stringtranslate.com

Taishanese people

Taishanese people (Chinese: 台山人, Taishanese: Hoi San Ngin), Sze Yup people (Chinese: 四邑人, Taishanese: Hlei Yip Ngin), or Toisanese[1] are a Yue-speaking Han Chinese group coming from Sze Yup (四邑), which consisted of the four county-level cities of Taishan, Kaiping, Xinhui and Enping. Heshan has since been added to this historic region and the prefecture-level city of Jiangmen administers all five of these county-level cities, which are sometimes informally called Ng Yap. The ancestors of Taishanese people are said to have arrived from central China under a thousand years ago and migrated into Guangdong during the Tang Dynasty. Taishanese, as a dialect of Yue Chinese, has linguistically preserved many characteristics of Middle Chinese.

The Taishanese are part of the Yue Chinese family and have an identity that distinguishes themselves from the dominant Cantonese people. Among the Han Chinese, Taishanese are a source for many famous international Chinese celebrities and have produced the largest numbers of Chinese actors and singers of any region in mainland China. Despite their small population, Taishanese people have also produced a number of famous academics and historical figures. Sze Yup or Jiangmen is considered the home of Chinese Academicians, a title gifted by the world's largest research institution, the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The total of academicians is 31 people, a city with over 20 is considered extremely rare in China.[2]

Among Asian Americans, Taishanese are influential in politics and were the first Americans of Asian descent to be elected as governors (for example Gary Locke), mayors and congressmen. The Taishanese were the first Chinese people to settle in America and the Taishanese language was the original lingua franca of Chinatowns. Taishanese as the lingua franca was later replaced with Cantonese after being overwhelmed by immigration from Guangzhou and its satellite cities when the Chinese Exclusion Act was fully repealed under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Taishanese American laundrymen and shopkeepers were a primary source of funding that helped launch Dr. Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary activities while he was in exile and raising money from overseas countrymen.[3]

Language and identity

Taishanese is a Yue Chinese language that is distinguished from Standard Cantonese but non-specialists often use "Cantonese" in a broader sense for the entire Yue subgroup of Chinese rather than specifically the language of Guangzhou. Cantonese speakers often find Taishanese difficult to understand and have an average intelligibility of only 30%. This is also true for other Yue Chinese variants such as the Goulou dialects.[4][5]

Unlike most varieties of Chinese, Cantonese has de facto official status in Hong Kong and Macau and has an independent tradition of the written vernacular. Taishanese, who make up one-third of the population of Hong Kong, may identify themselves with Cantonese instead of Taishanese. Since Hong Kong culture is heavily Cantonese-influenced and is a Cantonese-speaking society, Taishanese and other Han Chinese who are Hong Kong-born and raised, assimilate into the Cantonese identity of Hong Kong. Many Hong Kong activists are of Taishanese ancestry such as the late Szeto Wah who was a politician of the pan-democracy camp and sang democratic Cantonese songs with other activists to promote democracy in China.

Culture

Culturally, Taishanese people are similar to other Yue Chinese peoples. Today, many Sze Yup people have become successful in many areas such as the entertainment industry, business and politics. Hong Kongers of Sze Yup ancestry include: Andy Lau, Beyond (band), Danny Chan, Kenny Kwan, Joey Yung, Ronnie Chan, John Tsang, Andrew Li and many others. The Father of Hong Kong Cinema, Lai Man-Wai also has ancestry from the Sze Yup region of province. As a result, Sze Yup people have dominated in the entertainment industry and play most major roles in the music and movie sectors. In many films, Taishanese can be heard, especially in many of Karl Maka's films such as Merry Christmas and Aces Go Places.

It is said that over a hundred famous people come from the Sze Yup region of Guangdong Province, making the region famous for producing more stars than any other city/region in mainland China. As a result, the local government in Jiangmen which administers the Sze Yup or Ng Yap cities of Taishan, Kaiping, Enping, Xinhui, and Heshan, decided to build a Stars Park called Jiangmen star park (江门星光园).[6]

Taishan county is famous for being the Birthplace of China's volleyball, that was brought to Taishan by Overseas Chinese and the city won many provincial and national championships. Taishanese are well known for their love for Volleyball and being China's champions.[7] Premier Zhou En-Lai once stated, "Taishan is Half of the Country's (China) System."

Architecture

In 2007, UNESCO named the Kaiping Diaolou and Villages (开平碉楼与村落) in China as a World Heritage Site. UNESCO wrote, "...the Diaolou … display a complex and flamboyant fusion of Eastern and Western structural and decorative forms. They reflect the significant role of émigré Kaiping people in the development of several countries in South Asia, Australasia, and North America, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the close links between overseas Kaiping and their ancestral homes. The property inscribed here consists of four groups of Diaolou, totaling some 1,800 tower houses in their village settings." Today, approximately 1,833 diaolou remain standing in Kaiping and approximately 500 in Taishan. Although the diaolou served mainly as protection against forays by bandits, a few of them also served as living quarters. Kaiping has traditionally been a region of major emigration abroad and a melting pot of ideas and trends brought back from Overseas Chinese. As a result, many diaolou incorporate architectural features from China and from the West. Tong Laus which are mixed-used buildings where the ground floor is reserved for commercial use and the top floors for residential are also prominent in the region, as are traditional Lingnan architecture aesthetics which are commonly found throughout Guangdong Province.

Economy and business

Besides dominating the entertainment industry, they are quite dominant and influential[according to whom?] in Hong Kong's Business Industry, founding such companies as the Bank of East Asia (東亞銀行), Lee Kum Kee (李錦記), Hang Lung Properties, Maxim's Catering (美心), Li & Fung (利豐), Beijing Air Catering Ltd, Hysan Development (希慎興業) and many others. Lui Che-woo once the second richest man in Asia.

Famous overseas Taishanese businessmen includes Loke Yew, the richest man of Malaysia in his time and who made significant impact in the growth of Kuala Lumpur and was one of founder fathers of Victoria institution. Jack Yan who founded his company Lucire, is a magazine publisher in New Zealand and he also owns a software firm that created over 100 typeface designs himself for the firm and inspired other local typeface designers such as Kris Sowersby to pursue careers in that industry. Norman Kwong who is the lieutenant governor of Alberta, is also president and manager of Calgary Stampeders a Canadian football league.

Academics

Sze Yup or Jiangmen is considered the home of Chinese Academician town: The total of academicians is 31 people.[2] Some of the more well-known academics are:

Overseas

Because the history of going abroad is long and there are many people sojourning widely in various districts, Taishan is called the "No.1 Homeland of Overseas Chinese".[8] The Taishanese diaspora is distributed in 91 countries and regions of the five continents including US, Canada, Hong Kong, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Malaysia, Singapore, and Australia.

Trestle, c. 1869: Carleton Watkins

Taishanese have had a large influence in the course of Asian-American history, as they were the first Asian Americans to be elected as Governors, Mayors and U.S congressmen in the continental United States. The first international celebrity of Asian descent and America's first ace in World War II. They also represented the largest Asian community in America and made a significant contribution in building the First transcontinental railroad of United States. The Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR) is the former name of the railroad network built between California and Utah that formed part of the "First Transcontinental Railroad" in North America. About 12,000 such emigrant workers were employed as laborers by the Central Pacific Railroad representing 90 percent of the entire work force.[9] J. O. Wilder, a Central Pacific-Southern Pacific employee, commented that “The Chinese were as steady, hard-working a set of men as could be found. With the exception of a few whites at the west end of Tunnel No. 6, the laboring force was entirely composed of Chinamen with white foremen. A single Irish foreman with a gang of 30 to 40 Chinese men generally constituted the force at work at each end of a tunnel; of these, 12 to 15 worked on the heading and the rest on the bottom removing material. When a gang was small or the men needed elsewhere, the bottoms were worked with fewer men or stopped so as to keep the headings going.”[9] The laborers usually worked three shifts of 8 hours each per day, while the foremen worked in two shifts of 12 hours each, managing the laborers.[10]

The Sun Ning Railway (AKA Sunning Railway and Xinning Railway) 新寧鐵路 (Pinyin: Xinning Tielu) was a standard-gauge railway in the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong Province founded in 1906 by a man of Taishanese origin Chin Gee Hee 陳宜禧 (Pinyin: Chen Yixi) and Yu Shek 余灼 (Pinyin: Yu Zhuo). It was South China's second railway[11][12][13] and one of only three railways in pre-1949 China built solely with private Chinese capital.[14][15]

Notable Taishanese people

Artists

Actors

Business

Athletes

Education

Historical

Politicians

Others

See also

References

  1. ^ Chung, L.A. (December 21, 2007). "Chung: Chinese 'peasant' dialect redeemed". Mercury News. Retrieved November 26, 2022.
  2. ^ a b "拥有两院院士31名 江门"院士路"今成坦途". Southcn. Archived from the original on September 13, 2011. Retrieved September 6, 2022.
  3. ^ Kantowicz, Edward R. (June 2, 1999). The Rage of Nations. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. p. 52. ISBN 9780802844552 – via Internet Archive. sun yat sen laundrymen.
  4. ^ Cantonese speakers have been shown to understand only about 30% of what they hear in Taishanese.
    (Szeto, Cecilia (2000). "Testing intelligibility among Sinitic dialects" (PDF). Proceedings of ALS2K, the 2000 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society: 4. Retrieved September 6, 2008.)
  5. ^ Ma, Laurence J. C.; Cartier, Carolyn L. (2003). The Chinese Diaspora: Space, Place, Mobility, and Identity. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-0-7425-1756-1.
  6. ^ ""江门星光园" nddaily". Archived from the original on July 12, 2012.
  7. ^ "Taishan International Web – English Version Introduction". Archived from the original on June 10, 2008. Retrieved May 15, 2008.
  8. ^ "台山市招商指南". Archived from the original on August 7, 2011. Retrieved December 7, 2011.
  9. ^ a b Kraus, "Chinese Laborers and the Construction of the Central Pacific," p. 49.
  10. ^ John R. Gillis, "TUNNELS OF THE PACIFIC RAILROAD." Van Nostrand's Eclectic Engineering Magazine, January 5, 1870, p. 418-423,
  11. ^ The of Xinning Railway Archived 2004-12-10 at the Wayback Machine, Bureau of Archives of City.
  12. ^ Scigliano 2007.
  13. ^ Another transliteration of 余灼 (Pinyin: Yu Zhuo) is Yu Chuek (Editors' note, p. 125, Chin Gee Hee, "Letter Asking for Support to Build the Sunning Railroad" (1911), p. 125–128 in Judy Yung, Gordon H. Chang, and Him Mark Lai (compilers and editors), Chinese American Voices, University of California Press (2006). ISBN 0-520-24310-2.)
  14. ^ Don T. Nakanishi and Tina Yamano Nishida, The Asian American Educational Experience: A Source Book for Teachers and Students, Routledge (1995). ISBN 0-415-90872-8. p. 55.
  15. ^ Jue (1983) for the ideographs and spellings.