Traditional China lacked any systematic racial classification until the 1890s

Evidence

In popular Daoism, a human had to change bones (huangu) in order to become immortal: by analogy, African slaves were expected to change bowels (huanchang) to become half-human. A physical transformation, in other words, was perceived to be an intrinsic part of cultural assimilation. Even in the nineteenth century, scholar-officials like Xu Jiyu, who had extended contact with European traders and were familiar with world geography, wrote how “the hair and eyes of some [Europeans] gradually turn black when they come to China and stay for a long time. The features of such men and women half-resemble the Chinese.” If it could be shown that negative representations of physical markers existed in traditional China (Dikotter, 1992), no concept of “race” nor any systematic attempt to classify population groups on the basis of such markers existed until the emergence of modernity in the 1890s. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3310

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader scholarly literature on race as a modern invention (e.g. racial formation theory, the idea that race emerges with modernity/colonialism rather than being timeless).
• CANDY: The Daoist bone-change analogy and the claim that Chinese officials thought Europeans’ hair and eyes gradually turned black is a striking, conversation-starting detail.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3310