From: zzuo@iastate.edu (Zhiqi Zuo)
Subject: Re: What About Tibet? 
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, IA
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1992 20:41:52 GMT

...

>My logic is Han people will not treat people better who are not regarded as  
>superior. The sad fact is Han people regard Tibetans at most as equal (if not  
>inferior). They may treat some foreigner a bit better but not Tibetans. If you  
>walk on the streets of Chinese cities and hear people talk about minorities, I  
>bet you won't find a single word about their superiority. Many times you will  
>hear words and sentences about how dirty, lazy and uncivilized some minorities  
>are. 

I have observed a lot of discussions containing "Han ... Han ... Han ... Han ..."

It hurts.

Having lived in some different places in China, I find that many people from the
southeast of China might have not many chances to contact the minorities. This 
may explains the heavy use of "Han." Between Han and many major minorities, there 
are not many differences. The ethnic sense can be very weak when people meet, say 
Man3 (I met many of them), Hui2(dozens of), Tu3Jia12(four), maybe Zhuang4=Strong
(four), and may be Korea (a couple of only). It doesn't make sense for me to view 
myself a Han in the first place, when I have contacts with these people. If not 
for minor things, say for some sorta form-filling, I might have never known or 
sensed their ethnic idendities. The most obvious difference is probably that Han 
has an overwhelming population of 94%+, among the 56 ethnic groups. 

I don't intend to generalize here. Neither am I saying that there are not many 
differences between Han and many other minorities. Generally, there are many, in 
fact. BUT many of the differences have been shared by some major ethnic groups. We 
must be careful in using "Han" here and there. I would like to use mainstream, 
instead of Han, in many occassions. For me, the ethnic sense is too weak to mention
in these situations. Many of us have been intermixed so well that we often 
insensitive to the ethnic identity. 

>It's good to regard all peoples equal. But in China, not all the people think  
>this way. Some (if not many) people will feel happy and satisfied if they find  
>people "inferior" to them. If They can not find, they will make. 

It is true.
And universial.

>Take Shanghai for an example. In Shanghai, people look down upon people whose  
>ancesters were from northern Jiangshu Province. In some extreme cases, some  
>girls would not marry their fellow Shanghainese guys simply because the guys'  
>father or grandfather or even grand-grandfather were from northern Jiangshu.  
>The reason is probably northern Jiangshu was a poor area among eastern China  
>and the first generation from northern Jiangshu usually worked as labors. This  
>kind of discriminations are not rare in many parts of China. 

Yeah.

>If China had  
>different races, I bet there would be racial discrimination too.

I don't quite understand this statement. There are 56 ethnic groups there, the 
sizes of them vary from a few thusand to 1.1 billion. Ethnic discriminations did 
and do exist, between SOME of the groups. 

>Some of us may still remember the incident happened in Nanjing several years  
>ago where a group foreign students from Africa were attacked by Chinese college  
>students simply because these Africa students had Chinese girl-friends and made  
>local people unhappy. If those African students had been white, there wouldn't  
>have been such incident. I would point out that some (if not many) CSS here  
>have racial discrimination too although they themselves might be discriminated  
>against in the meantime.

>I find it hard to believe that Han people treat Tibetans better as Ze Yang  
>said. Like some CSS, Ze Yang's opinion is very self-centered. People like him  

>always refuse to think from the other side. I guess this is of our "ugly" part  


MANY people inside China tend to think too high of the West, while look down the 
others and/or themselve.

In the form of monetary support, DEFINITELY CG treats Tibetans better. In feeling, 
the mainstream of the society doesn't necessarily treat them better.

No personal comments here, but "always" is really a word that should be avoided
in using to a person.

>of Chinese culture. We Chinese used to think China as center of the world and  
>expect other peoples think this way too. This is impossible and unfair. When  
>some of us find other people have different or opposite opinions, they usually  
>feel insulted easily and attack back without logics and reasoning. I guess this  
>is related to both our ugly part of culture and people's personalities.

Our traditional conceptions are to be gentle, kind, modet, thrifty, and to yield.
I would rather say this is related to the maturity, instead of the culture. I think 
an efficient way to change the situation is to "force" the kids to leave the 
atmosphere of their families earlier.