It excludes the dozens of ethnic minorities in both regions with their own mythical ancestors, from the 17-million-strong Zhuang people in Guangxi to the Thao people in Taiwan, who number a little over 800.
The mainland authorities have in fact discouraged the use of the expression because it is not inclusive of China’s Koreans, Miao, Mongols and so on. In official discourse at least, all ethnic minorities are part of the Chinese nation: they are as Chinese as the Han.
So who were Yan and Huang, the supposed progenitors of the Han Chinese?
Like many origin stories, the events that involved Yan and Huang occurred long before they were written down. Their lives and times were already “ancient history” to those ancient historians who encountered the many oral traditions and wrote them down.
By collating all the different versions together and removing the more fantastical elements, modern historians present the story of Yan and Huang as a possible genesis of the Han Chinese people.
Yan and Huang were the leaders of two related tribes in the fertile Central Plains surrounding the lower and middle reaches of the Yellow River, a region long considered as the cradle of Han Chinese civilisation. Population growth inevitably resulted in competition for resources between the two tribes.
The two tribes finally went to war at Banquan, the actual whereabouts of which is still undetermined. In some versions of the story, there was a third tribe involved in the fighting.
Huang emerged victorious in the end, and Yan agreed to merge his tribe with Huang’s to form the Huaxia confederation.
The people of the Huaxia confederation were the predecessors of today’s Han Chinese. It was only after the 400-year Han dynasty (202BC-AD220) that the term Hanren (“Han people”) came into use.
However, the “Hua” from “Huaxia” is still used. People like Chinese-Americans, Chinese-Malaysians and Chinese Singaporeans, who are not nationals of China but have Han Chinese ancestries, prefer the word Huaren (“Hua people”) or Huayi (“Hua descendants”).
Huaren is also used by those within the Greater China region when the genealogical and cultural antecedents of a Han Chinese person is referred to, instead of their nationality or political allegiance, a distinction that the English exonym “Chinese” does not make.
After subjugating Yan and incorporating his tribe, Huang, often translated as the Yellow Emperor, though his realm wasn’t much of an “empire”, became the supreme leader of the Huaxia people.
All manner of civilisational inventions were attributed to Huang, Yan, their wives and lieutenants, from the ideographic writing system, music and the crossbow, to agriculture, pottery and the weaving of silk into fabric.
This prompts the question of whether Huang, Yan and so on actually existed or whether they were imagined, composite figures of legends and myths, or a bit of both. Until irrefutable archaeological evidence is unearthed, we will not know for sure.
But what is certain is that the culturally precocious Huaxia (later on the Han Chinese) people went on to create an enduring civilisation, with all its splendour, complexities and contradictions.
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