Jeremy Lin
Lin in 2012, photo by Prphotos
Birth Name: Jeremy Shu-How Lin
Place of Birth: Torrance, Los Angeles, California, United States
Date of Birth: August 23, 1988
Ethnicity: Han Chinese-Taiwanese
Jeremy Lin is an American professional basketball player. A point guard and shooting guard, he played for the Golden State Warriors, the Reno Bighorns, Dongguan Leopards, the New York Knicks, the Erie BayHawks of the NBA Development League (D-League), the Houston Rockets, the Los Angeles Lakers, the Charlotte Hornets, the Brooklyn Nets, the Atlanta Hawks, the Toronto Raptors of the National Basketball Association (NBA), the Beijing Ducks, the Santa Cruz Warriors of the NBA G League, the Guangzhou Loong Lions of the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA), Kaohsiung 17LIVE Steelers of the P. League+, and New Taipei Kings of the Taiwan Professional Basketball League (TPBL). He is the first American of Chinese and/or Taiwanese descent to have played in the NBA. His popularity was known as “Linsanity.” He is 6′3″.
Jeremy was born in Torrance, California, to Taiwanese parents, Lin Gie-Ming and Shirley (Wu) Lin. He also has a Taiwanese passport. Jeremy is a devout Evangelical Protestant. He attended Havard University, and was a leader in Harvard’s Asian American Christian Fellowship. His brother, Joseph Lin, is also a professional basketball player, who also plays for the New Taipei Kings. His paternal family are Hoklo people from Beidou, Changhua, Taiwan. Jeremy understands Mandarin.
He is married to a Filipino-American woman, with whom he has a son.
Jeremy’s maternal grandmother emigrated to Taiwan in the late 1940s from Pinghu, Zhejiang, China.
Chinese people, especially the right wing ones, are usually mindful of their ancestry. We’re talking about a nationality who worships their ancestors. How would they worship them if they didn’t know where they were from? That’s why when you talk to most Taiwanese, they;ll tell you they have Fujian ancestry, more specifically Quanzhou, or Zhangzhou. For those who keep good records, some of them can trace their ancestry back to Henan. Taiwanese isn’t really an ethnicity, just like being Mexican isn’t an ethnicity. Taiwan has only been settled by Fujianese for 400 years, contrasted with 5000 yrs Chinese history. The aboriginal population only constitutes a small %, much like the Native Americans.
Except Mexicans can/are considered their own ethnic group. Tons of Americans claim their ethnicity/ancestry as being “Mexican”. Taiwanese can/are considered their own ethnicity. You want to tell the Austrians that they should stop calling themselves “Austrian” and simply claim to be “German”? Should Scottish people just be called “Irish”?
Technically, China officially recognizes 55 ethnic minorities besides the majority Han Chinese population but when someone says their family is “Chinese” they mean Han Chinese/ethnic Chinese. Officially, 95% of Taiwan is considered “Han [Chinese]” and many will say they’re different from the mainland China… no more than Northern Irish consider themselves as part of Britain and separate from the Irish.
Calling Jeremy Lin’s ethnicity as “Han Chinese” would clear up some confusion IMO, but this site considers Chinese and Taiwanese separate. I’m also not sure if his wife is actually Filipino (as in directly from the Philippines). She’s more likely Filipino-American and I think they met/married in America.
Also like to add that the idea of what is and isn’t considered an “ethnicity” can be blurry or even nonsensical but it is what it is.
A country like the Philippines recognizes many different native tribes and ethnic groups (like the Bicolano, Tagalog and Igorot people) but many Filipinos or people of Filipino descent will simply call themselves “Filipino” or labels like “Filipino-American”/Filipino descent” unless otherwise stated.
Taiwan is an island in china. Taiwanese people is of both Chinese and Japanese decent . Don’t you people read?
I was baffled in one article I read on yahoo that referred to Jeremy Lin as “Taiwanese or Chinese descent”. That makes no sense. It’s not Taiwanese OR chinese, it’s both.
Obviously he is Chinese, but his parents and Jeremy’s nationality is Taiwanese. Simple. Hence the term chinese taiwanese.
Jeremy’s American by birth and nationality. He didn’t obtain a Taiwanese passport until a couple years ago.
Ethnically, he’d be considered “Han Chinese” or simply “Chinese”; officially Taiwan says they’re almost entirely Han [Chinese]. This site and many others do not usually use the term “Han Chinese” or simply “Han” and officially, unless someone claims to be aboriginal Taiwanese, the Taiwanese consider themselves to be their own people separate from mainland China.
Linsanity is just blowing up. I love it.