those people feel all oversea chinese r betrayers.
2 chinese nationalism, or u can call them han nationalism, they have no problem with oversea chinese.

I think it's as another poster mentioned, balance seems to be the order of the day. Specific regional occurrences lend a hand in developing key attributes which set apart one region from the next and I think that is beneficial to engaging in the development of diversification and personal identification schemes which allow for cross cultural blending. In the past this may not have been as evident since it was more or less a power struggle between different ethnic groups and cultural economics but in today's world I think less focus should be given to the tensions that arise and more focus be given to the gains that can result due to the development of new and adaptive cultural significances. So whether or not there is a distancing gap between mainlanders and overseas or between the various mainlanders themselves isn't really the issue it's the fact there is something like Han supremacism which fights for equality and unity on the basis of racial purity that can be the causes of rather severe division if it gets out of hand.

[Gan]

For some individuals, there is no rational reason for prejudice. They just find whatever is convenient, for ex. they were born in a certain ethnic group, and just because of that, they think they're above everyone. We shouldn't waste any brain power trying understand why those bigots are trying to justified themselves. The best thing to do in those cases, is to give no attention. Occasionally, people can be swayed, turned around with their prejudices, but I doubt that we can do that on the internet. It would have to be in person. However some people may be a little dangerous to meet, so again, best option would be to stay away.

A lot of hard-line bigots I know are part of this category. That, even if they had a good upbringing and lived in an environment that benefited them the most and encourage them to be nice to one another, the only reason why they hate are problems of their own personalities.

I am willing to guess, that even if you had no such minority preferred treatment (which is something I have heard from many countries, not just China), these people will still exist to a certain degree.

[baibushe]

Here is a few things I heard in person;
You're not from there.
You weren't born there.
You never lived there.
You don't live there.
You don't know the language.
You don't speak the language well.
You can't read the language.
You're American, why do you care what happens over there.
You're family isn't even from the mainland, why should youcare (my family hasn't lived in the mainland for 3 generations).
Mind your own business (as if what I identify is dictated by them).

Here is what I read;
Overseas Chinese thinking they're proud of being Chinese, that's so evil.
Try living in China and see if they're proud.
So funny, overseas Chinese thinking they're special.


There's a lot of comments I read which doesn't make sense to me (or at least, I couldn't understand). Some say we never contributed anything to the mainland, which is a load of bull. A few comments were decent towards overseas Chinese, trying to explain the diaspora identities, but I don't know how much of their message got through to those heads.

The most stupid thing is even if someone did fulfilled all those things they listed that we don't belong, some people would still be hating.

My personal theory is this; it's a mixture of resentment, jealousy and fantasy. Some overseas Chinese, if they include HK and Taiwan, did treat them pretty bad and looked down on them so they resent them all. Some do not even like the Sea turtles, Chinese nationals who only went overseas for a short term for something specific like education and came back. The jealousy part is a mixed bag; some overseas Chinese do displayed their successes quite flamboyantly but overall speaking, there's a lot of poor or not so well-off people in China that even if overseas Chinese were just making ends meet, the lives of the diaspora seems better than the natives. Relatively speaking. So, one on hand, the overseas Chinese are different fundamentally because of lifestyle, but also they can't relate culturally. Essentially, we are foreign to the Chinese nationals. The Fantasy part is something I heard from ABC English teachers in China. How some were overlook, pass over and criticized because they didn't looked "Western" enough to teach English. That part is slightly true apparently. This is something I have read across East Asia. I think it's a fantasy of some people and they're just not aware of reality. That's all.

Like I said, life can be pretty complicated. Again, not all Chinese nationals are like that.

I have met people who say stuff like this, and what's really ironic about it is that if I tell them I am Chinese-American, they basically say the same things to me that they say to you (especially the "You weren't born there. You have no right to judge!"). However, if I introduce myself as Taiwanese-American first, they immediately jump up and try to prove how Chinese I am (good luck with that. The Chinese part of my family hasn't seen the mainland for well over a hundred years). It's such a blatant double standard that I get really pissed off about it. It's like the criteria they use for overseas Chinese don't apply if there's politics involved.

[Gan]

I have met people who say stuff like this, and what's really ironic about it is that if I tell them I am Chinese-American, they basically say the same things to me that they say to you (especially the "You weren't born there. You have no right to judge!"). However, if I introduce myself as Taiwanese-American first, they immediately jump up and try to prove how Chinese I am (good luck with that. The Chinese part of my family hasn't seen the mainland for well over a hundred years). It's such a blatant double standard that I get really pissed off about it. It's like the criteria they use for overseas Chinese don't apply if there's politics involved.

I'm playing this theme endlessly, but here's something to think about.

I've watched this show called 非诚勿扰, if you've never heard of it, it's a matchmaking show. One bachelor has to present himself in front of 24 ladies and throughout the presentation, the ladies can opt of choosing him. He gets to pick one lady before the presentation secretly. It's within like 3 rounds of presenting himself and the results will determine what happens. Either one of the ladies choose him or he gets to choose his match, something like that. The show is kind of silly, but here is what I'm getting at.

Ok, there were two episodes which feature overseas Chinese. One was from Spain and the other from the US. In the beginning, all of the ladies were ok. However, the guy from Spain offended almost all of them when he said something like I want to find someone who is at my level (education or family background, something along that line). I didn't think it was bad because this is seriously what every match making session is to a certain extent, but a lot of the ladies and audience I presume think he was looking down on most of them. In the end, he got no one, and one of the ladies told him they're cultures are too different. The guy from the US was modest and he kind of hinted something similar but not as explicit as what the Spain guy said. In the end, the Chinese American got a match and he never got any of that "our cultures are too different" attitude. The most stupidest thing of this is that the Spain guy was actually born in China, but grew up in Spain vs the Chinese American who was born and raised overseas (maybe of Taiwan heritage instead of the Mainland).

The confusing thing is that the overseas Chinese were not seen as 100% foreign. Whenever any foreign bachelor went on, nearly a fourth of the ladies opt out of the match making in the before the presentations because they couldn't deal with an "international relationship". The foreign bachelor could be a White Caucasian from Sweden to a Korean man who doesn't look that different from other Chinese guys. Sometimes, the foreign bachelors spoke Chinese better than the overseas Chinese. Confusing eh?

Edited by Gan, 06 March 2011 - 11:58 PM.

[bloodmerchant]

I seem to be convinced that the attitude that Mainland Chinese have towards overseas Chinese in general (not all), but that overseas Chinese, to them, give off an impression that they might look down on mainlanders as well as the 'You were never born/grew up there, so how would you know?' rhetoric. Never had that problem before, but the last time I went to China (which was quite a while), most of the locals thought I 'looked' foreign, despite the fact that both of my parents grew up there for quite some time. (Maybe it's because of the diet/environment, and Overseas Chinese do look quite different than mainlanders) It's just that mainlanders and some overseas Chinese can tell each other apart. So even if you do speak Chinese, if you're an overseas Chinese, 95-99% of the time they would speak to you in English. The other 1-5% is an example in a few cases in which they think you might speak Chinese, but those were more likely to be accidental. Anti-Japanese rhetoric amongst overseas Chinese is likely to be more common where either the ethnic Japanese don't constitute a substantial portion of the overseas Asian population in a particular country or in regions where Chinese emigration was minimal/not as significant prior to the Deng Xiaoping era. Best examples would be the US, Brazil and Peru where the Asian population there has a substantial amount of individuals with Japanese ancestry along with individuals of Chinese ancestry. But even then, mainland Chinese immigrants prior to the 1990's didn't hold such bigoted views towards Japanese or other East Asians. Maybe it's all just a double standard, who knows?

Edited by bloodmerchant, 07 March 2011 - 01:40 AM.

[mohistManiac]

I think the reason why mainlanders/overseas are able to pick apart who and who is due to many factors least of all the latent effects of diet and environment. First you can attribute the difference to the distinguishing fact that most overseas came from southern Chinese cultural stock. You can expect them to shop differently dress differently find honors in different things etc the list can go on forever. Imagine if you will that you came from someplace in northern China all of a sudden to a place like southern China, you will definitely be able to tell that sort of thing, and vice versa of course. I don't mean prejudice here but I assume people don't look alike everywhere but have enough consequential knowledge about where they are going like "Oh I'm going to Hong Kong, isn't that right?" or "Oh I'm going to Beijing, isn't that right?" So obviously it is settled that there is no such thing as environmental equity but it's the people that make up this difference not the food. You can get soy sauce etc just about anywhere but people don't automatically comprehensively start looking Chinese just because of it nor do you stop looking Chinese because you use less or none at all.

Of course for a country like China where in particular there are no more wars, revolution, and economic growth is rather developed along the lines of southern China you can expect people to be at the stage where they stay put nowadays and find opportunity right at home as opposed to going overseas like before. It's going to be the northern cultural stock that produces more people year on year to go abroad for education and business these days. This is what I presume to be the reason why "mainlanders" are able to tell themselves apart from overseas because of the chronological divide in the structural reforms for which places were opened up for travel abroad. That's why the active perception of the differences between overseas and mainlanders otherwise the perception would have just been southern Chinese and northern Chinese and their different tastes in foods, clothing, entertainment, news, regional politics etc.

Edited by mohistManiac, 07 March 2011 - 02:55 AM.

[mohistManiac]

I'm playing this theme endlessly, but here's something to think about.

I've watched this show called 非诚勿扰, if you've never heard of it, it's a matchmaking show. One bachelor has to present himself in front of 24 ladies and throughout the presentation, the ladies can opt of choosing him. He gets to pick one lady before the presentation secretly. It's within like 3 rounds of presenting himself and the results will determine what happens. Either one of the ladies choose him or he gets to choose his match, something like that. The show is kind of silly, but here is what I'm getting at.

Ok, there were two episodes which feature overseas Chinese. One was from Spain and the other from the US. In the beginning, all of the ladies were ok. However, the guy from Spain offended almost all of them when he said something like I want to find someone who is at my level (education or family background, something along that line). I didn't think it was bad because this is seriously what every match making session is to a certain extent, but a lot of the ladies and audience I presume think he was looking down on most of them. In the end, he got no one, and one of the ladies told him they're cultures are too different. The guy from the US was modest and he kind of hinted something similar but not as explicit as what the Spain guy said. In the end, the Chinese American got a match and he never got any of that "our cultures are too different" attitude. The most stupidest thing of this is that the Spain guy was actually born in China, but grew up in Spain vs the Chinese American who was born and raised overseas (maybe of Taiwan heritage instead of the Mainland).

The confusing thing is that the overseas Chinese were not seen as 100% foreign. Whenever any foreign bachelor went on, nearly a fourth of the ladies opt out of the match making in the before the presentations because they couldn't deal with an "international relationship". The foreign bachelor could be a White Caucasian from Sweden to a Korean man who doesn't look that different from other Chinese guys. Sometimes, the foreign bachelors spoke Chinese better than the overseas Chinese. Confusing eh?

I think you might be thinking there is some sort of enterprise that mainland Chinese girls are more likely to go for someone who says they are overseas Chinese than simply overseas foreign and I'm bound to agree. But I would like to come back to the issue of Han supremacism and I'm wondering if this "feels" like blatant oppression or another one of those episodes of misunderstanding things and my question would be is this something that has been passed down from time immemorial or something recent.

[mohistManiac]

I have met people who say stuff like this, and what's really ironic about it is that if I tell them I am Chinese-American, they basically say the same things to me that they say to you (especially the "You weren't born there. You have no right to judge!"). However, if I introduce myself as Taiwanese-American first, they immediately jump up and try to prove how Chinese I am (good luck with that. The Chinese part of my family hasn't seen the mainland for well over a hundred years). It's such a blatant double standard that I get really pissed off about it. It's like the criteria they use for overseas Chinese don't apply if there's politics involved.

I've been unfortunate enough to engage in that kind of weird ironic conversations with fellow Taiwanese myself but not so much in an antithetical way but more of light humor maybe because I belong to the Taiwa heritage myself. Like I say "Orange Juice" normally and my aunt from Taiwan says no say "Oh Ren Ji Jew Shi" you know? with like a Taiwanese/Japanese accent and I'm like no thank you I'll just stick to regular orange juice and she says something like "Oh pity you really aren't Taiwanese like me aren't you? and I'm like but I was born there! I think I just want to stress that in being Chinese/Taiwanese American you will be singled out by someone who has came from China PRC or China ROC but in pursuing the perception that it is overbearing and annoying or double standard means there exists a politically complex factor underlying all this of which you may only be somewhat aware but nonetheless hinders one from being able to consistently resolve these misunderstandings and slight differences in a methodological way.