Collected Online Articles In English Language, 2013-2016 (eBook)

Timo Schmitz (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2017 | 2. Auflage
100 Seiten
epubli (Verlag)
978-3-7450-5918-2 (ISBN)

Infos

This book contains almost all English-language articles that were published online by Timo Schmitz between 2013 and 2016, including the two series 'Individualisam between Moral and Virtues, Government and Religion' (27 articles) and 'An Overview of Tibetan History' (9 articles), as well as his article 'Who are the Left?' (which includes an overview on the major Communist and Anarchist movements). Timo Schmitz (*1993) is a language fanatic, philosopher, journalist, poet and book author. In 2014, he started to publish English articles on his blog. The first articles dealt with general issues, such as independence movements in the USA, massacres in South Korea at around the Korean War, what is utopia, and the limits of gaining knowledge. In February 2015, he started his series 'Individualism between Moral and Virtues, Government and Religion', which finally consists of 27 articles. The series depicts his own philosophy, the 'New Constructivist Communism' which questions contemporary society, morality and thinks of alternative forms of living. It also questions the phenomena of 'culture' and gives first concerns. Further cultural critique followed in 2016, where he questioned the use of the term and critically thinks of the consequences arising out of it. In the same year, he published several articles dealing with Buddhist topics, such as the Storehouse-Consciousness, metta meditation, Buddhist eschatology, and the interpretation of allegories. Questions about life and death and the meaning of beauty followed in fall. As Schmitz is a Constructivist-Skepticist, questions about what is reality and where do humans start constructing their own reality also is depicted in some of his articles. He also published many articles about political issues, such as human rights in Korea, politics in Chechnya and the civil war in Myanmar.

Timo Schmitz ist ein junger Autor, Philosoph, Dichter und Journalist. Sein Schwerpunkt liegt auf der Erforschung indigener Religionen und Glaubenssysteme. 2013 brachte er zwei englische Gedichtsbände als E-Book heraus. Es folgten weitere Gedichtsbände in Deutsch, Englisch und Französisch. Desweiteren veröffentlichte er Bücher über den Buddhismus und Daoismus. Seine philosophischen Werke sind inspiriert vom Yogacara-Buddhismus, dem chassidischen Judentum und dem Islam.

Textauszug

A hypothesis about the origin of the Hui’an in Fujian and Lingao in Hainan and their parallels

 

 

Many years ago, my interest in the ethnic minority groups of the People’s Republic of China started. My first interests were of course the big ethnic grups like the Tibetans, Uyghurs and the Zhuang. Then I had the chance to get to know better about the Zhuang and their neighbouring cultures and native speakers started to teach me their Zhuang language and their culture. There are many researches on the big ethnic minorities, but not so much information on the small ones, especially the unrecognized ones. Most of the unrecognized ethnic groups have simple reasons. The Tuvans for example have only a small amount of people in China. In 1954, they were asked to receive their own Tuvan nationality. The Tuvans mostly live in an area populated by the Kazakhs. Like the Kazakhs, the Tuvans are a Turkic people and in fear to be confused with the Kazakhs who are Muslim while the Tuvans are Buddhists, they rejected the attempt to get their own nationality and took the Mongol nationality, as they feel traditionally and culturally closer to the Buddhist Mongols than to the many Muslim Turkic people who have a completely different culture. Kazakhs and Uyghurs are more closely related to each other than the Tuvans. So one reason for a minority being unrecognized is their own wish to share another nationality to which they identify themselves. Another reason for a minority being unrecognized in the PRC is that in past time they were thought to be part of another bigger ethnic group as they share a large amount of their culture. I think this can be said about the Sherpas who are classified as Tibetans and share many customs with the Tibetans. The third reason why an ethnic group might be still unrecognized is their little knowledge about the ethnic group and the fact that due to the centuries they have integrated themselves to the majority. Once, I got interested in the unique traditions of a small group of women in Hui’an County in Quanzhou City, Fujian Province. These women are classified as Han Chinese, as they don’t have their own language and nowadays many customs are closely related to the Han Chinese, but there are still some customs which are typical of these women in this small county. These women and their customs are mostly unknown to the people in China, even in Fujian, as they live in small costal towns, far away from the city center and the tourist areas.

A much bigger ethnic group are the Lingao (living mostly in Lingao County, Hainan Province) who are also classified as Han Chinese but have an own language. The classification of their language is still disputed. They don’t have their specific customs, but of course they have their local traditions. The people feel like the other Han Chinese, but their way of life is still a bit different, so that they are recognized as a Han sub-group, like the Kejia (Hakka) or the Cun, the last one can be found on Hainan, too. In 2012, I started writing small articles in Chinese under my Chinese self-given name Sun Nanfeng (some people may know some articles by the Korean or Vietnamese equivalent of my name) mostly about ethnic minorities in the People’s Republic of China which can be downloaded on the Internet. They are mainly about some basic stuff for people who have a special interest in the Chinese ethnic groups and who want to know some general things about ethnic groups, like some basic facts or quick introduction, so nothing special at all. In August, I published an article about the Hui’an Women under the name “Article about the Hui’an women” （《惠安女的论题》）. This article has been important to me, as it reaches the question if the culture of the Hui’an can be regarded as a distinct ethnic group or not. After writing that article, I didn’t pay any more attention to the Hui’an Women at first.

Then later I heard about the Lingao, a subgroup of Han Chinese speaking their own language. This awakened my interest, and I wanted to write a small article about them – nothing special at all, like I did with the Hui’an women. After completing my article, due to a coincidence, I found the contact to some inhabitants of Lingao on the internet who were willing to start teaching me their language. During my first research I found out that the Lingao language might be a Tai language closely related to Zhuang or a variant of Kejia dialect of Chinese spoken in Fujian. When a Lingao inhabitant （临高人, Lingaoren） told me about the rumor that the Lingao people’s ancestors came from Fujian Province, I was surprised at first. The Lingao, like the recognized Li minority, speak a Tai language, but they are not related to the Li and possibly came from Fujian Province, an area where Zhuang is not spoken, but the language shares some things with Zhuang. If the Lingao are relatives with the Zhuang, then why didn’t they take a boat from Guangxi to Hainan Province which is directly en route, but instead took a detour through Fujian Province where not a mentionable number of Zhuang is living?

As I started to learn Zhuang even before I started to learn Lingao and Lingao language has no official orthography yet, I thought I can use my Zhuang language knowledge to design an orthography, as I really found some matchings in both languages, although the similarities in vocabulary are totally rare, but their sound scheme shares some interesting futures, e.g. they mostly share the same tones and many letters sound almost the same in Zhuang and Lingao language. In this situation, I didn’t want to continue to write any superficial articles, but doing deeper research.

So when I first heard that the Lingao are from Fujian and share some common things with Tai people I had something that people could call a déjà-vu, as I even thought to see some connections between the Hui’an and the Lingao, and even the Hui’an and the Zhuang. My research concerning this triangle (Zhuang – Hui’an – Lingao) under the circumstances that not much is known about the Hui’an and the origins of the Lingao anyways lead me to a hypothesis that the Lingao and the Hui’an could be related to each other by only regarding cultural and linguistic aspects, as well as historically important aspects. Regarding the human identity I can not guarantee that both are really the “next relative” to each other, but I want to convince you that there is possibly a kind of relationship anyways. In the following paragraphs, I want to introduce the Hui’an and then the Lingao and in a conclusion tell the possible relationship between those two.

 

The mysterious women of Hui’an County in Fujian Province

 

When talking about the people in Hui’an we have a problem which makes it difficult to classify those people. The Hui’an don’t have a typical family with a man and a woman. The people living these special customs in Hui’an are all female. If the Hui’an were an ethnic group, there would have to be both men and women, as an ethnic group has to be composed of both genders. But except little male children, all those people living these unique traditions are women.  So where are the Hui’an men? This question and its possible answer will play a key role in my hypothesis, although I can’t proof it 100% due to the lack of literature and scientific articles on the one side, and the missing of Hui’an literature written by themselves on the other side. But what makes the Hui’an women so special? At first, Hui’an women can be easily seen by their dresses. A traditional Hui’an woman covers her hair with colourful designed scarves and sometimes a hat, too. There are many different kinds of scarves and hats, and some women wear really small yellow hats while others wear a more wider orange hat. The scarves can be green, blue or red for example, and even have different coloured designs on it. They normally wear a dark blue or cyan kind of jacket which is very tight to the body, but interestingly these clothes don’t seem to be strict or conservative as their jackets sometimes are really short and the bellies are totally uncovered. Especially the tight dresses are remembering me of the dresses of the Dai People although the Dai people don’t seem to wear uncovered bellies in general (although I already saw pictures of Dai women wearing two-pieces with uncovered bellies and Hui’an women wearing two-pieces covering their bellies). Instead of hats the Dai like flowers or very colourful acessoires in general in their hair, while Hui’an women often wear very colourful acessoires on their hats. Instead of the one-piece dresses of the Dai people as I saw them on pictures from Xishuangbanna Autonomous Prefecture of the Dai, the Hui’an seem to wear two piece dresses, as their trousers also are sometimes tight, but not always as they have to be comfortable for working.

The hats seem to be likely the hats of the Jing People, i.e. the ethnic Vietnamese native to China, while it is also a common costume among all the ethnic groups in southern China’s Guizhou and Guangxi. Zhuang women have their own kind of hat-like acessoires, same than the Miao and Dong have their accesoires on their heads. When I saw some women belonging to the Maonan people on a photo, they were wearing thin blue hats which remembered me very much of one of the hats in a Hui’an picture. Although they don’t seem to be as thin as the Maonan hats they were still very thin...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 22.4.2017
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Erkenntnistheorie / Wissenschaftstheorie
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft
• Schlagworte: Burma • China • communism • economy • Korea • Myanmar • Philosophy • Politics • Religion • Vietnam
• ISBN-10: 3-7450-5918-2 / 3745059182
• ISBN-13: 978-3-7450-5918-2 / 9783745059182