Yi was explained in Ci Hai (Chinese Lexicon) as the 'ancient tribes from the east'. Somehow or the other, foreigners and some Chinese writers, either through ignorance or with motives of their own, preferred to translate the term as 'barbarians'.

However, let's look at some of the ancient Chinese legends and rethink how offensive or racialist the term Yi could be:

Sima Qian's Shi Ji (Historical Records) named Wu Di (the Five Lords) of the ancient China among whom was Lord Shun (l. 2257 - 2208 BC ?), said to be a Dongyi . Later, about c.1600 BC to c. 1100 BC, the Shang Dynasty people took pride in Lord Shun being their ancestor. So, the Shang Dynasty was of the empire of the Dongyi , in the land now known as Zhongguo (China).

Huai Nan Zi, compiled during the Western Han Dynasty, talked about Nwa (a female) mending the collapsed skies. She was said to have created mankind out of mud figurines. One story claimed that Nwa was the younger sister of Fuxi or Taihao, who was the ancestor of the Dongyi people.

Fuxi was said to have invented the nets for catching animals and fishes, instituted the protocol of marriage, created the theory of Yin-Yang (i.e., female-male), authored the works of I-Ching ( The Book of Changes ), and invented Ba-Gua (the Trigrams). Fuxi was a great contributor to the Chinese civilisation.

And you have Shan Hai Jing ( Book of Mountains and Seas ) which documented that Fuxi and Nuwa were husband and wife, who gave birth to mankind, i.e. the Chinese people.

So, if Yi were to be barbarians, all Chinese were born of barbarian ancestors and the Chinese empire had but a barbarian root. What then is so offensive about the term Yi , when all Chinese actually had the Yi as their ancestors?

The fact is Yi denoted simply the Eastern tribes - not barbarians. Of course, writers later decided to translate the term for their own convenience, as the author of Chinese racism, not quite in a nut shell had .