There is a popular misconception that chinese yellow skin.

A typical Chinese is not at all yellower than the same French. During the first contacts of Europeans with the Far East, nowhere was any "yellow race" mentioned. "Like us" - such a description was given by the eminent traveler from Italy Andrea Korsali, who visited China in 1515.

A few years later, the secret adviser of the German emperor Transylvanus, taking as a basis the stories of Portuguese sailors, described the Chinese "People with white skin, with a high level of social organization ... in the likeness of us Germans."

When dividing humanity into races in the 18th century, the first mention of yellow skin color appeared. An intermediate race was needed between blacks in the south and whites in the north. It was then that the Indians first turned up, and later the Chinese were appointed as "yellow". At that time, the book of the professor of medicine I.F. Blumenbach. In it, he mentioned the "Caucasian race" with white skin color, Mongolian with yellow, American "red as copper" and black Africans.

These delusions of mankind were so cleverly imposed on him, one can more accurately say from the work of Ilf and Petrov - "And then Ostap suffered ...". At the writing table, taking as a basis only assumptions (for example, it was argued that Asians are more likely to get jaundice - hence they remain yellow until the end of their lives) a purely subjective opinion was imposed on the whole of mankind.
To top it all off, the theorists who came up with this classification have not seen anyone other than Europeans in the eye.
Often, the basis of their assumptions was the representation of the Chinese themselves.

“A yellow veil was thrown over all childhood memories,” writes the last Chinese emperor Pu Yi in his notes. “There were glazed tiles on the roofs of houses, yellow stretchers on which I was carried, the lining of my dress and hats, bedspreads ... and plates, from which I ate and drank were yellow ... There was nothing around me that did not wear a yellow tint. "
This love of the Chinese for the color yellow (the "yellow river" of the Yangtze, the mythological "yellow emperor", in general, everything big and spiritual was yellow) kind of pushed European classifiers to invent such a "yellow race", despite all these theories, the skin of the Chinese did not turn yellow at all.

Another misconception.

All Chinese are the same.

The wife of the last emperor Pu Yi, the only ruler of China who dared to leave the country and visit Europe, shares her memories of how difficult it was for her to participate in official ceremonies or give receptions for only one reason that it was difficult for her to distinguish faces - in particular, the faces of members royal family or relatives of the German emperor.
For Koreans or Japanese who first arrived in Europe or the New World, this problem also seems intractable at first.
So this is just another prejudice and nothing more.

Yellow-skinned Vietnamese

They squeal in the bushes like hares ...

Sergey Chigrakov (ChIZ)

Monk at the waterfall in the village of Doi Pui. Chiang Mai.

Asians skin color

It just so happened that people belonging to the Mongoloid race are called yellow-skinned(and also "cross-eyed" and "narrow-eyed"). We will not argue about the ethics and political correctness of such a term, we will only consider its actual component. And it is such that the Chinese, Japanese, Mongols, Vietnamese, Thais and other Asians, when carefully examined in the literal sense of the word, turn out to be no more yellow than the Russians, the British or the French.

Monk boys. Neighborhoods of Mae Hong Son.

It will be appropriate here to recall that the first Europeans who met the Chinese did not report anything about the yellow color of their skin. On the contrary, in the 16th century, the secret adviser of the German emperor, Transylvanus, described the inhabitants of the Celestial Empire as follows: "These are white-skinned people with a very high level of social organization - like us Germans." Another European, the Italian traveler Andrea Korsali, who visited China in 1515, looking at the locals, exclaimed “Di nostra qualita”, which means “Like us!”

Dance with umbrellas. Doi Suthep. Chiang Mai.

The widespread misconception around the world about yellow-skinned Asians was created by armchair science of the 18th century. Then scientists decided to divide humanity into races. The northern peoples were assigned to the white race, the southern peoples to the black, and since an intermediate between these two races was also needed, the population of India was attributed to it, and a little later the Chinese. They called it yellow, because, according to the creators of this theory, yellow is, as it were, in the middle between white and black. At that time, one of the main authorities in the scientific community was the professor of medicine from Göttingen, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. He compared the skin color of the American race to copper, and the Mongolian to ripe ears of wheat, like boiled quince or dried lemon peels. In addition, he explained that Asians have yellow skin color due to the fact that they often get jaundice. The most interesting thing is that according to reports of contemporaries, the professor himself has never seen an Indian or a Chinese in his life.

Dance with a paper umbrella. Doi Suthep. Chiang Mai.

I, unlike Herr Blumenbach, have seen a great many Asians. But in all my long wanderings in South and Southeast Asia, nowhere, not in Thailand, not in India, not in Nepal, or anywhere else, have I met a yellow-skinned Asian. And I’m unlikely to meet 🙂

Europeans called East Asians "white" until the late 18th century. But as soon as the Chinese and Japanese began to resist cultural assimilation, they immediately became "yellow", and not only in the eyes of Europeans. How did it happen that the inhabitants of East Asia began to be called yellow-skinned? This attitude is the result of a racist perception of the world and has nothing to do with the real skin color of people, says the South China Morning Post.

When it came to color in the 16th century, Western travelers, missionaries, or ambassadors called East Asians white. And in a number of cases it was generally said that they were "as white as we are." By the 17th century, the Chinese and Japanese began to gradually "turn yellow" in the texts published in Europe. The word "yellow" began to be used periodically at the end of the 18th century, and already in the 19th century it steadily entered the everyday life of Europeans. The Chinese gradually began to lose their former "whiteness", as it became clear that they want to participate in the European system of trade, religious and international contacts.

In other words, "whiteness" had nothing to do with skin color. She showed the level of civilization, culture, literacy and obedience (especially if Christianity was to be adopted).

The Swedish botanist and physician Carl Linnaeus compiled a classification of Homo Sapiens, dividing them into four species according to the number of continents known at the time. He named one of these species Homo Asiaticus. To designate the color of this group, he used the Latin word fuscus, which translates as "dark" or "brown". This happened in 1735.

The racial classification of Carl Linnaeus. Source: SCMP

After that, it became difficult to determine the exact color for the inhabitants of East Asia, since other racial groups (European, African and American) were easily associated with white, black and red colors. In the tenth edition of Linnaeus's classification, published in 1758, the word fuscus was replaced by the Latin word luridus, which translates as "dirty yellow," "yellowish," or "pale yellow." The reasons for the choice were not explained, however, this word had previously been found in Linnaeus's records, however, in relation to unhealthy and poisonous plants. Was an Asian person considered painful or dangerous?

In 1795, German anatomist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach proposed his five-race classification system, which became the first unambiguous marking of East Asian yellowness. An important aspect his concept was the inclusion of all East Asian peoples in one racial group called Mongoloid.

"Yellow" became a racial stamp that meant only one thing — a departure from white "normality." In Blumenbach, Europeans (or the Caucasian white race) were in the center of the table, surrounded by the Mongoloid (yellow), Negroid (black), American (red) and Malay (brown) races. The yellow race has come to be associated with physical and cultural "deviations" from the European norms of the white man. Some thinkers have built a whole racial hierarchy: at the top was the European white race, at the bottom - the Negroid, and the rest in between.

"Mongolian fold". Illustration: Handout

In the medical discourse of the 19th century, the physical "contours" of the yellow race began to appear. The emphasis was placed on the "Mongoloid" rather than on the color. Medical research of those times often tried to define the Mongoloid race as a set of certain physical properties inherent only to the inhabitants of East Asia. These include the Mongolian fold (or epicanthus, an extension of the upper eyelid fold that defines the narrow eye shape), the Mongolian patch (bluish discoloration of the sacrum, less commonly the buttocks or thighs), and Mongolism (today known as Down syndrome). Each of these traits was attributed exclusively to the Mongoloid race to show how the yellow race differs from the healthy and developed white race.

It was at the end of the 19th century that the word "yellow" began to define skin color in European and East Asian languages. This was facilitated by the so-called "yellow danger" - a concept associated with the potential military aggression of East Asian countries. The most obvious threat of that time was Japan, which defeated the Qing empire (1894-95) in an armed conflict, began to build its empire and prepare for war with the Russian empire.

The Chinese civilization is one of the oldest civilizations in the world and is about 4 thousand years old. When people wandered around the world in small tribes, plundering and destroying everything that came their way for profit, the Chinese were already creating, tirelessly creating their own world, culture and traditions.

Every day, the slaves painstakingly built the houses of their emperors and plowed the land under the scorching sun of the Celestial Empire, which made their skin yellowish, a little dark and wrinkled.

It was from the time when people were divided into classes that the history of the "white man syndrome" among the Chinese began:

If your skin is dark- so you belong to the class of slaves, then this is karma that you must carry all your life, passing it on from generation to generation.

If your skin is pale- you are privileged, you are one of the millions - you are the one who is called to rule and rule.

After all, it is not for nothing that Chinese emperors always wore long clothes leaving sunlight the opportunity to admire only their own face, and then only when they left their sun umbrellas at home.

Here is the answer to the question "what is he, Chinese skin color" or " why do the chinese have yellow skin«.

Time flew steadily, slavery was a thing of the past long ago, and the customs and foundations that had been established for thousands of years remained unchanged.

At the sight of a foreigner, the Chinese can calmly come up and instead of "Ni hao" say excitedly: "Oh my God, what an incredibly beautiful you have White skin! " (although my skin is perfectly normal ordinary men's skin, I don't go to spas or even use scrubs). Some may ask the recipe for your success - to which I always answer: "Eat even more spicy and fried and then you can definitely forget about the white, clean skin."

For you to understand, the Chinese eat "la jiao" (hot pepper) with all the dishes and, in addition, fill them with all kinds of sauces. As a result, most of the population suffers from acne problems.

Chinese people walk with umbrellas in sunny weather

Basically, these are girls aged 16 to 40, who are trying to maintain their "privilege" and be whiter than white.

Here I want to tell you that having visited the south of China in the summer, you yourself will begin to understand the whole essence of umbrellas, as a means of protection from the sun. The heat is such that the asphalt melts, and you can fry eggs on the concrete.

To be trendy some white people of china»Buying a foundation is indecent, in my opinion, white... On the street, you can often find a resident of the Middle Kingdom walking carelessly, whose face seems to be covered with sunscreen. The face is so white that you can accidentally mistake it for a mime. Smeared foundation not only girls, but also guys, so don't be intimidated by any means. In addition, in all Chinese stores you will always find a huge range of skin whitening products: scrubs and creams, masks and lotions, magic washcloths and brushes, and all of them, as one, are designed to make your skin whiter than white.

About the resorts

First of all, the Chinese always buy themselves the most expensive creams against sunburn. They are smeared with them one on top of the other, apparently the result in this way, according to their logic, will be better.

Every third billboard around the city has advertisements for beauty salons that offer to make your skin look like the skin of foreigners (in the picture there is always a photo of a Chinese woman and a foreign woman, for persuasiveness).

Before coming to China, I never thought that the Chinese really have such a complex as skin color. But it reaches such proportions that sometimes you even start to think: “Guys, what are you doing? Rejoice in what God has given you. "