The Term Hua Ren

[AngryABCGirl]

Hua Ren is a term some Chinese people throughout the world have been calling themselves as well has Hua Qiao for overseas Chinese. I haven't heard the term Hua Ren too much, but I've noticed it more recently. I have the impression a lot of people don't want to call themselves Zhong Guo Ren (literally meaning People of the Middle Kingdom but it pretty much means Chinese people) to disassociate themselves from the mainland. Most older Taiwanese people people refer to themselves still as Zhong Guo Ren but I hear Hua Ren here and there now. Most young Taiwanese would say Taiwanese, but not all people on Taiwan would be considered "Taiwanese", but that's complicated, hence more emergence of the term Hua Ren.

What do the other Chinese people on the board think from different places? Are we going to use Hua Ren more now around the world for the Chinese diaspora? And does anyone know how the term came about? I've only heard Chinese people say this, it seemed like Japanese people tend to refer to us more as the People of the Han.

[kasia]

for my family, it's always depended on the context. if the discussion is about how our family immigrated here or our identity as immigrants, we'll refer to ourselves as 'hua ren'. in other contexts - for example - when speaking with non-chinese about the chinese culture, we'll refer to ourselves as 'zhong guo ren'.

[seanp]

for my family, it's always depended on the context. if the discussion is about how our family immigrated here or our identity as immigrants, we'll refer to ourselves as 'hua ren'. in other contexts - for example - when speaking with non-chinese about the chinese culture, we'll refer to ourselves as 'zhong guo ren'.


I know vietnamese people call chinese-vietnamese people "nguoi hoa" like "hua ren" and batau (because the Ming immigrant used boats to immigrate to Annam when the Manchu tookover China). My mom said that when she says "zhong guo ren", she feels like saying that she's a maindland chinese.

[YuheiCarreau]

for my family, it's always depended on the context. if the discussion is about how our family immigrated here or our identity as immigrants, we'll refer to ourselves as 'hua ren'. in other contexts - for example - when speaking with non-chinese about the chinese culture, we'll refer to ourselves as 'zhong guo ren'.

If you're speaking to non-Chinese, though, can they really understand the difference?

[SunWuKong]

people in HK didn't much like referring to themselves as Zhong Guo Ren, but they didn't much use the term Hua Ren either. they usually refer to themselves as Xiang Gang Ren (Hong Kong people). because the same way with a lot of Taiwanese people, when they say Zhong Guo Ren, they feel like they're referring to themselves as Mainlanders. in English, however, they have always referred to themselves as "Chinese". now in the post-1997 HK, most people are accepting the handover back to China and accepting that HK is a part of China, and more people have been referring to themselves as Zhong Guo Ren.

i don't know if Mandarin speakers use this term, but a lot of Cantonese speakers also refer to themselves as Tang Ren. in fact, most Chinese people i know (who are on the East Coast) use Tang Ren instead of Hua Ren. i think most Overseas Chinese around the world refer to themselves as Hua Ren though, or Hua Qiao - though i think Hua Qiao is more common for those who were actually born overseas.

i'm not sure why people started using the term Hua Ren, instead of a slew of other terms that they could use. but the Hua in Hua Ren comes from Zhong Hua (a glorified term to describe something that is Chinese). i think the term goes back to the Qing dynasty, because that's a term that's always been used in Southeast Asia, which was the main destination of the Chinese diaspora pre-WW2, dating back at least a century or two.

[ModernLogic]

By the way, what about other terms like:

Tang Ren or Han Ren?

I know they pay homage to those dynasties but in which context are these terms used? I think Han is generally used to differentiate the Han Chinese from the Chinese ethnic minorities.

[SunWuKong]

By the way, what about other terms like:

Tang Ren or Han Ren?

I know they pay homage to those dynasties but in which context are these terms used? I think Han is generally used to differentiate the Han Chinese from the Chinese ethnic minorities.


yeah Tang Ren is commonly used by overseas Chinese in the US. i've never really heard Han Ren. only in kungfu TV series or kungfu movies. :p

[AliBabaIncorporated]

Btw, I have never heard any Japanese call us "Han jin" these days.

They will only call us Chiu gokujin, or sinaman.
sinaman?

anyway the 2nd and 3rd-generation Chinese I know in Japan, all three of them, anyway, seem to prefer "kazin" (just the Japanese reading of huaren) to refer to themselves, and they don't really like "zainiti tyuugokuzin" or "tyuugokukei" or whatnot ...