Huaxia

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Huaxia (simplified Chinese: 华夏; traditional Chinese: 華夏; pinyin: Huáxià) is an ancient endonym used by the peoples of the middle and lower Yellow River basin to describe themselves and their civilisation. It is formed from two near-synonymous elements, Hua (華) and Xia (夏), which were each used independently as ethnic and cultural self-designations before being joined. The term was later used as a synonym for the Han Chinese people collectively, and in modern Chinese it functions chiefly as a poetic and historical name for China and for Chinese civilisation as a whole. The concept behind the term is a cultural and ritual one rather than a genealogical one. In the classical texts where the word first appears, Hua and Xia are defined by possession of the classical rites (禮), correct dress and headgear, refined speech, and the shared music and canonical learning of the Zhou dynasty's central state(s). The Hua-Yi boundary that the term presupposes was understood by several classical and later...

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