~May Your Light Shine :D~

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Yay it's Chinese New Year and what better time to explore our ancestry and heritage?

Yes, it's ABOUT the identity crisis.

Ok, so this time I was doing research on Wiki and I actually found stuff that was USEFUL in determining my ethnicity's authenticity.

-----INFORMATION-----
(I summarised it and put it in my own words cuz wiki language is boring)

So, the Chinese race, as we call ourselves, are actually made up of 56(or 57) different clans/tribes/ethnic groups and majority(when I say majority, I mean like 91++ %) of the Chinese are from the Han tribe(even though they used ethnic group but I think tribe sounds cooler so I'll use tribe).

The original dialect of the Han tribe, is, of course, Han, which is mandarin. And just when I thought I couldn't be Han because my native dialect is Hokkien and Teochew, I read below that even though mandarin is the official dialect of the Han tribe, many other dialects like Cantonese, Hokkien, Teochew and Hakka are actually from mandarin and they all belong to the Han tribe. So I guess I'm still Han.

Ok, so here's a question. Why then, do we look so different from the northern Chinese(who are also Han)? I found the answer! Because our ancestors were from southern china, we might not be PURE Han Chinese as southern chinese consist of mainly the minority tribal groups and the Han chinese only migrated south sometime in history so we southern chinese may very well be of mixed chinese tribal blood! That's so cool, right? Or am I the only one whos really interested?

By the way, the cheongsam is NOT a Han Chinese traditional costume. The origin of the cheongsam was actually from the Manchus(which is also a chinese tribe, but just not Han). The REAL Han Chinese traditional costume is what I mentioned before, robes and sashes and belts, and its really beautiful too. It looks a bit like a Hanbok, but not as puffy. I wished we were like the Koreans who still own a piece of their traditional costume for special events.

Now I want to do the DNA test more than ever.

My Kitchen blogged at Tuesday, February 05, 2008

May your light shine...
in the darkness...