Who were the Cantonese? I am Cantonese, but not sure about the region and its history. We'rnt the Cantonese seen as barbarians during Ancient China and up until the Yuan dynasty?

The cantonese originated from the "Yue" (越) people. Basically, a cantonese is a chinese who comes from the southern region of Guangdong (canton) province in south China, where the dialect of Cantonese (粤语) is spoken. The region of Hongkong, Guangzhou, Foshan, Shenzhen, Zhongshan, Macau etc.all speaks cantonese, and is where cantonese people stayed and originated. Many of the overseas chinese are also cantonese. If you visit this region, all the people there speaks cantonese, although they can also speak mandarin.

Please take note that the spoken chinese language was only unified during the Republic of China times (after 1911), when Republic of China decided to adopt the Mandarin policy to unify the spoken language. Basically before 1911, different regions speak their own dialects and the communication proves to be rather cumbersome, despite the fact that the written language was already unified by Qinshihuang in 221BC.

You might be aware that the father of Republic of China, Sun Yat Sen, is a cantonese (he was born in Zhong Shan) and when Republic was founded, there was a debate whether Cantonese or Mandarin should be adopted as the official language of China. At that time, the north speaks Mandarin (the Beijing dialect) , while the south speaks cantonese. The vote and election later was that Mandarin wins and thereafter Mandarin was adopted as the official language. Had Cantonese won the vote, all chinese could be speaking cantonese instead. The only exception was Hong Kong, which was under british rule and did not adopt the mandarin policy and that's why up to today, Hong Kong still uses Cantonese as the official chinese language in education, politics everywhere.

I'll discuss briefly about the history of the Yue (越) people, from which the cantonese originated. The Yue people are the ancestors of the cantonese, to be more precise "Southern Yue" tribes were the direct ancestors. The cantonese are in fact very closely related to today's north vietnamese, in terms of looks, body structure and language. And compared to northern Chinese, the cantonese are generally shorter and look differently (they appeared to look more like northen Vietnamese)

History of Yue People

Basically, during the spring/autumn and warring states period times, the people that dwelled in the southern region of what's called "Zhejiang", "Fujian", "Guangdong" provinces today and northern part of "Vietnam" are called "Yue" people. The Yue people are quite diverse and have many clans and tribal federation. The Yue people are considered by the civilized chinese of the central plain (中原) as uncivilized and therefore barbaric. Because of so many clans and tribes, the Yue people are also called the "Hundred Yue" (百越).

During the Spring/Autumn period, among the Yue people, the tribes that are more advanced and civilized will have to include the "Yue" (越) clan and " Gou Wu" (句吴) clan. During those times, they dwelled in the region of the lake Tai. The Yue clan founded the Yue state (in today's Zhejiang province region) while the Gou Wu established the Wu state (in today's Jiangsu province region). Later, the Wu state defeated the Yue state and the king of Yue, "Gou Jian" (勾践) had to rear horses for the king of Wu, "Fu Chai" (夫差). However, the king of Yue later gained trust from the king of Wu and he was allowed to return to Yue kingdom. Legend had it that after he returned to Yue kingdom, he worked very hard to make his kingdom strong. Finally after 10 years of hardwork, he finally defeated the Wu state. However, by the late Warring states period, the Kingdom of Yue was conquered by the Chu kingdom (one of the 7 strong states during the warring states period).

Although the Yue kingdom was conquered by the chu kingdom, the Yue people survived. The Yue people of former yue state and Wu state intermixed with the Hua Xia people (ancestors of Han-chinese) . After the warring states period, the "hundred Yue' term began to become popular. During the Western Han period, the people of the south were officially called "Hundred Yue". The "Yue" (越) could also referred to another Yue "粤" (which means "cantonese").

During the early Han dynasty period, the "Hundred Yue" were divided into "Eastern Ou" (东瓯), "Min Yue" (闽越), "Southern Yue" (南越), "Western Ou" (西瓯), "Luo Yue" (骆越) etc, main groups.

1. "Eastern Ou" (东瓯) - also known as "Ou Yue" (瓯越). They dwelled in the region of previous Yue and Wu state. (today's Zhejiang Wenzhou region)

2. "Min Yue" (闽越) - also within the region of previous Yue state (today's Fujiang province) - these were the ancestors of the "Min" chinese people today (who speaks Hokkien dialect)

3. "Southern Yue" (南越) - within the region of today's Guangdong province, later developed into the region of Guangxi province and its south part. They were the ancestors of cantonese today.

4. "Western Ou" (西瓯) - within the region of today's western part of Guangdong province and southern part of Guangxi province

5. "Luo Yue" (骆越) - today's north Vietnam region. The ancient Luo Yue people were the direct ancestors of today's Vietnamese. Today's vietnam in chinese is called "Yue Nan" (越南), which means south of Yue.

The above Yue people were all conquered by Emperor Han Wudi during his military expansion campaign of the south (I'll narrate this campaign in my next posts) and after that, these regions in the south became part of the Han provinces. After this conquest, the term "Hundred Yue" disappeared from the history records of the chinese. Some of the Yue people were sinificised and mixed with the Han-chinese. Some of the Yue people became the ancestors of today's "Gao Shan" ethnic
(高山族) in Taiwan. Another Yue faction became today's "Dai" ethnic (傣族) in southern China. Others became today's "Zhuang" ethnic (壮族), "Bu Yi" ethnic (布依族), "Tong" ethnic (侗族), "Shui" ethnic (水族) in Southern China.

Basically, today's "Zhuang" ethnic (壮族) and "Tong" ethnic (侗族) in South China were related to the polynesian people in south-east asia.

It is thus important to note that Yue was a generic term to referred to barbarian people of the south during warring states. The Southern Yue tribes/people were the ancestors of today's cantonese.

Also they still use tradational writing system rather then the new system.

Taiwan and Hongkong all uses the traditional characters that dated from the 5th century AD, because they were unaffected by the chinese writing reform of People's Republic of China (PRC) in the 1950s, in which PRC adopted the simplified writing, which currently is the norm 'standard' chinese writing worldwide.

As for Singapore and Malaysia, they had also already adopted the simplified writing, although the older generations were educated in the traditional writing.

(Because I'm educated in Singapore, I can read and write in the simplified characters. However, I can also read the traditional writing used in Taiwan and Hongkong, although I can't really write in traditional characters :D )

My wife's roots are Hakka. There are many Cantonese-speaking people in the Hong Kong SAR and Guangdong province with Hakka blood. They also have their own Hakka dialect, and my wife knows some of it.

I researched this a little one time, and found out that the Hakkas are sometimes referred to as "the wandering people of China", because for hundreds of years they have migrated from one region to another.

I guess the Hakka would be a good topic for another thread. :)

Wow, thanks Zhaoyun, thats some good info there, so good I'm going to print it. I guess my dad would love to know this. :lol:

Many of my friends here do not have much knowledge of their culture, heritage, and stuff, I am not exception. So, we sometimes tell stories and talk about our heritage. Folf stories, myths, like the Dragon Boat festival. I'm just wondering, if you guys do that? We're trying to know our roots. :lol:

Yup, we always do that in the fifth day of the fifth lunar month in Taiwan. We also get to eat Zong Zi (粽子), a pyramid-shaped mass of glutinous rice wrapped in leaves.

Just wondering, what is the name for people who speak Taiwanese (台語), or the language people speak in Fu Jian (福建) in China?

I think, we call them "Min"(闽) or "Min Nan" people (闽南人) to be exact . To be more proper, the dialect is called "Min Nan" language (闽南话).

In Taiwan, the "Min Nan" dialect is called "Taiwanese"(台語), which IMO is not correct, because the Min Nan dialect originated from Fujian province and not from Taiwan. They arrived in Taiwan, because many Min Nan people migrated to Taiwan from Fujian province ever since 17th century onwards. "Taiwanese" is not an ethnicity, because we know in Taiwan, there are "Min Nan" people, Hakka people (客家人), mainland Chinese (外省人), as well as Aborigines (原住民).

In Singapore, the "Min Nan" people are called "Hokkien" people. "Hokkien" is the taiwanese (台語 )/ Min Nan (闽南) language pronounciation for "Fu Jian" (福建), and the dialect is called "Hokkien" language ("Hokkien Wei"). Hokkien people are the largest chinese group in Singapore (around 40%), and many of the Singaporean chinese's ancestors came from Fujian province.

The "Min" chinese people dwelled in the region of Fujian province (around Xiamen, NanAn cities), in Taiwan, and in many parts of South-East Asia (such as Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia).

The direct ancestors of the "Min" people today were the ancient "Min Yue" (闽越) people (one of the "Hundred Yue" ) which I have mentioned above. You might notice that the chinese character "Min" (闽) , when analysed and broken up, consists of a character "insect" (虫) inside a door (门). This was how the highly civilized han-chinese viewed the "Min" people as "an insect inside a door" (in short, they viewed the Min people as barbarians).

(anyway, the discussion of the Min people or Hakka should be in another thread.. let us not deviate from the subject of Cantonese)

Be my guest.

wouldn't it be MIN NAN REN. Its this the symbol for person? 人

Yes.

It is always amazing to know about the diversity of China's origins, especially the ancestry of the different provinces. You can even tell today that Cantonese have a lot of austronesian blood and can often pass for Vietnamese or even Filipino, and can look very different from Northerners. The same goes for Fujianese and other southern territories.

I always thought that Southern Chinese looked more Huaxia than Dongyi.

what about the theory that Cantonese and other southern dialects are much more closely related to ancient Chinese.

its definiately believable, i took a 古代汉语 class with some Canto friends and when they read it, it flowed so much more smoothly, when i read it, it was studdery and awkward.

i honestly can't believe that today's Cantonese are the DIRECT descendants of the Yue people. The Yue kingdom was annihilated and dispersed by Han Wu Di. The barbarian invasions at the end of Jin Dynasty and Tang dynasty caused massive migration to the south from the north which is why i think Guangdong ren call themselves Tang ren. In my 古代汉语 class was doing Tang poetry. the teacher said only the Canto speakers could read this outloud, the rest of us had to stay silent. Also, Guangdong Chamber Ensemble music(except for the use of Gaohu) is closely related to the music of the Tang dynasty.

care to elaborate further

are you saying Guangdongren=Yue, because just because Guangdong happens to be the same place where 南越 use to be isn't a very good explanation

Langtaoyin, let me refer you to two other threads in this forum:

http://www.chinahistoryforum.com...p?showtopic=223

http://www.chinahistoryforum.com...p?showtopic=226

It's good to have another Chinese Orchestra person here, besides myself!

i composed many Chinese Orchestral pieces. hopefully one day they'll be performed.

i'm also working on an Opera with Chinese Orchestra combined with the drama of western opera vocals.

what instruments do you play? (actually, we should probably move this conversation to anothe thread)

GZ. have you heard of the Austronesians, who were also mentioned by Cheapfujianese? They're the prehistoric inhabitants of south China and Taiwan, who spread throughout Southeast Asia and are now mainly represented by the Taiwanese aboriginal peoples, the Malays and the Filipinos. When you said "Polynesian", I think what you actually meant is "Austronesian".

Here's an introduction to the Austronesians from the lecture notes of the history course "China and Southeast Asia" that I took last semester. After reading it, I'd like to ask you guys a question that has been on my mind for a while: Are the Austronesians the same as the Bai Yue? Or a different people who were displaced from south China by the Bai Yue?

The Austronesians

• Today, Austronesian peoples comprise the majority of the indigenous populations in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Madagascar. Some in Burma, some on Hainan, along the coast of Papua and through Melanesia, to all of the Pacific islands.
• The debate continues as to whether there are any biological links between all these people who are linked by the same language family, but generally accepted that the spread of the language was by migration, by colonizing speakers not by borrowing.
• The general consensus is that Austronesian peoples and societies are all linked by branching, but not sealed lines of common ancestry going back 6,000 years.
• So why does such a family exist??
• Two aspects of studying the past of Austronesians: Linguistic and archaeological. No texts extend back that far.

Austronesian Linguistics

• The Austronesian languages form a single and close-knit family, similar in terms of internal diversity with language families such as Indo-European. It is possibly the largest language in the world, comprising some 1200 languages.

• The discovery of the language family goes back to the 17th century. Today, after having recorded the majority of the languages, they have reconstructed a proto-Austronesian through systematic comparison of sound correspondences between the various languages, to give some idea of the lexicon of the earliest ancestor of these languages.

• Linguistics claims that the Austronesian languages derive from a single parent language spoken on Taiwan 5,000 years ago. There are four subgroups of Austronesian. Three of these are only spoken on Taiwan and the fourth is those Austronesian languages spoken in all areas outside Taiwan. Spread of languages shown on map.

• Based on the linguistic evidence, the first Austronesians are believed to have originated somewhere in what is today Southern China before moving to Taiwan 5000-6000 years ago. They remained there for some time before some moved southwards into the northern Philippines

• Based on linguistic analysis, claims about the early societies have been made. It is suggested that, after the first seafarers moved from Taiwan to the Philippines, major developments in their culture occurred. We are only able to reconstruct a few words relating to sailing technology at the highest levels of the Austronesian family tree. But at the next level down, the level ancestral to all those people who left their Taiwan homeland, we find terms for outriggers, sails, paddles, rudders, and a whole range of new developments in seafaring. New kinds of plants became available, and new species of fauna were encountered.

• The claims that the Austronesian maritime expansion moved in a northerly direction as well as southwards derives from both archaeological correlations and linguistic claims of an Austronesian substratum in the Japanese languages. One of the proponents of this idea was Murayama Shichiro (1908-1995), who claimed links between Austronesian and Ainu languages. The claim remains contested.

Austronesian Archaeology

• The other aspect is archaeological. And one of the key figures in this is Peter Bellwood of the ANU. He argues that the Neolithic revolutions in China—new polished stone technologies and introduction of agriculture -- sparked population growth and that the food supply provided by the new technology allowed a “continuous generation-by-generation ‘budding off’ of new families into new terrain”, which was supported by “the inherent transportability and reproducibility of the agricultural economy” and “a developing tradition of sailing-canoe construction and navigation”.
• Their technologies were marked by polished stone tools and by agriculture. Jared Diamond notes that they did not settle on islands which did not support their agricultural 'package' (e.g., New Guinea and Australia) because they had no advantage. These people maintained links with the islands from whence they came and thereby created a wide-ranging trade network.

• As people moved south from Taiwan, into the Philippines, Borneo, Sulawesi and the Moluccas, their vocabulary changed with new terms relating to breadfruit, banana, yam, sago and coconut. Reflects a movement away from rice to greater dependence on tubers and fruits in the tropics.

• Spread associated with pottery. 3000-4000 BC, the appearance of pottery on Taiwan

• Between 2500 and 1500 BC, the pottery assemblages appear through coastal Indonesia and by 1500 BC, they extended from Taiwan to western Melanesia.

• Reasons for spread:

1. Continuous population growth as a result of food provided by agriculture, allowing generation-by-generation “budding-off”
2. Inherent transportability and reproducibility of the agricultural economy.
3. Presence of a deep and absorbent “frontier zone” adjacent to the early areas of agricultural development. Populations sparse
4. A developing tradition of sailing canoe construction and navigation
5. A preference for rapid coastal movement, initially for fishing but followed later by the agriculturalists.

• Neolithic populations covered the whole of Mainland Southeast Asia by 2000 BC. However, these were likely Austroasiatic speakers, not the sea-faring Austronesians, who settled on the peninsula much later.

That's a wonderful article for your lecture note for some Austronesian history.



I should think so..I can't find the word for it, so I guess, the more appropriate word should be "Austronesian". The aborigines in Taiwan and minorities people in south China looks pretty much like Filipinos and Malays.

Although the Yue kingdom was annihilated by Han Wudi, the Yue people were not dispersed or annihilated. Many still remains. There was alot of mixing going on between the Southern Yue and the han-chinese from the north (especially about the migration of han-chinese towards south during the Age of fragmentation). Many Southern Yue people were sinificized and adopted the han-writing for their language.
This formed the first 'cantonese' chinese people. Obviously, the original (yue) language could possibily include the native yue language plus ancient chinese -han language of the north to form what's called Cantonese today.

Yue (越) sounds alot like "Yue" (粤), which is cantonese.

During Tang dynasty, there was alot of migration from north to the south to Canton. By that time, many indigenous population (originating from Southern Yue) in Guangdong province had already been sinificized or been mixed with han-chinese of the north. With more migration onwards, this sinification becomes more predominant and this consolidated the cantonese chinese communities in the south.

The cantonese loved to call themselves "Tang Ren'' (people of Tang) instead of Han-chinese because part of their ancestry actually originated from the mass migration of han-chinese from north China during Tang dynasty (in which the citizens are called "Tang chinese"). After migrating to the south, they brought forth with them the Middle Chinese language (spoken dring Tang dynasty), and mixed with the southern cantonese population. All of these enriched the cantonese language in the south. The Han-chinese from the north also brought with them the Tang culture and poetry, and that's why the cantonese people began to call themselves "Tang ren".

Many of them migrated due to economic reasons, because Guangzhou city was an important trading port during Tang dynasty. They are also proud of their Tang culture. So cantonese in overseas broadcast themselves as "Tang Ren", so much as so that China towns in overseas are also called "Tang Ren Jie" (Tang People's street)

If you have visited China today, you will know that there is a difference in looks between Cantonese chinese in the south China and the chinese in the north China.

The Cantonese chinese look more like the Vietnamese and "South-east Asian" people, who have darker skin. They are also shorter and smaller size. There are however some fair cantonese and this can be explained by the fact that there were some mixing involved between the han-chinese of the north and the cantonese in past history.

The northern chinese look more like mongolians, because during the age of fragmentation, Tang period and other past history, there was lots of mixing between han-chinese and the northern people such as Xianbei, XiongNu, Jurchens, Manchus, Mongolians etc. Typical "Mongolian" look is "Square face" and "Small eyes with single eye-lid" ..which is abit like what today's Korean look like.

Anyway, chinese are pretty "mixed".. and there is no single ethnicity to define it, except that now we call chinese who use the han-language as han-chinese.

Interesting. I always thought "Tong" or "Tang" "yun" was just a dialect sound of "Hong yun" in Cantonese.

I understand now.

I'm Taishanese. I only say this because of the history of that area. Large immgrants were from Taishan County of Guangdong Prov. Majority Dialect in the states were Taishanese til 1970s. Taishanese is closely related to Cantonese in tone but sometimes not in phrases. Grammar is the same tho. I would call myself Cantonese as well.

Taishanese.. uhmm... that's a new dialect I learnt of.. never really heard of it before.

Is Taishanese widely spoken in China?

Taishanese is only spoke in Taishan County of 1 Million in the GuangDong Prov.

There are Over 1 million Taishanese overseas and most likely more. The early Chinese immgrants to America were Taishanese.

www.taishan.com

That is a myth. Cantonese was never considered for National Language. The two contestants were Beijing Mandarin and Wu Chinese (Shanghainese, Suzhou-hua).


The below is from the "One State, One People, One Language" chapter of Nationalism and Language Reform in China, by John DeFrancis. © 1950 by Princeton University Press:

The most important issue confronting the assembly was the question of what sounds were to be represented by these symbols. In view of the fact that the conference which the delegates had been invited to attend had been designated as a Conference on Unification of Pronunciation, their task was clearly one of deciding on a standard language for the whole country. On this issue the delegates split into two groups. One comprised delegates from the Mandarin-speaking area under the leadership of Wang Chao. The other consisted of representatives from the southern coastal area under the leadership of the Kiangsu-Chekiang bloc, which in turn was led by Wu Chih-hui and Wang Jung-pao of Kiangsu, the latter being the man who in 1906 had drafted the reply of the Ministry of Education rejecting the phonetic scheme proposed by Lu Kan-chang. The two groups were about equal in strength. The focal point of their disagreement was Wang Chao's insistence that the Mandarin pronunciation should be taken as the standard as against the equally strong contention of southern representatives that such a procedure would not meet the problem of southern dialect sounds not existing in Mandarin. "Southerners cannot get along without voiced sounds and the entering tone," maintained Wang Jung-pao. He was echoed in this by Wu Chih-hui, who argued that Germany was strong because its language contained many voiced sounds and that China was weak because Mandarin was lacking in them.+

After a month of stalemate Wang Chao called a separate meeting of the thirty delegates, a majority of those attending the conference, who were representatives either of the Mandarin area or of the provinces of Kwangtung and Fukien. Wang told his audience that the stand taken by the absent Kiangsu-Chekiang bloc was tantamount to advocating the pronunciation of this region as the national language, a course which if adopted would bring disaster to China for generations to come. He repeated this assertion to the plenary conference and also advanced a proposal for a new system of voting to resolve the deadlock. His suggestion, calling for one vote for each province regardless of number of delegates, was quickly identified as a means of giving ascendancy to the numerically preponderant Mandarin provinces. The conference was thrown into an uproar. Wang Chao attempted to exert pressure to split the southern group by threatening to walk out on what he referred to as the "Kiangsu-Chekiang Conference on Unification of Pronunciation." Finally he almost came to blows with Wang Jung-pao. One day, when the latter happened to use the colloquial Shanghai expression huang-pao ch`e "rickshaw," Wang Chao mis-heard it as the Mandarin oath wang-pa tan "turtle's egg," whereupon he bared his arms and chased the speaker out of the hall. That was the last of Wang Jung-pao at the conference.

The upshot of all this controversy was a complete victory for the Mandarin group. Wang Chao got his way in the matter of voting procedure and was thereby enabled to end the more than three months of discussion by receiving approval for a series of agreements to his liking. The symbols remained limited to the 39 needed for representing the sounds of the standard language. They were to be used only for the standard language and were not to be adapted for writing the various dialects of the coastal area. The standard language was defined by fixing the pronunciation of some 6,500 characters in a Dictionary of National Pronunciation. Finally, accord was reached on submitting to the Ministry of Education a series of recommendations under the general heading of How to Promote the National Pronunciation.


+ Voiced sounds (e.g. the sound represented by b in English bat) do not exist in Mandarin, which has only unvoiced sounds, either aspirated (e.g. somewhat like p in English pat) , or unaspirated (e.g. like p in English spat). Only the Wu (Kiangsu-Chekiang) and Min dialects of Chinese have voiced sounds. The entering tone, commonly called the fifth tone, does not exist in standard Mandarin, which has only four full tones.

Kiangsu = Jiangsu = 江苏
Chekiang = Zhejiang = 浙江
Kwangtung = Guangdong = 广东
Fukien = Fujian = 福建

越国 Yue Kingdom refers to the ancient coastal kingdom in today's Zhejiang (Chekiang 浙江) Province, and later united with the adjacent coastal 吴国 （句吴国） Wu Kingdom in today's Jiangsu (Kiangsu 江苏) and Shanghai (上海) provinces. Wu and Yue spoke the SAME intelligble language and had an identical culture, but hated each other. The proverb 吴越同舟 (Wu and Yue in the same boat) comes from those two kingdoms. It has nothing to do with Cantonese. After Yue's conquest of Wu, 楚国 Chu conquered both territories. Many refugees from Wu and Yue left for Japan (Japanese claim to be descendents of Wu) and Korea by sea. Wu Kingdom will reappear during the Three Kingdoms, and 5 Dynasties 10 States periods.

吴越 Wu-Yue people are 东夷 (Dongyi) and probably related closely to 殷商 (Yin-Shang) peoples, as opposed to 华夏 (Hua-Xia) in the north. 吴越 were also quick to adopt foreign ideas and technology, and became assimilated as early as during the Qin.

The original 越国 should not be confused for the far-south 百越, 南越, 粤. All these other regions are called 越 as a collective name meaning "Southern" and have nothing to do with 越国 except for being south of the Yangtze River. The other "Yue" regions consist of different peoples, tribes, languages.

Today 越剧 still refers to Shanghai and Zhejiang/Shaoxing Opera.

The contention between Mandarin and Wu dialect is indeed informative. I did not know exactly the history. What I've heard was from a cantonese friend who told me that there was such a contention between Mandarin and Cantonese to be the official language of China. I second this argument until I can one day find more historical proof of it.

I've heard Cantonese claim that when the Republic of China was first established, there was a vote by the top officials on which dialect to make as the official language. In the end, it was a tie between Mandarin, supported by Dr. Sun Yatsen, a Cantonese-speaker himself, and Cantonese. However, because there were more officials from northern China present, Mandarin was chosen after lengthy discussions.

This claim sounds legit until the very end.

Toishanese and Cantonese, for the most part, are the same. Folks from the countryside speak Toishanese; Cantonese is spoken by the more urbane city folks.

Toishanese is accented Cantonese, and vis versa.

Hey Zhaoyun,

There's a background story behind the adoptation of Beijing dialect as official language -- though I'm not sure if the story is true. The story was that Sun Yat Sen wanted to bargain with Yuen Shi Hai, who was a Northerner. Btw, I think there was probably some Guan Hua, official dialects, used in the past (thought this Guan Hua changed,) so it's not just the written language that units ancient China.

Peace,

Michael

10-6-2004

Hey, was it Yuan Shi Kai instead of Yuen Shi Hai? I don't know of this figure called Yuen Shi Hai.

Yes it's Yuan Shikai 袁世凱

Sorry Zhaoyun, my Mandarin sucks =) (I knew it should be Yuan instead of Yuen, that was probably an inadvertent mistake. As to not writing Kai but instead wrote Hai, that's just my unfamiliarity with Mandarin.)

My dad comes from Chiu Chow, and he speaks Chiu Chow dialect. So does he count as a "Chiu Chow-ese"? This is despite Chiu Chow being a mere city in Guandong. I eat cold steamed fish at home alot.

I know for certain that Cantonese and Chiu Chow dialect sound nothing alike, because I listen to him talk to relatives and I don't understand a single word he's saying.

Hey.. when you're saying "Chiu Chow", do you mean "Chao Zhou 朝洲"?
Actually, in english, it's more commonly known as Teochew, if I'm not wrong. Teochew and Cantonese are very differently although Teochew people lived in Guangdong province. Teochew however bears some similarity to Hokkien, and Hokkien and Teochew people can converse without any problem. I'm spoken to Teochew people and I understand about 60%, despite me being Hokkien.

Chiu chow is Teochiu in cantonese. They are not cantonese but come from Swatow and speak their own dialect which is closer to hokkien than it is to cantonese. One of the major centres of Teochiu clan activity is in Thailand.

The Cantonese over the centuries are mixed, northerners have been streaming southward due to economic pressures, northern invasions etc and mixing with the local populations. Many of the large chinese clans like Huang, and my own smaller Liang are now mainly in the south because of this. There is a distinction between the northern chinese and the southern chinese because of this intermixing but the cantonese are still fairly distinct from the peoples of Southeast Asia like the Filipino, Thai or Malay. The Vietnamese are pretty similar to the Cantonese more because they too are fairly well mixed with the Chinese.

http://www.villagephotos.com/pubbrowse.asp?folder_id=1057102

I've uploaded a picture on Hakka migrations southward. Although this map is only about the Hakka migrations, this is also fairly representative of the general southward migrations of the other groups. The south retained many of the "original" language such as the Tang dynasty "cantonese" because of this southward movement.

The first major southward movement was during the Qin dynasty when the Qin conquered the south and started stationing troops and adminitrators there. Many stayed. The second major wave was during the three kingdoms when Shu expanded control southwest and Wu expanded southward. During the Tang, the south was culturally incorporated into China proper although they had been part of China since the first Qin armies marched south, which is why southerners still use the term Tang-ren. Before the Tang, the south was considered hardship posting for chinese soldiers and administrators. People who offended the king were also exiled to the south.

Different terms used.
Tang Ren
Hua Ren
Han Ren

Then the 3rd major wave occured during the Song when the "barbarians" chased the chinese southward, pushing the capital for the first time to what has always been considered outside the traditional homelands of the Chinese, to Hangzhou. This forced most of the major family clans to uproot and move south with the fleeing government.


Jieming
DragonSeedLegacy

i am cantonese and i think one reason why we call ourselves tang ren and our language tang hua is because modern cantonese is closely associated with the language used during tang times. if you care to examine modern cantonese vocabulary, you can see that many words we use in everyday speech exist in classical texts but used only in mandarin as compounds of more advanced words or what not. ex: we use drink as 饮 and eat as 食 while mandarin uses for 喝 drink and for 吃 eat. in cantonese, 喝 would be used for loud shouting, and i think this definition accords with the definition of older texts (i don't yet have proof for this)
additionally, if you take a look at tang shi san bai shou 唐诗三百首 and look at the rhyming poems. they consistently rhyme if recited in cantonese but fail miserably if recited in mandarin. i've done this test myself and found many many more poems that rhyme very well in cantonese as opposed to mandarin.

also, cantonese generally does not use many of the chinese compounds that were borrowed from the northern peoples, like 胡同 for alley (mongolian word?) we still use 巷.

another theory of mine... when looking at some transliterations from tang dynasty of foreign names, it seems to sound closer to original when read in cantonese. like 突厥 dat kyut in cantonese, while tu jue in mandarin. sounds more like turk to me in cantonese. also 匈奴 hung nou canto, xiong nu mand. also countries that use chinese characters, like koguryo 高句丽 gou geoi lai - cant. gao ju li - mand. paekche 百齐 baak cai - cant. bai qi - mand.
*this rule won't apply to modern transliterations tho becuz they are transliterated using mandarin sounds.

Wow thank you very much! now that I have had the time to read it through, my previous question has been answered(difference between cantonese and mandarin!) so thanks a lot for this as I found it really unseful!
Pascal

yes...proud Cantonese i am, also a proud Chinese....

Interesting topic about Cantonese, well basic I know where my ancestor from the northern china then travel to southern china (which I do not know what dynasty it's). But I found something out about my surname is that in mandarin it's pronounce totally different from how I say it in cantonese. So, I was wondering that I could have been a mixed breed between yue ren and han-ren. Well, I don't really care about the distinction. Now I only refer to myself as Han-ren or Tang-ren or even chinese. it doesn't really matter what you are refer as along is our heart go to our roots, people, and our history.

Just because one's surname is pronounced differently in mandarin than in cantonese does not automatically mean that one is a "mixed breed" between yue ren and han ren. For example: Northerners nowadays who move to Guangdong and speak cantonese will have their surnames pronounced differently in cantonese than their native language... does this mean that they are mixed breed? I agree that as long as we associate ourselves with the chinese nation it doesn't matter whether we are yue, han, etc etc

theres solid evidence that the Sinicization process in Guangdong was extremely slow. (by the way, when i refer to Guangdong ren, i'm not referring to the Kejia ren that live in the eastern side of Guangdong.

Qin generals and their troops were the first Hua/Han ren to arrive in Guangdong, for the next several centuries, it was mostly military personnel

remember, the south is a HUGE area and most people generalize migration to the south as migration to Guangdong. the first major Hua/Han ren settlement of areas below the YangZi was during the North/SOuth dynasties because of warfare, HOWEVER, the settlement was mostly in the areas close to the YangZi IE Central China and the north's population was still much higher.

the center of Chinese civilization shifted southward during Southern Song, HOWEVER once again, the population stayed close to the YangZi river and the deep south coastline was still mostly aboriginal

the book Imperial China 900-1800 AD by F.W Motte offers some excellent translations of information regarding the Sinicization of Guangdong and the area according to this info was not full Sinicized until the middle of the Ming dynasty

i'm no anthropologist but by observing the phenotype of the large cantonese population in boston, i can divide them into categories

40-50%=completely phenotypically proto-malay, Daic or austroasiatic. Essentially descended from Sinicized aboriginals

30%-40%=intermarried with Kejia(northern migrants) OR intermarried with slow but steady flow of northern migrants MANY generations ago. looks like intermediate between Northerner and aboriginal

10-20%=northern migrants that arrived in Guangdong very recently. Easily pass for North/Central Han and even look more northern than some northerners

Sorry once again for my word, but I meant mixed bred in a good term for Yue and Han-chinese. Once sorry if I had led you to think mixed bred mean bad. We southerners or Guangdong ren are proud to be both Han-chinese and Yue-ren, which meaning chinese. But there are ethnicities in China that doesn't really like to be part of China like Tibetan, outer Mongalian, and etc. There are change that happening in China policies that will include seats for these minorities group, which is a good thing. But from what I heard such case about Chinese government rewriting the history of China that say Yue Fei wasn't a hero, but anti-hero type (when I meant anti-hero I meant not a hero nor a villian). This topic I proposing should be on a another thread, but I don't know where to post it. Sorry about this post here. Most overseas chinese objected this radical change of rewritting history. I guess because the Chinese government PRC want to get more minorities seats in the government for the certain group that what domination in the PRC gov't, that is why they are favoring to rewrite history saying some heroes are not hero nor villian, but anti-heroes. Edit me if I'm wrong thank you once again and I hope I wouldn't be provoking or offending some members.

Thank you.

ShuHan, for the Yue Fei 'national hero' issue, go to this topic: http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php?showtopic=295

Yeah, I just have post my reply on that thread sorry didn't notice that thread did exist. You guys have covered a lots of topics on ancient China.

We Mandarin speakers use 巷 as well for alley!

i always wondered why Cantonese call themselves "Tang ren". well, first of all, there is no such thing as 唐族 , "Han" is the official term for ethnic Chinese whether you call yourself that or not.

anyway, i've gotten three types of answers when asking

1. Guangdong was Sinicized during the Tang so they began their existence as "Chinese" during the Tang
2. they speak the language of the Tang dynasty
3. they retain cultural elements of the Tang that everyone else forgot


lets see.

1. Guangdong was first militarily occupied during Qin. Han China had to re-conquer the area later (the Nan Yue kingdom) and from then on, the population consisted of military personnel and the large aboriginal population. During the Tang, Guangzhou became an important port city, however, it doesn't mean it was fully Sinicized. according to the book Imperial China 900-1800 AD, as late as the Ming dynasty, Guangdong(not counting the side occupied by Kejia migrants) was not fully Sinicized yet.

2. linguists speculate that middle Chinese spoken in the North consisted of dialects that were more or less closer to Kejia, Fujian dialects (as well as an archaic form of mandarin still spoken in Hubei and Anhui) and to a lesser extent, Cantonese. Cantonese without a doubt retains some elements of Tang Chinese language but to say its exclusively Cantonese is just false.

3. other than the fact that Tang poems supposedly rhyme well in Cantonese, i can't find any Tang cultural elements still practiced by Cantonese specifically. here are some examples
A. Bussiness-Cantonese are excellent bussinessman but during the Tang (like all ancient dynasties), merchants were considered the lowest class
B. Archery/hunting-these activities have been important in China since time immemorial, however, they were especially popular during the Tang-definitely not still practiced by Cantonese
C. clothes-Han Fu has been lost all over China except for dramas and movies but Cantonese have been more or less responsible for spreading the image of Qing dynasty era clothing
D. openness to others-Cantonese are not xenophobic but have a habit of calling Northerners "la lo" and calling most other people 鬼

i can list more but you get the idea

One of the use of "Tong Yan" is probably Guangdong's early contact with Western Civilization. During that contact the residents of Guangdong began to learn about the concepts of nationalism, statehood and ethnicity. This meant that the residents of Guangdong were likely the first to succesfully conceive the idea of national identity and the name likely was chosen because people thought that "Tong" sounded the best. In addition its quite common for the Cantonese to use "Wah Yan" as well. I like to ask you if the semantics more important to you than the symbolic meanings.

Hey.. there isn't much clear proof or evidence that the Tang language was exactly cantonese. The Tang court spoke the middle chinese which sounds abit like cantonese/hokkien, but is not clearly cantonese. It isn't correct to say Cantonese=Tang Ren.

Cantonese called themselves "Tang Ren" (Tang people) because it was during the Tang dynasty that Canton (Guangzhou) became a thriving port of trade and where Tang culture flourished in Canton, and as a result they were largely influenced by the Tang culture.

The cantonese people today were a mix of Nanyue people and Han-chinese who migrated southwards as far as during Qin dynasty's conquest of Canton (yes the 1st batch of huaxia soldiers stationed in Canton)..and later during Han Wudi's conquest of South-China.

Lao Li? I'm more familiar with Lao Bi, and sometimes refer them as Mo Mo Tou's, lol. Lao Bi probably, Old North.

My cousin's name is Lao Bi Jun, and we call her Lao Bi all the time, and ironic she lives and studies most of the time in Nanjing, well, still North, but you get the idea.