From: clipper@mccarthy.csd.uwo.ca (Khun Yee Fung)
Subject: Chinese? Han? Tang? Hua? Xia? Zhongguo? Zhonghua?
Organization: Department of Computer Science, The University of Western
	Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1993 07:44:36 GMT

[This article certainly has no relevance in this forum, except that it
may tell you what the Chinese calls themselves and why. A piece of
trivia in this age, even for most Chinese. And compared to the
important discussions in this forum, this is really unimportant.]

Today is the second day of Chinese new year. A good time to talk a
little bit about cultural things. A good start is what we mean by the
label `Chinese'.

Chinese is of course a term initially used by non-Chinese to refer to
Chinese. Like Inuits being called Eskimos in the old days (and modern
days in U.S.). Or like the term Indian when used to refer to
oboriginal peoples in the Americas. A rather common name for China is
Cathay, first used by Marco Polo. Unfortunately, he went to North
China which at the time was governed by a tribe call the Khitans. From
this word came the word Khitai, Cathay. The Khitans assimilated
themselves completely to the sinitic tradition (their conquerors
Jurcheds did not. But they came back to found the Qing dynasty and
ultimately assimilated[0] completely a few centuries later). So I
guess it is not totally wrong.

There are quite a few names that the Chinese used to call themselves.
All of them have different denotations and different origins. An old
common term is Xiaren, literally people of summer. Xia was also the
name of their perhaps oldest dynasty. The area they lived was (and is
still) called Zhongyuan (central plains). That is perhaps why they
called their country Zhongguo, the central kingdom. Huaxia (flowering
summer) is the way of life, culture of Zhongguo. This term is still
used today. Another term referring to the mythical origin of the
Chinese is the `descendants of Huangdi', Huangdi being the mythical
tribal chief who united the whole central plains. Xiaren is a good
name when referring to people like Laozi, Confucian, etc. because they
lived before the Han dynasty and therefore were not really Hanren.

After the Han dynasty, Hanren is another term commonly used. Although
the Han dynasty is not as highly regarded as the Warring States in
terms of achievements, it was really the foundation of the Chinese
influence as a single unifying force in China. Mongols used it to
refer to peoples living in North China (Peoples living in South China
were called Nanren, southern peoples). Today, Hanren is used to refer
to peoples who have accepted the Tradition. Ethnic origin is seldom
the deciding factor. The acceptance of the Tradition is. A Hui orients
his life to the Islamic world and so is not a Hanren whatever his
ethnic makeup is. But a Miao who accepts the Tradition is a Hanren in
fact.  One of my friends just married to a Miao who is more Chinese
than me (He looks more Chinese, acts more Chinese, eats more Chinese,
speaks more Chinese, listens more Chinese, behaves more Chinese than
me) and is not considered an outsider by his friends, as far as I can
see.  So it really is defined in terms of cultural background, not
genetics. If the genetic makeup of the people we call Hanren is
considered, there will certainly be a great confusion. The differences
of a Yue and a Min would be considered great enough to deserve
different racial status in Europe, for instance. But since both of
them accept the Tradition, they are both Han.

Tang dynasty was the defining dynasty of peoples of the South. As a
result, almost every Yue call himself/herself a Tangren. The Hakkas,
though migrated from central plains, call themselves Tangren as well.
China is still called by my parents as Tangshan (the mountains of
Tang, a name referring to the whole of China, not to be confused by
the name of a coastal city in Hebei).

The mass migration of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth
century of Yues, Mins, and Hakkas to South East Asia, North America
and the Caribean created Chinese communities in almost every corner of
the South East Asia and many cities in North America. In South East
Asia, these immigrants called themselves Huajiao because they believed
they would go back to China once it was stable again. When the
colonies became independant, they changed the name and call themselves
Huaren, literally the flowering people. The Chinese language is not
called Hanwen but Huawen. The characters are Huawenzi, not Hanzi. Some
people still use Zhongwen, Zhongwenzi though. The Chinese literature
is called Zhonghua (central flowering) wenxue or Zhongguo wenxue.

The concept of nationalities came very late for the Chinese for China,
because of historical accidents, never broke into longstanding
separate nations. It had stayed united even though for some centuries
there had been different regimes and dynasties controling different
parts of China in different areas. The separation could be for a few
centuries but eventually China would unit again. The yearning for a
united China still echoes today's world of nation states. Even the
communists, began by creating Soviet regions, still eventually has
only one regime. However, the Chinese do refer to Chinese citizens and
residents by a different name, Zhongguoren (the people of Zhonggua).
Then they muddle the whole thing by calling Hanren Zhonghua Minzhu,
the central flowering nationality. Even worse, the phrase minzhu can
mean race, and nationality. This certain results from the central
concept still held by many Chinese, consciously or unconsciously, that
peoples who accepted the Tradition are a single group. So the recent
concepts of race and nationality are simply fused into the long-held
concept.

Sunzhongshan was perhaps the first person to refer to the Chinese
people in terms of the moderns concepts of nationalities and races.
But to unite peoples of very different ethnic backgrounds, different
peoples in different regions just came one big race, Hanren.

Of course, the subgroups call themselves with different names and call
other peoples names.  The surest thing to instigate an argument with a
Yue is to tell him that Yues are not Han. To incite the pride of a
Hakka, tell him that Hakkas are definitely from the Central Plains,
untainted by the barbarian blood of the South.

If not for the accident of history, China would have been something
like Europe, with each province a crude estimation of the distribution
of peoples rather different from each other. I lived in an immigrant
community for my first eleven years. Everybody was sort the same,
speaking the same dialect, except a group of strange Chinese who were
supposed to have come from Hebei. When I went to Singapore, I
discovered to communicate with another Chinese, I had to use Mandarin
or my broken Min (Hokkien) dialect. I came to understand the diversity
of the group of people who call themselves Hanren, Tangren, Huaren,
Zhongguoren, and of course, Chinese.

Today, I often heard students from Hong Kong[2] call themselves
Zhongguoren and they call the students from Mainland China Dailukyan
(Mainlanders). This was very interesting to me when I first had
contacts with students from Hong Kong. In Canada, their student club
is called the Chinese Student Association. The Chinese programs on TV
in Toronto uses only one spoken language, Yue (or Cantonese, a
misnomer because there are more than one subgroup in Guangdong
province, Hakkas being one and Teochiu another). So the use of terms
seemingly very clear cut is not so at all.

I guess I should emphasize again that the differences are significant
among the subgroups. The spoken language[1], customs, diets, costumes,
music, social structures, can all be very different. The differences
can be fascinating especially when it comes to what different peoples
eat amd how they prepare it.

I guess when a dispute over what a term referring to a group of people
means, the best idea is to know what that group of people calls
themselves, and why they do. This can certainly avoid the blooper
equivalent to saying a person has the native gene because he/she is
called a native (in Canada, all American Indians and Inuits are called
the natives). How they define it is really their own business.
Pseudo-scientific classifications, though clean and simple, confuse
the issue, not clearing it.

Khun Yee

[0] The word assimilation is too strong a word, I suppose. They
contributed quite a lot to the Chinese culture too. For instance, the
Chinese `traditional' dress is called qipao because it was worn by
Qiren, another term for Manchus.

[1] The languages they used are often referred to as dialects as if
they are only slightly different from each other, like the English
dialects in the US and Canada. The Mandarin peoples usually cannot
understand Yue. Yue and Min are also very different. Hakka is another
very different language.  The fact that they share the same origin
does not prohibit them to be considered as different languages.  The
common root of many of the Indian languages and the European languages
has not detered us from classifying them as different languages. They
do share the same written language, the reason why it is extremely
difficult to teach a child Yue because the child has to learn a spoken
language, a written language with words never used in daily life with
different grammar and idioms, and the pronouciations of these
non-daily words.

[2] In this era of anti-drug campaigns it is interesting to note that
Hong Kong was conceded to Britain when China lost a war with Britain
when it tried to enforce a ban on the import of opium (In simplistic
terms, Britain wanted the right to import it to China and China tried
to keep it out, if you did not get it). From this infamous origin came
a wonderful cosmopolitan city.
--
Khun Yee Fung    clipper@csd.uwo.ca
Department of Computer Science
Middlesex College
University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario
Canada N6A 5B7
Tel: (519) 661-6889
Fax: (519) 661-3515
Newsgroups: soc.culture.asian.american