China: Border Ethnic Minority Issues

To follow this story, you are requested to assume you are an Anglo Saxon male. You are in a shop that sells things ladies buy and you would rather wait outside. But she who must be obeyed and several garments are having a time out. She- your beloved- is Oriental(Chinese): your sales clerks are both female. One sales lady is blond and she stands back a bit. The black sales clerk is much more helpful, and after giving my Chinese born wife so much cherrful assistance, I thank her, she smiles.

At the sales counter, the phone rings. The blond pauses but continues to file her nails, so our sales clerk takes the call. We say that's fine. I didn't want to say that's fine, because it was not. But having said that, one feels one must grope along route until we can tripwire ourselves onto a different trajectory. We were in the south of China, on one of those marvellous river tours that shows you such amazing country. But there were problems. You couldn't put their Viet Chinese near the Cambodian Chinese, and the Hmong were all over their plans.

We know that ethnic Chinese become quite wary when they are ou at their borders. And that is simply a fact of trying to officially bring together ethnic minorities into one great nation ready to take on the world, as China is proving it can do. But when you get into isolated border regions of China, these are not people who have been integrated into the central Han society of central China. For since the fall of the last emperor in 1912, China has slowly tried to in tegrate the speach and dialects of people living within what is now China.

In the populated south, in particular but also in the far west and of course in Tibet, local people still wear their tribal garments and have their local beliefs and customs and do not take kindly taking any direction from Han Chinese from far away. You could be the kindest curator in a Chinese antiques shop location in any isolated region and you will realize that if you are anything but Han that is good news down here. Gradually, however, the beneficial nature of a Han majority who want things their way but are prepared to share the wealth, may make things work out really very well.

China may bring its ethnic minorities within the fold by sharing the wealth.And part of this wealth is in tourism, which encourages the wearing of local customs. Young ethnic people demand and receive payment for allowing tourists from around the world to be photograghed with. If you were a Chinese antiques shop dealer you would want several of these stone age merchants active in front of your shop as the tour bus from Llhasa arrives. We have only 20 minutes to empty their wallets and send away out treasures.

Article Source: http://www.articleadventure.com

Derek Dashwood enjoys noticing positive ways we progress, the combining of science into the humanities to measure life at Chinese Antiques

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