Southeastern Peripheries of Huaxia: The Historical-Cultural Interaction and Assimilation from Southern Man and Bai Yue of Mainland to Island Yi and Maritime Fan

In the macroscopic situation of ethno-history in the East Asia, the mainstream of ethnic relationships in diverse regions has generally come along with the expansion of the Huaxia and Han nationality, as well as its interaction, conflicts, and assimilation with the neighboring cultures in “Four Directions”. The process of the so-called “Huaxianization” (华夏化) and “sinicization” (汉化) pushed forward step by step from the “Central Plains” and “Central Nation” in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River, outward to the peripheries of its “Four Directions”, and from the mainland to the oceanic areas. In this process, the main pattern of ethnic interaction presented in a differentiated concentric geopolitical order of the “Central Nation (中国)”- peripheral “Four Directions” (四方) with “Nine States” (九州) and “Various States” (万国)—“Four Seas” as the “Gullied Boundary of China Nation” (四海为壑), finally resulting in the unity of China Nation of “Assimilation and Integration of Pluralistic Cultures” (多元一体) with the Han ethnicity as its core.