No.69: A Different Culture

Since there are 56 ethnic groups in China, not exaggerating, China can be said to have 56 cultures. The ethnic groups include a majority Han, and 55 minorities. I belong to the majority group and I always admire those people who have a different ethnic group than Han. I think it is good to be different. I am in charge of marketing in a student organization, Chinese Circle of Communication. And about two weeks ago, it was my turn to prepare the power point on the topic that I was assigned to at the beginning of this quarter. The topic was Ethnic Groups. I did not know much about other ethnic groups before I researched on this topic for the organization. I even learnt a lot on my own group, Han, after the research.

The ethnic group I like the best is Manchu. It is one of the oldest ethnic groups recognized. The last dynasty, Qing, was established by Manchu people and the royal family members all intermarriage with another ethnic group, Mongolian. So many of their descendent are mixed with two distinct kinds of blood. Around China, the total number of Manchu people is greater than ten million, according to the census in 2000. It still is a small number compared to the majority Han, which is about 1.3 billion. Most of the Manchu people live in the northeast part of China. Manchu language is different from Mandarin Chinese. But it sounds close to Korean and Japanese, because they all belong to Altaic language family. I read something interesting on the Internet and it said that Mandarin Chinese was formed when Manchu people were trying to learn the dialect in Beijing and that Cantonese was actually influenced the most by ancient Chinese.