Article

2008-07-11 China-Japan-Koreas

Archived material is restricted to Rantburg regulars and members. If you need access email fred.pruitt=at=gmail.com with your nick to be added to the members list. There is no charge to join Rantburg as a member.

Posted by gromky 2008-07-11 06:12|| || Front Page|| [4 views ] Top

#1 Personally, I'm proud my ancestors either ran out or were thrown out of Europe. I am not a Euro [or a jelly donut].

Posted by Procopius2k 2008-07-11 13:55|| 2008-07-11 13:55|| Front Page Top

#2 I was arguing with an Irish moonbat once: what infuriated her more than anything was when I told her that my ancestors came to America to get away from her ancestors.

Posted by Steve White 2008-07-11 17:04|| 2008-07-11 17:04|| Front Page Top

#3 My community has a large Chinese population. After a day of regular school, the children attend another couple of hours of "Chinese School". Even the Charles Schwab office has its sign in Chinese.

These kids consider themselves Chinese and that is pretty much normal for the first generation of kids born of parents who were born in China. The next generation, the children whose parents were born here, will generally identify as more American and the third generation usually doesn't even speak Chinese and identifies as American.

I was in a little dumpling shop and an Asian couple sat down. They looked Chinese. The owners of the shop are Chinese. The woman who co-owned the shop walked over to the couple and began speaking to them in Chinese. They gave her a blank stare and told her in perfect American English that they didn't speak a word of Chinese.

Her expression soured and she had this look as if that couple were some kind of disgrace to their race or something. I just kindof chuckled.

That kid who wrote the article is probably first generation. His kids probably won't identify as Chinese. And by the third generation they will be marrying Mexicans and pissing off their grandparents.

Posted by crosspatch 2008-07-11 18:06|| 2008-07-11 18:06|| Front Page Top

#4 as if that couple were some kind of disgrace to their race

Yeah, that's pretty much it. You hit the nail on the head.

the third generation usually doesn't even speak Chinese and identifies as American.

That's what this is about, they're talking about preventing that.

Posted by gromky 2008-07-11 19:17|| 2008-07-11 19:17|| Front Page Top

#5 A few finer points:

Zhonghua minzu, is the supra-ethnic Chinese nationality. But this is subdivided into the majority Han Chinese, and the Chinese minorities, the 55 other ethnic varieties of Chinese which comprise about 9.5% of the Mainland and Taiwan Chinese. There are also the Taiwanese aborigines, unrecognized ethnic groups, and foreigners who live in China.

The Chinese are also distinguished by "The Chinese Way", which is a China-centric worldview with very different axioms in viewing how the world functions.

For a great length of time, China's geographical boundaries were fixed, but it made an effort to export "The Chinese Way" to neighboring countries. Importantly, those that practiced "The Chinese Way" were left alone, even if otherwise troublesome. But those who did not follow it were seen as enemies.

The Chinese are also distinguished by the unifying factors of China, some of which date to the first Emperor. These include things like a standardized written language, even though there is wide divergence in spoken language; common weights and measures; and an educational system based in a select few number of standardized pamphlets that taught things like morality. No matter what part of China you lived in, you read the pamphlets and if you could write, you wrote in the standard written language.

The Chinese were further unified by the creation of a meritocratic bureaucracy based in Confucian philosophy. Any Chinese could take the bureaucratic exam, and if they passed, were elevated in rank to government office.

Confucianism was one of the three philosophies-religions of China, a middle class philosophy, alongside Taoism, the religion of the poor, and Buddhism, the religion of the upper classes. Each of the three appealed to the values of their class, but had little conflict with each other.

Socially, the individual in China has traditionally been less important than his extended family. This relationship stands apart from the individual-centric way of life in the West.

Chinese do stand apart from westerners for many reasons, and there is little clarity when and how people from one side embrace the totality of the other side, but it does happen at times.

Posted by Anonymoose 2008-07-11 21:34|| 2008-07-11 21:34|| Front Page Top

23:48 Abdominal Snowman
23:37 Pappy
23:13 Barbara Skolaut
23:08 Classical_Liberal
23:08 Abdominal Snowman
23:01 OldSpook
22:49 Swamp Blondie in the Cornfields
22:45 Pearl Jeager2939
22:45 Frank G
22:42 Leonard Plynth Garnell
22:40 bigjim-ky
22:39 Bright Pebbles
22:37 PBMcL
22:33 KBK
22:32 bigjim-ky
22:31 trailing wife
22:30 KBK
22:28 bigjim-ky
22:27 bigjim-ky
22:26 trailing wife
22:25 trailing wife
22:22 KBK
22:03 john frum
21:51 Old Patriot