Anyway, Hakka is at worst as "Huaxia" as Cantonese and Fujianese. I'm not supporting their (or our? ) claim of being "the purest", I'm seeing the condition of modern Han Chinese now.

* "Yellow race" did not develop in Africa, they developed after they reached Asia, presumably Central Asia. That's why "Yellow race" have African ancestry but it's not right to consider them Africans.

Disregard the blending first: the data strongly suggests that the agriculture are not developing among distinct people, but rather carried by a unique people. (anyway, these people should be in North about 15.000 years ago (carrying older marker O), as there's Korean evidence of ancient rice grain this old)

You do.* Take a read on all your posts first : what have you written and what have you cited?

Well, in my opinion, the term 'Han' exists since Han dynasty, as it's one of the longest dynasty in Chinese history, and also because of its glory. I think Han people refer themselves are Han people initially because they are under Han dynasty's rule.

Then, after the fall of Han dynasty in 220 AD, and the fall of West Jing in 316 AD, the people in the northen China regard themselves as Hans and the nomadic races who found the new kingdom regard the locals as Hans as well (to differ the locals to their own races). However, those races adapted to the northen Hans and Hans adapted those races' culture and when China was reunified by Sui, the Hans' population suddenly increased by huge amount.

Thus, during Sui-Tang era, 'Han' consist of the original Hua Xia, some northen nomadic races and southern babaric tribes.

Later, after the fall of Northen Song, then the 'Han' term become blur. This is due to both Nurzhen in North, Southern Song and Da Li all regard themselves as 'Han'.

When Mongols conqueror the whole China, 'Han' would refer to those regards as HanRen in central China and NanRen in Southern China.

During Ming and Qing, 'Han' would refer to those south to the Great Wall. This is due to the North East is largely occupied by Nurzhen while Mongols spread from the north of Great Wall to Siberia.

I wouldn't know how ROC and PRC define 'Han' in the first place. Perhaps they do this to make people realise that there are not only Hans in China, but rather other 55 races (indeed they are different from Han people).

So, from history, I think that Han is both an ethnic group and a collective term. Han as an ethnic group as it has it roots from HuangDi and YanDi, just that the term 'Han' exists only after Han dynasty. Han as a collective term as history showed that 'Han' refers to different groups of ethnics as different period of time.

So now we can find that Han people, although as 1 ethnic group, but their differs greatly in culture, food, linguist. I think the term 'Han' was initially used due the the people in China suffers from warfare and yearn for the peaceful and prosperous Han dynasty. To keep each other spirit up and unified one another, they use Han to identify themselves. But then, noone would expect that Han ethnic would become so large, so diverse.

In my opinion, it's hard to determine if it's a wise move, but Han ethnic should be a '异中求同，同中存异' group, otherwise it would not become so large.

Hi snowybeagle:

I made another academic mistake. My point was that there are very few archaeological records from a complex civilisation (such as the Shang dynasty) prior to about 1400 BC. (For example, the oldest oracle bone and shell inscriptions only date back to the 14th century BC) There are of course plenty of archaeological material from earlier times, but those are mostly Neolithic and so I wasn't referring to them. However, I am clearly wrong. It turns out that although most of oracle bone and shell inscriptions come from Yin(Anyang) during the period between the 14th century to the 11th centuries BC, some oracle bone and shell inscriptions actually date back to the 16th century BC at the modern day city of Zhengzhou.

See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_script

"Oracle bone script (Chinese: 甲骨文; Pinyin: jiǎgǔwén; literally "shell bone writing") refers to incised (or, rarely, brush-written) ancient Chinese characters found on oracle bones, which are animal bones or turtle shells used in divination in ancient China. The vast majority are ox scapulae and tortoise plastrons which record the pyromantic divinations of the royal house of the late Shāng Dynasty, primarily at the capital of Yīn (modern Anyang, Henan Province), around the 14th to 11th centuries. A few are from Zhengzhou and date to earlier in the dynasty, around the 16th to 14th centuries BC, while a very few date to the beginning of the subsequent Zhōu dynasty."

Also, the idea that the Shang divination system was only invented around 1400 BC is clearly wrong as well, for as early as 2500 BC chiefdoms in the Longshan Late Neolithic Culture were employing essentially the same kind of divination techniques.

It seems certain now that the earliest evidence of the Shang dynasty Chinese script date back to at least the 16th century BC so that it is justifiable to trace the earliest fully developed (mature) Chinese script to the time period 1600 - 1500 BC, as many sources attest.

I apologise for the mistakes I made.

Well, besides the mixing of different people and marriage alliances with once warring factions throughout China's history, my first guess would be the true Chinese ethnicity would have to be derived from the old Yellow River peoples of the Yangshao and Longshan pottery cultures. Although there has been plenty of population migration, elimination, and interracial relations, I believe the ancient Yangshao/Longshan race of the northern Yellow River region exists today as China's bloodline majority. Just an estimated guess, though.

I would say Han IS an ethnic group as though there are north and south variations, Han have common origins in Zhongyuan. It's just that over time they assimilated native populations into the bulk of Han.

"Han" exists today as the name for an ethnic group. But whether the name "Han" was used historically as the name for that distinct ethnic group, prior to the Qing dynasty, is very debatable.

Whether the 'Han' people of the Qing dynasty were essentially the same 'Han' people of the Han dynasty, is even more debatable.

To make myself clearer: I believe that 'Han' can be used today to refer to an ethnic group (indeed, the ethnic group that I myself belong to), since they want to be known as such. But the term should not be used by historians to refer to the people whom this ethnic group claim as their ancient ancestors, because this tends to obscure more than it illuminates.

The term Han for the central Chinese ethnicity, Zhongyuan ren, certainly existed since Song. One of Wang AnShi's poems contains the line:

Han4 en zi4 qian3 hu2 zi4 shen
ren2 sheng le4 zai4 shuang zhi xin

The Han's grants in life are shallow the Hu's are deep
Happiness in life lies in mutual knowledge of the heart.

The poem was a contrarian view on the commonly presumed plight of a beautiful woman sent to a distant hu.

The concept of such ethnicity existed no later than Spring and Autumn

Laozi lamented that many of his students read the same scripts but did not pronouce the text in the same way; he lamented the divergence of spoken Chinese. Zhongyuan ren was pretty much people who shared the same Hanyu characters, and nothing else, in writing with similar grammar or structure of expression.

I suspect that if you examine the context of Wang Anshi's poem more closely, you will find he was alluding to the Heqin ('marriage alliance') policy of the early Han dynasty. 'Han' was thus referring to a dynasty, rather than an ethnicity.

To my knowledge, the widespread use of 'Han' as an ethnic category occurred only in the Northern Qi, Yuan and Qing dynasties. The phrase 'Han people' or 'Han troops' is used occasionally in the Tang dynastic histories to refer to people of Zhongguo descent fighting the Tibetans or living under Tibetan rule in the Gansu Corridor and Tarim Basin (i.e. along the Silk Road), but I suspect that in this case it is using an allusion to the Han dynasty presence in that region. I am still looking into the question of how the term 'Han' was used during the Tang.



Having the same written script need not have been understood as being a mark of ethnicity. Remember that the other 'barbaric' peoples outside 'Zhongyuan' or 'Zhongguo' had no written script to mark them ethnically. So the ability to write the script of Zhongguo was seen as a mark of 'civilization' itself, not ethnicity. Remember also that before the Qin dynasty standardized the written script, the scripts of various Spring-Autumn and Warring States regions and states differed considerably, despite having important commonalities. Laozi should have had just as much cause to lament the divergence of the written script (BTW can you provide the source of this story about Laozi?).

You are probably right about Han being a Dynasty rather than a people in Wang Anshi's poem.
BTW, he was quite a pioneer in ethnic equality although he didn't think in such terms, I presume.

Earlier in Tang, Bai juyi's Chang Hen Ge's first line:

Han huang zhong se si qing guo is also interesting.

Isn't Han Huang actually Tang xuan zong? He had to be subtle for political reason I suppose.

It seems, from my research over the last two days, that 'Han' was also used as an ethnic category by the Liao and Jin dynasties, and not just revived by the Yuan. The Yuan copied it from the Jin, the Jin copied it from the Liao, and the Liao probably copied it from the Northern Qi who originated the label.

That would actually strengthen my argument that before 1911 'Han' as an ethnic category was used by 'conquest dynasties' that were originally considered as 'barbarian'. This was done to avoid the connotations of cultural superiority in the term 'Hua'.

Given a choice, the 'Hua' would always want to be called 'Hua', rather than 'Han'.

What make a ethnic group what it is ,an ethnic group?
the comon :
language?
comon culture?
comon religion?
comon history ?etc
is th ethnic group a artificial invention?

Han people refers to people who lived in Han territory under Han Dynasty. That's all.
During the initial period of Han dynasty, Southern China was not even considered Han people. Even tough they share similiar tradition, they were semi barbaric.

Within Han dynasty, there were many subjects that comes from various tribes. It took a very long time for Southern Chinese to be integrated into the so called Han people.

I disagree, as you will see from my earlier posts. In the Han dynasty, 'Han people' was merely a term of political affiliation, not an ethnic identity. It was used to distinguish politically between people under Han rule and those who were not (e.g. the Xiongnu and Qiang), but the ethno-cultural term was 'Hua people' or 'Zhongguo people'. 'Han people' fell out of use as a term after the Han dynasty, until the Northern Qi dynasty (550-577) used it to substitute for the term 'Hua people'. The reason why the Northern Qi did this is that 'Hua people' implied cultural superiority over 'Yi people' (i.e. barbarians) - Hua and Yi were always in a binary relationship. The Northern Qi disapproved of this elevation of Hua over Yi because its ruling family considered itself Xianbei (i.e. one of the Yi). So it used the neutral term 'Han people' to refer to those who called themselves Hua people, and even gave 'Han' a derogatory meaning.

This, in my opinion, is how the 'Han' ethnic label first got created.



There is no evidence that they could not be called 'Han people' during the Han dynasty. There is only evidence that they were not included in 'Zhongguo' even in the early 4th century, 100 years after the Han ended. 'Han' meant the whole empire; 'Zhongguo' only meant the northern heartland of the Central Plains and Guanzhong.

No it's not clear at all that this is the case, and part of the point of this discussion is that in most situations before the 1800's, this *wasn't* the case. The big distinctiion throughout most of Chinese history was between "civilized" and "barbarian."

It is a mystery why I didnt see this topic in the past...nroth purest hahaha

"Is Han even an Ethnic Group?, Or was the Han ethnicity invented?"

--------

Sure, why not. Except 56 ethnic minorities, the last one, the biggest ethnic group will be han. It is ethnicity instead of nationality, right?

Everybody is an ethnic group. Some groups are just larger than others and ends up absorbing smaller diverse groups into their society.

I was watching the History and finally I understood why China's population grew by leaps and bounds. They engineered a masterpiece that delivered a river up to the people and there was a huge population explosion.

China was destined, under the heavens, to be the dominant Asian Empire.

Since an ethnic group is an extended community, I propose the following factors as ethnic markers:
- common history (e.g. due to common ancestry)
- common culture
- common language
- common beliefs
- common values
- mutual relations

The reason is that these factors normally determine whether a basic community life is possible at all: a shared history can mean that people understand each other due to common, inherited problems; a common culture can mean that people have the opportunity to contact each other on social occasions; a common language makes understanding each other easier; shared beliefs make long, annoying explanations of irrational behavioural patterns unnecessary; common values make social organisation easier; without social relations there is no community, i.e. a single person without social contacts cannot be ethnic.

------------

Now, it would be interesting to me which of the people officially considered as Han also share above mentioned characteristics to a degree that they would (have) be(en) capable of building up and maintaining an ethnically exclusive Han community in present (and past). (I mention exclusiveness here because all the factors mentioned in the list above can be negated in a way so that it would be hard to establish and maintain a community.) Your opinions?

While the ancient concept of Han isn't completely the same as that of the modern one, its equally ridiculous to dismiss ethnicity as none-exsistent. The modern Han ethnicity is just an evolution of the ancient term, a process that carried a vast amount of inertia. Ethnicity is defined by a presumed common ancestry(which doesn't have to be true), sirnames are a determining factor in this regard, shared customs(such as rituals and holidays), and the same language system. Ancient ethnicity has less biological component than modern ones, but it still contains all the characteristics of modern day ethnicity. Lastly, even modernday ethnicity retain political notions. Most Manchus today are as good as Han. But they were still categorized differently for social and political purposes.(such as privileges)

I have not read the 12 pages of posts.

"Han" is not a useful term - either to designate an ethnic group or a cultural group.

I prefer the term "Hua" to designate:

1. Blood descendents of the original Hua people who began the Chinese civilization in the Yellow River valley; and

2. Cultural descendents of that same group.

So, if a group of barbarians has become sinicized, then that group becomes part of "Hua".

I think what is Han should be taken within the context of time/place in history.

The modern concept of Han has little to do with ethnicity/anthropology, it's a political/administrative definition of convenience.

"They supported Sun Yat-sen's claim that China had only five ethnic groups, namely, Han, Hui (Muslims), Manchus, Mongols, and Tibetans. That classification included most ethnic minorities in southern China in the Han group." Source Han XiaoRong, University of Hawaii.

So don't know if he's the first but Sun Yat-sen dabbled into the definition of Han. A defintion set by politician, not by ethno/anthropologist.

The quote that you have quoted is not correct: Of course the Hua people had a concept of their own race and civilization. They called other people Barbarians and Hu and Yue, among others. I am still sticking with my definition of Hua as set out in my earlier post.

Nothing to add really... I'm still too busy taking notes on areas in which to read up.
Fascinating thread. Thanks to those who contributed.

To me personally, Han can be seen as an ethnicity. But due to the fact that China is huge geogrpahically and the fact that migration of the Hans from the central plains to the south & northeast did happened, yes we do have a common ancestor and culture, but each(region) are distinct. We might not look alike 100%, but we still have quite alot of physical features that are common. We are a single ethnic group, but each province or region... the Hans have their slight distinctiveness ^^

Hi Let me first say that there are no pure 'races' in the world. So to speak of a pure Han blood would be stretching it a bit. The Shang and Zhou people may not even be of the same linguistic group. But I guess the amalgam of the 2 groups produced something that could be called Chinese culture, and separated them from their ancient Tibetan relatives in the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. The North it is true continued to receive infusions of nomadic blood - the Wu (martial) element so crucial to the governing a state like China. Thus the Qin - the state closest to the Northwest 'barbarian' world was the unifier of China. Nonetheless these infusions were continually absorbed by the majority proto-Chinese population and disappeared. The 400 years of Han cemented the Chinese identity versus the nomads of the North and the tribes of the South. Thus people who were effectively sinicized during this time tend to call themselves people of Han, even after the fall of the dynasty. In the subsequent turbulent centuries of nomadic occupation of the North, the people in the South became increasingly sinicized through migration and intermarriage with the Yue peoples. When the mixed race rulers of Sui and Tang once again unified China (with their infusions of the Wu martial elements), the southerners called themselves people of Tang, recalling with pride the achievements of this 2nd empire. Whether this amounts to identification of a nation is of course arguable. While nomads before the Mongols have always chosen to Sinicize themselves, the Mongols did not. This led to a permanent break between the settled peoples and the nomadic peoples, so that when the Manchus finally conquered China, they and the Han majority were no longer able to assimilate one another like in the past. This would further enforce the idea of the Han people as a separate race. So from what I see the concept of the Han as a separate ethnicity is an evolving one, not something that was cooked up overnight.

In my opinion, I think Han is not refer to Ethnic but refer to Dinasty Han People.
Like Zhong Guo Ren is refer to PRC Nationality(include Taiwan, HK and Macau), so not refer to Ethnic.

N I think a word may be suitable for Ethnic Chinese in my Mandarin is "Hua" because this word is refer to Huaxia.
so why many Chinese ppl in overseas prefer use Huaren to refer Chinese than HanRen.
HanRen is a ancient word, the word can suitable for use in China.

the word Hanren is so long story, so if we want to change to Hua I think it will need some time.

About the rebellion of Qing dynasty to restore Ming dynasty: Lande Village where miao ethnic live is famous for having its own very unique architectural style and designs. Because of its uniqueness, the Chinese Architectural Society declared this village a preserved cultural heritage site. Having been declared a cultural heritage site, the villagers have been required to abide by many rules, including those inhibiting new additions or infrastructures, unless approved by the Chinese
Architectural Society. The second reason this village is famous is its history. During the Qing Dynasty, a
leader of this village rebelled against the Qing Emperor. Although he lost the war, his name and village
became a historical site. Taijiang is the hometown of the famous rebel Zhang Shiumei, who reportedly led a
rebellion against the Qing Emperor from 1854 to 1873. The Miao make up approximately ninety percent of
the population of Taijiang. During the lectures on Miao history, Professor Li Jinping stated that Zhang
Shiumei was the paramount leader of the rebellion against the Qing Dynasty during the middle of the
nineteenth century, from 1854 to 1873. He stated that Zhang Shiumei and his troops stood against the Qing for
eighteen years, until Zhang Shiumei was captured on the Leigong Mountain and taken to Changsha to be executed. This account appears to be supported by many Miao in Guizhou and scholars in China. During the two-week stay in Guiyang, this author met with many important people, including a group of leaders from Taijiang, who proudly introduced themselves as the leaders of Taijiang, hometown of Zhang Shiumei where his statue was erected. Many Research Notes from the Field:Tracing the Path of the Ancestors – A Visit to the Hmong in China by Kou Yang, EdD, Hmong Studies Journal, 2005, 6: 1-38.16 Other scholars and leaders the author met in Guizhou also referred to Zhang Shiumei as the leader of the rebellion of the middle of the nineteenth century. Jenks, however, question the account of Zhang
Shiumei being the supreme leader of the mentioned rebellion. Jenks also states that the naming of Zhang Shiumei as the supreme leader of the rebellion plays down the roles of other leaders, such as Gao He, who was referred to in historical documents as one of the two “great kings.” The other great king was Jiu Song – one of the leaders of the rebellion. According to Jenks, Gao He, who was captured in 1872 near Leigong Mountain, was the last leader
to be captured. He lists the Miao leaders of the rebellion as Zhang Shiumei, Jui Song, Gao He, Bao Dadu, Jin Gan’gan,
Jin Dawu, and Jiu Dabai. Jenks sums up his description of the Miao leaders of the rebellion writing “All but
the last, who was killed in action in April 1872, were captured and executed by the government” (1994:159).
Although many leaders of the rebellion were Miao, Jenks argues that the label “Miao” rebellion against Qing
rulers is not a proper depiction of the Miao. The rebellion, he writes, included many factions, with leaders and supporters from many ethnic groups, including the Miao and the Han.

The answer is both. All ethnic groups are invented.

Please DEFINE ethnic group and Han.

So two words to define!

Good. The next question then is, when was the idea of a Han ethnic group invented? In other words, when did Han ethnic identity first appear.

You will find that scholars differ drastically on this question. Some say it was the Han period. Others say it was the Age of Fragmentation. Yet others say it was invented by the Qing emperors or by Sun Yat-sen.



I think the Wikipedia article's definition of an ethnic group is balanced and comprehensive enough: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_group

As for defining 'Han', my point would actually be that the term has had different definitions in different periods of history. If you are asking for the modern definition, then I would like to point you to my post at http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php...t&p=4946280

Thank you for the info, but just for your information, WIKI is a known to be not a factual or true definition, due to the fact that anyone could just edit the information or post the information up.

There are good Wiki articles and bad ones. The good ones have reliable citations to show that the content is not just made up by the writer(s) of the article. I think the Ethnic Group article has enough citations to be reliable; it also does not deviate significantly from other definitions of ethnicity that I've seen in academic writings on the subject.