Talk:Tibetan people

Surely this should be a section of the article Tibet? Do we have articles on the German people or the Guatemalan people? No, we have a demographic or ethnographic section of the main article. Adam 04:51, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)

we have articles on the Chinese ethnic groups. --Jiang

There are probably some countries, such as China, Russia and India, which are so large and ethnically diverse that such a separate article could be justified, but I don't think Tibet is one of them. Adam 05:15, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Look at the list - although most are stubs, a few like Uighur, Hui, Mongols have some content. --Jiang 05:33, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I would put discussions about peoples in the articles relating to the places where the peoples live: Tibetans under Tibet, Mongols under Mongolia, Uighurs under Sinkiang-Uighur Autonomous Region or perhaps Chinese Turkestan. Since the Hui don't seem to live in a discrete area I suppose they would have to be an exception, although the article suggests they are really a religious minority and not an ethnicity. Adam 05:40, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)

The article on Koreans is based havily on Koreans not living in Korea. --Jiang

So I see. I would incorporate that material into the Korea article, with the subheading Koreans outside Korea. I think there is far too much proliferation of superfluous and overlapping articles at WP. I know that Wikipedia is not paper but it still strikes me as untidy. Adam 06:10, 30 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Actually, Adam, the project Wikipedia:WikiProject Ethnic Groups is moving toward having separate articles on states and peoples. There is some pretty lively discussion on the talk page about whether this is a good or bad thing. I'm one of the partisans of the idea (for reasons expressed there). Come, have a look, and if you want to debate the issue it is probably more productive to do there than in the discussion of a single ethnic group or nation. -- Jmabel 19:44, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I am removing a great deal of the 1911 EB text from the article. The language of that text, coming from a turn-of-the-century physical anthropological POV is downright racist. I'm not going to go as far in this respect as I might, but would welcome someone going even further. -- Jmabel 02:22, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Does anyone know the extent (if at all) to which the remarks on polyandry and polygamy still apply? -- Jmabel 02:42, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Apparently, yes. [1] (http://www.cwru.edu/affil/tibet/polyandry.html) has several articles (unfortunately, each a massive scanned JPEG) sympathetically documenting this practice into the 1980s; a quick web search shows recent articles in which the PRC government uses this to argue how backwards, feudal, and (at least by implication) licentious the Tibetans remain. An intersting topic, though, probably deserves some expansion in the article, including the use of it in PRC anti-Tibetan rhetoric. -- Jmabel 07:17, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

This article should have content on the post-1956 Tibetan diaspora. It does not. -- Jmabel 02:42, 19 Feb 2004 (UTC)

---

Umrao, what exactly do you mean by saying that the Uighur, the Manchu, the Mongols, and the Tibetans "the four non-Chinese nations incorporated into the PRC"? How are the Hmong (for example) any more Chinese than these? Or is the operative word "nation" and somehow you don't consider groups such as the Hmong "nations"? This is a sincere question: your additions were mostly good and I'm sure you have a point here, but we should try to reword to make it more precise. -- Jmabel 19:02, Aug 22, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I think the use of "nation" here is problematic. And the Mongol "nation" has at best been partially incorporated into China, since there's still an independent Mongolian state. -- Danny Yee 03:11, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Contents

1 needing rewording 2 Explanation 3 Images 4 Life cycles 5 Recent edits

needing rewording

Two passages confuse me. I'm not sure enough of the meaning to reword them myself:

• "Mani stones and people holding the Dorje, a sacred meant for chanting the mantra, is widely seen among the Tibetans."
• "The Thangka, is a widely popular art among the Tibetans."

Explanation

1. I never knew about the book Goldstein, Melvyn C., "Study of the Family structure in Tibet", Natural History, March 1987, 109-112 ([3] (http://web.archive.org/web/20030306141537/http://www.cwru.edu/affil/tibet/family.html) on the Web Archive), as such as short sentence can come from any observations. The book was never, or almost never heard of in Singapore, the region where I live in.

And it was poorly cited before. But as you can see from the link, without even having to go to a library, it's a quite legitimate citation. Note that this is a 4-page article in the magazine Natural History, not a book, so there is no particular reason it would have been "heard of". However, the magazine is certainly a reputable journal. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:19, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)

2. I apologise for my unknowing mistake by removing the 1911 Britannica text, as I did not review the content of the Notable Features and origins.

3. The marriage customs was plainly rewritten by me, and I never review the original content.

Mr Tan, 15:26, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

How can you prove that I "loaned" content from here? : [Goldstein, 1987] Intermarriage with Han Chinese exists but is uncommon, as many ethnic Tibetans have negative sentiments towards the Han. ---> Are you trying to mean this sentence?

• The phrase is not the same,
• It can be a statement of observation.

Meet me at 7:00, Florida time for the debate on this issue. Thanks

Mr Tan, 14:54, 21 Mar 2005 (Singapore Time)

7:00, Florida time is 4:00 where I live. I sleep at night. And "meet you" is supposed to mean what? -- Jmabel | Talk 08:26, Mar 21, 2005 (UTC)

I'm not saying you "loaned" (I presume you mean borrowed) content from Goldstein. I, not you, am citing Goldstein for as a source for the statement that Tibetan fraternal polyandry continues in recent times. And why do you continue to insist on taking my correct citation and substituting things that are unclear? This thing where you are throwing in a number "2" in brackets is totally non-standard. Wikipedia:Cite Sources is quite clear about using author name and year (and, in longer works, page number; I am citing the gist of a 3-1/2 page paper, so that would be inappropriate).

A citation note like this always indicates a source for the preceding material, not the following material. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:26, Mar 21, 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether the citation situation has been resolved. But I agree with Jmabel about not removing them. Maurreen 06:36, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• I do not deny the Goldestin source, but I think my old style would be neater. 2 refers to the Goldstein source at the bottom, and this can be counter-done by putting another 2 at the reference section against the Goldstein in there.

• Also, I thibk that breaking up the paragraph would look neater and classify the facts to a clearer extent. What do you think?

• I meant to meet you means to arrange at a specific time so that both of us are on Wikipedia and can discuss this topic carefully.

Mr Tan, 14:57, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:Cite sources. I am following the established style of citation.

Also, one does not normally introduce a new paragraph in the middle of a quotation that does not, itself, have a paragraph break. This is just plain standard. There are ways to do it, but they are clumsy. I'll do that if you really want it, but I think it only makes matters worse.

I literally do not understand why any of this should be in any sense an issue. I am following Wikipedia standards, which in these matters are pretty much precisely the normal standards for academic writing.

By the way, the 1911 EB article on Tibet that I am quoting can be found at http://25.1911encyclopedia.org/T/TI/TIBET.htm, poorly scanned, but the relevant passage appears to have no problems. -- Jmabel | Talk 16:48, Mar 22, 2005 (UTC)

Images

While I don't really care what images are actually used in this article, I disagree strenuously with the edit summary "don't want black%white images, looks bad". I am unaware of any Wikpedia policy against B&W images. I happen to like them. This is strictly a matter of personal taste. -- Jmabel | Talk 06:02, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

Personally I agree, but it's another of Mr Tan's obsessions (see also Talk:Zanskar). Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 09:10, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

Life cycles

Should the article of Life cycles be written in past tense? Technically although the PRC has had its fluctuations with Tibetan religion in the past, Tibetans themselves generally continue to believe in these things, and it seems misleading to place them in the past tense. --hidoshi@hidoshi.com 04:00, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)

Recent edits

1. It is a gross oversimplification to call the Tibetans "one of the 4 non-Chinese nations incorporated into the PRC". There are 55 ethnic minorities recognized by the PRC, plus many more groups (e.g. the Mosuo) asking to be recognized. The gradual expansion of the Chinese nation resulted in the conquest and incorporation of hundreds of ethnic groups, all of which are at different levels of assimilation and integration, from completely assimilated (e.g. Hsiung-Nu, Minyue, Bashu), to near complete (e.g. She, Manchu, Tujia) to distinct but peaceful (e.g. Korean, Yi, Li) to more violently separatist (e.g. Tibetan, Uyghur, Mongol). Many of these ethnic groups have established independent states at some time or other, and some wish to do so again, so it is simply ridiculous to say that "4" nations are at present incorporated.
2. Ethnic Tibetan was a self link in the image caption.
3. Scare quotes are POV. To write "autonomous entities" is to imply that the entities are not autonomous, by Wikipedia's judgement. Similarly we do not write Operation Iraqi "Freedom" or "Democratic" "People's" Republic of Korea regardless of what we think about them.
4. The explanation about the light grey and dark grey areas are already in the map. They were cluttering up the caption.
5. There is obviously more than one difference between the two maps.

-- ran (talk) 15:47, May 22, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining. I'm still unsure about the inverted commas, but my main worry concerns the excision of the sentence about ethnic groups. First, the text talks about non-Chinese nations, whereas your argument depends upon there being many non-Chinese ethnicities. Secondly, even so, it would better to add more detail than to remove what's there. Can you add a more detailed and accurate version in place of what you've removed? Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 17:13, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

Scare quotes are inherently POV. On the Chinese Wikipedia we've always had problems with people changing Republic of China to "Republic of China", Tibetan independence to "Tibetan independence" and so forth. Surely you agree that we need a common standard here — i.e., scare quotes are simply not acceptable. Also, "autonomous" is part of the official name, in the same way "People's" is part of the name People's Republic of China.

As for the other thing: a more accurate description is already in place: The Tibetan people form one of the fifty-six ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China (PRC). As for the distinction between "non-Chinese ethnicities" and "non-Chinese nations" — if you mean "nation" in the sense of a "people", then all of those ethnicities are nations — in fact, the government refers to them as nationalities rather than ethnicities. If you mean "nation" in the sense of a political entity, then it is safe to say that again, all of the aforementioned ethnicities lived under their own political institutions before the successive expansion and consolidation of the Chinese state over the centuries.

-- ran (talk) 19:31, May 22, 2005 (UTC)

1. The reson that I'm unsure is that inverted commas are also often used to indicate a technical use of a term (and given that I don't think that anyone claims that the regions are actually autonomous, this would seem to be technical use). Still, I'm not really worried about that.
2. The new text reads fine. My only thought is that the claim is about modern China, not about China throughout its history; thus, I took it to mean that Tibet is one of four nations that have been made part of China in relatively recent times, since China took its present basic form. In the same way, the United Kingdom is usually (though not, oddly, in the Wikipedia article) explained as being a state or political unit made up of three countries (England, Wales, and Scotland) and a province (northern Ireland) — but not as including the countries of Mercia, Wessex, my own Kingdom of Lindsey, etc., because they only existed before the individual countries existed, and had been absorbed long before the U.K. came into being.

Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 08:33, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

1. Well, of course there are people who claim that they're autonomous, like the PRC government. A quick trip through Mainland BBS's would reveal plenty of people who consider them to be too autonomous. (We should note that autonomy is relative, so people will judge the autonomy of something based on how autonomous they want it to be.) And it is true that relative to provinces, they are indeed more autonomous (though relative to, say, Hong Kong, they aren't remotely autonomous). And in any case, the word autonomous is part of the official title.
2. The United Kingdom still has four actual political divisions that correspond to England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. And the dividing lines, both geographically and historically, are a lot sharper. This is not the case for China. E.g.: if you're talking about recently incorporated states, then what about, say, the extensive tusi system in the Yunnan-Guizhou-Guangxi highlands, now part of "China proper"? Much of that area, populated by peoples such as the Zhuang, Hmong, Yi etc., was once essentially left intact with its own independent political structures, nominally subservient to the emperor. From the early- to mid-18th century all the way into the early 20th century, all of that was abolished, and regular Chinese prefectures, counties etc. were imposed, with Han Chinese officials replacing local leaders. (Reminiscent to the establishment of Xinjiang province in the 1880's, and the Tibet Autonomous Region in 1965.) Rebellions flared as a result, but they died down and the area has become a lot more sinicized since. The situation here is analogous to Xinjiang, Tibet, etc.

-- ran (talk) 16:57, May 23, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your expalantion. I hadn't realised that areas like the Yunnan-Guizhou-Guangxi highlands had had de facto independence until so recently. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 17:11, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Neither had I, actually, until recently. :-) In any case, here's something to read if you're interested: The Zhuang: A Longitudinal Study of Their History and Their Culture (http://mcel.pacificu.edu/as/resources/zhuang/contents.html). Goes into a lot of detail over the Tusi system as applied to the Zhuang people in Guangxi and surrounding areas. -- ran (talk) 17:21, May 23, 2005 (UTC)

And one chapter in particular, about the mid-Qing era: [2] (http://mcel.pacificu.edu/as/resources/zhuang/zhuang16.htm). I think terms like "independence", even de facto, are somewhat thorny in cases like these, where formal and informal authority overlapped on top of each other and were constantly in flux. -- ran (talk) 17:37, May 23, 2005 (UTC)