but for you to really grasp the meaning of the term you have to understand how the chinese see it. the chinks call their ethnicity - han chinese.  and in this han chinese there is room for about half of them who are very notoriously of different ethnicities by any measure but consider themselves han chinese because they descend for the most part of the original han chinese. but the real name for china in mandarin (and all other chink languages) is actually something like... "zhongguo".  which means something like the middle realm. as in the centre of the world. as in we're the civilised ones, all others are barbarians. this being chinese doesn't have any ethnic conotations at all. it just means being subjects of one empire. the empire.  which allows for foreigners to invade, dominate and in time becoming "chinese" (of the empire) without becoming "ethnicc chinese" (han chinese). but who cares, though, after a time they are assimilated and absorbed and mostly become han chinese. it's just so tiresome and so complicated. > zongguo - under rome > han chinese - italics > northern chinese - actually the original latin ethnic group (current nationality in europe, although back in the day.)
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