Event

While the standard terms for an ethnic group in modern Chinese are minzu 民族 and zuqun 族群, the most important non-ethnonymic terms in Chinese ethnic discourse in premodern times were zulei 族類, zhonglei 種類, and zhong 種. Of these, zulei has received more attention in Western scholarship, due in large part to a well-known but controversial saying from the ancient chronicle Zuozhuan 左傳: feiwo zulei, qi xin biyi 非我族類，其心必異 (“Those not of our zulei must have different hearts and minds”). Although zulei most likely meant clan lineage in the original Zuozhuan context, the saying was frequently used to justify ethnic prejudice and discrimination in later periods of Chinese history. In this talk, I will trace the evidence for new ethnic uses of zulei, zhonglei, and zhong to the Han and early medieval periods, while showing that they coexisted with non-ethnic meanings for centuries. I will also use examples from the Tang and Ming periods to draw inferences with regard to premodern Chinese ideas about ethnic difference and the extent to which they correspond to modern ideas of ethnicity and race.