Han Chinese - Han Diversity

Han Diversity

In addition to a diversity of spoken language, which were all descended from a common Old Chinese ancestor, there are also regional differences in culture among Han Chinese. For example, China's cuisine varies from Sichuan's famously spicy food to Guangdong's Dim Sum and fresh seafood. However, like other ethnic groups, some sense of cultural (or at least political) unity still exists between the various groups because of common cultural, behavioural, linguistic, and religious practices.

Historical documentation indicates that the Han were descended from the ancient Huaxia tribes of northern China. During the past two millennia, the Han culture (that is, the language and its associated culture) extended into southern China, a region inhabited by the southern natives, including those speaking Tai–Kadai, Austro-Asiatic, and Hmong–Mien languages. As Huaxia culture spread from its heartland in the Yellow River basin, it absorbed many distinct ethnic groups which then came to be identified as Han Chinese, as these groups adopted Han language (or variations of it) and customs.

For example, during the Shang Dynasty, people of the Wu area, in the Yangtze River Delta, were considered a different tribe. They spoke a language that was almost certainly distinct from that of the Shang, and were described as being scantily dressed and tattooed. Later Taibo, elder uncle of King Wen of Zhou, realising that his younger brother, Jili, was wiser than him and deserved to inherit the throne, fled to Wu and settled there. Three generations later, King Wu of Zhou defeated the last Yin emperor, and enfeoffed the descendants of Taibo in Wu, this mirrors the later history of Nanyue, where a Chinese king and his soldiers ruled a local non-Chinese population, and mixed with the local inhabitants who were sinicized over time. By the Tang Dynasty, however, this area had become part of the Han Chinese heartland, and is today the most densely populated and strongest performing economic region in China, the site of China's largest city Shanghai. Many Chinese languages are mutually unintelligible, but descend from a common Old Chinese, and Middle Chinese ancestors.