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The People
China today has a total population about 1.3 billion people. It has been speculated that the first Chinese came from the “Peking Man”. It is more reasonable to speculate that the Chinese people that we see today were originated in the present day Henan Province, where the Yellow River flows through. However, after thousands of years that area had been often the battlefields for many tribes, especially the northern tribes beyond the Great Wall of China. These tribes felt the needs to seek a shelter to survive during the severe winter time, so they came north. Over the centuries, these northern nomads were called by the Chinese as “Xiong Nu”. Eventually, they settled down and intermarried with local Chinese. Also, during the later dynasty, the tribes from the western part of China in Shanxi and Gansu mixed with local inhabitants. Altogether, they are the northern Chinese of today.
During 7th century, in the Tang Dynasty, the kingdom of Tibet invaded China and came as far as Chang An (the Capital of Tang Dynasty). The Tang emperor in order to make peace of Tibet, married one of his daughters Princess Wencheng to the king of Tibet. The Tibetans have thus been appeased and retreated to Tibet. At the height of the Tibetan empire, its territories would comprise one third of present day China. If the Tibetans really became independent, China would be one third smaller than it is today.
When Princess Wencheng went to Tibet to marry the king of Tibet, she brought along with her silk, tea, Chinese art works, some Chinese inventions but most important of all, the religion of Buddhism. Many people thought that Buddhism came from India to Tibet, this is true maybe later, but Buddhism came first definitely from China into Tibet. Later after the Mongolian conquest, the Mongols amalgamated China, Tibet, Mongolia and East Turkistan together to form the new Dynasty called the “Yuan Dynasty”. It was during this period the Marco Polo came from Venice to China. The territories consolidated into the Yuan Dynasty became the sovereignty of China to these days.
After Ming Dynasty, the Manchurians entered into China and conquered all of the China and inherited the previous sovereignty of the Mongols. Now the territorial sovereignty became even larger with the addition of Manchuria, Mongolia and the eastern Turkistan which is known as Xinjiang Province today. China became the largest country in the world. In 1911 when China became a republic, thus, inherited all the territories which were acquired by all the previous dynasties.
A question to be asked by Canadians is, has China invaded Tibet? In fact, in the Tang Dynasty, well over 1000 years ago, it was Tibet that invaded China. Later, in the Yuan Dynasty (14th-15th centuries), it was the Mongolian Empire that conquered China and Tibet together and made it into one country. This produced the territorial sovereignty of today’s China. But at any rate, China had never treated the Tibetans the way the European Canadians have treated the Native Canadian aboriginals , that is, taking all their lands and forcing them onto reserves, wiping out their culture and reducing them to become unemployable by varying degrees of genocide. Tibetans are but only one of the 56 minorities in China and Tibet’s sovereignty is a modern day issue. Canadians should not use this single issue to stereotype the entire Chinese history, saying that China will become a superpower, disregarding China’s past tradition and philosophy.
In view of China’s past history, China is a country, not only of one race and one language. All countries in the world today have minority races. China is not an exception. Today, there are 56 nationalities in China. The predominant majority is the Han people comprising about 95% of total population. The other minorities in the order of populations are the Muslims, Mongolians, Manchurians and Tibetans and many others. It should be pointed out that the most of the Muslims live in Xinjiang, Gansu and Ningxia. As a matter of fact, every province in China has Muslims. Apart from the Uygurs and the Kazaks who have their own languages, other Muslims speak mainly Chinese. Practically, all the minorities can speak Chinese. For example, the Tibetans naturally speak Tibetan, but in school they also learn Chinese and English.
It is estimated that there are about five million Uygurs. There are many Koreans, living in Manchuria today. In Yunnan province alone there are 24 minorities. Perhaps China has the second largest Muslim population in the world next to Indonesia. It is about 40 million. I have visited many of the minorities in different part of China. In Yunnan province, the minorities still believe in the deities of the nature. They do not easily destroy nature because for them nature is divine.
In Manchuria, I visited the Manchu autonomous county. I was surprised to find that none of them speak Manchurian language anymore. In fact, all of them speak Mandarin Chinese. Most of them were farmers and as such they were heavy users of chemicals in their farming. When I asked them why they don’t use manure to fertilize the soil, they replied using manure is very inconvenient. It is simple and easy to use the chemicals.
In Helongjiang Province, near the border of Siberia I visited two Korean minority schools and the people in the village. They are bilingual speaking Korean and Mandarin Chinese. Their homes are cleaner than the Han Chinese. The Korean minorities by nationality are Chinese citizens. All 56 minorities in China are Chinese citizens.
Ningxia Muslim Autonomous Region, I lectured in their university and visited the different sites of agriculture. Their landscape is continuously destroyed by the grazing of goats. However, in Xinjiang province the Kazaks and Uygurs are all Muslims and there are more mountains, more grassland and more desserts. I was told that the people from Turkey and the Uygurs in Xinjiang have a common language and they can communicate with each other.
In Tibet, I was doing religious pilgrimage at the Jokang Temple in Lhasa with pilgrims from all over China and visitors from many other countries. The many Tibetans I ran into at the temple came from other parts of China. There are Tibetans living in Manchuria and in Beijing. Many Tibetans can be found living in Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan and Yunnan Provinces.
In the city called Golmud Qinghai, I was told that most of the inhabitants are Tibetans. But when I visited Golmud, I saw only Chinese. Later I found out why. Practically, all the Tibetans dwellers speak Mandarin Chinese and dressed like Chinese. When I find similar phenomena in Lhasa Tibet, many Tibetans in Lhasa are educated and speak Mandarin Chinese and dressed like Chinese. To the tourists, they concluded that there are more Han Chinese in Tibet than the native Tibetans. Golmud Qinghai is the starting point for long distance buses and train into Lhasa. The trip may take a day and night going through very high mountain peaks which might cause breathing difficulties for travellers. Visitors are required to carry water and oxygen on the trip. I was told when I was in Tibet, there are still pockets of non-Tibetans minorities inside Tibet, namely, Catholic and Mongolian people but I did not have a chance to visit them.
In Guangxi Province, I visited the Miao tribe outside Guilin and the tribal girls conducted a mock of wedding ceremony in which I participated for a fee of course. It was quite a lengthy ceremony and I was assigned to marry a Miao girl and was obliged to go through the tribal customary rituals. Although the whole thing was a mock, the lengthy procedures made me feel that I was really getting married and certain emotional attachment to the assigned lady precipitated. It took me half a day afterward to recover from the paid event.
In Henan province which is the cradle of Chinese civilization, one would have thought there would be no minorities at all, just the Han Chinese, but not soI knew better than most of people there that there are Jewish people in Kaifeng known as Kaifeng Jewish. About a thousand year ago, seven large Jewish families with their slaves traveled along the Silk Road arrived at the Kaifeng, then the capital of Northern Song Dynasty. They were welcomed and received by the emperor of Northern Song Dynasty. The emperor permitted them to settle down in China and conferred upon them seven Chinese surnames. The largest family received the surname “Zhang”.
When I visited Kaifeng I was received by the leader of Jewish community in the year 2001. His name is Moshe Zhang who told me that there were still some six hundred in Kaifeng. The Jews in Kaifeng have been visited by the personnel of the Israeli Embassy in Beijing and offered free passage to return to Israel but they refused. The Jews in Kaifeng have also been approached by the American Baptist Missionaries to be converted to Baptist Christians to receive 500 US dollars per person. They also refused.
When I told Moshe Zhang that my mother’s last name is also Zhang, Moshe exclaimed in excitement that if so, you are a half-Jew. He said that actually we are all children of Abraham. Officially, there are 56 minorities in China but this does not include the Jews, because a thousand years ago, the Chinese did not know how to classify the Jews. There was no such a racial category in their registry. The Jews to this day in China are still unclassified as a minority. There are simply Chinese.