Hanul_Na wrote on another thread:



My reply:

Zhonghua 中華 ('the Civilized Centre') is a relatively old term to refer to the area occupied by Huaxia 華夏 ('the Great Civilization'), which is now known as 'China'. It first appears in texts of the Age of Fragmentation, Sui, and Tang.

Minzu 民族 (literally 'people-lineage') is a new term invented in the 19th century in Japan, and used to translate 'nation'. The Chinese borrowed it to translate a number of different but related terms: 'nation', 'race', and 'ethnic group'.

Zhonghua Minzu 中華民族 is a composite of the two terms, first used in 1902 by Liang Qichao to refer to what were then commonly known as the 'Han' people. This usage of Zhonghua Minzu as a synonym for the Han continued until the early Republican period. Then, in the 1910s and 1920s, the need to emphasize the unity of the peoples of the Republic of China (in Chinese, Zhonghua Minguo, literally 'Country of the Zhonghua Minzu') as a single nation-state led to the increasingly popular argument that the Manchus, Mongols, Tibetans and Muslims were also part of the greater 中華民族. This position eventually became orthodox in the Republic of China, with five ethnic groups (zu 族) being recognized as making up the 中華 nation (minzu 民族).

The PRC further developed this multi-ethnic model by recognizing 56 民族 (translated as 'nationalities', but actually meaning 'ethnic groups') as making up a greater 中華 nation (again, minzu 民族). Many scholars have commented on the problems with using 民族 to translate both 'ethnic group' and 'nation', as well as the difficulty of developing a sense of multi-ethnic nationhood in the PRC, where ethnic nationalism tends to remain strong.

That also implies there is no 中華民族 ...

There is a term 中華民族 represents all the people of whose roots are in present China. However there is no an ethnic group or nation or race called 中華民族.

Hua華also means beautful. If you are Chinese living outside of China, you will be called a Huaren 華人. So by definition, we are all beautiful people no matter how we look.

The term 中華民族 is more like "the group of people who share the same 中華 cultural background and lifestyle."
It is a very flexible concept and just about anybody can join.



If there is no 中華民族, there was no Roman then.

Mark Elliott, a historian at Harvard specializing in the Qing dynasty, argues that the best way to define 中華民族 is "the former peoples of the Qing dominions", i.e. all ethnic groups that have been ruled by the Qing empire, since the ROC and PRC were essentialy built upon the results of the Qing imperial expansion.

Today's China is really a former multi-ethnic empire trying to redefine itself as a multi-ethnic nation. Benedict Anderson said as much in his 1991 classic Imagined Communities.

I have to disagree with Mark Elliott's definition, for that makes 中華民族 exclusive, which can be very dangerous down the road and may flame up nationalism. It might be plausible after the immediate collpase of Qing but right now we should worry about how to make 中華民族 inclusive.

How much more inclusive does it have to be, since all the 56 ethnic groups now recognized by the PRC were once under Qing rule, and so was Taiwan? I would think it only needs to be even more inclusive if the PRC government has an interest in integrating immigrants (e.g. North Korean refugees and Russians) into the 中華民族.

I almost agree completely with this except that PRC/ROC no longer includes Mongolia.
Thus 中華民族 is different today.

Its essentially like ancient times when confucians stressed that all peoples born within the territories of the middle kingdom was one family. yet the 'middle kingdom''s borders change, ie Tang was obvuoisly larger then Ming thus included more peoples.

Today all people inside borders of PRC/ROC are one people.

Ethnic groups are invented and changes. Khitan was mongolic speakers yet claimed to be descendents of yan emperor, does not really matter if it was true or not, but it serves the purpose.

中華民族 serves the purpose of uniting all the peoples of PRC/ROC, but outer-mongolians obviosly aren't really part of it today.

Immigrants that's what I was thinking about. As China's economy getting developed, there will be lots and lots of people going to China for whatever reasons. Why shoud the definition of 中華民族 be limited to 56 ethnic groups then, when the culture is being shared by more and more people?

To be inclusive is to adopt and incorporate. It is benefitial to which ever country that does that.

Immigrants will be Chinese if they take up citizenship.

However 中華民族 is differen in that its a ethnic definition not nationality, ie a Singaporean chinese or an american chiense is also 中華民族 even if they do not hold PRC/ROC citizenship.

They are 中華民族 if they think they are, but they are not born to be. If they don't think they are then the Chinese ethnicity means nothing to them. That's why I said the term has to be flexible. If a Manchurain is 中華民族, why can't a Japanese, Vietnamese, Italian, German be 中華民族? You see where I'm going?

I think 中華民族 is a term to describ nether ethnicity nor nationality. it is a matter of cultural concept. So anyone who share the relative culture could be a member of 中華民族 no matter their ethnicity and nationality indeed.

Because they have their own countries and those countries aren't inside PRC borders.

Actually, the Khitan didn't. It was the Tuoba Xianbei who claimed to be descendants of the Yellow Emperor (Huang Di).



However, the PRC still has citizens of Mongol ethnicity, though not as many as the Qing did. I don't think the ROC has even given up its claim to Outer Mongolia yet.

Perhaps the only ethnic groups the Qing had that the PRC and ROC do not have would be certain peoples living north of the Amur River, which are in Russian Siberia now. But I don't know if there such groups.

The (Liao history) imply they did.


有关契丹族源起的历史传说，除了上面谈到的青牛白马说和三汗说之外，还应该提到黄帝说和炎帝说。《辽史·太祖纪赞》曰：“辽之先，出自炎帝，世为审吉国，其可知者盖自奇首云。”卷六三《世表序》亦曰：“考之宇文周之书，辽本炎帝之后，而耶律俨称辽为轩辕后。俨志晚出，盍从《周书》。盖炎帝之裔曰葛乌菟者，世雄朔陲，后为冒顿可汗所袭，保鲜卑山以居，号鲜卑氏。既而慕容燕破之，析其部曰宇文，曰库莫奚，曰契丹。契丹之名，昉见于此。”　　以上所引《辽史·太祖纪赞》和《世表序》，都只能代表元朝史官的观点。他们主张契丹为炎帝之后，其史料依据出自《周书·文帝纪》。据《世表序》说，耶律俨《皇朝实录》原是称契丹为黄帝之后的，但《辽史》纂修者们认为此说无据，故改倡炎帝说。

Thanks for that reference!

The Yuan historians based their statement on the fact that the Khitan were related to the Yuwen Xianbei, and the Zhou Shu (compiled in the early Tang dynasty) claimed the Yuwen were descended from Yan Di/Shennong. However, according to the passage you quoted (Liao Shi Chapter 63), Yelu Yan's 耶律俨 "Huangchao Shilu" 《皇朝实录》, written in the late Liao, claimed descent for the Khitan from Huang Di. This text was still around in Yuan times, but unfortunately is lost today. The most likely interpretation is that the late Liao did claim descent from Huang Di, but the early Liao never claimed descent from Yan Di - this was merely inferred by the Yuan historians on the basis of the Zhou Shu.

Note that late Liao attitudes towards ethnic identity were probably rather different from early Liao attitudes. The Khitan seem to have been increasingly keen to assert themselves as legitimately Hua or Zhonghua people towards the end of the dynasty. I am basing this view on an article by Guo Kangsong published in the February 2001 issue of "Zhongguoshi Yanjiu".

Miscommunication there. What I meant was why a Machurian can and should consider himself a 中華民族, is the exaclty reason why a Japanese or German could consider himself a 中華民族. If a Japanese cannot consider himself 中華民族 then an American born Chinese should not consider himself 中華民族.
National boundaries do not limite culture. Inside, outsied, next to PRC does not matter.

[quote name='Yun' date='Oct 8 2006, 11:11 PM' post='4853386']
Hanul_Na wrote on another thread:



My reply:

What does it really mean to be a Chinese? I think, conceptually, the term Chinese is more similar to the term "european". China is but a United Europe with a more centralized government. Prior to the forced adoption of Mandarin/Putonhua(which is a modern movement, accelerated in the past 50 years), people from different regions couldn't really understand each other. And culturally, machuria, the north, Jiangnan, deep south are vastly different. Yes, we had shared a few philosophical views in the past, but a German or an Italian could very well believe in Voltaire. The ex-president of taiwan, Lee den-hue(a much hated figure in China), argued that China geopolitically, culturally, linguistically is made up of 7 unique "countries". Despite his biased political view etc., some of his assersions have certain merits. I am a Chinese, but am also distinctively shanghainese. Much like a French calling himself European. I have my own spoken language, well, a dialect (to denote less importance) spoken by close to 100 million (Wu dialects). We have our own customes and traditions, some shared with Chinese from other regions, some not.

all arguments here seems to arise because whether zhonghua minzu is a cultural, political or ideological concept is up to anyone's interest.

Most Han Chinese agree everyone within Chinese boundary is politically Zhonghua minzu. They're true. But some, like tibetian or Xinjiang insurgents reject this idea culturally---indeed they're culturally true too. How could we expect a consensus on this term when we're actually comparing an apple to an orange?

The problem comes when PRC historians are routinely forced to get into the act and assert that from the beginning of history, the multi-ethnic Zhonghua nation has existed. In other words, history books have to portray the Tibetans, Mongols, Jurchens, Xiongnu, Yunnan tribes, even the Taiwanese aborigines as being as 'Chinese' (Zhongguo or Zhonghua) as the people of the Central Plains, regardless of which time period is being referred to. This denies them an independent, autonomous history, and politicizes historiography.

if we're only talking about a nationality, "Zhongguo congmin" is a modern and neutral word for describing this.
The underlying meaning behind "Zhonghua minzu" is different from "congmin".

The key word here is "current". No one denies the PRC the right to now present itself as a multi-ethnic nation-state. But it is historically dubious for PRC government statements and historians to routinely say, "China has been a multi-ethnic nation throughout its history." This is done mainly for the purpose of justifying the claim to Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, northern Manchuria, etc. as inalienable parts of China, even though they are regions that were only relatively recently annexed by Central Plains regimes. I can see the political need for that, but it is not good history.

I haven't read any PRC source which claim China always had the same 56 ethnic groups since the beginning of history. "China has been a multi-ethnic nation throughout its history" is not an invalid statement. The most I've seen is the claim that certain ethnic groups has been part of China "since ancient times". Yet the term ancient itself is ambiguous. In Chinese, it can mean anytime in the distant past.

One thing I hate about historiography nowadays(although there are changes) however, is its ethnological terminologies. Whenever a political state in the past does something, we use ethnological terms such as the Khitans did this or the Chinese(Han) did that, instead of using the state names themselves such as the Liao did this, or Song did that. The worst example is a case where I saw the history book calling the kingdom of NanZho the Thai state. And that "in the 8th century the Thai succcesfully resisted the encroachment of the Han Chinese." Political entities in the past are usually multi-ethnic, they have no concept of modern ethnic based statehood.

That is because there were other ethnic groups that supposedly got absorbed by the Han. However, I myself have never seen any statement that any of the present 56 official ethnic groups was ever not part of the Chinese nation even from the very beginning. In other words, the claim is made for more than 56 ethnic groups (including those that no longer exist), and not less than 56.

A typical example is the Foreword written by the PRC editors for the PRC edition of Bai Yang's Zhongguoren Shigang. They objected to Bai Yang's use of 'Zhongguoren' to mean mainly the Han, and asserted that the idea of Zhongguo/China 'expanding' to include places like Taiwan and Tibet is fallacious since the Chinese nation has always included the Tibetan and Gaoshan ethnic groups, even when they were not under a Central Plains regime. To them, the correct way of saying it is that a completely unified Zhongguo/China only came about in the Qing dynasty - Qing expansion is thus not imperial expansion, but rather national unification.



It is if "multi-ethnic" is defined such that all of the present 56 ethnic groups must be included at any time.

That permits such illogical statements as that the ancestors of the Manchus were also 'Zhongguoren' at the time of the Han dynasty, when the Han government hardly even knew about them.

But it is not invalid if "multi-ethnic" can be interpreted in a more flexible way that changes over time.

Thats really just playing with words. But its not unique to China; modern historiography tend to use the backward projection analysis in which they try to explain history as a process of events which naturally lead up to the present situation. Other countries do the same thing. The U.S. label Colonial period Britains as Americans as well, and Canada also labels early British colonists in Canada as Canadians. Britain consider themselves a mixture of the old Celtish culture with the Germainc culture, labeling all as British history. And Egypt even claim heritage to the ancient Egyptian civilization.
Its even more the case in Asia, since post modernism has not quite taken root there. India claim heritage to both the Dravidian and Aryan states, Turkey consider the Xiongnu and all other Turkish people to be part of its history with the notion of a "Pan-Turkish" nation. Korea consider the 3 kingdom to be always Korean until it led to unification of a "Pan-Korean" state. The only difference is that China incorporates multi-ethnicity in its definition of nationhood. So instead of "Pan Hanism(or sinism in the ambiguous western version)" it promotes a Pan-Chinese state that includes the 56 ethnic groups, but both are still artificial constructs nonetheless. But I highly doubt that the PRC view the Russians(one of the 56 ethnic group) as part of China's ethnic group since the beginning. They are selective about the ethnicities, only including those that are neibours of the central plains.

Yes, I was wondering about this too. I think the only exceptions among the 56 would be the Russian and Korean immigrants, since Russians and Koreans have their own nation-states and it would be politically incorrect to claim them as part of the Chinese nation since ancient times. But the PRC historians choose not to state this problem openly, such that people often forget that Russians and Koreans are even included among the 56 ethnic groups.

While Mongolia is an independent state now, PRC historiography still counts the Mongols (and their predecessors on the Mongolian steppe, the Xiongnu and Turks) as part of the historical Chinese nation. The official explanation is that Outer Mongolia was only split off from the Chinese nation because of foreign imperialism.



The usual word for this is 'teleological'. All nation-based historiography is inherently teleological, because its purpose is to explain the formation of the present nation-state as an inevitable and natural process, in order to promote nationalism and prevent separatism.

One problem with these discussions is the assumption that any rule has to be consistent, and these labels are not consistent at all. There's no reason that any sort of ethnic/national/racial label has to follow any consistent rule, and requiring that it does causes more problems than it solves.

Personally, I think the solution is to recognize that all national identities are imagined and to a large extent arbitrary.

I would classify any PRC/ROC natives as 中華民族 and also the 60 million strong overseas Chinese community as 中華民族 not what Ashura said "They are 中華民族 if they think they are, but they are not born to be"

I think it can be historically justified. Before around 1800, the Emperor of China was Emperor of the Entire World, and there are many ways of mapping the political situation pre-1800 to the current Chinese nation-state. One can argue that because the definition of Chinese includes Tibetans, that Tibetan history is automatically part of Chinese history. To me, it seems no more historically dubious than to claim Native Americans as part of American history or Mayans as part of Mexican history or the Picts as part of British history.

Also, this *isn't* to justify claims to Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, and Manchuria. The claims of the PRC are based on a formalistic reading of international law rather than based on ethnicity. The PRC doesn't attempt to justify claims to Mongolia or Singapore, for example.

What groups are and are not included as "Chinese since the beginning" is largely a function of currently politics. Russians, Mongolians, and Koreans will scream very loudly if they are included as "inherently Chinese" (and the Koreans did in fact scream very loudly recently over the boundaries of "Chinese"). What makes this tricky is that pre-1800, every civilized human was Chinese in Chinese thought.

This also applies to "overseas Chinese." During the 1960's. the PRC made a concerted effort to distance itself from overseas Chinese. Someone who was "ethnically Han" living in Thailand was expected by the PRC government to "become Thai." That's changed radically in the last decade because of globalization, and how "overseas Chinese" relate to the "Motherland" is something that is still actively being renegotiated/

The boundaries of "national history" are as arbitrary as national boundaries.

That's a very good summary of the situation. The only caveat is that this doesn't make the concept of China more "artificial" than any other national concept. Benedict Anderson's point in this classic was that *all* nations do this, and the concept of a "natural nation" is an artificial concept in itself. (I believe he used the example of Indonesia.)

Also, I would argue that China has largely suceeded in defining itself as a multi-ethnic nation, where success is defined in creating a national concept that is accepted by most of the polity. Certainly more successful than the Habsburgs, the Ottomans, or the Romanovs. It is interesting that when you list the major powers of the 21st century (the United States, China, India, Europe) all of them have had the challenge of creating a multi-ethnic national concept.

The other point is that the concept of "Han ethnicity" is itself a very interesting "artificial construction." The differences between different groups of "Han Chinese" are easily as great as those between different groups of Europeans. I think this accounts for the instinctive negative reaction that Chinese have toward challenges toward national unity. Because the idea of "Han ethnicity" is as much a construction as "Chinese nationhood" and effort to define China in ethnic terms is going to set up with a lot of small states the size of provinces.

1) When writing a national history, I don'tt see how you can avoid politicizing historiography. Constructing a historical narrative is fundamentally a political act.

2) Speaking as an American-born Chinese who has had to deal with a lot of the same issues from an American context, my feeling is that giving a minority group an independent autonomous history has the effect of marginalizing that group and denying them a place within the national history. It was a great thing in the 1960's when American history books started talking about the "first Americans" rather than starting American history with European colonization, and I think it would be a very bad thing if Chinese railroad workers of the mid-19th century were not treated as an integral part of American history or if Spanish colonization of the Southwest was considered outside the bounds of "American history." Similarly, my feeling is that including the history of the "border regions" as an inherent and integral part of "Chinese history" will actually be socially beneficial in allow minorities to make political demands (i.e. if Tibetans are just as much Chinese as people in Shanghai, then why can't we do X, Y, and Z).

The reason I bring up the United States is that I'm most familiar with it. It's been very successful at dealing with a lot of the issues that China has to deal with.

One has to be careful about analogies. The interesting thing about the American identity is that it is defined solely in terms of citizenship and not in terms of ethnic blood relations. You are an American if you are an American citizen, and you are not an American if you aren't. I'm an American because I hold an American passport and I believe in the Constitution of the United States. It doesn't matter what language I speak, what I look like, or my cultural traits.



Malaysian and Singaporean Chinese make a strong distinction between the ethnicity (hua ren) and the nationality (zhong guo ren). Since I'm an American-born Chinese I tend not to, because I'd like to identify myself with the Chinese nationalist project. I can get away with this in part because Chinese-Americans make up an insignificant part of the US population, and hence identifying myself as a Chinese nationalist causes surprisingly few political problems. (I pledge allegiance to the flag and the US Constitution, and point out that if Irish-Americans and Polish-Americans can be nationalists, why can't I?)

It would cause problems if Chinese-Americans made up 30 or even 20% of the population.

One other thing, I've found that the strongest supporters of what I call "Han nationalism" tend to be Malaysian and Singaporean Chinese, and this is partly due to the special situations that Malaysian and Singaporean Chinese find themselves in.

What special situations do the Malaysian and Singaporean Chinese find themselves in respectively?

Basically, Malaysian and Singaporean Chinese have to define a "Chinese ethnicity" which is separate from the Malay ethnicity, yet cannot become part of the "Chinese nationalist project" without destabilizing the political situation in Malaysia and Singapore. I met a ethnolinguist who argued that a lot of what people think of as the "Chinese ethnic identity" was actually invented in Singapore to distinguish themselves from the native Malay.

This is different from other overseas Chinese contexts. In Thailand and Philiphines, ethnic Chinese tend to assimilate into the majority population, which is difficult in Malaysia and Singapore because of religion. In the United States and Indonesia, the number of Chinese is too small to develop a "communal identity."

The thing that is the case in the PRC, is that the People's Republic of China simply can't define Chinese in purely ethnic terms without the risk of losing a large amount of strategic territory and causing the entire nation to be at risk.

Well said. Which international law were the claims based on?

The position of the PRC is that the Instrument of Surrender of Japan gave legal effect to the Potsdam Declaration which referenced the Cairo Declaration which stated that Taiwan was to be turned over to China after WWII, and that since the PRC is the successor state to the ROC, it is entitled to position of Taiwan. The PRC would also argue that there is an international consensus that there is "one China" and the PRC is the sole legitimate government of China.

Now before you start screaming at me..... Yes, I know that this position can be challenged in several dozen ways. Taiwan independence supporters question the validity of the Cairo Declaration, point out that the Treaty of San Francisco doesn't mention Taiwan, invokes the right of self-determination, and questions the level of international consensus requiring Taiwan. ROC supporters can question the successor state theory and the international consensus argument. (One rule of doing legal stuff is that you need to know your opponents arguments better than they do.)

But my point is this.......

In claiming Taiwan and Tibet (and not Singapore or Mongolia), the PRC is *not* using an ethnic argument but rather a legal one. You can dispute the legal argument, but my point is that the PRC is using it. Because the claim of Taiwan is based on a legal argument, the PRC is *very* sensitive to things that could undermine that legal argument and the implications of international law. The main implication is that it is fine for a state to use force to settle an internal dispute, but it is a "crime against peace" for a sovereign state to use force to annex another sovereign state. Likewise, the validity of using force to intervene in another states internal affairs is limited.

Right now, the PRC is very, very, very careful to avoid doing anything that would fatally kill their legal arguments. For example, if the United States or Japan were to recognize the Taiwan representative as "ambassador" and to accept a letter of credence, then PRC's legal position would be unsupportable. Similarly, other people are very, very, very careful to do anything that would make the PRC's legal position the only valid one, since the implication of that would be that the United States would have no legal right to intervene in the Taiwan straits.

The result of this is that people *deliberately* make the status of Taiwan ambigious so that everyone can pretend that their version of reality is correct. It gets very, very dangerous when people try to make things clear, because at that point, someone can no longer argue their version of reality and is likely to react in a bad way.

I stumbled onto this site accidentally with an inquiry into the true origin of the yin-yang symbol which was misrepresented in a history textbook of one of my American eighth-grade students. I insisted that the true origin was not the light versus shade of a mountain, but developed scientifically through observation surrounding measurements using a pole. I am very happy that I was able to corroborate my understanding with a link provided from this forum. Thank you to the owners of this list.

Reading this topic, I am reminded of my own father-in-law's story, which required seperation from the homeland, then in 1949, forced exile, but in 1978, reconciliation. He never lost his dream to reunite with his beloved China (he grew up in ninbo and shanghai). He was happy to give China the information it had originally asked a young and ambitious scholar to find in America when he was allowed to return.

What I find perplexing is that there is so much fighting over this topic of what is Chinese, or more precisely 中華民族. It seems a moot point, because one is either mentally a member of 中華 or not. I am an American who is ethnically diverse in my lineage, however my 中国人 parents accept me as Chinese. This is because everything I do is Chinese, as I naturally behave and adapt to their way of thinking. It is not my place to tell them what to do, unless they ask me (which they are not afraid to do!). I am merely part of a continuum which begins with 孔子， 老子， and ends with this family.

Thank you for providing this forum. It is intellectually stimulating and quite diverse in opinions.

Thanks for sharing, I appreciate and respect your comments.

If I read it correctly, it means that your descendants will no longer be part of that continuum, and that they will have little to do with anything "chinese", no more than anything else. It is surely one's sole right to decide how to go about this. However, if by any chance later in life you get this feeling that you need to know more about chinese ancestry, heritage, history and culture that goes with it, you may find CHF offers more than just the "fighting" you perceive.

是！

对！

<Bow and Smile>

李思松

problem with this kind of topics are the following:

1. confusing nationality with ethnicity
2. confusing ethnicity with race
3. confusing common language with ethnicity
4. confusing historical interaction with ethnicity

and it only gets worse with the term 中華民族, because the term itself was created by confusing all these together, making any attempt to try rationalize such term futile.

I guess lisesong got us stranded.

Anyone care to restart this?

What I find missing in the informed and interesting discussion that precedes is any appraisal of the non-cognitive content of a term such as Zhonghua Minzu (中華民族). To my mind it is designed, and indeed often succeeds, in arousing an emotion of belonging and community that defies (and does not require) detailed definition. What I am suggesting is that we will also need to approach this term as a rhetorical trope for individuals and groups to define their own identities in an active manner... i.e., not just as a term with a singular meaning dispense from some notional centre.

As I am not a Chinese national, I do not really know what Zhonghua Minzu means to citizens in the PRC. If all citizens, Han or others, feel "all-chinese", as in the nationality, then that term will be defunct and unnecessary.

However, for those now living outside but possess lineage and heritage linked back to that land, the feeling may be different.
Less so, I would think for those who have comfortably settled down in other countries - and naturally.
In fact, I would think there are plenty who feel strange about the term.
For those who settled in other places but somehow feel discriminated against or sidelined may have a reason to feel strongly for that term.
There were times, I remember, that when a government of a certain country did not grant citizenship to them, the PRC came in to offer to take them.
I do not see the term as just to arouse emotions, but more of a human brotherhood notion that does provide something meaningful to some souls.

Outside China, those who still pick up chopsticks, drink chinese tea and watch chinese TV series would probably feel quite strongly about it.
When I walk the streets of chinatown in Melbourne or London or New York, I feel pretty good. That's because I am familiar with the language, the food and the stores. In contrast, those who have consciossly or unconsciously shed that "chineseness" will either dislike or indifferent about places like that. But then, I do not know if this feeling outside China is different from Han and Manchu or others. Perhaps someone in the right shoes can comment.

Hua is both an ethnic and a cultural term.

Hua can mean that one is a blood descendent of the Hua people who were the originators of the Hua/Chinese civilization.

Hua can also mean that one is a cultural descendent of the Hua civilization (sinicized person).

Shopping and eating in Chinatown is just for convenience. If it arouses your emotion - good for you!

Technically, I believe that there is no such a nation or nationality called Chinese, Chinese is a mix of different ethnic groups(which I prefer to use race). Think about this, when China became one country with different ethnics, my guess is that Qin Dynasty formed and uniformed the language in the writing and speaking. Just listen to a Cantonese speaking Cantonese, A Hakka speaking Hakka, a Northerner speaking Mandarin, and a Shanghainese speaking Shanghainese. The pronunciations of all these different 'languages' never sound close or similar. They vary from each other. How can you define all these people as one nation? Obviously, history is made and decided by the dominant class and the dominee class can never voice one word about it.

Why is it still so common in the West (including western scholars and media) to categorize Chinese as only Hans? It appears to be pretty clear both in term of the historical development of the term "Chinese" and technically that it includes a number of ethnic groups. One theory that I heard is due to the Euro-centric approach to historiography of naton states.