“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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.