n comes from three historically large clans: Kim, Lee and Park. Add Choi and Chong and the proportion exceeds half.
Independent from France in 1949. Larger than Utah’s land mass. Between Thailand and Vietnam. Border disputes with Thailand. Capital: Vientiane. Population: 6.6 million (2012 estimate). Proportion of population younger than 15: more than one-third. Languages: Lao, French, English and various ethnic languages, including Hmong. Faith: Buddhism (67 percent), animist and others, including Christianity, (33 percent). Ethnic groups: Lao (55 percent), Khmou (11 percent), Hmong (8 percent) and others. See HMONG.
Typically family name first, personal name second, often multi-syllable names.
Once a Portuguese colony, it is one of China’s two “special administrative regions,” the other being Hong Kong, a former British colony. Macau, like rival Hong Kong, is a port city and commercial center. With a population approaching half a million in an area the size of five Central Parks, it is routinely described as the most densely populated spot on Earth. Tourism and gambling dominate its economy. See CHINA; HONG KONG; TAIPENG REBELLION; TAIWAN; TIBET.
Independent from Britain in 1957. Slightly larger land mass than New Mexico. Borders South China Sea and Indonesia. Border and other international disputes with neighbors. Capital: Kuala Lumpur. Population: 29 million (2012 estimate). Proportion of population younger than 15: nearly one-third. Languages: Bahasa Melayu (official), English, Chinese dialects, Tamil and others. Faith: Islam (60 percent), Buddhism (19 percent), Christian (9 percent), Hindu (6 percent) and others. Literacy: 89 percent. (Source: World Factbook.)
Some Malaysians do not use family names, but, as in Burma, use honorifics. Malaysian Chinese and Malaysian Muslims follow special naming rules.
Caution, important differences from Cantonese. The official language of China and Taiwan, derived from different dialects but not itself a dialect, or regional variety of a language, like Cockney English. The term Mandarin refers to the spoken language. One speaks Mandarin but writes Chinese. While the Cantonese dialect is more prevalent in older American Chinatowns, Mandarin is increasingly spoken in newer Chinatowns. China has one written language using characters understood by anyone who is literate, but many spoken regional dialects such as Shanghainese and Fukienese, which are unintelligible to people from other regions. See CHINA; HONG KONG; MACAU; TAIPENG REBELLION; TAIWAN.
MANONG (mah-nong)/MANANG (mah-nang):
Manong is a term of respect that precedes the first name of older Filipino men; manang for older Filipina women.
Armed and unarmed fighting sports or skills, mainly of East Asian origin. Unarmed martial arts emphasize striking with the feet and hands or grappling. Influenced substantially by Taoism and Buddhism. Kung fu, judo, karate, kendo and archery influenced American popular culture, including the “Star Wars” films and “The Hunger Games.” Derivatives of the unarmed forms of combat can be seen in parkour, the French sport of scaling urban settings seen in the films “District B13″ and the “Mission Impossible” series. Caution, like other Asian iconography, martial-arts imagery can be abused in contexts such as editorial cartoons. See ASIA, use and abuse of images from; BUDDHISM; STEREOTYPES; TAOISM.
Caution. Not a synonym for people of color. Use specifics whenever possible, particularly as demographic forecasts call for non-Hispanic whites in the United States to be outnumbered by 2042. See MODEL MINORITY, myth of.
MODEL MINORITY, myth of:
The phrase “model minority” dates to at least the 1960s. In the 1980s, articles praising Asian Americans implicitly criticized blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans for failing to measure up. Factually inaccurate in the sense of collapsing the experience of many ethnic groups of many countries into one “group” experience. Newsweek used the phrase in quotation marks for a 1982 article celebrating Asian American academic achievement. Some regard it, at best, as a backh