"Mainland"

Opinion dump:

“Mainland Asia” makes a certain amount of sense.

“Mainland China” might make sense as long as we didn’t think it included Hainan.

“Chinese Beijing” is not quite right. To make the analogy perfect, we’d have to call it “Japanese Beijing.” (Actually, the PRC Olympic team was supposed to be called “Chinese Beijing”–short for “Chinese Olympic Committee, Beijing”–but those Communist Canadians liked them better than us.)

Taiwan is “the mainland” for people living in certain of its outlying islands.

Don’t Hawaiians call the continental USA the “mainland”? That’s a lot farther away than Australia and New Zealand.

You know what would be a good analogy? India and Lanka. (I refuse to call it “Sri”.)

Funny that people stopped saying “Free China” about the time it actually became free.

Rather than an “undercurrent,” I would call it a small group of activists. They have a good case from the perspective of international law, but not so much from the perspective of political reality. Also, I don’t see how they get from “Taiwan really should have been given a plebiscite” to “We are the true government of Taiwan.” It’s a bit like declaring yourself king.

Taiwan, beautiful as it is, isn’t actually the center of the universe.

How do you distinguish between the provinces you can travel through without going through immigration and the SAR’s, if not by calling the large part Mainland China?

yea, you can have any opinion you like, provided that your opinion is exactly the same as my opinion…

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I talk to myself here. Maybe I am going mad. YOU CAN CALL IT MAINLAND IN THAT CONTEXT! Of course!
Let me give you example. I have a friend on Facebook who writes this: “I just got back to Taiwan from the Mainland…” She is Taiwanese.That is context. That has an implication that is not simple geography.

in my experience 大陆 usually has pejorative connotations 内地 polite but not used much, and people also just say the province or city to skip the crap

oh no, her opinion might be slightly different to your opinion. call the police :wink:

The legal term is 大陸地區.

This could go on forever, like another thread I’m suddenly reminded of.

I’ll say it again:
In the end, we are all displaced Pangaeans.
:rainbow: :penguin: :elephant: :cat: :deer: :monkey_face: :bird: :camel: :dog: :lion_face: :bear: :zebra: :smiley: :peace:

“China proper” is a great old phrase from a century ago.

But then you have further ambiguity, and people get upset.

When you say “I went to China”, nobody would assume you went to Hong Kong, despite whatever political relations China might have with respect to Hong Kong.

You went to China, period. You did not go to Hong Kong.

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No you’re absolutely wrong. Dalu (i.e., mainland) is a euphemism for China because the word has been in use for so long. It’s just word and doesn’t really reflect the person’s political view. By calling it Dalu, it doesn’t mean that the person implies Taiwan is a part of China. It doesn’t mean he agrees with that claim.

Most Canadians all US “the States” in everyday conversation whereas the rest of the world call US “America.” Does it mean that Canadians believe Canadians are US citizens too? No.

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I typically ask which continent, Africa?

If people say Nei-di (內地 inland) to refer to China, then I pretend they are talking about Nantou.

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As someone who’s pretty strong in that taiwan is a independent nation state. Mainland is just a way for me to separate HK from and sometimes Macau from the rest of China.

No. China is the most politically neutral term. It’s what people call it. Mainland, Mainland China, and that last one all have political baggage.

A bad habit.

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Maybe nobody you know. :idunno:

Really?

People say 大陸 all the time, most of those I know are apolitical. I never considered it to be political before.

內地 you hear all the time on TV shows and from celebrities trying to get money from China.

I don’t know what the problem is.

main•land /ˈmeɪnˌlænd, -lənd/
n. [countable; usually singular;
usually: the + ~]
the principal land of a region, etc., as distinguished from nearby islands:
ferried back to the mainland.

It looks like a good word for referring to China… mainland.

Also Taiwan is just an island (and well, the islands around), the “country” is called Republic of China. The government here and the chinese government both agree that there’s only one China. Both of them seem to believe they are China, in one way or another. Are there people here who don’t feel Chinese? sure there are, but Taiwan as a country is what it is thanks to be or have been the ROC.

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If you live on Lanyu, Taiwan is 大陸.

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The problem with that is Dalu (大陸) doesn’t have that meaning in Chinese. Dalu simply means continent.

The closest term to mainland is actually Neidi (內地), which is why the Japanese also forced Taiwanese to refer to Japan as 內地 when Taiwan was still a Japanese colony.

I used to have a condo on the Big Island. People always refer to the contiguous states as the mainland. Hawaii is so different and they have many funny laws when it comes to buying property that I refer to the Hawaii as the country of Hawaii. I frequently find myself referring to “back in the US” while in Hawaii.

I guess if you think about Taiwan’s history, the mainland is really what it was during this civil war.