We Chinese generally consider ourselves the descendants of Huang-ti, the Yellow Emperor, and we have other ties to the color yellow as well. Dr. K.C. Chang, an archaeologist from Harvard, once said: We belong to the yellow race, our culture originated in the yellow loess plains of the Yellow River basin, and our ancestors' diet consisted chiefly of yellow rice (glutinous millet) and yellow beans (soybeans). The emperor wore yellow robes, lucky days were termed "auspicious days of the Yellow Way (the ecliptic)," and even after death the place where spirits were said to go was called the Yellow Springs. Chinese civilization can truly be termed a civilization of the color yellow.
Whether or not there is any necessary relationship among these various items connected with the color yellow cannot be delved into here. The questions I want to examine are, what are the true physical features of the Chinese, of the people who consider themselves the descendants of the Yellow Emperor? And how did these features come about?
Strictly speaking, a more accurate designation for the yellow race is the Mongoloid race, which is one of the three main races in the world, along with Negroids and Caucasoids.
Mongoloids are distributed over a vast area of the world, centered in China and spreading east to the islands of Japan, south to the Malay peninsula and then east to most of the Pacific islands, and north to Siberia and then over the Bering Strait into the Americas--Indians, or native Americans, also belong to the Mongoloid race. All in all, Mongoloids make up around half the population of the world.
Within this vast expanse and huge population, the typical representatives of the Mongoloid race, as the anthropologist Carleton Coon has stated, are the Chinese, other national and ethnic groups having been created by miscegenation or geographical differentiation. But how did the characteristic features of the Mongoloid people arise?
The earliest fossils of primitive man that have been discovered in China to date are those of Peking Man, or Sinan-thropus pekinensis. Peking Man lived 300,000 to 350,000 years ago and inhabited the area that later became the chief cradle of ancient Chinese civilization, but anthropologists still harbor doubts about whether Peking Man was a direct ancestor of modern man, classifying him as an ape-man rather than Homo sapiens.
Nonetheless, anthropologists tell us, Peking Man possessed a number of physical characteristics shared by modern Mongoloids, such as shovel-shaped incisors, a flat nose, prominent cheekbones, and rather prominent eye sockets, and even if Peking Man cannot be called a direct ancestor of modern Chinese at least we can say that several physical characteristics of modern Chinese were already found in Peking Man as early as 300,000 or more years ago.
The most important human fossil remains found in China after Peking Man belong to Upper Caveman, who lived around 20,000 years ago and is classified as a true man rather than an ape-man. Upper Caveman possessed even more physical characteristics of primitive Mongoloids than did Peking Man, making him a real, true ancestor of modern Mongoloids.
A major discovery in the study of early Chinese history has been the remains from the Yin, or Shang, dynasty (16th to 11th centuries B.C.) excavated at Hsiaotuntsun in Anyang, Honan Province. Most people's understanding of the findings is limited to shell-and-bone writing and bronze ware, but they also include a large number of human bones.
According to studies by Li Chi and Yang Hsi-mei, more than 400 skulls have been unearthed at the site, most of them found in a pit of skulls near the tomb of the Yin kings, which most likely implies that they came from decapitated sacrificial victims. The skulls belong to five different physical types, a diversity that is probably due to their having come from foreign slaves and captives rather than indicating any racial heterogeneity of the Yin people themselves.
Overriding individual divergences, the skulls all share the features of rather developed cheekbones, flat noses, narrow nasal cavities, sloped foreheads, broad flat faces, and shovel-shaped incisors, all basic Mongoloid characteristics.
In historical times, the people of China have undergone many periods of racial admixture, which should have led to the transfer of quite a few physical traits, one would believe. But according to such noted experts as Paul Stevenson and David-son Black, the physical characteristics of the Chinese people have basically remained constant from mid-Neolithic times to the present.
Carleton Coon and Ernest Hooton, professors of anthropology at Harvard University, have identified eight major and five minor characteristics of the Mongoloid people, which can also serve to describe the main physical features of the Chinese people:
* thick, straight hair.
* black hair color.
* yellowish or tawny pigmentation.
* almond-shaped or slanted eyes with pronounced epicanthic folds.
* dark irises.
* flat noses.
* prominent cheekbones with flat facial features.
* little or no body or facial hair.
* broad shoulders, long trunks, short limbs.
* an average height below 5'6".
* shovel-shaped incisors.
* a sacral spot often visible in children under five years old.
* a high proportion of B blood types.
In view of these thirteen characteristics, the physical features of the Chinese people can be traced back not only to the Yin dynasty but even to the Neolithic era and the distant antiquity of Peking Man.
A scientist's description consists of cold and colorless terminology, whereas the ideal image of a people is charged with beauty and emotion. The search for an ideal ethnic image, however, can produce many misunderstandings and misconceptions, and the misuse or distortion of scientific theory in that regard can indeed be very dangerous. Nor is there any need for us to adopt the image of another race as an aesthetic ideal of our own. Only when we recognize and have adequate confidence in the beauty of our own race can we truly set up an ideal that belongs to it alone.
[Picture Caption]
The Chinese are members of the Mongoloid race, one of the three main races in the world. They come in all sizes. (photo by Arthur Cheng)
(Source: Echo Magazine)
Shovel-Shaped Incisors
Skull of Peking Man
(Source: Echo Magazine)
Features of the Mongoloid Eye
Features of the Mongoloid Eye & The drawing on the right shows the upward sweep of the outside corner of the eye and the lower curve of the inside corner. The drawing on the left shows the pronounced epicanthic fold covering the upper eyelashes.
Under the masterly brush of painter Lin Feng-mien, these "phoenix-eyed" Chinese beauties radiate an elegant charm. (photo courtesy of National Museum of History)
The Chinese form can also be used as a model for chessmen. This ivory set is kept in a museum in Spain. (photo by Arthur Cheng)
Shovel-Shaped Incisors.
Skull of Peking Man.
Features of the Mongoloid Eye.
Features of the Mongoloid Eye & The drawing on the right shows the upward sweep of the outside corner of the eye and the lower curve of the inside corner. The drawing on the left shows the pronounced epicanthic fold covering the upper eyelashes.
Under the masterly brush of painter Lin Feng-mien, these "phoenix-eyed" Chinese beauties radiate an elegant charm. （photo courtesy of National Museum of History）
The Chinese form can also be used as a model for chessmen. This ivory set is kept in a museum in Spain. （photo by Arthur Cheng）
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