One of them is Han Chinese, can you tell who?
Since the first post on the diverseness of China’s stars, many new artists have came out with their own unique looks and cultural flair. Several Uyghur artists have especially been taking on more mainstream roles recently, making the face of Chinese entertainment that much prettier.
Something to note amongst these stars is that very few of them are famous because of their ethnicity, but rather due to their general abilities. It’s also something that was brought to my attention in this year’s CCTV Spring Festival Gala. Despite the elimination of the usual group songs by ethnic minorities, this year’s gala had as many if not more ethnic minorities than usual in almost every category of performers, from host Sa Beining to singers like Jin Mei’er and Cai Guoqing and to pop performer Han Geng.
A roundup of Chinese artists who came into the spotlight (or at least my notice) since last post, per suggestion from Benji.
Gulnazar (Uyghur, Xinjiang Urumqi)
Shanghai Tangren company
current Beijing Film Academy student
second lead in upcoming drama Scar of Heaven
Bai’er (Uyghur, Xinjiang)
pop singer
Medina Maimaiti (Uyghur, Xinjiang Urumqi)
Shanghai New Image (Hunan TV – Qiong Yao)
Princess Fragrance in the new My Fair Princess/Huan Zhu Ge Ge
supporting actress in upcoming drama Female Prime Minister
Apaerjiang Tuersun (Uyghur, Xinjiang Hetian)
Central Drama Academy graduate
Prince of the Wuji Kingdom in New Journey to the West
Persian Prince in Daming Palace film
In case you’re wondering, of the four Hui’s listed here, Ma Tianyu and Zhang Rui are religious (co-star Li Sheng didn’t eat pork products for three months in order to film kissing scenes with Zhang Rui + Medina) . I have read that Li Sidanni is not from fans, and I don’t think Liu Shishi is, but that’s just a guess. Either way, I still ship her and Ma Tianyu.
Ma Tianyu (Hui, Shandong Dezhou)
Singer
Beijing Film Academy graduate
Actor in The Tale of Daiyu, Strange Hero YiZhiMei, etc.
Liu Shishi (Hui, Beijing)
Shanghai Tangren
Lead actress of Strange Hero YiZhiMei, Bu Bu Jin Xing, etc.
Zhang Rui (Hui, Liaoning Jinzhou)
Shanghai New Image (Hunan TV – Qiong Yao)
Central Drama Academy graduate
“lead” actor in new My Fair Princess/Huan Zhu Ge Ge
Li Sidanni (Hui, Sichuan Chengdu)
eeMedia singer-dancer-actor
made out with Fan Bingbing in Buddha Mountain
Fu Mengni (Miao, Yunnan Guizhou)
eeMedia singer
Taobao model
8th place of Super Girls 2011
MIC Xiaoxin (Yi, Yunnan Kunming)
Taihe Rye Recording
singer-dancer-composer
Jin Yinling (Korean, Gilin Yanji)
eeMedia singer
13th place of Super Girls 2011
Wu’ershan (Mongolian, Inner Mongolia )
director of “The Butcher, the Chef and the Swordsman” , “Painted Skin II”
Wudamu/Uudam (Mongolian, Inner Mongolia’s Hulunbei’er Plains)
Member of the Multicolor Hulunbei’er Choir
Popular contestant on China’s Got Talented
Adopted by singers Burenbaya’er and Wurina, who have done the most amazing job promoting and preserving the cultural heritage of the region.
Nuo’erman (half-Mongolian half-Evenki, Inner Mongolia Hulunbei’er)
Singer – composer – current student at Berklee
Daughter of singers Burenbaya’er(Mongolian) and Wuri’na (Evenki)
Watch the gorgeous Evenki MV The Sound of History with the two’s parents and cousin here . For those of us in America, it would’ve been hard to not see the resemblance to the Native Americans in the video. I wonder if the clothes and tepee developed separately or were they of the same origins?
Tong Liya (Xibo, Xinjiang Qapqal)
Central Drama Academy graduate
Supporting Actress in Palace/Gong
Lead actress in Beijing Love Story, Tangshan Earthquake, etc.
Yang Xiucuo (Tibetan, Qinghai Tongde)
2010 Blossoming Flowers 4th place
Lead actress in upcoming drama Where are the heroes 借问英雄何处
Nizu (Va, Yunnan A’va’shan)
China’s Top 10 model of 2005
Current CEO of a Chongqing Modeling Agency
He Qiuxiang (Naxi, Yunnan Shangri-la )
2011 Blossoming Flowers 3rd place
recently signed with Seed music
Linda and Wanda Li (half Naxi, half German; Yunnan Xishuangbanna)
Adopted sisters of 2011 Super Girl Wang Yijie
In the link attached, they’re singing an Akha folk song.
Now I got to look up what these ethinicities are D:
I only know Tibetian… I met a group of pretty tibetian girls once
You mean Acha Tsendep? xD Coz they’re awesome.
All the pretty pretties are from Hui!
lol I love how Yuehan is most ethnic looking yet he’s Han but Xiao Xin’s Yi hehe
Gulnazar’s beauty is on another whole level. She’s gorgeous.
I feel like ignoring the photoshoots and looking at her in videos alone, she’s fairly average-looking amongst Uyghur girls. (same with Medina). I feel like Uyghurs are really pretty in general from a generic Chinese standard of beauty, and most girls I met on the streets of Xinjiang are as pretty, if not fairer, than them.
~it’s settled; i’m going to xinjiang so I can marry an Uyghur boy with a beautiful sister :<
You’ll have to convert to Islam first. LOL.
or try to convert him.
why is MIC yuehan on the picture? He’s Han
I was trying to illustrate the point that it’s hard to tell who’s Han, but I guess it wasn’t clear. I changed the caption make it clearer that one of them is not Han.
>_< has everyone already memorized the 55 minorities?!?!?!? I can remember like 2…
lol no. I definitely don’t think most people’s heard of Hezhe before Han Geng came around, nor Xibo before Tong Liya came around, nor Ewenke before the awesome couple came around.
The most commonly heard-of ones are Hui, Miao, Tibetan, Uyghur, Korean, Manchu and Mongolian. And then I think most people in China would’ve heard of the Bai, Yao, Zhuang, Kazakh and maybe Yi?
Also Sa Dingding is part Mongolian
She was noted in the last post’s comments. ^.^ And I think she’s only a quarter Mongolian?
Aparently shao shu men zu get extra points in uni…? lucky….. Im half Man zu so does that mean I gett extra points if I went to uni in china…
Jjks…. XD
Its amazing how china has so many different … Types of ppl…? Wat do u call them in english xP… So many cultures in one… Ppl frm Xin Jiang r so pretty… But they r religous n cant marry ppl that arent wei zu… Which is sad…..
But I really dont get haw a Han zu person like Yue Han got born to look like a kid that was only half chinese… O.O
People of mixed ethnicities in China have to choose an official designation when they turn 18. If one of the parents is Han, then usually the child will choose the lineage of the non-Han parent, since there are a lot of benefits for being a minority. So, if you were in China, you’d probably choose to be Manchu for all the university perks~
Though, if you went to China now and were granted permanent residency, you’d probably be classified as a returned Overseas Chinese, rather than a specific ethnicity.
The more you know~
so many hui’s in entertainment
i think not all of them are that pretty, but tong li ya is gorgeous
liu shi shi is hui??? i always thought she was han. she looks han.
some of those pics, you can tell some of them look mixed
but i’m seriously surprised about shi shi and ma tianyu.
According to Wikipedia (so you may want to check the sources), the Hui were ” defined to include all historically Muslim communities in People’s Republic of China that are not included in China’s other ethnic groups.” Although many Hui do have Arab or Persian ancestry, many of them are mostly Han Chinese who are Muslim.
Many Hui’s now, especially those living in the cities and who are no longer practicing Muslims, are really indistinguishable from Han’s.
Yeah. “Hui” was basically just the generic term for Muslims back in the day, so Uyghurs were also considered “Hui” up until the late Republican period. Even just a few decades ago, a Han person could become Hui, and register as such, just by converting to Islam. That’s not the case anymore, but it is a rather recent change in the larger scope of things.
ahhhhh! I have always thought that Uyghurs are really beautiful
Random:
Some Xinjiang performers perform MIC’s Get it Hot:
http://xiyou.cntv.cn/v-d840e5ae-4638-11 … 5b3ca.html
Thanks so much for this continuation! I love learning about China’s ethnic minorities, so thank you so much! It’s so interesting; will you post more later on? And do you know of any other famous people (ie. athletes, scholars, etc.) who are minorities?
Ah, there are a lot! This probably requires a whole other blog entry of its own, but let’s do a quick rundown.
The most famous non-Han Chinese athlete is probably Li Ning, who is Zhuang. But there are many others. Lang Ping, probably the second-most famous non-Han athlete, is Manchu. Known as the “Iron Hammer,” she led China’s women’s volleyball team to a gold medal at the World Championships. She was the Liu Xiang of her time, becoming world champion in a sport traditionally seen as a Chinese weak spot.
Zhao Junzhe is a Manchu soccer player. And Bai Yuefeng is a Korean soccer player from Yanbian.
Mehmet Tursun Chong is a Uyghur, light welterweight boxer from Xinjiang, and a bronze medalist at the Asian Games. Maimaiti Zaifula and Richabilige Hu are also Uyghur boxers. Zou Shiming, who I think looks like a miniature version of Han Geng, is an Olympic gold medalist. I’m not sure what ethnicity he is…but I always assumed he wasn’t Han.
Kahar Barat is a Uyghur historian, a graduate of Minzu University and Harvard, now a professor at Yale.
D.O. (Dular Osor) Chaoke is an Evenki linguist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and a member of the National People’s Congress. He contributed to the standardisation of writing the Evenki language in the Latin script.
Choijinzhab is a Mongol linguist and director of…I’m not sure what the English translation is…but the organisation that deals with minority languages in China. He worked on standardising the Mongolian script and encoding Mongolian into Unicode.
Jiang Jingshan is a Korean aerospace engineer and the founder of the National Microwave Remote Sensing Laboratory in the Chinese Academy of Science. He was (still is?) director of the Centre for Space Science at the CAS, and deputy chief designer of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program. He participated in the development of China’s first satelite.
Han Dayuan is the deputy director of the Constitutional Law Institute of the China Law Society, and dean of the law faculty at Renmin University. He’s Korean.
Three-starred general Zhao Nanqi, also Korean, was the director and party secretary of the People’s Liberation Army, and president of the PLA Academy of Military Sciences. He’s a member of the CPC Central Committee and was vice-chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.
And my favourite, former ambassador to Australia and to the United Kingdom, current Vice Foreign Minister Fu Ying is Mongol~
There are many, many more prominent non-Han people in China, though. Maybe some other people could add to the list~
You’re so much better at this than I am. …
There’s also a number of hosts who are ethnic minorities – Bai Yansong is Mongolian; Chen Luyu (from A Date with Luyu) and Sa Beining are both Hui.
Hui Authors: Zhang Chengzhi , Huo Da (Muslim Funeral), Chou Ding (Muslim Orchard)
Xi Murong, another author is Mongolian.
omg, Gulnazar is beautiful. and that name… soooo stunning too. there are so many beauties out there in china among the various regions. i’m hmong and happy to see also a miao artist too. but all these indigenous artists are sooo stunning looking! thanks.
i think that’s just a really pretty picture of her lol. i’ve seen stills of her in xuan yuan jian, and she seems really plain there despite her beautiful features
While I don’t think Gulnazar is as pretty as that photo, I think she’s prettier than XYJ made her out to be, though. XuanYuanJian followed suit of BBJX and had poor lighting + makeup. Liu Shishi, who used to be one of the prettiest actresses and continues to be so in events and such, looks so plain for the most part in the two dramas. =_=
ain’t gonna lie. i always thought of those in China were just Chinese people who just happened to have two languages when i was younger. but nowadays, i’m learning more and more, although still a little bit confuse since it’s all new to me. i probably won’t be able to get the hang of it, but i’m happy that i’m able to find information about it and that it is getting out there… i kind of hope that makes sense. but anyways, thank you so much for sharing!! =]
Updated artist:
Yang Rong, who plays a leading role in Gong II and is also a signed artist of Yu Zheng workshops and a Shanghai Drama graduate, is Bai from Yunnan Dali. As a reference, dancer Yang Liping is also Bai.
Her in Young Justice Bao:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mC2W-TjDzeg
I guess some of the minority people just get all the luck when it comes to looks >.> Because I definitely don’t ~ lol
I think that in general, ethnicity doesn’t have much to do with how good a person looks. Plus, standards of beauty is different across cultures and time periods.