Quote:
Originally Posted by Radar
There were people in America, before there was a U.S.A. There were people in China before there was a nation of China. The Chinese people were still Chinese before there was a China, and the people in America were Americans before we started using the term "Americans" to describe them. It's the same people regardless of what you call them.
Jews have ALWAYS lived in Israel even after the temple was destroyed. There has never been a single day during the last 3,000 years when Jewish people didn't live in Israel.
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You are wrong, Radar.
Before there was a china, there were Han people and Qin people and Sichuan people and Canton people and Hakka people.
Qin Shi Huang Di conquered and united all of what we currently know as china. He personally created the chinese language, from his own Qin language, and standardized a method of writing across all of his empire. The people still continued to
speak their own languages, but were forced to learn and write what we now know as chinese. The people still continued to be Han people and Qin people and Hakka people, and many still do
to this day, while others have in the intervening centuries grown to identify as chinese.
You are definitely wrong in this case, radar. Maybe a different example would be more apt. They were not chinese on the virtue that they happened to live in what later eventually became china, they were not chinese by virtue of their ethnicity, they were not chinese by virtue of their language, they were not chines by virtue of their identity. They were not chinese.