Taiwanese Ethnicity

After watching the census video from a few years ago "Write in 'Taiwanese", I've been sort of wondering what exactly defines Taiwanese ethnicity, or is it a different sort of identity?

A lot of the comments on youtube criticize such a notion(things like "Taiwanese is just regional, They're Han Chinese in denial). It makes me contemplate the arbitrary nature of ethnicity. Yeah, we have ancestry tracing back to many places, and phenotypic differences, but why should that affect how we define ourselves? Now I know humans have the need to categorize things, but aren't there flaws to this?

I personally identify myself as Taiwanese. I consider ethnicity to be a product of social experience.

All in all, yes. Taiwanese are all mostly Minnan-ians. Island natives were nearly purged by the Jiang regime in the past, so there's not much excuse to use that to define them all as 'The Island's people'

And in my experience, pardon my bluntness, Taiwanese seem like a cultural mess: wouldn't admit being closer and closer to Japanese' way of speaking, wouldn't want to admit coming from Xiamen (Fujian Province territory just opposite of Taiwan's west coast) in the past ancestrally, and wouldn't define themselves clearly being similar people but with different founding backgrounds

It doesn't help that the whole east Asia is economically competitive, and sometimes in order to achieve that spot, they think it is necessary to be unique. This is where I plug in something controversial: Koreans. I would never, ever condone the act of trying to claim something historical that's not yours originally. Koreans tried to be attention whores at least two times regarding this matter : the Dragon Boat & Dumpling Festival, originally a Heroic Sacrifice story stemming longer than the establishment of Korea as a trade ally in dynasties past, they are going at it by claiming that with a festive of a SIMILAR name that's theirs, it comes first

The other one: Chopsticks. That's crossing straight into Too Dumb to Live territory, as even Japan wouldn't pick that bone with China. But I'll stop this now, in favor of continuing my point. Basically Taiwanese wanna be unique. While I support being expressive to a certain extent, the scope of their expression is limited. There's nothing what they can say and write that differs from what's found on China originally. Hokkienese and Traditional "Big 5" Chinese fonts hardly set them apart from the whole mainland where they were ancestrally from

And certainly, going through that path is going to make them pick an answer soon : whether they roll back to admit being what they are, or treading Korean's lower extremes, or something else. Taiwan is hardly the only island nation in Asia and the world

Ethnicity / Nationality is a social construct, it is always semi-arbitrary. Taiwanese had full rights to define themselves, just like Canadians, Norwegians, Americans define their own.

trying to separate language is not Taiwanese invention, Norwegian trying to make their language different from Danish, Indonesian and Malaysian had branched from Malays to become different language, and Israel re-educated their citizen to use Hebrew is other example.

It's totally arbitrary. What's the ethnicity of a Chinese person born in Canada or United States? Canadian? Chinese-Canadian? Chinese?

I'd classify myself as Malaysia Chinese, if that helps any.

Ethnically? Min-speaking Chinese, mostly, with some other stuff thrown in for flavour. Culturally? Taiwanese. No other way to put it. (A friend of mine studied in Taiwan, so I'm not completely talking out of my behind here.)

^^^ Okay, I did not expect that line to get thumped. (Maybe I needed more context? It didn't get thumped the last time I quoted it.)

Anyways, I think the whole concept of ethnicity is pretty much bull. People are what they want to be. (If, for instance, you were born in America, but really want to be Japanese, I won't say you're not. But if you were born in Japan, and you don't want to be Japanese, I won't say you are. Either way, I won't think of you as Japanese or not Japanese, but as humble or arrogant, brave or cowardly, and other traits that I think better define who someone is.)

edited 10th Apr '12 6:04:46 PM by feotakahari

I don't like that attitude. It's one thing to not place undue importance on physical features, but it's a whole 'nother to act like they don't exist. Imagine you work at the Department of Motor Vehicles, and someone who's less than five feet tall writes down their height as 7ft. 8 in. on the form for their driver's license. You wouldn't have a problem with that?

But ethnicity is different from racial or facial descriptions. If chinese - americans claimed to be caucasian that would be different.

some Hakka claim their different from Han, Zaza claim their different ethnicity than Kurds, and Scottish different from English despite closeness of their physical feature. Ethnicity is more than just physical, it is also about language and culture.

Huh? Isn't ethnicity just "race, only slightly more specific"?

Race and Ethnicity are not the same thing. They're closely related, but not the same. Ethnicity is more primarily concerned with culture. Yeah, my ancestors came from the territory which is known as China throughout various parts of history.

What we can't deny is the path of our ancestry. But what experiences define us, what cultures shape us, shouldn't that play a role?

edited 11th Apr '12 3:35:12 AM by blueflame724

So is there any meaningful difference between ethnicity and culture/nationality?

I'm a Hakka and I'm not stupid enough to say I'm not a Han

Thank you for your subtlety.

Seriously, we could potentially call ourselves Africans couldn't we?

edited 11th Apr '12 7:43:17 AM by blueflame724

"I'm an African-American."

"I thought you're a Native American?"

"That's what I said."

edited 11th Apr '12 8:05:36 AM by Qeise

Hm, I thought ethnicity was just the actual correct term for what people call 'race'. From what I remember learning at school, there is only one human race, biologically speaking.

That's just too generalized. We still can't adequately determine whether or not all the humans around the globe were evolved from the same animal line, or if all humans were genetically divided from a single gene variation. If the latter is true then ethnicity and its meanings become nullified

Here's a good way to think about race and ethnicity; an African American and a Nigerian are both black, but have vastly different cultural upbringings. Same thing for a WASP and some white French guy. With today's ability to move around and the fact that we've moved populations in huge swathes in the past, ethnicity and race have become different though interrelated concepts.

Really, though, the longer the Taiwanese people go on thinking of themselves as separate from China, the only thing that can happen is that they get more Taiwanese. From what I gather in this thread though, they seem to be suffering an odd case of cultural cringe.

Strawman comparison. First, how often does the colour of the skin affect the ability of somebody to do a certain job? Secondly, race is something that is far vaguer than a certain height. The fact that people expects an Asian to be short is already a racist stereotyping by itself: look at Yao Ming.

I always thought that it's the other way around: ethnicity is more about the physical aspects, whereas "race" includes culture.

^ To build on that, tall people are likely to be more confident than short people, and confidence is something I think is worth noting about people, but I won't treat a confident tall person and a confident short person differently.

(Well, I guess I'll help the short one reach things that are on high shelves, but other than that . . .)

@Ace of Spades Yes, some Taiwanese do have some sort of cultural cringe, but I think others genuinely feel a sense of difference in terms of social experience. I have heard Chinese saying that if people identify as Taiwanese, then they should just stop practicing the cultural traditions. What, people can't borrow and make their own distinct customs?

Cassie, it doesn't matter which branch of homo erectus/ ergaster anybody came from: they could all intermix, ergo... same bleeding species out the same bleeding place: Africa. Heck: Neanders left a mark (even as far as Asia, thanks), there are many hints that various Asian and Australasian H. erectus-based "species" left a genetic mark in modern H. sapiens. Big sodding deal.

Humans move. It's what we do. And, we're a sexy bunch who won't say no to a new trick, even if they have a ridiculously tiny nose and frame, with no brow-ridges to speak of.

It's one reason why I think we lie when we call ourself H. sapiens sapiens. We should just bite the bullet and call ourselves "erectus" and get it over with. If we could intermix when having even greater, locally developed, physical differences in the past than we do now, I doubt we ever were separate species of human in the first place.

Heck, we don't even know which australopithecine we come from. Or, if there was one: humans might well have a history of "hybridisation" going back 7 million years. We just can't be certain. And, since a distinctive, highly archaic Pan hasn't turned up, the spectre remains that chimps and bonobos might well be of currently labelled australopithine ancestors, as well. Just... ones that didn't lose the arboreal way of life entirely. Heck... Lucy could swing through trees, and there is increasing evidence that even the relatively upright australopithecines remained partially arboreal for millions of years.

But, all relevant autralophitecines? AFRICA. Java man, ultimately, came from Africa. Along with everybody else: trying to assert "specialness" from branching is just trying to assert racism from another angle.

Get over it: even African populations of human are hybrids, thanks to genetic drift and the fact that even there, more types of human existed than we like to think. Since, you know... that's where we came from, so that's where most kinds developed.

edited 19th Nov '12 10:41:53 PM by Euodiachloris

I was not aware of ethnicity and race having cultural baggage as well. I've always thought of ethnicity and race being objective information, not subjective.

OMG... I really did laugh out loud, there. *cough*

Yes... ethnicity has a heavy cultural base that likes to use physical "differences" as a cover, generally speaking. Even when genetics show such "differences" can, surprisingly often enough, be explained by environmental factors during development. For a classic case of that: "Asians are smaller and more gracile". Well, depends on what they eat, you know.

edited 19th Nov '12 1:23:48 PM by Euodiachloris