Jump to content

Talk:Jin Li

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Traditional idea of South vs North

[edit]

Regarding the comment "traditional idea in China is chinese culture originate and spread from n china, not that the N Chinese are genetic ancestors of S Chinese", the following is what the article states: "To ethnocentric northern Chinese, the idea that they descend from southerners is about as welcome as the news that all Chinese are descended from Africans. In China, the north is the Middle Kingdom, the source of all civilization and culture." This passage clearly indicates that Jin's finding of ancestral origins is considered unorthodox. Shawnc 07:03, 16 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
More citation on this: "it had been widely accepted that there was a massive population expansion of Han Chinese from north to south during the past 2,000 years of imperial rule -- overlaying, displacing and ultimately replacing the bulk of indigenous minorities in the south." Shawnc 07:07, 16 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think you can use the article as a source of unbiased facts because it seems to be an editorial from an newspaper. The ideas and assertions in the sentences you have quoted are themselves unsourced and are used to advance a particular point of view.
That article was used as a source of opinion, not "fact" per se, because the context is one of culture or at least of perceived culture. Also, where is the source that "traditional idea in China is... not that the N Chinese are genetic ancestors of S Chinese"? It would help determine what the preexisting notion is.
Moreover, the article confuses two very different ideas, the movement of the first early humans into what is now China which took place many tens of thousands of years ago, and the spread of Han culture from Northen China into the South which only happened in the last one to two thousand years.
Since the article did not imply that the Han culture as it is known now did not come from the North, I do not recognize a confusion. It was referring to the flow of population in a genetic or anthropological context.
Lets examine To ethnocentric northern Chinese, the idea that they descend from southerners is about as welcome as the news that all Chinese are descended from Africans. In China, the north is the Middle Kingdom, the source of all civilization and culture. This starts with the assumption that the northern Chinese are ethnocentric, furthermore they are not merely ethnocentric from a Chinese point of view but from a northern Chinese point of view. Who says the the northern Chinese are ethnocentric? I'm not saying they are not but one newspaper editorial is not research from a peer reviewed journal.
Perhaps what you object to is the pejorative use of the term "ethnocentric", but northern China has been the center of administration. I don't think it should be controversial to presume northern-centric tendencies, on the basis of the status quo. The word "ethnocentric" was not used in this article anyway.
It had been widely accepted that there was a massive population expansion of Han Chinese from north to south during the past 2,000 years of imperial rule -- overlaying, displacing and ultimately replacing the bulk of indigenous minorities in the south. Widely accepted by whom? Again this an unsupported assertion with no sources, actually the common view is that the bulk of the indigenous populations in the south were gradually assimilated and absorbed into the Han identity, not that they were "displaced and ultimately replaced" by people from the north. In fact this is supportd by genetic research which shows that the southern Chinese are geneticlly distinct from the northern Chinese, indicating that the spread and expansion of the Han from the north in the last one to two thousand years was mainly cultural and not genetic.
Whatever the author's sources were, he was stating what he thought to be opinion, not fact, as he did later put "Recent historical research has shown, however, that Han identity in the south was, for pragmatic political reasons, adopted or synthesized by southern indigenous peoples only over the past few hundred years. This suggests that much of the population migration from the north to the south was more perceived than real, and supports the view that regional populations may have been more stable over the past few thousand years than was previously assumed."
This wiki article should focus on Jin Li and his research, and not quote from an editorial which uses his research to express an agenda. LDHan 14:39, 16 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This article should certainly focus on Jin's research, which implicates migration patterns such as the direction and the order of movement. While culture is not necessarily the topic under discussion, ancestry is. Based on my own conversations with Chinese-speaking people, they do seem surprised or unfamiliar with the notion that the earliest people in China arrived form southern regions and not the north. In that regard, I assume the article's aforementioned statements to be representative. If you think this view is not representative, we can leave out the concept of "traditional ideas" until there are more sources.
The literal of Jin's own papers should remain, on the other hand. Shawnc 20:59,
[edit]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on Jin Li. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

  • If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
  • If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 21:15, 25 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]