China/India Influences

[Dejkib]

Western scholars often said that if one's Asian then one's either influenced by Chinese or Indian culture, religion, etc...how true is it currently?

Await your personal or educational responses...

[kimpossible]

Sooner or later, you're gonna hump us.

[Napoleon Chynamite]

That's like saying if you're European then your ethnic culture has influences from either the ancient Greeks or the Roman empire.

[AngryABCGirl]

That's like saying if you're European then your ethnic culture has influences from either the ancient Greeks or the Roman empire.

I know seriously. I'd think some Indonesians and Filipinos are feeling left out by this unscholarly blanket statement.

[SunWuKong]

Sooner or later, you're gonna hump us.

Chinese and Indian - little Chindus!

I know seriously. I'd think some Indonesians and Filipinos are feeling left out by this unscholarly blanket statement.

not trying to substantiate the claim, but i think Indonesia has been historically influenced by Indian culture and i know the Philippines has been influenced by Chinese culture in the past. the most visible Chinese cultural influence in Filipino culture is probably in its cuisine. not that i'm saying you can see a lot of Chinese influence in Filipino culture today - i don't think you can - but there was a certain amount of influence.

[Napoleon Chynamite]

Plus, I'm sure Indonesia has significant Chinese influence as well what with all the rich Chinese people that live there. If you see international students from Indonesia here the chances are they are ethnically Chinese, they always made me curious because they looked Chinese (or East Asian) but the language they spoke was something I couldn't identify.

[Sunflare]

There are other influences that was embraced by various southeast Asian cultures too, along with the Indian and Chinese influences.

Indonesia for example. The influence is heavily Chinese and Indian, true. But it also has been influenced by other cultures, namely Arabic, Malay, and European cultures.

Thailand culture too. The influence by Chinese and Indian culture is obvious, but it also has influenced by Arabic culture as well.

The Phillipines? Well they have the true natives of the land who are Austronesians. (They are similar in appearance to the native Australians) their descendants living today in remote areas They are affectionately named as the Aeta (black filipinos.)

pics :

http://www.sam21phj.com/Central%20Luzon.files/pampanga/CL_aeta_wud.jpg

http://www.philippines.hvu.nl/images/aeta-small.jpg

link: http://www.philippines.hvu.nl/hitory1.htm

The culture also had it's influences from Middleeastern cultures as well as the Hispanic, Chinese and Indian influences. Hope this helps to clarify things.

[AliBabaIncorporated]

they always made me curious because they looked Chinese (or East Asian) but the language they spoke was something I couldn't identify.
Indonesian, presumably. Not many Indonesian Chinese around our age speak any Chinese dialect particularly well; even if you'd learned it well enough at home among your relatives (already enough of a rarity), speaking it in public with your friends was frowned upon if you were growing up in the 70s and 80s, so BI was the language of communication among everyone's peer groups.

not trying to substantiate the claim, but i think Indonesia has been historically influenced by Indian culture
BI/BM have plenty of Sanskrit loanwords, even fairly basic words like "north", but not so many from Chinese except for food words. On the other hand, though, Indian Muslims weren't the ones who were responsible for the spread of Islam in Malaysia and Indonesia ...

[Zombie Dave]

Western scholars often said that if one's Asian then one's either influenced by Chinese or Indian culture, religion, etc...how true is it currently?

Await your personal or educational responses...

Which 'scholars' say this? Is this, like, a minority of one - you know, like the occasional article you see saying 'scientists say global warming is a myth'?

Give us their names/source.

[Napoleon Chynamite]

I guess what I was trying to say was that while it might be very well possible that every single Asian culture might have at least traces of influence, if not a lot more, from ways of life originally of peoples from the enormous regions we call India and China today, in which present combined populations consist of well over half of the population in the broadest sense of what is Asia, it doesn't really mean anything.

Even if you could say the same about China and India as the current states they are today, China is huge and basically can be likened to a modern day Roman empire that never split apart, and the same can almost be said for India; in fact Indian history tells us that there was actually a greater amount of religious, ethnic, and cultural variety than China even though there might not be as great an expanse of land on the South Asian peninsula. Every culture has influence from another culture, either existing or pre-existing. Contrary to what armchair nationalists would have you believe it's not exactly a big deal to concede to these types of claims.