It’s cleaer in Post #8, that the poster intended to include the entire country in his description. China is one huge country. And there are currently 55 recognized ethnic minorities (I think the number is usually given as 56 since one should still count the Han majority as an ethnic group), some of whom, as mentioned above, have their own language that is decidedly not a dialect of Chinese. How big are the groups? You can check here to get your feet wet on an answer. An example of an ethnic group using something other than Chinese to write their language is the Uyghur, have a number of alphabets to write it; the one I’ve seen in use is the Arabic-based one, though.
By the way, there are other ethnic groups in China that are not officially recognized by the PRC government.
I’m surprised there was only one mention of Tibet, and that was almost off-hand. Surely that is one of THE major ethnic divisions in China. In a country with 1B people, it would astounding if there were NOT dozens of ethnic dividing lines.
Seriously, the whole Red State/Blue State business is mostly a media invention, to create drama during election years.
As for as Hong Kong vs the rest of China, I think I’m pretty safe saying that HK (and Macau) are trying to push back the tide. I’m waiting for the day HK is forced to switch to left-hand-drive cars, to make life simpler for drivers from the rest of China.
I did have the whole country in mind…but also was willing to simplify or even over-simplify. For instance, English-speaking and French-speaking is one of the major divisions in Canada, but it completely neglects the Indian tribes. They’re far from irrelevant, but they aren’t part of that division.
I really did need it dumbed down for me. I had wandered in with a vision of something as simplistic (and wrong!) as Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda, i.e., that a minority had all the bureaucratic and party power.
Thank you! It’s a little expensive for a Kindle book…but I asked for an education, and so I just went and bought this book. If anyone cares (or, heh, even if they don’t) I’ll come back later and post what I think. Thank you very, very much!
I thought about Tibet, and it certainly is an ethnic dividing line – and one causing some serious tension. But I was mainly trying to follow a red-state/blue-state or Hutu/Tutsi model – and am happy to have had that chair knocked out from under me completely.
The fight against ignorance is slightly easier when the subject really does want to learn!
Red/Blue state is a political division, not an ethnic one. And, as we all should know by now, it’s really an urban/suburban/rural split. I don’t know what a Hutu/Tutsi model is, unless you mean only 2 main ethnic groups. But keep in mind that the Hutu and Tutsi division is more about class than ethnicity, and probably have more to do with European colonial attempts to categorize the population than anything else.
I believe there are 56 recognized ethnic minorities in China. Included are the Dai in southern China, who are very closely related to Thais. They basically speak Thai, and Thais are always amazed when they travel there and meet these Thai speakers in person.
If you want to use Canada as an analogy, then while Canada is divided between French-speaking regions and English-speaking regions; they still all are decedents of white Europeans. Same with China, divided by many different dialogues but still all Han Chinese. While Tibetans, Hui, Manchu, Miao, Mongol, etc…they’re the American Natives.
China does have a longer history, so the culture difference btw the different region of Han Chinese is bigger than Canadians. Like the early Europeans, Han Chinese also tend to think they were better than the barbarians, even when conquered by those barbarians (first the Mongolians and then by Manchu, although both groups end up assimilating into the Han culture). Currently 91% of people in China is Han Chinese, politically the rest of the ethnic tribes don’t have much power. And that has caused issues and unrest.
Also want to add:
If you’re thinking about Chinese culture, history, food, you’re thinking about the Han Chinese. Historically, a lot of those minority ethnic Chinese weren’t considered Chinese at all. Culturally they can be as different as the White Canadians as the American Indians. Politically they have less say in govt. than the current Native tribes in Canada.
The Battle of Talas was fought between the ‘Abbasid Caliphate and the Chinese empire in 751, somewhere in what is now Kyrgyzstan. The Muslims won and carried away Chinese engineers and craftsmen back to the Middle East with them. This is how paper making began in the Arab world, from which it spread to Europe.
So there’s your Arabs west of China, except they didn’t get all the way to China and it was 13 centuries ago.