h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I felt obliged to break away from these amusing tales for a while and set down some 'facts', since the first question that is going to get asked if I were to try and submit one of these stories for review is 'Who the hell were the Ainu' (apart from an "Ancient People You Didn't Know Still Existed" kinda thing, that is ... )

http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A724286

I started out with an article on the Ainu in general with a heading for History and a heading for Language etc., but the history seemed to be getting quite big on its own I think this is probably around about half the length it will come to when done...

Sorry, didn't mean to make your life interesting.

Not to be nitpicky, but I think the (the Ainu) would appreciate "native" as opposed to aboriginal...since the Japanese govt. just stopped referring to them as the former aborigines (or something like that.

sorry.....

If their myths are anything to go by, the Ainu are into interesting lives. Its the Chinese who think its a curse

I'd been meaning to write the Ainu up sometime anyway; I'd started on a draft structure for an entry on the town I live in and they would have to get a mention or six (since it was stolen off them).

So the push (and the audience, its so much easier not writing to a void ) is much appreciated actually

I'll take your word for it, thanks! No need to run I'm relying for this on entirely Ainu-published sources, but they are in Japanese so I'm not sure what the PC terms are in English. I thought aborigine was an OK term. You sure its not the 'former' that they don't like? I've made the change anyway.

In Japanese (lang) the Ainu get much more hung up on the terms used to desribe the Japanese (people) themselves. The traditional Japanese (lang + people) usage has favoured Wa-jin (Person of Wa [Japan]). This allows for one country (Japan) with (in the past) 2 peoples: the Ainu and the Wa, and now 1 people, the Japanese. The Ainu point out that no-one ever talks about the Wa invading Korea, or the Wa invading Taiwan, so they'd like it if people would stop talking about the Wa invading Hokkaido please, even if it did happen gradually 50-500 years earlier than the other invasions.

I think this is one of those things (like the Black / Coloured / African American / People of Colour / etc. problem) where what is PC changes every n years to suit current dogma. The Ainu have big hangups about whether they are Ainu, or the Ainu Race, or the Ainu Nation, etc, too. The current preference is for Ainu (on its own); the word just means people/humans.

Of course, since most Ainu will have been through the Japanese education system, they are patently unqualified to decide what they should be called in English anyway

Ahhhh, the curse of the "third world"....well, most, um, caucasions have a similar problem...There are no ethnic English. Or Americans.
And most have no idea where the Caucasus is or what it is.
If I remember correctly, a lot of the English-speaker's ethnic noise came from some Cambridge idiot sitting on his butt, divvying up the world so it would be more convenient for the diplomats to tell who was worth treating as an equal....kinda like the tail wagging the dog, I always thought...
The WA and Formosa....oops!...Taiwan?

Well, the more I learn about that part of the world, the less I know.
My wife didn't know that Japan was near Russia...

I am always writing into a void.
Like this stupid novel sitting here, staring at me, waiting for a second draft....

You said most of the Ainu have been through the Japanese education system... Do they have any incidence of that achievement-based suicide?

I have to keep reminding myself that Japan is near Russia too (although Russia's recent penchant for granting fishing licenses to Korean fishing vessels in disputed waters has tended to keep it in the news lately).

Funny you should mention Formosa. I've got a guide-book to Tamshui in front of me (in Chinese, which I don't read except with great difficulty and a dictionary and a lot of time) and I was toying with a description of a walking tour the book describes that I followed back in December, having 1/2 a day spare on a business trip to Taipei. The highlight of this tour would be the Fort of San Domingo (also known as the Fort of the Red-Haired Barbarians) built by the Spanish when they colonised Formosa in 1629, then nicked by the Dutch, who lost it to the English, who lost it to the Spanish, who lost it to the English, who ceded it to the Dutch, or something like that anyway. Eventually the place ended up in the hands of the British and the consulate was built in the same compound. The Han only invaded Formosa in the mid 1700s or something it seems, and are still displacing the abor^H^H^H^Hnatives today. And of course the present government/state is a more recent refugee invading force anyway; and has little to do with the previous Chinese invaders who have lived there for a few hundred years.

Tne thing that sticks in my mind though is how the museum displays at the site talked about the British finally 'returning' the castle, consulate and grounds back to the Taiwanese in 197x when diplomatic relations broke off. It seemed a bit rich to me since the return of the land was from one invader to another. And it seems odd to talk about the vacation of a consulate which the British built themselves in those terms anyway.

One of the amazing things I discovered (thanks to my excellent Japanese Rough Guide-equivalent which pointed me to a bookshop specialising in books on the indigenous peopls) is that there are still rural schools in Taiwan that teach in 2 languages, Mandarin/Putonghua (oops; neither of which term is PC in Taiwan) and Insert-native-language-here. In the bookshop I picked up for my daughter a CD/picture book set of Tai-ese children's songs intended for use as a school textbook, and they had several equivalent books in even less-well-known languages. I also (I now suddenly remember) acquired a two-volume (4-colour glossy 20x20cm 200-page each) bilingual Chinese/English set of photojournalism-cum-coffeetable books titled "The Struggle for Renaissance: Taiwan's Indigenous Culture" (ISBN 957-9188-22-X (set), -23-8 (vol 1), -26-2 (vol 2)), so I might have enough source material for an entry on them sometime too.

Another little be-sieged state that the US has been toying with.

I don't know anything about Taiwan except that Chiang Kai-shek moved there with some of his buddies after Mao got busy.

I seem to remember something about both sides having pet warlords and the "people" not really caring which one ran the show or if either of them slipped off the edge of the planet.

My knowledge of the linguistics of the area is limited to trying to ignore stereotypes. But then I know people who don't know the difference between Burma (I forgot the new name)and China, or Nepal and Tibet. My mother-in-law thought the "King and I" took place in Vietnam. She also thought Dien Bien Phu took place in Korea.