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Chinese ethnicity
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Samurai
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Posts: 141 		  Quote Guess Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Chinese ethnicity
    Posted: 22-May-2008 at 04:09
Do most people who live in China consider themselves to be the same ethnic group? I believe its called "han" chinese. I thought manchurians were a different ethnic group?
are there many major languages in china or just one that dominates?

China was not always one empire. Weren't there periods as recent as a few hundred years ago when there were 3 kingdoms in china? were differnet languges spoken in these kingdoms? Were they different cultures?
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Posts: 3113 		  Quote Sarmat Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22-May-2008 at 04:13
I think you already started this topic in the East Asian subforum.
 
Why starting the same topic again?
 
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Alia Atreides

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Posts: 1042 		  Quote Penelope Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24-May-2008 at 19:11
What many people fail to realize, is that when the empire split into the 3 kingdoms, and to the eventual 16 kingdoms, the people had already been writing in one universal language, since the time of The First Emperor. So the sense of "unity" remained, which gave each and every ruler of these sub-kingoms reason to make an attempt at reunification.
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24-May-2008 at 20:15

the country is actually very diverse, for example i came from beijing and i cannot understand a word of cantonese, and i have difficulties understanding ppl from nearby provinces because of the different accents. it's like if china was as fragmented geologically and politically as europe then there would probably be many states and languages in china now. but because reasons like we had a single developed writing system we are able to assimilate among ourselves, merge and form one common identity
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Alia Atreides

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Posts: 1042 		  Quote Penelope Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 31-May-2008 at 19:02
Originally posted by Platoriental

the country is actually very diverse, for example i came from beijing and i cannot understand a word of cantonese, and i have difficulties understanding ppl from nearby provinces because of the different accents. it's like if china was as fragmented geologically and politically as europe then there would probably be many states and languages in china now. but because reasons like we had a single developed writing system we are able to assimilate among ourselves, merge and form one common identity

 
Very good point indeed. China's culture is a very beautiful one.


Edited by Penelope - 31-May-2008 at 19:05
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 17-Jul-2008 at 16:51
China is indeed very diverse, but for such a large country, it has absolutely remarkable cohesion.  For hundreds and hundreds of years, weren't there only two different dialects of Chinese?  That's a remarkable accomplishment, especially before the information age, to see a culture so vast, across so many miles, be able to maintain any sort of stability and consistency.

Or am I completely wrong about the dialects?
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Posts: 1962 		  Quote Cryptic Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19-Jul-2008 at 05:04
Originally posted by AdamantFire


Or am I completely wrong about the dialects?
 
Your main point is correct, historically, China has had remarkable unity.  Technically though there are far more than 2 Chinese dialects.  Cantonese and Mandarin are seperate languages.  In addition to these two big languages, there are probably at least  eight additional Chinese languages and even more very distinct regional dialects (not counting languages spoken by ethnic  minorities etc.).  


Edited by Cryptic - 19-Jul-2008 at 05:07
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Posts: 511 		  Quote Bankotsu Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19-Jul-2008 at 05:16
There is more info here:

http://www.chinahistoryforum.com
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