32 CultureShock! China
These and similar questions, as with ‘what makes an
American’ or ‘who is a Jew’, are freighted with emotional
sensitivities and political consequences. People tend to hold
very strong opinions, some of them at times self-contradictory.
Chinese visa officials, for instance, will generally grant special
‘visiting your relatives’ visas to ‘half-Chinese’ children of
mixed marriages, but may deny those visas to ‘one-quarter
Chinese’ grandchildren of such marriages—even as China in
many ways tries to court anyone with any degree of Chinese
ancestry to come ‘contribute to the homeland’ as teachers,
investors, and so on.
About all one can say for sure is that the question is
complex. Again, beware of easy generalities. For purposes
of this book, except where noted otherwise, we focus
predominantly on citizens of the PRC—but we are well aware
that other definitions exist.‘Blue Ants’ No More
One thing for sure, the Chinese, however one defines them,
are definitely not homogenous. In truth, of course, they
never were, but the totalitarian controls of the Maoist years
imposed an external sameness on all those living in the
People’s Republic.
During the Maoist years, the mainland Chinese were
almost all universally born in state hospitals or helped by
state-funded midwives, attended state schools and lived
out their lives in small, simple apartments or rural villages
assigned by the state.
They worked in jobs assigned by the state, used towels,
clothes, washbasins and dishware manufactured by the state
in a narrow range of utilitarian designs, and slept under
the same state-assigned quilts. They sold through state-run
stores, read newspapers published by the state, saw news
and entertainment funded and controlled by the state, were
married by the state and in the end, cremated and buried
by the state. Thus, it’s small wonder they appeared to be the
same to outsiders.
In Mao’s time, more than any other clothing, the Chinese
wore cheap blue cotton outfits which Westerners label ‘Mao