Personal Ethnography

What is ethnicity? Ethnicities are the common characteristics of a group of people. As a large multi-national country, China is composed of 56 ethnic groups. My family is Han Chinese. Han people are majority people group in the China, account for 91.59 of the overall Chinese population according to the Fifth National Population census of 2000. I was born and grew up in China so I would account myself, identify as the full-blooded Chinese. I don not have the complicated ethnic background. However Asian Americans have been in American for over 150 years. My ancestors never leave their homeland motivated by seeking political asylum or dreams of a money in my family history. Therefore, my roots allow me to be classified as Chinese. Mandarin is my mother tongue, all my families speak it and read it. All education is conducted in Mandarin. It does not mean there no problem among the Mandarin speakers all around the China because there are over 600 regional dialects except Mandarin. Older generation used to speak regional dialects, like my parents often speak Fukienese with my grandparents. Generally, China’s main religion are Buddhism, this was the only foreign religion to be absorbed into and changed by Chinese culture, contributing in many ways to the country’s cultural development. Buddhism is also my family’s beliefs, we will worship Budda in some festivals. No matter the language or the religion also help to identify me as full-blooded Chinese. Other identifying me as a Chinese by my skin color, hair, eyes, other appearance features, and ask me where I come from. I 'm a little bit shy at school, and when I have questions or I need help on my subjects, I hesitate to raise my hand. Since my freshman year I have been like this. I attend every class and turn in every homework or project on time, for this reason, they identified me as an Asian, because of the stereotypes placed on Asians my behavior and attitude contributed to people 's reasoning. China is

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