So? They live in East Asia. The Malay Penninsula is attached to Thailand (Japan isn’t even attached, but who would question that it’s eastern Asia?). Are we now arguing that’s not Asia? Monogolia is in what part of which continent? The Cham ruins are in present day Vietnam for the most part, and today most of them live in Cambodia. That’s about as East Asia as it gets. This all rather seems to argue my point for me; there’s enough diversity in eastern Asia, genetically, linguistically, politically etc., that referring to everyone who lives there as one group doesn’t usually make much sense.
It might make more sense if you start picking out ethnic groups (which are only “small” in comparison to the two+ billions of Asia; in Europe they’d be quite large ethnolinguistic groups in most cases) as not being “real” East Asians or not fitting a certain model. But why do that?
Crossing the Vietnamese-Cambodian border gives a person an excellent perspective on the multitude of differences between cultures influenced by former eastern Indian influence and Chinese influence. Heck, for the most part those two groups of people don’t even like each other very much. They don’t share an alphabet, religion (by and large), system of government, cuisine, archetecture, facial characteristics, language family, writing system, the list goes on… Now, what “East Asian” characteristics are shared by these neighbors? Basically just that white people are wont to think of them as slant-eyed rice eaters. That’s just one example of very different neighbors out of what are probably dozens.
It’d also be amusing and eye-opening for anyone to ‘explain’ to the average Thai that their culture is essentially Chinese-influenced (now, there are distinct Chinatowns in Thailand, but that’s no different than Chinatown here; a distinct ethnic enclave.) I wouldn’t do it if they’re eating a durian at the time, not a fruit you want to end up wearing…
Is China not an east Asian nation? Where are you drawing the line in the country if you’re dividing it? By a geographic feature? Eye flaps? Buddhism? I don’t see any of that workable, especially if you try to carry that line into the rest of East Asia. You’ll find all sorts of peoples east and west of any such line, messing up neat attempts to categorize them.
Since you mentioned them, what about the Karen? That’s the first one that pops into mind.
Just as a mental excercise, try putting together useful sentences that begin “East Asians are…”
The best I can do that seems to hold true is “East Asians are residents of eastern Asia.” Not very useful.
What do you mean by “recent”? The Cham kingdom was around at least since about the end of the 4th to the beginning of the fifth century AD. Their culture goes back to about the 2nd century. More extensive than even the . The Cham are credited with having the oldest inscription among the Austronesian peoples, which also predates most of the other languages in the region.
Congrats, Crandolph, you’ve teased out the actual meaning in my original post perfectly, and argued against it in a cogent, thoughtful manner. When I said that there are certain cultural similarities shared by East Asians, what I actually meant was this: East Asia is inhabited by billions of identical yellow dwarves, who jabber at each other in an incomprehensible language, worship the same pagan idols, eat cats and dogs, and draw little pictures instead of writing. You’ve done an admirable job of disproving all of the above statements.
I think the point you’re edging towards making here is that by using definitions, I edge perilously close to defining a group of people who share certain cultural similarities as “East Asians”, and those who don’t as “Not real Asians”. This is a relevant criticism, though it would make for a more interesting debate had I not had to supply it myself. Still, though, Malaysia is geographically at the periphery of East Asia - so they can be forgiven for having taken less advantage of the wealth of culture and history of East Asia. Nevertheless: a quarter of Malaysians are ethnically Han, and Buddhism is hardly unknown in Malaysia. So I’m not sure exactly what point you were aiming towards in bringing it up. (Do I really have to tell you that there are Chinese people in Malaysia? Isn’t that common knowledge?)
BTW, where did I suggest that Mongolians aren’t East Asian?
I honestly don’t know much about the Cham, except that I believe them to be of Austronesian roots, and my limited understanding of the anthropology of the region is that the Austronesians left mainland Asia long enough ago that it makes little sense to try to shoehorn them into some “Asian” identity. However, I don’t see how my broad assertion that there are relevant cultural similarities among East Asians is disproven completely by one exception.
Because I never stated that all residents of East Asia are identical. You might as well start bashing me for having implied that roger thornhill is a Chinese-speaking Buddhist; I never stated that one step upon the continent turns one into a mysterious, inscrutable, yellow-skinned creature - I said that there are certain broad cultural similarities. Or are Europeans just as similar to Chinese people as are Vietnamese people?
Are you saying that Thai and Han cultures are completely dissimilar and free of influence on each other? What an odd claim. Here’s one thought. Thai is a Tai-Kadai language, possibly belonging to a larger phylum that includes Austronesian. Vietnamese is a completely unrelated language, thought to be Austroasiatic in origin. Both are completely unrelated to Chinese, which is Sino-Tibetan. However, they are all members of a Sprachbund, which shares so many similarities that both Thai and Vietnamese were long naively believed to be Sino-Tibetan in origin. The presence of continuous cultural contact is so great that Thai and Vietnamese became tonal languages under the influence of the Sino-Tibetan family, and developed a tendency (particularly in Vietnamese) towards monosyllabic words.
Do you own an atlas? Open it up. Look at China. Look, in particular, at Xinjiang. Note where it’s located. It’s in Central Asia. It’s next to Tajikistan. Kyrgyzstan. Kazakhstan. Pakistan. Now reflect upon calls for independence for Xinjiang, and realize that the political borders of modern nations are in many circumstances arbitrary when it comes to the populations within.
When did I try to draw a line demarcating East Asia? I have not claimed that there is some territory, within which one can discern no differences among the population. I’m not sure why you keep trying to imply that I have; I have thoughts on the subject but they’re probably not appropriate to GQ. My pointing out that Xinjiang is not within East Asia does not then obligate me to somehow rigorously define East Asia. I’m sorry that your own education has clearly been so lacking, but you could cure much of it at the moment with a simple glance at your globe. Note that the political boundaries of the PRC enclose an enormous territory; it would be a shock if all of the inhabitants were identical.
I know that you take enormous umbrage at the notion that there is anything similar about the different inhabitants of East Asia, but that is your own problem. There are also similarities shared amongst different groups in Europe - even though (shockingly) they have different religions, different (and unrelated) languages, and separate histories. No generalization can be correct in every case, but that doesn’t mean there is no value to be found in identifying broader trends and concepts. I’m not sure if you’re responding due to some kneejerk need to educate others in the notion that they’re not all the same. Rest assured that I am not under the impression that they are; however, to ignorantly assert that since there’s no single list of factors that unite East Asia with no exceptions, there are no broader similarities at all is the worst kind of reactionary and, yes, PC, fallacy. Please abandon whatever notion you have that I’m trying to imply that Asia is a uniform sea of identical people and pay attention to what I’ve written. There is an enormous amount of cultural similarities along with enormous cultural differences. That’s the way human society works.
We are drifting toward GD here, but if you insist on dwelling on this broad classification, it’s incumbent upon you to describe the value of grouping people into a general category of having slanty eyes, ascribing to some flavor of Buddhism, and consuming rice as a staple grain. I don’t argue that it’s impossible to make that grouping, but I do question why it’s necessary or important. This categorization becomes especially silly when you delve into East Asian cultures and recognize a depth of diversity that belies the superficial commonalities of appearance.
re: Finns and Hungarians, this is what Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza says in Genes, Peoples and Languages:
“The Saami [Lapps] are genetically European, but they also have affinites with non-Europeans, probably as a result of their trans-Uralic origins… Other European Uralic speakers (eg, Finns and Estonians) appear almost entirely European genetically. As to Hungarians, about 12 percent of their genes have a Uralic origin… The Finns, by contrast, show almost no trace of genetic admixture with Uralic populations…”
Pretty much what I thought. Guin’s prof might have been thinking of the Saami when he talked about the Finns, but most likely he was confusing a linguistic affinity with a genetic one.
Thank you very much NattoGuy, I think you’ve basically made my argument in a condensed fashion. I appear to have stuck my hands into the tar baby of providing examples, which lend themselves to nitpicking.
If anyone wants to explain to Thais and Vietnamese how similar they are (which would only be in comparison to the European diaspora, certainly not to each other), be my guest. I can only assume in doing so that you’ve never been to either place, don’t mind deeply offending people and enjoy long, pointless argument. While working on that project, remember to impress upon Sicilians and Finns how they’re also pretty much the same folks too… grain-eatin’ round-eyed Christians from Europe. Indistinguishable, I say! (Once again, the comparative close distances of Europe and general religious classification agreement of the continent preclude me from being as sarcastic in analogy as I’d like.)
It seems we’ve both been to Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand very recently, so it’s not so surprising that we’d make the same observations. Especially regarding the Khmer… it seemed to me that they had more in common physically and culturally with India than with China. Intellectually, I knew and expected this before I went, but knowing a thing and seeing it firsthand are quite different things.
I don’t have so much of a problem lumping China, the Koreas, and Japan into a group. Despite the animosity and conflict between the groups, Japan and Korea are very similar to each other. The Japanese are odd in this way… they wouldn’t be caught dead being called a Chinese, yet due to their Chinese cultural heritage they take quite a bit of vicarious pride in glory of Chinese culture. But anyway, that has nothing to do with slanty-eyes and everything to do with Chinese culture and empire.
I can add a note as to what might be driving this…
On my recent trip to China, I stayed in an area of Beijing where there weren’t many Westerners. I could walk around all day and count the number of Western faces I saw on one hand - counting real-life, billboards, magazines, etc.
Except… in anything having to do with fashion. If I walked into a department store, I might not see a non-Asian in the whole place. But the walls were covered in advertising from Western cosmetics/clothing/jewelry companies, all featuring American and European models. Magazine ads would feature Chinese ladies advertising travel agencies, but always Western women for make-up.
Given this kind of pressure, I’m not surprised many perfectly attractive Asian women get a complex.
In my dreams, I am Chinese speaking - proper Chinese, of course - not that stuff spoken by those mixed folk from the north. As for Buddhism, never dabbled . Yet
This is PC gone to extremes. In a Usenet group when I used the word “Orientals” as you do, someone posting from Hong Kong jumped on my post as being an ethnic slur. Someone else in the NG from the US came to my defense, and pointed out it was quite obvious that I didn’t have that intent. The reason being any American who wanted to intentionally use an ethinic slur would not use “Orientals”, but instead “gooks”. As he put it, in the US “Orientals” ordinarily just means “those people who would ordinarily be associated with eating with chopsticks.” I’m not sure how the rest of the world may use ethnic slurs for these people, but in the US nobody with that intent would choose “Orientals”.
As he put it, in the US “Orientals” ordinarily just means “those people who would ordinarily be associated with eating with chopsticks.” I’m not sure how the rest of the world may use ethnic slurs for these people, but in the US nobody with that intent would choose “Orientals”.