Apology accepted. Yet I have to say since I'm not the one being insulted, it is not necessary to me.

Nonetheless, if you read between the words you can see Suren 911 was being sarcastic, so if we all cool down a little and put away our egoism for a while, we can see better what the other person has to say. Maybe, just maybe there are some truth there that we may not be able to see because of we all have different preception about the world.

My biggest problem with what you posted was 挑拨中国民族和谐, which is a good accuse for just about anything, and so many people, albeit innocent, were killed because of that.

Back to racial discrimination. It is just really hard to spot nowadays, since no government would pass any law to promote so. That said, it still exits but has just taken a different form. The prejudice of race has also mingled with prejudice of social status, culture and so on. When I was visiting Beijing, I received some looks and stares maybe because of my not so good Mandarin or that they see me as outsider, it is just really hard to prove whether it is prejudice or not. However, I have to say most people in Beijing I met were really nice. I have also come across some Chinese internet forums which are filled with people who say Tibetan or other minorities are just trouble makers etc. Even my relatives, who I won't consider as racists, have higher view about themselves as a group then people from other ethnicities. These kinds of memes lead me to believe that racial and other kinds of discrimination are still at large in China but they are just being swept under the rug.

On a last note, I just want to say we have to distinguish patriotism from nationalism. Patriotism allows one to do what is necessary to the well-being of his or her country. Nationalism is just a blind promoption of one's nation. Defending you country on grounds of patriotism is good, while criticising it is even better. On the other hand, nationalism should have no ground at all.

\\

We all know whatever you wrote is simple truth which happens daily.

You are an Mongol girl in your heart. For that reason you felt lots of minor discrimination. As you mentioned that Mongol Stigma is there in presence. That stigma is started from founding of mongol nation, Chinggis Khaan personality distortion. He achieved beyond the human ability, too much burden to small simple nomads. Since the middle age untill now, historians and politics sadistically distorted our history, used all possible insulting vocalbulary on Mongols. As Mongols , we are subject to this legacy. Not only chinese, russian, european, middle easterner might discriminate you. But one thing to remember, those who tend to be vulgar are in most cases intellectually below average, politically motivated people. Do not stuck in fighting or try to convince them to what you believe right. It is waste of time.

Although CHF is better place, you can find here many derogatory, falsely accusiing, exaggerated insulting statements against Mongol State, Mongols and nomads. No one really knows what is the real reason they tend to be discriminating. It is just prejudice attitude which is instilled in them for centuries

so I bet you don't know Mongolian language, nor your father because you are from PRC where limited possibilities of learning and practizing your languages- mongol and manchu...

Learn some mongol/manchu and be American

What is with "the term Chinese only applied to Han"? I think in some sense it is, on other sense it isn't. Without adding anything else before the "Chinese" all of those senses might be there....
Usually when I use "Indonesian", most of the time I will exclude some people like Indian and Chinese. But some people may think otherwise...

Analogy
Tropical year, sidereal year, lunar year, etc are all years (and referred to similar period of time) though they are somehow different.
Somebody thinks that, if we use the most basic definition of year, the most rightful definition for year comes with tropical year. Then are all others not year?
Another person only knows year from calendar so the Gregorian year is the rightful year, then there is problem.
does not work

Thank you, I was trying hard to understand ..

OK, you are not angry. Even if you are angry, you are entitled to do so, because racial abuse of any form is very unpleasant .
Of the inter-racial dating, I agree Muslims are much less prone to date other ethnics, but that's more about religion. In any other cases, I can't see any barriers exist. Most of the time, you don't know the ethnic of your dating girl before you know each other better. They don't look so different as you said anyway.
Of Dazi, did you read it from Jin Yong's book? I didn't hear anyone use that word except a abusive elemenary school classmate. But I'm sure Mongolian have some very bad word for Han too. People need some mean words when they are angry. Why don't you look at the good side of things? Tenger, a mongolian singer, is very popular and respected through out China. Xie Fei shoot a award winning moie about Mongolia Black Steed. Most people have some kind of romantic nomad imagination of Mongolia somehow.

I'm glad you agree there are no significant discriminaton. It's more a personal cultivation thing. Ignorance is a good thng sometime, just as you said.

So many many other nationals, actually ... Singaporeans ... Malaysians ... etc.

Sometimes, it is just defensive nature when we're in alien territories ...

Just because I left China when I was 9 means you can conclude that I have no knowledge about China? What about the millions of Chinese whose parents and grand parents migrated to Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Phillipines and any other parts of the world? Don't try to use that s/he-didn't-live-in-China-therefore-she-knows-jack-about-china bs and deny anybody their right to be proud of their Chinese heritage.

I'm very well accepted among the ABC community as well as the immigrant Chinese. Some new comers from Taiwan and China are mostly surprised at how fluent my Mandarin is and how understanding I am with the Chinese culture, unlike the kids who choose to be "American" and not speak Chinese at all or participate in cultural events.

I'm surprised you carry so much hate within yourself. That's quite the shame. I'm not an ABC and neither do I classify myself as "American." I know how to speak Mandarin and can write, I learn about the culture, I have Chinese blood flowing in my veins. And am quite comfortable with my Chineseness. If anything, you're obviously insecure and have racist attitudes toward Chinese who weren't raised in China. Or maybe you're just a racist because I'm not a full blood Han Chinese. If I didn't have a Chinese heart, then I wouldn't be here reading up on history and participating in the Chinese organizations in my city. I think you're freaking out because I'm not full blood Han Chinese yet still call myself Chinese. I'm proud of my Chinese heritage and that's all I need to know. Your endless tirade proved to me how uncivilized you are and I hope one day you can stop acting so childishly and perhaps understand that Chinese people are very very diverse and not everyone is cookie cutter the same way like you imagine it to be. Sounds like someone is extremely obsessed with a false idea of what being Chinese is and needs an extra dosage of chill pill.


It seems that a lot of people think that I purposely made up things and think that China is a prejudice and discrimination free society. Even within a homogenous country like Korea, there's still discrimination based on class and whatever. Of course. Someone will always claim to be the expert in some subject s/he has no clue about.

I've traveled around and lived in various places, from Inner Mongolia to Harbin to Jilin province to Beijing to Japan to Northeast USA. I'm trilingual and grew up in a very multicultural upbringing. I wasn't too sure of my identity for a very long time because I was brought up this way and that my dad was brought up in a nomadic lifestyle in IM and my parents never taught me much about tradition or culture or ancestry. I learned a lot on my own and sometimes think my footsteps are just like my ancestors, from the arctic land of Siberia to the desert of Central Asia. They traveled everywhere and were very multicultural and everywhere was their home. I guess I'm the same way in a lot of ways. There's a saying in Chinese, 四海为 - the four seas are your home. I've been judged by various people because they can't see things through my eyes. I've learned to be proud of all that I am and at one point, I just stopped caring what others think of it. I know what I am in my heart and that's all that it matter.

My dad knew a little bit of Mongolian when he was little. His dad was fluent (Khalka I believe) and I pretty much don't know any. I'll learn it someday, hopefully.


No, I don't really like to read fictional novels and I learned the term "dazi" from my dad. He told me about it when I was a kid. Every ethnicity has some kind of bad name for another ethnicity. It's pretty much always mutual. Yeah Tenger is quite popular in China. The current fascination about Mongolia (not just in China but worldwide) is from recent years. Maybe a decade ago. It's a piece of secluded land and a lot of it is still like what it was like hundreds of years ago. Naadam was celebrated the same way hundreds of years ago, and the people still live in the past, although the younger generations are rapidly changing. It carries that mystique I think.

I agree it's not Racial in the sense of being biologically defined. But as a historian studying ethnicity in Chinese history, I constantly come across the orthodox line that Han culture is so much more advanced than all other ethnic cultures in China. Non-Han ways of life are seen as primitive and backward, especially nomadic ways of life. Originally Confucianism was used to justify this belief, then Social Darwinism, and finally Marxism (i.e. "the Han achieved the feudal stage of historical development, while other ethnic groups remained stuck in the slave society stage"). So the assumption keeps being made that non-Han ethnic groups should abandon their traditions and adopt the Han way of life, such as agriculture and cities. Non-Han cultural heritage is only encouraged as a form of tourist attraction - it doesn't get preserved in everyday life, and is only put on display in a diluted form in the numerous ethnic minority theme parks. Indeed, the history books maintain that this is why numerous ancient ethnic groups all 'disappeared' - they got assimilated into the Han culture. The unspoken message is that in the long term, the 55 existing ethnic minorities will get assimilated too.

Naturally, many Han citizens exposed to such an education would develop an attitude of cultural superiority towards the minorities, whether overtly expressed or not.



That is actually part of the problem. Minorities get exoticized, romanticized, orientalized, even eroticized, in Han popular culture. There is a certain Inner Mongolian exotic stereotype, a Tibetan exotic stereotype, and a southern minorities exotic stereotype. The Mongolian or Tibetan stock figure is a rough macho warrior or a lama with magical powers, while the dominant image of southern minorities plays on the Han male fantasy of mysterious, sexily-dressed, tribal women. The US cultural anthropologist Dru Gladney has written a lot about such ethnic stereotypes in the PRC - you can go and check out any of his books.

It is not too different from how the Native American man or the Asian woman gets stereotyped in US popular culture.



Xuanzang, your 中国心 concept seems to me to be just a way of dictating that whoever wants to call himself/herself 'Chinese' must not criticize China in front of the non-Chinese, and must instead loyally emphasize all the good things about China. Picking 白求恩 (Dr Bethune) who died in 1939 as your poster boy of a foreigner who 'became Chinese' because he had a 中国心 is pretty pointless, since he is not alive now and there is no way to know if he would criticize the ethnic situation in the PRC as well if he were alive.

CHF does not approve of any attempts to run another member's views down by questioning his or her Chineseness. That is a bad expression of nationalism. I would ask you not to do so again. Your rude, defensive and intolerant attitude is actually making Suren911's arguments even more convincing.

BTW, most of us were able to tell that Suren911 was being bitterly sarcastic when she said she "just loved" how Chinese people have been fighting each other throughout history. What the sarcasm implies is that she actually hates it.

Just a side-note to Ashura: this was actually said by Abraham Lincoln.

Really? I heard it from somewhere and it said it was from Mark Twain, anyway thx for the information.

The fascination of nomadic life has started for a long time, I believe. Some people take it as a psychology esacape from modern life. In reality, IM do have attractive attributes too. The view is beautiful, people are amicable.A classmate from my college grew up in Baotou. She missed IM so much, she has to go back every year.
In modern China, all culture is tourism attraction. I'm nt saying it's a good thing. It's just market. Unlike in us, Chinese government, esp local government, are relunctant to spend money on culture reservation and China don't have that much private donations and funds to do so.

That's a very old stereotype of China. China has lost that kind of sense of cultural superiority long ago. Currently, nomadic people in IM and Xinjiang are encoraged to dwell, because they can make more money that way, at least temporaly. But there are debates about if it is good for them in long run. Also the traditional nomadic life style need very large lands to support very few people. The population is growing very fast, no one child policy there, they don't have enough lands to support tradtional life style. This is a part of the 扶贫工程， assisting poor people projet. The government is serious in lifting poor people out of poverty. (The new Nobel peace prize winner is already invited to set up bank to give small loans to poor people in China.) Because many minorities are living in the poorest areas. They make a big part of the project. That's rather a historical heritage than any kind of discrimination. From some western point of view, one might argue, 'Hey, leave them alone. You are destroying their culture.' That would leave some place for discusson. In fact, China did pretty well in assisting the poorest, although the general gap between poor and rich are widening. I think UN praised China for that. BTW, the line of the poorest in China is annual earning below 500yuan or 60$. Before making any judgement, please imagine first how can you live with 60$ a year.



That's the old problem. When you have discrimination in mind, you see discrimination everywhere. The artists need some exotic things in their imagined romantic relationships. No need to make it something pervert sexual fantacy of Chinese men. You can see plenty of female fall for macho nomadic men too. Like in Crouching tiger Hidden Dragon, the heroine fall for a bandit from Xinjiang who want to rob her. Though Yu Jiaolong is manchu, she's much sinicised and has that kind of cultural superiority typically of Han. The movie is very late, but the novel it based on are written in 1930s. Of all Jin Yng's books the rate of Han female fall for minority male is equal to minority female fall for Han male. He Tieshou, a miao, fall for Yuan. The han girl in Bai Ma Xiao Xi Feng, fall for a mongolian boy. Interesting, both the two are one-sided love. Though Huazheng, the mongolian princess, fall for Guo Jing, a Han. Guo Jing grew up in Mongolia, and has more mongolian stereotype characters like simple and straight forward. Huang Rong observed, 'You and Huazheng are two eagles flying on the steppe, I'm just an outsider.'

My suggestion is American scholars' works are sure to be a good reference sometimes, but they sometimes project their own altitude on Chinese.

I have only one more thing to add:

Being chinese is not about 'blood' , sigh, some people never seems to understand, there is no 'Chinese blood', we don't have this 'pure blood' concept as in the west. Some ppl just can't give up this racial thinking.

Chi‧nese  /tʃaɪˈniz, -ˈnis/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[chahy-neez, -nees] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation noun, plural -nese, adjective
–noun

4. a native or descendant of a native of China.

Source: www.dictionary.com

Good Definition.

Wow...

That was depressing, miscommunication all the way.

Sorry for dragging this out again...

And we all know what that is...

Pride and Ignorance.

Ok. I understand your feelings. There is 2 types of discrimination, 1st is legal like Malaysia's New Economic Policy(where 'natives' or bumiputra get 30% equity,the non-bumi Chinese and Indians suffer, and bumi have their Mara U(100% bumi)) and 2nd is indirect as how your father experienced. imho, we Malaysian Chinese are worse than chinese minorities

Honestly, i think both the han and minorities does not understand each other. There should be a dialogue together. As for the term Chinese, it's not like separating black and white.

It is wrong to classify "Chinese" as han only (esp. in the west). In broader sense, it refers to all chinese nationality/citizens living in China.

In order to promote harmony among various ethnics in China I suggest the abolishment of any mention of "minority ethnic group" by the PRC government. Nobody would liked to be called a minority group even in their traditional homeland.

Of course the privileged policy for the minority groups should stay.

Han chauvinism should be scraped.

There are 2 kinds of "Chinese" definition in the world today:

1) Anyone holding an ID card or passport issued by PRC (also HK &Macao) and ROC, regardless of ethnic background.
2) Culturally Han Chinese ( of any nationality and most likely a descendant of a (majority Han Chinese) PRC or ROC citizen).

From (1), "Chinese" does not apply to Han Chinese only.
From (2), "Chinese" more likely applies to Han Chinese, but may include non-Han Chinese occasionally.

What about Han Chinese who think that they are the only "true Chinese"?

Then the Song, Xia, and Jin Dynasty are all equally Chinese?

I agree with you to a great extent, but I've encountered many who wouldn't.

Well, I think it may be possible that Han Chinese to think themselves as the true Zhong Hua, but I doubt Han Chinese thinks themselves as the true Chinese, as Chinese is really a relative new term in comparison to what we call our selves.

In today's stand point, Xia is Barbarian until its reform to dress in Han cloth and follow edict of Confucian text; Jin is Barbarian until its switch from a nomadic tribe into a Confucian style government. In sense of Hua, Song is more Hua then Xia and Jin not because of its bloodlines but because how close it follow the word of the Sages [聖人言] That is, one can say Korea at the time of Song is more Hua then China at Yuan's time. Many of us are heirs to Chu culture; you can say Chu was barbaric at one point until it follow Li.

They should just scrap the Han ethnicity altogether because it's based in nothing, and group the subgroups based on their genetic/linguistic and historical affiliations.

I am a Han Chinese, but my family has NEVER believed the definition for Chinese only limited to Han Chinese. We consider any people who want to claim that they are Chinese as Chinese, and we really don't care whether they are from ethnic groups of Hui, Tibetans, Mongolians, Manchurians, Hmongs, Zhuangs, Tu people, She people, White people, Africans, Persians, Jews, Slavics, etc., and my family members also do not require them to know Chinese or Chinese culture -- In my family members' opinions, if you want to be Chinese, you are Chinese, and it is just like: if you want to be an American, you are an American -- Of course, NOT politically (not that you can get the modern citizenship just by declaration alone), but both China and U.S. are/were actually formed more through the person's declaration of belonging than ANY ethnic or cultural connections all throughout the history!!! Therefore, I really can't stand anyone who claims such and such groups of people could NOT be considered Chinese!!!

They are mostly overseas chinese who do not know much about chinese history or China. As can be said, they were classified under the group called "han chauvanistic". It's hard to blame them, as quite a large number of overseas chinese hardly studied chinese history. I've encountered a few such people. Even in China, I've come across 1 or 2 han-chinese who refused to think of Uighurs as "Zhongguo Ren" (chinese nationals), because they look different from han-chinese.

To tell you the truth, before I study Chinese history, I thought chinese people are only han people. But after studying chinese history, I've changed my perception after realizing such as large number of ethnic minorities made up the people in China.



From chinese historical perspective, they are all equally chinese. The Xia and Jin dynasty adopted chinese dynasty period, system just like any chinese dynasty, even though they were ruled by Tanguts and Jurchen ethnicity.

But to let you know, quite a big portion of chinese history written during Song dynasty were han-centric (i.e. they regarded han as chinese only and refused to recognise the Jurchen/Tanguts even though they rule parts of china using chinese dynasty system).



Many overseas chinese grouped themselves under subgroups based on language such as Cantonese, Hokkiens, Hakka, Mandarins, Teochew, Wu etc.

I guess, the 'han' is probably more useful in PRC when differentiating between different ethnicities.

I agree. Under the Wu-Yue culture, I don't really think that we (as I am a daughter of Yue people) are as purely Han Chinese as many people think if one really look into the Wu-Yue history, culture, and genes. In my family hometown of Wenzhou, we have a lot of Chinese ethnic minorities living among us and near us and probably have marriage relationship with our families, so much so that my father, a very traditional Han Chinese Confucian scholar who was born in late Qing dynasty, would NOT refer them as someone less than Han or barbaric like some of the more Northern Han Chinese would have done.

as far as I know..

1. Huaxia tribes - the neolithic peoples in the yellow river valley
2. "Han" Chinese - #1 + the various groups and their descendants the neolithic tribes have interacted with and mixed with for the longest time
3. Chinese nationality - refers to legal status
4. Zhonghua Minzu - #3 + overseas Chinese

I think the broad term "Chinese" is more fitting for just nationality. It's not very descriptive, esp. for a nation with 1,320+ people. China definitely isn't an America though, the people there are established for a much longer time and it's not an immigrant nation. All the ethnic groups in China have been Chinese for thousand + years.

When you have U.S. and Americans going in the same track like the last few hundred years (since the Europeans came to North America) for the next 4000 or 5000 years, you will get a nation and a people like China and Chinese.

But regardless of the "definitions", after all it's said and done, it seems that, as of today, Chinese still means "culturally Han" Chinese!