On Being a Minority: Yunnan Province

(picture of a Xi minority woman dressed up in native garb to intrigue tourists)
On this family vacation, I, Daughter No. 1, had the chance to visit Yunnan province in the Southwest, a favorite destination among Chinese tourists, partially for areas of great natural beauty, and also because it is the home of at least 21 Chinese minority (min zu ren) groups. I was not well-versed in the nuances of ethnic and racial categories in the Middle Kingdom, and subsequently, had my first introduction in Kunming, the polluted and slightly desperate capital city of this exotic province. Upon my arrival, the tour guide "Justin," a youngish, slight, Chinese man, told us that instead of calling the working people fu ren, a term that could mean "miss, sir, or man,", we should call men ah hei ge, which literally means, my black brother, and the women ah shi ma, which did not seem to mean more than my mama. At first I was horrified, and then tried to suspend my cynicism. Hey wait, what exactly was "black" to the Chinese? I saw a group of South Asian people in the airport, wondering if they resided in Yunnan Province. Were these the black brothers and sisters Justin spoke of? I realized that the answer was no when the group happily boarded a plane to Bangladesh.

As the bus navigated through Kunming's congested roads, Justin informed us that minority people in Yunnan were darker, and had other distinguishing features that marked them as different from the majority group, the Han. According to Justin, being darker was a good thing, it meant those darker people did manual labor, and thus, were hard-working. Although Chinese people usually preferred light skin (as demonstrated by the many dainty women walking around with plastic parasols on bright summer days), in this region, pale people were considered "lazy." Justin said, in true Chinese humility, "since I am Han, you must know I am lazy." He won laughter from the group for his tremendous act of self-deprecation, and at the same time, distinguished himself from his minority brothers and sisters as a member of the dominant group.

At first Justin had me believe that Chinese people had a completely different idea of blackness which did not include Westernized prejudices against people of African descent, and instead was based in typical Middle Kingdom superiority. While both were offensive, the latter was more unfamiliar to me as a American, and worthy of exploration. However, only a few minutes later, he described what we would be doing the next day, following the itinerary with what he believed was a joke: "Now ah hei ge and ah shi ma, remember to bring lots of sun block and a hat, or else you will look like a Negro person." Yes, according to the group's cultural interpreter, you can revere the noble, hard-working, dark skinned Asian person living under Chinese rule, but try to avoid being associated with being a Black American, at any cost! At times I have tried not to apply what many have called my college paradigms of race to conversations with people from other cultural groups, but Justin's comment confirmed to me that racism transcended national and ethnic boundaries.
I called out from the back of the bus, wondering if one could ever really call themselves racially pure.
"Hey Justin," I said, "Are you full Han?"
Pause. "No," he replied quickly. "My mother is from the Xi minority group and my father is Han, so that makes me Han."
And within the first thirty minutes of arriving to Yunnan Province, I didn't learn much about what it means to be a minority in China...I learned just a little about what it means to be Chinese.