Is it true that at the end of the Tang Dynasty and during the incessant wars of the Five Dynasties Period, many Tang Dynasty clans migrated to what is now the Guangdong province from the North-western part of Tang China? (Guangzhong in southern Shaanxi, Shanxi and eastern Gansu) Is this why many Cantonese people call themselves Tangren, or people of the Tang?

There are several migrations out of Africa. One went up north and became Caucasians/White/Europeans. Another went north east and into India, which then mixed with later African migrations and became the Indians known today. The Indians migrated to Southeast Asia. Southeast Asians migrated to Mongolia. People from Mongolia spread to Central Asia, Korea and Japan. They mixed with the White. So, Northern Chinese, especially those living in Xinjiang, has more Caucasian variation of genes. Chinese have a degree of mixture between White and Southeast Asian, which varies from region to region. So, we are all related to one another.

AFAIK, west-eurasian admixture in Chinese is very insignificant.

It's more significant in Xinjiang (Western China), but this declines further east, and declines faster as you go south.

You don't seem to have even got the point of my thread, unfortunately, I wasn't even talking about this in the racial sense, merely in the ancestral sense. Racially most East Asian ethnicities are very similar anyway, let alone two branches of the same Hanren ethnicity.

Your theory of "the origin of races" is wrong by the way, Hanren people do not have any significant "white" ancestry at all.

I hope you are not one of those people who somehow feels proud for having white ancestry...

I never said the "white" ancestry is signifcant. It is just present. East Asians are a mixture between White and Southeast Asians, with more geared toward Southeast. It shows we are all related.

Hmm....do I detect a hint of sarcasm in your reply? Next time just answer the question please, regardless of how ridiculous it may sound, it will benefit the newcomers.

I am curious, why do you think it is ridiculous?

No one is interested in this possible connection?

One of my aunts has recently married a Cantonese from SE Asia. So there is some personal connection here...LOL

In my personal opinion, I think it is possible that there is a relationship between the 2 becuz the NW part of China is not very populated, so there must have been a mass migration in the past which result in todays low population in that area. Plus many Southern Han families trace their roots to that area(ie mainly Henan and Shanxi). How does a typical NW Chinese look like..just out of curiosity? lol

Ok, I'm sorry but there are many errors in your paragraph, lol.
The Out of Africa theory applies to people who migrated over 40,000 years ago.
Indo-Europeans started in western central Asia and some migrated to India and some to Europe. They did not mix with later African migrations. Asians are not mixed with white, because at that time there was no such thing as caucasian. The environment over tens of thousands of years would determine our skin color/physical structure.

"The Indians migrated to Southeast Asia. "
That's only partially true. According to an old anthropology chart, the Mongolid (Asians) and Caucasoid (Caucasians) are in different categories. South East Asians/Australians/Pacfic Islanders belong in the Aborigines category. Africans belong in Negroid category. South East Asians are a separate group from Indians, who are Caucasoids.

"Southeast Asians migrated to Mongolia"
Um, no they didnt.

" Chinese have a degree of mixture between White and Southeast Asian, which varies from region to region."

Chinese are Mongoloids. They are not mixed with caucasoids. Some Chinese people in the south are mixed with SE Asians, who have aborigines background.

Let me clarify. Middle-easterners moved to Europe and India. The ones in Europe became Europeans, and those in India mixed with later migrations from middle-east and Africa. Environment changes skin color, but you can't claim they did not mix with later African migrations. The Indians then traveled to Southeast Asia, where there's also a large population that arrived from Africa, and they mixed. The Southeast Asians migrated north to Mongolia and became Eastern Asians that populated Korea, Japan, and Northern China. Southern Chinese are closer related to Southeast Asians than Northern Chinese. In Eastern Asia, there are several migrations from Middle-east, Europe, through Western China and Russia, and mixed with East Asians. In short, there are no clear boundaries among Caucasoids (Europeans), Negroids (Africans), and Mongoloids (Asians).

In the Out of Africa theory, mankind only migrated out of Africa once. The ones who migrated south/stayed behind became modern day Africans. There are no clear boundaries, but the general 4 categories are specific enough to group a large portion of the human population.






You have the migration patterns wrong. Southeast Asians did not migrated north to become East Asians.
Southern Chinese are a separate group that branched off of Northern Chinese during the migration from Central Asia. Modern southern Chinese also can include the original Southern Chinese group, mixed Northern Chinese, or more recently, mixed South East Asians who migrated there.

The East Asians/Northern Chinese separated from the Southern Chinese separated in Central Asia, while
South Asians/South East Asians separated from the East Asians & Southern Chinese while in Africa.


Here is a chart of migration patterns for the Out of Africa.

Reports might vary, and it makes sense that migrations from Africa happened several times in humanity's long history. Out-of-Africa theory explains the one and major migration, but it doesn't account for later migrations from Africa. The four categories are specific, but some still mixed, which is very evident in large regions like Central Asia.


There are migrations from Western Asia into China, but people from Southeast Asia went to Mongolia and became East Asians according to http://kennethomura.tripod.com/asian_genes/. Northern Chinese later went South and mixed with the Southern population, who are more related to Southeast Asians. Basically, Africans -> Middle-easterners -> Europeans + Indians (who mixed with later migrations out of Africa) -> Southeast Asians (some mixed with Africans already in Southern Pacific) -> East Asians/Mongolians -> Northern Chinese + Southern Chinese

White ancestry? that guy is plain stupid


I detest those kind of people

Yeh, then we're using different models. I'm using the main Out of Africa model. You're using another model.

These are my models:




This is your model:

Good Day CHF Forummers,
Just to add some relevancies to this discussion (although unrelated to the original subject matter). Caucasian actually came from the area called the Caucasus, a mountain range system between the Black and the Caspian Sea. Hence, the name Caucasian…

ok..let's not get too far back in history. We're suppose to talk about the period starting from Qin dynasty and on..and the main subject is the relationship between NW china and Cantonese ppl.

I personally think that the first Han arrivals to guangdong were the Standard Cantonese speakers, because it's dialect evolved slightly different from Toisan and Hakka(the late comers) and they took the best fertile land in guangdong - around Guangzhou. The 2nd arrivals were probably the Taishanese(toisan) speaking ppl who's dialect is quite similar to hakka and Standard Cantonese. Also another reason why i think that is because Taishanese(Taishan, Kaiping, Xinhui, Heshan, Enping and Jiangmen) settled in the second best fertile land - for farming. Then were the Teo Chiu(Chaozhou ren) who settled in the western coast of guangdong - good for fishing. Lastly were the hakkas, becuz they mostly settled in the mountains. Can anyone confirm this? this is my guess..lol

Not really.

By your logic all Mongolid peoples must have originated from Mongolia...

The real picture of human history is a lot more complex than that.

The "three race" model is an old paradigm that is already somewhat out of date. It was invented long before the discovery of DNA. Hence the divisions are not along genetic lines, but merely some anthropological considerations.

But there is such a thing called convergent evolution. Superficial features can often be misleading. Consider that superficially dolphins may seem to be more similar to sharks but genetically they are far closer to tigers.

Genetically speaking there is considerably more variation within the Negroid population than there is between any of the 3 groups. Therefore technically both Mongolids and Caucasoids are sub-branches of the Negroid race.

There isn't really a single typical NW look in my opinion, just as there isn't a single typical Cantonese look.

true same with japanese and koreans..

@ somechineseperson,
I certainly am aware of the complexity nature of human evolution and our migration patterns on this planet. However, if you want to get technical about the term I can explain more. Yes, it is true that it was formulated by Anthropologists in the 18th and 19th century. And it may render obsolete. But they did in fact formulated and claimed that ‘white’ people came from this area (not to say this is where they original evolved). And up until now there is still no other solid hypothesis by Anthropologists stating that they have diffused from a different area.
I never say or imply that Mongoloid came from Mongolian. Mongoloid was named for the group of people indigenous to central and eastern Asia by these same Anthropologists. And even in today’s standard, Mongoloid is also considered outdated and potentially offensive. But it is still commonly used but not by any mean to reference that all Mongoloid came from Mongolia. In a sense, the term is a misnomer.
I only mentioned the name in reference to physical geography. Caucasus is a mountain range between the Caspian and Black Sea and they (‘white’ people) were indeed named after this mountain range.

p.s. This is not even the right post for this topic anyway. It is irrelevant to the original post. Case closed.

Not exactly. The humans who first lived in Africa were not Negroid, Mongolid, Caucasoid, etc
They were not of any modern day race. The humans who migrated out of Africa eventually became the Mongolids and Caucasoids, while those who stayed became Negroid.

All 3 categories evolved from the original human ancestors in Africa.

Out of curiosity..do i look NW chinese hehe? or southern? or can'T tell lol

here is a hong kong actor, Wong Hei(王喜) of Toisan origin..does he look like me? lol and does he look NWestern?

Yeah! What a misapplication of the out of Africa theory. That was at least 70 thousand years ago! Anyway, The Caucasian appearance of the Uighurs in Xinjiang has to do with the fact that these people racially (but not linguistically) descended from the historical Scythians or the Yue-Zhi people mentioned in Han dynasty history. The have never made any incursions into China, and they were part of the Indo-European expansion from the Ukraine area from 4000 BC up to 1000 BC, and the Chinese civilization was already well into the Bronza age by the time they reached Xinjiang. These people were conquered by successive waves of nomads and end up speaking a Turkic language instead.

As for the original question - Cantonese, like most southern Chinese, are descended from a mixture of northern colonists and local non-Han peoples. So there should be some northern blood. This is the case even for Vietnamese. But Vietnamese was too far away for the assimilation process to complete, and thus the Vietnamese never became Sinitic people even though the country was thoroughly sinicized.

That's a lot of moving around and humping!

Here's something that hadn't been mentioned. In the early days when Canton was open to trading with the west, you know before the Opium war started with the British, there were many non-Chinese people who came to that area to trade and some have settled down. Canton in those days particularly traded with the Arabic, that's why there was a muslim lighthouse/mosque built in Canton, it's meant to guide Arabic sailors to shore. I lived near that lighthouse the first 8 years of my life and always wanted to visit, but was not allowed to go in because I was not muslim.

Also in the earlier days of trade with the Europeans, the first western country to trade in Canton was the Portugese. Many of them also have mixed in with the locals, fathering children and had wives/mistresses. In fact if you go to the Shamian Island in Canton, many of their European (particularly Portugese) influenced architecture still remains. The White Swan hotel was originally build to cater to foreigners only, and still remains a 5 star hotel even to today. I stayed there in 2002 with my husband (then boyfriend) and it was so obvious the western influence left in Canton. That's also why if you look at the Cantonese people, they tend to have pretty unique features apart from other SE Asian people.

Man all this talk about Canton sure makes me want to go for another trip I love that place, the culture, the busy night life (Cantonese people never sleeps, ever), the late night dim sum, the bakeries, I can't name it all. My husband on the other hand likes Beijing, Guilin, and Shuzhou more. Eh, what do you expect from a gwai lo.

I take it you also detest Chinese people who somehow feel proud for having Chinese ancestry? Such people exist ...

I doubt that a great deal. The amount of Caucasian introgression in SE Asian peoples will be very small compared to northern Han and the admixture of indigenous peoples.

The original NW Chinese look would look like the Terra Cotta soldiers in Qin Shi Huang Di's tomb. The Disney's Mulan's main male character was supposed based on that look. He did looked like a few of the people I know from that region.

Andy Lau, you don't look NW at all. You have a very typical Southern look. Personally, I think you have more of a Jiang-Zhe look than the typical Cantonese look. In the old time, Canton and Fujian and Hainan were the places for exile, so there were many people from different provinces coming there.

The HK actor Wong Hei(王喜) does have a NW look for the shape of his head -- at least, the Northern look for sure. However, his face itself does have more of a Fujian and Taiwanese look. I don't know....he looks very mixed to me -- I mean he is mostly Southern look, but with a Northern/Northwestern head shape.

Jiang-Zhe ? is that the Jiangsu and Zhejiang Wu area?? if so, thanks =) it's true that Guangdong and Fujian does have a mixture of looks due to migration of chinese from other provinces... I think Guangdong's major source were from Zhejiang (after the fall of the Southern Song dynasty.. where about a quarter million people migrated to guangdong living in the Xinhui - Taishan was part of it until 1500 and became it's own county - and Guangzhou area), Hakkas and neighbouring Hunan and Jiangxi. Can someone confirm this..

true, i know an online friend who was raised in Shenzhen but was actually born in Wenzhou, Zhejiang. I also know another friend who was my high school classmate(he lives with relatives) and his parents lives & owns a travel agency in shenzhen. They also had a child born in shenzhen as well and they were originally from Wuhan, Hubei.

Awkwardly even in the medium sized city of Taishan(my hometown), there are northerners who live there as well who operate their own business there. There are also alot of migrant workers too who come from the north. So migration of chinese from the north to guangdong is still going on in front of our eyes =/

Yes, they are Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces and the old Wu and Yue areas. I heard from my dad that a lot of Zhejiang people went to Fujian and Canton areas doing business or got kidnapped as children by bad guys and sold in either Fujian or Canton. The kidnapped kids were adopted by Fujian and Canton parents to be sent oversea or out of town to earn money for the adopted families so that their adopted parents could keep their own children close at home. Therefore, my dad concluded there were a lot of Zhejiang bloodlines mingled with the Fuiianese and Cantonese. In addition, after 1950, a lot of rich (or not so rich) Shanghai (Jiangsu) and Ningpo (Zhejiang) people went to Hong Kong to settle. The current Hong Kong's leader's family was originally from Ningpo, Zhejiang.

Also, I think if you want to find the original looks of different areas of Chinese people, you might want to go for the central plains and the Northerners first so that you could at least weed out those looks in the Southerners' looks. Then, you need to get familiar with the South Asian and the Pacific Islander's looks because they do get mixed in some of the Southern Chinese looks also. IMO, there are certain very distinct looks among Mongols, Koreans, Japanese, Vietnamese, Malaysians, Indonesians, and Philipinos. Usually, if the person has little or no Chinese blood and does not have too much other ethnic groups' blood in him/her, I could generally categorize which Asian nationality he/she is from in the above groups. When I was in college, I could recognize my Chinese classmates who were from Malaysia, Indonesia, or Philipine by their facial characteristics (with a bit of help that their Mandarin had a bit of Cantonese or Hokkien accent ). It was harder to tell apart oversea Chinese from Japan or Korea because most of them were from Shandong, and if they could speak Mandarin and did not speak their host countries' language, I would have no way of knowing where they were from. I would probably tihink they were from Shandong province originally or through Taiwan (Shandong => Taiwan => where I meet them.) With the Singapore Chinese, I have the most problems because their Mandarin are all as good as Taiwan's Mandarin and there seem to be more of a mixed Southern Chinese looks in Singapore and no characters from specific areas to speak of. Therefore, a few years back, I usually feel that the better Enlish speaking oversea Chinese who also speak good Mandarin should be Singaporeans because of the English requirement in Singapore. In recent years, the young people in Taiwan have learned to speak English better, so I couldn't tell apart the people from Taiwan or the people from Singapore any more, especially many Singapore people are also Hokkien speakers and might have a slight Hokkien accent like Taiwanese.

Actually he got replaced lol I think the guy your talking about is Tung Che Hwa.. Now the current leader is a Cantonese(origins from 南海) named Donald Tsang.

Oh good. Tung Che Hwa is finally gone from that position. I don't like him at all!

I personally think the migration of Zhejiang people to Guangdong after the fall of the song dynasty in Hangzhou, contributed the most.. more than the kidnapping that occured between Zhejiang with Fujiang + Guangdong. As a result, alot of words originate from Hangzhou variant such as Ngo(in Guangzhou Variant) = Me, Gu Gu = Big brother in my Kaiping dialect(another dialect similar to my Taishan dialect) and the word Ho = good. Can't think of any other at the moment..

I agree. There certainly were a lot of people in one shot ... So, hello cousin! My mom was from Hangzhou. I think your look is more like Ningpo or Hangzhou look actually. You definitely do not look like Southern Zhejiang people (from Wenzhou area), and you have no Fujian look at all (IMO). I know someone who looks exactly like you and his family is from Ningpo area.

really haha thanks ^^

First we need to define what NW root means? Is it a certain look? or is it through family genealogy?

Geneology: If you tract by last name, then there are last name that orginate from NW China, i.e. Shaanxi, Gansu. For example "Lin" is a last name orginate from Long gang Gansu. Or if one is lucky, the family still keep a Jiapu, then bingo one can trace with certainty one's ancestral homeland.

Look: Depending on the time period, NW people may look different.
The Terra Cottage warriors give us a general picture of how NW people look at Qin time- big nose and big eyes, and we do find it in Cantonese nowadays.
However, if we look at the NW today, like in Xi An, people there has a tendency of Arabic look more due to the Hui people migrating and lived in this area. Last time I was in Xi An, that's the impression I got - lot of people with high nose ridge (arabic looking) and narrow long face that you do not find commonly in other part of China. My grandpa is from Canton, but he has exactly that look, so tell me, maybe he's from NW...

found a picture of the warriors and if you look at the nose of the guy on the front left(my nose looks like that) and compare his to the other guy's nose, who is in the centre of the picture.. they both have different structure noses.. it seems there was diversity back then as well =/

i found this video clip of a lion dance in Xi'an... isn't this popular chinese lion a southern chinese lion + dance - with origins from guangdong?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIW50GnTxmY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AWyEfN1gdM

Found another in Shanghai (at 0:50) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRrOXjFI1QA

I heard and seen of a northern chinese lion, but it doesn't seem as handsome nor active as the southern one lol

Does it really start in Guangdong? Do you have the story of that origin?



Could you post a video for comparison?

Btw, you always found good videos to post. I like them a lot. Thanks!

There is plenty of diversity today, and not just among Chinese. Even Europeans have noses ranging from the small "snub" shape to the beaky "hawk" shape.

Yea i got the info from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_dance#Southern_style But the other lion that i was referring to originates from Beijing and is mainly used in the circus performances.. Here is a video of the Beijing variant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhyCjCbGseA

found the article about the migration of chinese from Hangzhou to the Sunwui(Xinhui) area of Guangdong: http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~alew/personal/othe...an/jigeili.html