" 

 == insults, tone of voice, etc == 

 alright, fine, we can calm down before things get out of hand, but let me first bring to light some examples of confrontational language on your part. 

 may i remind that you entered the argument quite bluntly with the statement, in capital letters, ""You Are Not Correct"".  you want to talk about sounding smug?  perhaps keep an eye on yourself as well! 

 then, prior to my last rejoinder, you concluded with your own sense of superiority, declaring to have ""put the matter to rest.""  fine, perhaps you have not been writing in english as much lately, but may i remind you that this can be perceived as a provocation as well? 

 this is especially since you had not yet cited your most recent source, re: chinese cosmogony, but instead went on about ""pictograms"".  it is sincerely wonderful to know that you were a student of prof. jerry norman.  but perhaps you were just a regular (speaking+writing) chinese language student of his, and not a student of the more specific field of chinese linguistics?  his writings on the latter should leave no doubt in any reader's mind that ""pictographic"" or ""ideographic"" are gross mischaracterizations of the chinese writing system.  this fundamental concept may only get passing mention in a regular language class, if at all.  but i cannot easily imagine an english-fluent student of chinese linguistics ever losing sight of that concept, whether or not they are currently in the habit of writing in english day-to-day anymore.  so if you were indeed a linguistics student of prof. norman, then i can only suggest that you apparently lost sight of a cornerstone concept within the field, and perhaps need to re-read his and other's writings on.  i try to say this with all due respect. 

 you also argued earlier about how even the english word ""raw"" has other tangentially related meanings such as ""unrefined, bare, etc"".  but the same cannot be said about ""cooked"".  the only other meaning for ""cooked"" in english might be the slang usage ""his goose is cooked"", as in ""he is doomed"".  by translating 熟 as ""cooked"" in english, this precludes ascribing to the original 熟 any other meaning than the culinary one. 

 so, while i can agree that the most recent source you cited might begin to shed some light on the possible merit of your position, it remains contingent on the fact that the original chinese 熟 and 生 can have these double meanings.  to which i might say ""fine, so maybe the Qing era classification might have alluded to the pure culinary senses of the words as well,"" but they obviously also intended to convey the meanings ""familiar/assimilated"" vs ""unfamiliar/unassimilated"".  (and my arguement has been that this was primarily what they meant to convey, even if the other ""essential"" meanings of the original characters were also meant to be alluded to.)  however, in the english translations of ""raw"" and ""cooked"", only ""raw"" has the potential to allude to the quasi-suitable secondary meanings.  thus again, it is the english translations which are problematic. 

 therefore an english-only reader of the article will come across the terms ""raw"" and ""cooked"", and thus think that the chinese were just obstinately ethnocentric overlords willing to just classify non-han tribes in the same vein as things and objects.  that they were or were not this chauvinistic is not the issue (and i would agree that they were indeed quite chauvinistically ethnocentric).  but by simply translating the terms as ""raw"" and ""cooked"", one loses the more ""nuanced"", shall we say, ethnocentrism of the chinese literati from that period, because an english reader of the article will assume that only the culinary senses of the word were intended."