Dilemma of Chinese Returnee

During my travel to the Greater China Region, I was often asked the question "Are you a Chinese?"

The question puzzled me as much as it hurt my feeling. Often, a lengthy discussion and healthy debate ensued as to "Who is a Chinese".

In my view, there are four definitions:

1. Chinese Nationals who are citizens of People's Republic of China (PROC). In this definition there are over 1.3 billion of Chinese (as of July 07), and I include the 6 million Hong Kong 'citizens' in this category.


2. Chinese Nationals who are citizens of Republic of China (ROC) a.k.a Taiwan, in this definition there are over 23 million Chinese (as of July 07). This includes a small percentage of aborigines such as the Ali-shan tribal people.


3. The Chinese Diaspora - those who have left both China's and reside elsewhere now. This includes the descendants of those who left China during the Gold rush era to Americas and Australia. According to Wikipedia, there are about 40 million of Chinese in this category.


4. Han Chinese, which is the most common and oldest reference to the Chinese people used in the Western press. The Han 'tribe' is one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the PROC as of May 2007.

By these definitions, I qualify as a Chinese under definitions 3 and 4 even though I have a small percentage of ethnic Thai blood flowing within me.

Invariably, the next question raised during these discussions was "Do you speak Chinese?"

The official Chinese language is Mandarin (as is commonly known to the West) or Putonghua as it is now increasingly referred to. With some exception, this is the language that almost all Chinese understand and can converse in. However, there are some among the Chinese Diaspora who cannot speak this language, particularly those born and residing in Western countries and some parts of South East Asia.

To complicate matters, there are various 'dialects' spoken among the Han Chinese. Those that I have encountered include Fujian (a.k.a. Hokkien, Minan, Taiwanese), Cantonese (spoken widely in Hong Kong and Guangzhou province), Chiuchow (a.k.a. Teochew), Hakka, Hainanese, Hui Chiew, Hock Chiew and Shanghainese. Most if not all of these 'dialects' employ the Mandarin character set in their written form. Apart from this commonality, the dialects are so different as chalk and cheese that I wonder if they were at one point a separate language.

I often wondered if Hong Kong had not return to China in 1997 would the version of Cantonese spoken there evolve into a distinct language? Reading the local newspapers there, I struggle occasionally with the colloqualism that has crept into the written language. The development there reminded me of the existence of the Japanese character set - Kanji and Hiragana - the latter of which can be used without the earlier but yet both co-exist in most written text.

At the height of its power in 87 B.C. the Han Chinese empire included the northern part of Korea, and right up to the 14th century, Koreans were using written Chinese as part of their language. The 'aristocrats' of South Korea today have a Chinese name often given to them at birth and most are proud of it. In essence, during the first century the Korean language could be considered a 'dialect' in much the same way as Fujian is today. By extension, Koreans (at least those in the north) in those early days could have been technically classed as 'Chinese' by the fact they were subjects of the Han Chinese empire. However, through a stroke of historical intervention, Korea's King Shila decided to create a totally new form of the written Korean language - thus Hanggul was born.

Labels: Chinese Returnee, Cultural adaptation, Dilemma, Who is Chinese