Taishan people ( English Taishanese people , English Sze Yap Cantonese , Chinese. 四 邑 廣東 人 ) - one of the largest ethnolinguistic groups of the population of Hong Kong , which is part of a larger community of Guangdong . People from Taishan County ( Jiangmen County, Guangdong Province ) and their descendants speak the Taishan dialect (aka syap) of the Yue language and have peculiar cultural differences.
The Taishans were formerly known as the “Cantonians syyap” (“Cantonians siyy”), because they came from the region of Syyap, or Siyy (Sze Yup, Siyi, 四 邑, translated from Chinese means “four counties”) - the current districts of Taishan, Kaiping, Enping and Xinhui of Jiangmen County [1] .
Content
History
In the second half of the 19th century, a large number of Taishans traveled through Hong Kong to North America (today about 1.3 million Chinese immigrants from the USA and Canada have Thai roots) [2] [3] .
In the wake of mutual hostility in 1855-1867 in southern Guangdong (especially in the area of the modern Jiangmen district) and partly in British Hong Kong, a war broke out between the "local" Guangdong ( Punti ) and the "newcomers" of Hakka. Punti historically occupied fertile plains, and Hakka settled in the surrounding hills and in areas unsuitable for agriculture. Over time, mutual hostility and social inequality resulted in a series of bloody clashes. The parties to the conflict massively destroyed the villages of the opponents, captured the survivors, sold men on plantations to Latin America, and women - in the brothels of Hong Kong and Macau . As a result of the conflict, about 1 million people died, several million became refugees (due to the numerical advantage of Punti, hakka losses were more significant) [4] [5] [6] .
After the Taiping uprising was suppressed , the Qing troops finally stopped the war between Punti and Hakka, having hardly scattered the warring parties. The surviving hakka were isolated in Chishi County, isolated from Taishan County (today part of Jiangmen County), the rest were moved to Guangxi Province. Both the Taiping uprising and the conflict between Punti and Hakka led to a new wave of refugees rushing to relatively calm British Hong Kong (the tension between Punti and Hakka remained in a new place).
Determining the exact number of Taishans in Hong Kong and their share of the total population is rather difficult. In 1911, there were 45 thousand “Cantonese syap” in the colony, 71 thousand in 1921, 101 thousand in 1931 [7] ; In the 1960s and 1970s, “Cantonese syap” accounted for about 30% of the total population of Hong Kong (in 1961 there were 574 thousand people, in 1971 - 685 thousand) [8] . As of the beginning of the 1980s, 3.1% of all Hong Kong Chinese spoke the Taishan dialect (syap) of the Yue language [9] . Immigration of Taishans to Hong Kong continues even after 1997 , their community takes the second or third place among all the ethno-linguistic groups of Hong Kong.
Current situation
Carriers of the Taishan dialect hardly understand the Cantonese dialect , which is considered more prestigious in Hong Kong [10] . Many representatives of the second and third generations of Taishans completely switch to Cantonese and lose their native dialect. If in 1961, 4.36% of Hong Kong people spoke the syap dialect, in 1983 - 6.3% of all Chinese in Hong Kong, in 1993 - 3.3% of all Hong Kong residents, then in 2006 the census did not record carriers of this dialect [11] [12] .
Taishans traditionally make up a notable stratum among businessmen, politicians, officials and figures of the Hong Kong entertainment industry [13] . Among Hong Kong's famous Taishans are businessmen Lei Hysan ( Hysan Development ), Ronnie Chan ( Hang Lung Group ), David Lee ( Bank of East Asia ), Lee Kuovei ( Hang Seng Bank ), Victor and William Fungi ( Li & Fung ), Li Kumsen ( Lee Kum Kee ) and James Wu ( Maxim's Caterers ), politician John Tsang, former Chief Justice of the Hong Kong Supreme Court Andrew Lee, filmmakers Lee Mingwei and Karl Maka , artists Tee Loon , Andy Lau , Donnie Yen , Tony Lunchuwai , Alan Tam , Adam Cheng , Joey Jung, Alfred Hyun, Raymond Wong and Danny Chan.
Notes
- ↑ Huei-Ying Kuo. Transnational Business Networks and Sub-ethnic Nationalism: Chinese Business and Nationalist Activities in Interwar Hong Kong and Singapore, 1919-1941. - State University of New York at Binghamton, 2007 .-- S. 68-69. - ISBN 9780549267195 .
- ↑ Kwok B. Chan. Smoke and Fire: The Chinese in Montreal. - BRILL, 1991 .-- S. 63-64. - ISBN 9789622014619 .
- ↑ Robert E. Murowchick. China: Ancient Culture, Modern Land. - University of Oklahoma Press, 1994. - S. 179. - ISBN 9780806126838 .
- ↑ Hong Beom Rhee, 2006 , p. 261-263.
- ↑ Benjamin N. Judkins, Jon Nielson. The Creation of Wing Chun: A Social History of the Southern Chinese Martial Arts. - SUNY Press, 2015 .-- S. 30. - ISBN 9781438456935 .
- ↑ Shiv Shanker Tiwary & PS Choudhary. Encyclopaedia Of Southeast Asia And Its Tribes. - Anmol Publications, 2009 .-- S. 137. - ISBN 9788126138371 .
- ↑ Huei-Ying Kuo. Transnational Business Networks and Sub-ethnic Nationalism: Chinese Business and Nationalist Activities in Interwar Hong Kong and Singapore, 1919-1941. - State University of New York at Binghamton, 2007. - S. 69. - ISBN 9780549267195 .
- ↑ Fan Shuh Ching. The population of Hong Kong (p. 18 ) . Department of Statistics University of Hong Kong (1974).
- ↑ Brooke, 1981 , p. 520.
- ↑ Jocelyn Kan, Hakwan Lau, Diana Martin. Live and Work in China and Hong Kong. - Crimson Publishing, 2008 .-- S. 260-261. - ISBN 9781854583840 .
- ↑ Robert B. Kaplan. Language Planning in the Asia Pacific: Hong Kong, Timor-Leste and Sri Lanka. - Routledge, 2013 .-- S. 75. - ISBN 9781317981800 .
- ↑ Martha C. Pennington. Language in Hong Kong at Century's End. - Hong Kong University Press, 1998. - S. 75. - ISBN 9789622094185 .
- ↑ Huei-Ying Kuo. Transnational Business Networks and Sub-ethnic Nationalism: Chinese Business and Nationalist Activities in Interwar Hong Kong and Singapore, 1919-1941. - State University of New York at Binghamton, 2007. - S. 69-70. - ISBN 9780549267195 .
Literature
- Brooke S.I.Population of the world. Ethno-demographic reference. - Moscow: Science, 1981.
- Ivanov P.M. Hong Kong. History and modernity. - Moscow: “Science”, Main Edition of Oriental Literature, 1990. - ISBN 5-02-016958-7 .
- Hong Beom Rhee. Asian Millenarianism: An Interdisciplinary Study of the Taiping and Tonghak Rebellions in a Global Context. - Amherst, New York: Cambria Press, 2006 .-- ISBN 9781934043424 .