Talk:Heihaizi

This page is created about the term heihaizu. It is a relatively rare term, that I could not find references about, apart from the blogs and yahoo questions about it. If someone knows about this term, could he be willing to contribute to this page. All the content is from the poor sources I could pick up from google, and not one of them was in the least verifiable. If someone could find any reliable sources that allow the article to stay in wikipedia, please do so. 4l31st3r (talk) 14:30, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

Chinese Name vs. Japanese Name
In the article, you have not given the Chinese hanzi: 黑孩子 (hēi hái zi). The characters are the same whether they are simplified or traditional. What you have given, however, is only the Japanese name 黒核子. The Japanese name has another meaning, but I believe the reason 核 is used here instead of 孩 is simply because 孩 does not exist in Japanese and cannot be typed using Japanese IME. Therefore, 核, which looks like 孩, is used instead as an ateji. --  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  21:17, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

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4l31st3r (talk) 00:24, 4 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you for that. I didn't see it until now. I fixed it (at least I think so...).


 * Cheers. I was thinking, you may want to change the name of the article to 'Heihaizi', because the way you have it now is a Japanese name for a Chinese phenomenon, despite the fact there is a Chinese name for it. This would be like having an article about, for example, ASBO - a British thing - and having the title of the article in French. :) In fact, what it is called in Japanese is probably irrelevant, unless you are planning to list what it is called in other languages, too --  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  11:15, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

4l31st3r (talk) 20:00, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Done, and done. Sorry for the name, but I started researching the subject through and for a Japanese source, so I had this page created before I knew the correct Chinese pronunciation, and then I didn't think to change it. Nevertheless, I had created the relevant redirect pages (black children, heihaizi, hei haizi).

Inadequate definition of the term
The first sentence of the second paragraph states the definition of the term "heihaizi" as follows. quote  If a family not permitted to have a second child under the One Child Policy has a second child, the family sometimes chooses not to enter them in the family register, often to avoid financial and social penalties. unquote

There are four problems here. First, this in fact is not a definition, but merely the closest thing to it. Second, we have to read it several times to understand it. Third, even then it is inadequate because it may lead us to understand that ALL children whose births do not conform to law are forever classified as heihaizi, including those whose parents choose to pay the fine and register the birth (thereby lifting the restrictions which characterize the lives of heihaizi.) Fourth, it does not deal with third and later children whereas the law penalizes ALL births after the first.

How about a revision?

quote  Any child whose birth is illegal under then-existing Chinese law is likely to be unreported to the authorities through the required birth registration process, the family register. Such unregistered children are heihaizi. Other children of such illegal birth, whose parents choose to properly report the birth and pay the monetary penalty imposed, are not heihaizi. unquote

My revision is longer but clearly more precise.

The fact is that the status of heihaizi is a tragedy that should be understood. I lived in Korea for 12 years focused on the 1980s and discovered a social underclass of children, of primary school age, illiterate and working as servants in the homes of wealthy families. Many of these children had been born out of wedlock. In such cases, the mother's father (who controls all additions to the family register), may in anger refuse to register his grandchild. If the biological father also refuses to register the baby, then the child is destined to mature into a life without access to education and legitimate employment. Some such individuals have risen to overcome the handicap, especially in entertainment, such as popular singers and actresses. But these are rare exceptions. Thus, this is a problem not only in China but also in societies that have no laws restricting birth processes.

What drives this phenomenon in Japan, Korea and China? Confucian norms, in which males control access to family registers, as well as hundreds of other societal processes, both minor and major. Until the mid-20th century in Asia, divorce was a man's prerogative, never (or at least, rarely) a woman's. Today, births to internationally mixed marriages result in the child being assigned the father's nationality, not the mothers. And why are unregistered children not allowed to attend primary school? Because it is the men who dominate the various Asian Ministries of Education who, under the guise of upholding tradition, continue decade after decade to condemn these sub-populations to a life of almost certain servitude.

The list goes on. It would be interesting to see an article discuss the incompatibility between Confucian societies and the UN definition of human rights.

Ertdfgcvb (talk) 14:31, 30 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Sorry about the late reply and the article syntax. I think I fixed the first, third and fourth problems, and also the spacing and the plural.
 * The fact of the matter is that the subject of heihaizi came up while translating a Japanese anime (through the term as "Heihaizu", which by the way has a redirect to this page), and I wasn't able to find any source on the web (or any English source, to be more precise) explaining the phenomenon, so I tried to create one for anyone who might later stumble upon it. I have no personal experience of the culture or the phenomenon, and so I can not elaborate further on the matter.
 * Unfortunately I can not fix the obscure syntax (second point).
 * If you notice any other inconsistencies, feel free to edit the page.
 * 4l31st3r (talk) 13:30, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Follow-up on Heihaizi
I have just now seen your request for references/sources, but in fact you are unlikely to find much. East Asians are good at sweeping under the rug things they prefer not to have outsiders notice. For instance, I don't know the term for children similar to heihaizi in either Japanese or Korean language, although I am certain that the phenomenon exists in those two nations, or at least did in current human memory. Regrettably I can only give my unsupported eye-witness account of 30 years prior.

But I do know a few terms for Japanese and Korean under-classes, similar to the untouchable class of traditional India. You might find that terms "eta" or "burakumin" in Japanese or perhaps "chonmin" in Korean might lead you in the right direction. The Japanese terms are/were occupationally derived, with the Buddhist restrictions on the unclean driving them. For instance, undertakers, butchers, and, curiously, sandal-makers. The Korean term is less certain. It may simply mean the lowest classes, or also be occupationally driven.

As proof of this sub-strata in both Japanese and Korean cultures, witness the careful and thorough investigation before the wedding of any candidate to join one's family through marriage!

I rush to point out that none of those three terms means heihaizi in those nations or languages, because of course there are no similar one-child laws in Japan and Korea. However, all three nations have family registers, and the fact is that the phenomenon of unregistered children being severely discriminated against in Japan, Korean and China is undeniable, again at least in current human memory. If Japan or Korea have moved to eliminate such abuses of human rights, they are to be congratulated. However, especially in East Asia, governments have a tendency to write laws in support of such laudable issues as human rights and then to move on to other weighty matters. A peculiarly East Asian pattern in law is to write a law and promulgate it even though it has no provision for a penalty in the event of violation. Imagine the chaos of traffic patterns if it all amounted to nothing more than "please obey"!

Sorry I can't be more helpful.

By the way, the correct spacing in Chinese pinyin is all one word: heihaizi. Three syllables, all written together. (Beijing is always correct; Bei jing never is.) The marks above the pinyin vowels simply guide us in pronunciation (tones) and are usually deleted in writing (except in language classes and textbooks).

PS: I'm a retired college teacher, an American, living in Wuhan, China.

Ertdfgcvb (talk) 15:35, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I somehow just can't leave this topic
I checked what Kage Tora (shadow tiger!) wrote and discovered that there is indeed the "hai" character in Japanese. It is reference number 1272 in my Nelson's Japanese-English Character Dictionary. It translates as baby, and carries the Japanese pronunciation of "gai". This dictionary lists 5,446 characters so it might be a bit obscure in Japanese but not radically so. They say that Japanese graduate students need something like 3,000 characters to perform well in college. (Some ancient Chinese dictionaries have listed 50,000!)

A final point is that a literal translation of the three characters is "black child", not black children. The pluralizing suffix character "men" is needed to refer to more than one child, as in heihaizimen. Specifically, hei means black and haizi means child.

It is true though that Chinese language is much looser than English on the issue of count, so you may not be far off the mark with children.

Ertdfgcvb (talk) 16:04, 30 January 2012 (UTC)


 * The word does indeed exist, but cannot be written with Japanese IME on a Windows computer - so obscure as it is. I have Nelson's, too - excellent dictionary for Kanji. If you need to write it, you need to use Chinese IME, then, as the Japanese do, write the hiragana (or katakana, depending on what publications you read) after it. However, this is an article in an English language part of an encyclopaedia about a Chinese phenomenon. Giving it a Japanese title would be irrelevant.  KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( TALK )  03:05, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

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