Family Portraits of all 56 ethnic groups in China

[Swede]

I never realised there were that many.

http://www.chinahush.com/2009/12/06/family-portraits-of-all-56-ethnic-groups-in-china/

[TexasObserver]

1. Recommend

It's important for people to know that there are many kinds Chinese in China. From the tall, thin, angular ones to the short, squat, aboriginal ones.

[patrice]

2. Absolutely fascinating! I wonder if Global Climate Change will give them more arable land.

[AwakeAtLast]

3. The various styles of dress are so interesting!

You can tell a lot about them by their dress and the articles they chose to include in their pictures.

Thanks for posting!

[Jane Austin]

4. Beautiful!

Thanks for sharing this.

[varelse]

5. Awesome

thanks for sharing the link.

[mainer]

6. I would love to see this book in print, available in English

The photos are too small here to really get a good look at the faces.

[Xithras]

7. China is as ethnically diverse as all of Europe combined.

The byproduct of several thousand years of Han militarism and conquest.

[Spider Jerusalem]

8. China is almost as large as all of Europe, and has more people, too.

China: 3.7 million square miles, 1.3 billion people.

Europe: 3.8 million square miles, 731 million people.

China's ethnic diversity is thus not especially surprising. Although Europe is fairly ethnically diverse itself, especially when one considers that 'ethnicity' means more than 'race', but encompasses shared language, history, culture and traditions; just in the British Isles you have English, Irish, Scots, Welsh, Manx, and Cornish, for instance.

[Texasgal]

9. wow!

That's really cool!

[Festivito]

10. Trouble is for decades China transplants young to new areas.

Their jobs move, so they move, then build family in their assigned location. The result is that the indigenous culture is there, but the people are not.

Chinese hire people to dress in Religious costumes and stand in temples. It makes the tourists happy. The people in the pictures shown might be offspring of, or some of the transplanted themselves.

Finally, in homogenized China, there are no groups of people with long histories to build a threat to the ruling elite.

[Hekate]

11. wrong place--self delete

[Hekate]

12. This is fascinating. Look at all the 'Stans that are represented. I'd love to see a good-quality...

... coffee table book with well-researched text on this subject.

Hekate

[liberalpragmatist]

13. I would argue it's even more diverse than that

Even the "Han" are as diverse as most Europeans. There are enormous cultural and linguistic differences between Han Chinese of various provinces and regions.

[girl gone mad]

14. I once read that all future humans will resemble modern Chinese people..

if we successfully integrate, because China is centuries ahead of the rest of us. They have long been more accepting and open to intermarrying between different ethnicities than other nations were, so long as the foreigners were willing to adopt the local religious and/or cultural beliefs and customs. Most Chinese genetic traits are dominant (don't tell the White Supremacists).

Edited to specify intermarrying.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

15. I asked a chinese person once about Yao Ming.

I asked him if Yao Ming's ethnic group was particularly tall, or if it was merely his family genetics (his parents were on the national basketball teams).

He said it was his family, not his ethnic group as a whole.

[alfredo]

16. I found reference to a Siberian Tartar with the same surname name as mine.

He was Muslim.

[AlienGirl]

17. Wow, check out the Hani garb!

It reminds me a lot of this:

(Sami)

and this:

(Karelian)

Tucker