Ethnicity or whatever
Posted: 2025-08-03
I've seen a lot of people (or maybe not a lot and I'm just overreacting) mix up ethnicity (民族) and place of origin (籍贯) when it comes to Chinese people, when these two things are entirely separate concepts. And well I want to ramble about it now.
We're mostly all Han. An overwhelming majority. That's ethnicity.
When someone says they're a "Hunan person" or whatever, they're referring to their place of origin, a geographical divide. It usually refers to where your grandpa's grandpa[1] had been living all these generations, but since a lot of people can't really trace it back that far (or had kept moving), maybe three or four generations would suffice.
Me, for one: my mom's from Hebei and my dad's from Hunan. That makes my place of origin Hunan[1:1]. I can't half-and-half that since it's not ethnicity and only ethnicity can be mixed[2]. I grew up in Shenzhen[3]. I had hardly ever stepped foot in Hunan; I can't speak the dialect and I can't tolerate spicy food to save my life, but no matter where I move to I'd still be from Hunan. (It kinda gives the same vibes as "my papa's papa is my grandpa.") On the ethnicity side, we're all Han.
Geographical divides can't function as ethnic divides because there is no clearly distinct cultural identity across those province borders. Regional differences in dialects or cuisine exist, but they don't amount to separate ethnic identities; and current province borders do not reflect those regional divides enough.
So yeah, ethnicity and place of origin are two separate categories. A person with a certain place of origin may as well be of any ethnicity, and vice versa. For some OC-making advice, you can mix and match those to your heart's content because they're separate categories and technically speaking any combination works (though certain ethnicities are prominent in certain areas and it would be a little weird if you said they're from somewhere too far).