(Image of Lin Zexu)

 

Fujian

 

Fuchou

 

Southern "Han"

 

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Foochow

Excerpts from Wikipedia.org

The Fuzhou Han or Fuzhou people (福州人; also known as Foochowese and Hokchewese) are a subgroup of the Han people (also known as the ethnic Chinese). They are a Min-speaking group, who speaks Eastern Min language or specifically Fuzhou dialect. They are native to Fuzhou region and adjacent Gutian County, Pingnan County in Fujian province of the People's Republic of China and in Matsu Islands of the Republic of China (Taiwan). There is also a significant overseas Foochowese population, particularly distributed in Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, United States, Japan, United Kingdom, etc.

They are referred to as "Hockchiu" in Malaysia.

 

Emigration

Fuzhou's history of emigration since Ming dynasty with Zheng he's vovages overseas. As the result of immigration of Fuzhouese to southeast Asia, Fuzhou dialect is found in Malaysia and Indonesia.The city of Sibu of Malaysia is called "new Fuzhou" due to immigration wave in early 1900s

 

Subgroups

• Native Fuzhou people (福州儂)
• She people in Fuzhou (畲婆; 畲族)
• Fuzhou Tanka (曲蹄; 福州蜑民)
• Manchu people in Fuzhou (旗下囝)
• Recent Chinese migrants to Fuzhou and their descendants (兩個聲)

 

After Han China's occupation of Minyue (閩越) in 110 BC, Han people began populating in what is Fujian Province today. Having lost their nationalities, the aboriginal Minyue people, a branch of Yue peoples (百越), were gradually assimilated into Chinese culture. The Ancient Wu and Ancient Chu language brought by the mass influx of Han immigrants from Northern area gradually mixed with the local Minyue language and finally developed into the Ancient Min language, from which Fuzhou dialect evolved.

Fuzhou dialect came into being during the period somewhere between late Tang Dynasty and "Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms", and has been considered by most as a Chinese dialect ever since. However, it is also worth noting that its substratum is constituted by large quantities of well-preserved Minyue vocabulary. In this sense, Fuzhou dialect is a de facto mixed language of Ancient Chinese and Minyue language.

The famous book Qī Lín Bāyīn (戚林八音), which was compiled in the 17th century, is the first and the most full-scale rime book that provides a systematic guide to character reading for people speaking or learning Fuzhou dialect. It once served to standardize the language and is still widely quoted as an authoritative reference book in modern academic research in Chinese phonology.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She

Photo from Cultural China

The She (畲) people are a Chinese ethnic group. They form one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China. They are the largest minority in Fujian province. They are also present in the provinces of Zhejiang, Anhui, Jiangxi and Guangdong.

Language: The She language is a Hmong-Mien language. Most of the She today speak Chinese dialects, like Hakka. Those who retain their own language - approximately 1,200 individuals in Guangdong province - call themselves Ho Ne "mountain people" (活聂).

 

Fujian Province

Fuzhou Municipality

Xiaocang She-nation Ethnic Township (小沧畲族乡) in Lianjiang County

Ningde Municipality

Muyun She-nation Ethnic Township (穆云畲族乡) in FuAn City

Kangcuo She-nation Ethnic Township (康厝畲族乡) in FuAn City

Banzhong She-nation Ethnic Township (坂中畲族乡) in FuAn City

Xiamen She-nation Ethnic Township (硖门畲族乡) in Fuding City

Yantian She-nation Ethnic Township (盐田畲族乡) in Xiapu County

Shuimen She-nation Ethnic Township (水门畲族乡) in Xiapu County

Chongru She-nation Ethnic Township (崇儒畲族乡) in Xiapu County

Zhangzhou Municipality

Longjiao She-nation Ethnic Township (隆教畲族乡) in Longhai City

Huxi She-nation Ethnic Township (湖西畲族乡) in Zhangpu County

Chiling She-nation Ethnic Township (赤岭畲族乡) in Zhangpu County

Longyan Municipality

Gongzhuang She-nation Ethnic Township (宫庄畲族乡) in Shanghang County

Lufeng She-nation Ethnic Township (庐丰畲族乡) in Shanghang County

 

Fuzhou Tanka

Fuzhou Tanka (曲蹄; 福州疍民; 曲蹄婆), or Fuzhou Boat People, is an ethnic group in Fujian, China. A branch of the Tanka people, they traditionally lived on sampans in the lower course of Min River and the coast of Fuzhou in Fujian Province most of their lives and have been officially recognized as Han Chinese since 1955.

Origin: There are several different views on the origin of Fuzhou Tanka. The mainstream theory believes that Fuzhou Tanka are descendants of ancient Yue peoples. As a branch of the Tanka people, Fuzhou Tanka has been in South China for more than 2000 years. Their Foochowese name "Kuóh-dà" (曲蹄) is a derogatory term used by the Foochowese people on land, which can be literally translated into "bowlegged" and might come from the bow shape of their legs caused by longtime living in the low cabins of their boats.

Language: Fuzhou Tanka now speak the Foochowese language, which is widely used by the majority Foochowese in this region. Mandarin has also been brought to many of them through national compulsory education. However, they had their own language in history, but gradually abandoned it. In Ming Dynasty, many of them were already able to speak Foochowese or other Eastern Min languages.

Society: Traditionally, Fuzhou Tanka people lived on boats in most of their lives. They were severely discriminated by land living Foochowese residents. Their life depended on fishing and ferrying, and most of them remained poor and uneducated before the founding of Republic of China. Fuzhou Tanka people had a rich tradition of folk music, especially call and response. They also had different views on chastity and remarriage from the land living Han Chinese. Pre-marital sex and remarriage were not restricted in their society. Due to the discriminatory policy imposed by the land living Han majority, Fuzhou Tanka were forced to dress themselves in a humble way to show their inferiority to the land residents.

By the second half of the 19th century, many Tanka people had already been converted to Roman Catholicism. Some of these Catholic Tanka consequently moved onto land under the protection of Catholic Church. In the Republic of China era, the ethnic egalitarianism was guaranteed by law. Since the 1950s, the Communist government began to resettle Fuzhou Tanka to land dwellings. As a result, many Fuzhou Tanka villages were built along the Min River and the coast. Nowadays, most Fuzhou Tanka people have abandoned their traditional waterborne lives and intermarriage is common. Their traditions, such as Fuzhou Tanka folk music, are under threat as well.

Discrimination Against Fuzhou Tanka: Before the founding of Republic of China, the Fuzhou Tanka were generally treated by land Chinese residents as mean and inferior. They were not allowed to dwell on land, receive education, wear silk clothes or work in government or army. In some areas, they were even forbidden to walk on land, otherwise, they would be faced with death threats. Since the 18th century several attempts had been made by the Qing and Kuomintang governments to lift the discrimination against Tanka people, but it was only in the People's Republic of China era that all the discriminatory policies were completely eliminated.

 

Manchu

The Manchu people (滿族) are a Tungusic people who originated in Manchuria (today's Northeastern China). During their rise in the seventeenth century, along with the help of Ming rebels (such as general Wu Sangui), they conquered the Ming Dynasty and founded the Qing Dynasty, which ruled China until its abolition in 1912 after the Xinhai Revolution, which established a republican government in its place.

The Manchu ethnicity has largely been assimilated with the Han Chinese. The Manchu language is almost extinct, now spoken only among a small number of elderly people in remote rural areas of northeastern China and a few scholars; there are around ten thousand speakers of Sibe (Xibo), a Manchu dialect spoken in the Ili region of Xinjiang. In recent years, however, there has been a resurgence of interest in Manchu culture among both ethnic Manchus and Han. The number of Chinese today with some Manchu ancestry is quite large, and the adoption of favorable policies towards ethnic minorities (such as preferential university admission, government employment opportunities and exemption from the one child policy) has encouraged some people with mixed Han and Manchu ancestry to re-identify themselves as Manchu.

Northeast China (東北) is a geographical region of China, consisting of the three provinces of Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang. Some people in parts of Inner Mongolia (like Chifeng) still call themselves Northeasterners. It is generally coterminous with some definitions of the historical region of Manchuria and is commonly referred to in English as such. It is also sometimes referred to as Inner Manchuria in contrast with Outer Manchuria, provinces lost to the Russian Empire, during the Qing Dynasty.

 

 

福州外地移民

福州外地移民泛指居住於福州地區而祖籍非福州、沒有本地化的人群。一般而言，這個族群不包括族譜上顯示遷自中原的福州人或已經完全被福州族群同化的人，而特指第二次國共內戰時期及之後（1940至1950年代後）隨共產黨大批遷入福州地區並定居於此的外地人及其後裔（多為北方人）。福州本地人通稱此族群為兩個聲，其字面意思是指口音與福州人不同的人，亦即外地人。福州兩個聲一般以普通話為第一語言，其中許多人的福州話口音不純正或不會福州話。

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* The GM Genetic Polymorphism in Taiwan Aborigines: New data revealing remarkable differentiation patterns
by Alicia Sanchez-Mazas, et al.

Multidimensional Scaling Analysis among 63 Populations from Southeast Asia Excluding all Sino-Tibetans but the Southern Chinese (grouped)

(Fuzhou, Guizhou, Hunan, Guangdong)

The ‘mixed’ sample is composed of individuals from Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, and Hunan. ST-SC: Sino-Tibetan, Southern Chinese (Min, Xiang, Gan, Hakka, Yue); AA: Austroasiatic; KA: Tai-Kadai; AN-EF: Extra-Formosan Austronesian; AN-TW: Autronesian from Taiwan; HM: Hmong-Mien.

 

 

Southern Mongoloid

Map of the Yangtze River (Chang Jiang)

Southern Mongoloid populations are a subgroup of Mongoloid populations, distinguished by older criteria like appearance and craniology, or dental patterns. Genetically Northern Mongoloids are very unrelated to Southern Mongoloids.

In Cavalli-Sforza's genetic clustering work (1988) South Chinese join Southeast Asians in genetic clustering while the North Chinese associate with Koreans, Japanese, Ainu, Bhutanese and Tibetans in genetic clustering. Other Southeast Asians include Malaysian, Viet Muong, Thai, Western Indonesian and Philippine.

Xiao and Cavalli-Sforza (2000) find the boundary between Northern and Southern Mongoloids to approximate the Yangtze River, and suggest that their ancestors arrived from Africa via separate routes. Principal component analysis of gene frequencies of Chinese populations

Other scientists have suggested that the finding of sharp genetic differences between North and South China is an artifact of using an insufficient number of samples. However, Xiao and Cavalli-Sforza (2000) has a larger number of samples than previous studies.

Modern biological evidence from the anthropological textbook Human Species (2003) contradicts earlier theories of which groups were more genetically related to other groups. The Human Species(2003) and Physical Anthropology used the genetic clustering of Cavalli-Sforza (2000) in their publication. Humans are all related. Humanity divided itself into the African and the Eurasian/Oceanic branch. The Eurasian and Oceanic branches are the products of this common origin. The Eurasian branch split into the Amerindian and major East Asian branch. The major East Asian branch divided itself into eastern Russian and the East Asian. The Oceanic branch divided itself into the Southeast Asians and Pacific Islanders. According to the Human Species (2003), East Asians generally are more genetically similar to the South Asians than to Southeast Asians, because the Far East and the Indian Subcontinent are members of the Eurasian branch while Southeast Asians (including south Chinese) are members of the Oceanic branch. More interestingly, Asians have very local genetic clusters inside these regions, implying different Asian ethnic groups have not historically intermarried with each other. Examples of localized genetic clusters include Japan, Korea, Mongolia and China which form separate genetic clusters from each other.

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福州人

福州民系，即福州族群、福州人、福州儂、十邑人，也有稱為閩東民系，是發源於中國福建東部的一個民系，屬閩民系的一支。福州民系是指籍貫在福州十邑，以福州話為母語，認同福州文化的漢族民系。廣義的福州民系還包括籍貫在寧德地區其餘縣市，以廣義的閩東語為母語的族群。傳統上福州民系不包括該地區同說閩東語的疍民，也不包括近現代遷入福州的外地移民。

分佈: 狹義的福州民系分佈於福州十邑，即今天福建省福州地區的福州五區、閩侯縣、閩清縣、長樂市、福清市、平潭縣、連江縣、羅源縣、永泰縣，以及寧德地區的古田縣和屏南縣。由於歷史上各個時期福州人進行移民的緣故，福州民系還分佈在馬來西亞、印度尼西亞、新加坡、汶萊、緬甸、泰國、美國、日本、英國、加拿大、台灣、香港等許多國家和地區。

來源: 福州民系的來源有兩個：中原漢人的入遷和土著閩越人的漢化。南遷至福州的漢人與當地漢化的閩越人相互融合，形成了福州民系。福州民系有著普遍的中原認同。

中原漢民遷居福建可追溯至漢代，自晉代的八姓入閩開始，見諸於文字記載的漢人入閩漸多，尤以遷居閩江下游的福州平原為眾，福州地區成為早期漢人入閩的主要聚居點。到了晚唐和五代，隨著王潮、王審知入閩建立閩政權，形成了一個中原漢人入閩的高潮，福州成為閩國的政治中心，得到了大力開發。

古閩越人是福建的原住居民。公元前202年，閩越王無諸定都東冶，即今天福州冶山附近。公元前110年，閩越國被漢朝所滅，閩越國的國民被遷徙至江淮間，閩地遂空。在此後漫長的時間裡，留居福建的閩越人逐漸被漢化。

對於福州民系的形成時間，陳支平認為大致在隋唐五代已經形成。從語言形成的角度上看，李如龍認為閩東語形成於唐末王潮、王審知入閩時期。一般認為，福州民系形成於五代時期。

語言: 福州民系使用的語言為閩東語福州話，屬於漢語的閩語分支。福州人常稱自己的母語為「平話」。

福州話屬於漢語的閩語分支，是閩東次方言的代表，也是福州民系所使用的母語。此外，福州疍民也以福州話為母語。在漢語各大語系中佔有重要的地位。福州當地人把這門語言稱作平話，意思是「日常生活中所使用的語言」。

雖然福州話被官方定義為一種方言，但從語言學的定義來看，福州話同漢語標準語差別迥異，甚至無法被說閩語其他分支的人所理解。從這個意義上說，福州話算是一種語言而不是方言。

福州地區最初的原住民為閩部落，至後來越族遷來，形成閩越族，後一度形成南方最強大的閩越國。西元前110年，西漢滅亡閩越國，並將閩越國民舉國遷徙到江淮地區。此時的福州境域已經人走城空，隨後已定居的先秦漢人與閩越亡國後陸續遷居來的北方漢人，成為了這片土地的新主人，古漢語就此在福州紮根了。

中原漢人歷年遷入閩中，至西晉永嘉之亂，衣冠入閩之時，漢人大規模入閩，福州的晉安之名，便是其足跡印證。隨後歷經數次漢人的移民入閩，帶來不同歷史層次的中原漢語，逐漸形成今天的閩東漢語。福州話大致形成於唐朝，並且一直以來都被視作漢語的一個分支。但是，千百年來福州話也保存了大量古齊語的沉澱。因此，福州話事實上是中原古漢語的流承。1842年福州被開放為通商口岸，福州話從此也引入了不少英語詞彙。

建築: 福州民系的建築具有強烈的地域特點。民居多為三合型和四合型，注重入口門罩的處理，封火山牆造型尤其獨特，比較典型的是馬鞍形風火牆。風格明快、靈巧、素雅。代表性的福州民居群落如福州的三坊七巷和閩清的宏琳厝等。

飲食: 福州人的傳統菜係為閩菜中的福州菜。

海外移民: 老移民: 自宋代起，就有明確見諸於文字記錄的福州人海外經商移民活動。明洪武二十五年（1392年）有福州36姓到琉球定居。明代中葉後，福州地區有不少人移居日本，還有人遷往東南亞。清末有大量的福州十邑人以各種形式移民東南亞，並形成了規模可觀的福州人社區，比如馬來西亞沙撈越州的詩巫。這個移民潮一直持續到1949年中華人民共和國成立，因為政治形勢的改變，此後直到1970年代，福州人的海外移民基本停止。

海外移民: 新移民: 1970年代開始，福州人開始新一階段的移民潮。移出地主要為閩江口的福州、長樂、福清、連江等市縣，主要移民目的地國包括美國、日本、英國、加拿大等。這一階段的新移民中有很大一部分採取了不合法的手段進入所在國，也有相當多的人最後取得了合法居留權。福州新移民分佈極為廣泛，遍佈於五大洲的許多國家，在海外形成了大量新的福州人社區，其中比較著名的比如紐約的曼哈頓華埠

。世界福州十邑同鄉總會

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福州話

福州話屬於漢語的閩語分支，是閩東次方言的代表，也是福州民系所使用的母語。此外，福州疍民也以福州話為母語。在漢語各大語系中佔有重要的地位。福州當地人把這門語言稱作平話，意思是「日常生活中所使用的語言」。

雖然福州話被官方定義為一種方言，但從語言學的定義來看，福州話同漢語標準語差別迥異，甚至無法被說閩語其他分支的人所理解。從這個意義上說，福州話算是一種語言而不是方言。

福州話主要通行於中華人民共和國東南部福建省的閩江流域中下游（包括其支流大樟溪和古田溪流域）至入海口一帶，涵蓋11個縣市，分別是福州市區、閩侯、永泰、閩清、長樂、羅源、連江、福清、平潭、屏南和古田，海外福州華僑組織有稱福州十邑同鄉會。中華民國台灣的馬祖同樣使用福州話。

隨著福州人向海外移民，福州話也傳播到了東南亞、日本和美國等地的華人社區中，成爲在海外影響力頗大的漢語之一。

歷史與現狀: 福州地區最初的原住民為閩部落，至後來越族遷來，形成閩越族，後一度形成南方最強大的閩越國。西元前110年，西漢滅亡閩越國，並將閩越國民舉國遷徙到江淮地區。此時的福州境域已經人走城空，隨後已定居的先秦漢人與閩越亡國後陸續遷居來的北方漢人，成為了這片土地的新主人，古漢語就此在福州紮根了。

中原漢人歷年遷入閩中，至西晉永嘉之亂，衣冠入閩之時，漢人大規模入閩，福州的晉安之名，便是其足跡印證。隨後歷經數次漢人的移民入閩，帶來不同歷史層次的中原漢語，逐漸形成今天的閩東漢語。福州話大致形成於唐朝，並且一直以來都被視作漢語的一個分支。但是，千百年來福州話也保存了大量古齊語的沉澱。因此，福州話事實上是中原古漢語的流承。1842年福州被開放為通商口岸，福州話從此也引入了不少英語詞彙。

同親緣語言的比較: 閩語群都同源，不管是詞彙還是語法上，比如說「人」字，所有閩語的白讀都是訓讀為「儂」，等等。

中原移民在西晉末年遷入閩南的過程中，第一站是現在的南京和鎮江（他們在南京定都），另一部分人經過浙江來到了福建，落腳點在福州和泉州（然後泉州那一支還有繼續南遷到粵東的），所以福州的閩民系的先祖當然也是來自古河洛地區 (指中國河南黃河、洛河流域，亦泛指中原)。

閩南語和閩東語的分化應該是在唐代，閩南語的文讀主要來自七世紀唐音，而閩東語主要來自十世紀唐音，所以像撮口呼字，兩者就很容易看出區別來。而且，閩東地近吳越，語音上受到南吳語影響比閩南大一些，所以後來韻尾逐漸減少，而閩南語把唐音的六大韻尾都保留了下來。並且，由於福州是省城，又受官話影響較深，所以聲母里濁塞音和濁擦音都消失了，但閩南語保存了一些。 可以看出，福州話口語中的許多常用詞彙都與古代漢語息息相關，許多可以追溯到先秦時期。上面所分析的福州話特有的詞彙表明其與《詩經》的關聯性遠超過其與《楚辭》的關聯性，顯示福州人的祖先來自河洛地域，而不是江湘地域，儘管後者更接近福州。

在《詩經》各篇中其中特別值得注意的是與《詩經·邶風》和《詩經·鄘風》的出現。眾所周知，歷史上從中原向福建的第一次大規模移民發生在西晉末期的308 AD，即所謂「衣冠南渡」，或稱「八姓入閩」。所謂「八姓」系林、黃、陳、鄭、詹、邱、何、胡，其中的林、陳、鄭與唐朝末期892 AD 入閩的王氏共同構成二十世紀初福州的四大姓氏。當時有「林陳一大半，王鄭滿街擺」之說 (「王鄭」在福州話中與當地的一種叫「黃彈」的水果同音)。福州話的形成相信就發生在「八姓入閩」的前後。據傳，林為比干之後，周武王在克商之後賜此姓氏，源於河南牧野；黃源於黃國，在河南潢川一帶，亡國後以國為氏；陳為舜之後，源於陳國，周武王所封，都河南淮陽，亡國後以國為氏；鄭為周王室的一支，在河南新鄭，鄭亡國後以國為氏。這三大家族均來自於河南，而邶和鄘也就在豫北的湯陰一帶，與「八姓」之首的林氏發源地咫尺之遙。由此可見，福州話受到河南特別是豫北一帶的古方言影響是合乎邏輯的。 如果說個別詞彙的分析尚無法證明福州話整體的狀況的話，用福州話朗讀唐詩宋詞能夠更加合韻這一事實在很大程度上彌補了這一不足。

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Min Language

Chinese Language Tree from glossika.com

Mǐn or Miin (閩語) is the name of a broad group of Chinese dialects spoken by 45 million people in the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian as well as by migrants from this province in Guangdong (around Chaozhou-Swatou, or Chaoshan area, and the Leizhou peninsula), Hainan, three counties in southern Zhejiang, and Zhoushan archipelago off Ningbo, and Taiwan. There are many Min speakers also among overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. The most widely spoken variety of Min is Hokkien, which includes Taiwanese and Amoy, amongst other dialects. The Min dialects preserve many of the archaic pronunciations of Old Chinese and Middle Chinese.

Varieties of Min Dialect: Min has greater dialectal diversity than any other division of Chinese. It is typically divided, on the basis of mutual intelligibility, into five to nine languages, such as Min Dong (Eastern Min) and Min Nan (Southern Min). Min Dong is centered around the city of Fuzhou (Fuzhou dialect is the standard dialect of Min Dong), capital of Fujian province, while Min Nan is dominant in the south of Fujian and into Guangdong. Qiongwen, spoken in Hainan, is sometimes classed as a separate language, but often seen as a dialect of Min Nan.

Min Nan is also called by the name of its regional variants in the places it is spoken, especially Taiwanese. The Amoy dialect of Xiamen is the prestige dialect of Min Nan in mainland China, with Teochew also being an important variety. Teochew has low intelligibility with Hokkien Minnan, having fewer words in common with them than German has with English.

The Southern Min language in Guangdong is known as Hoklo, in Hainan as Qiong Wen or Qiongzhou hua (though some class Qiong Wen as a separate sub-group). Min Nan is the dominant Chinese dialect spoken by the Chinese minority in the Philippines, where it is known as Lan-nang. In Taiwan, Minnan is known as Hō-ló-oē and is spoken by the majority of the population as their native language. In Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and other areas in Southeast Asia, Minnan is known as Hokkien, in addition to the Teochew variant, originating in the Chaoshan region, which is the ancestral home of many ethnic Chinese in Singapore.

 

 

Zhou Dynasty -- Qin Dynasty -- Guan Dong Yu -- Zhong Yuan Yu --Min -- Min -- Min (Fujian)
Zhou Dynasty -- Qi State (齊國) -- Qi -- Qi -- Min -- Min -- Min (Fujian)

 

 

Qi State

Qi State: Qi (齊國) was a powerful state during the Spring and Autumn Period and Period of the Warring States. Its capital was Linzi, which is part of the present city of Zibo in Shandong Province.

Qi was founded around 1046 B.C. as one of the many states of the Zhou Dynasty. The first ruler appointed for Qi is Jiang Shang, the most powerful official during that time. The Jiang family (姜) ruled Qi for several centuries before it was replaced by the Tian family (田) in 384 BC (田氏代齊). In 221 BC, Qi was the last state of pre-Imperial China to be conquered by the State of Qin, the final obstacle which allowed the Qin Dynasty to consolidate the first centralized and imperial empire over China.

Lord Huan of Qi (齊桓公, died 643 BC) was the best-known ruler of the state of Qi in the Spring and Autumn Period. His personal name was Jiāng Xiǎobái (姜小白) . Lord Huan of Qi appointed Guan Zhong (管仲, given name Yíwú, 夷吾), the famous thinker and economist, as his prime minister, and adopted Guan's thoughts and policies to administer his country, reform the economic system and develop relations with other states, After scores of years, Qi became the strongest state for its economic and military strength, and was named as the "state with one thousand chariots" and the "head of the five strongest states". The culture and education undertakings were rather developed in Qi. Both poetry and music were of high level. Linzi District remained its capital for as long as 638 years, and was the biggest city in the orient.

The Silk Road, prosperous through the Han (漢朝; 206 BC–220 AD) and Tang Dynasties (唐朝; 618 AD–907 AD) is the famous passageway in China's history for economic and cultural exchange between East and West. As a result of textual research, Shandong area, with Zibo as its center, was the major place of silk supply at that time, and was one of the origins of the "Silk Road".

Shandong is the second most populous province of China, after Henan, with a population of almost 92 million. Over 99% of Shandong's population is Han Chinese. Minority groups include the Hui and the Manchus. Shandong is also known as having highest average height of any Chinese province.

臨淄，古稱營丘，秦漢時作臨菑。相傳上古時期的伏羲、顓頊曾在這裡活動。此後為爽鳩氏、蒲姑氏等部族的聚居地。公元前約1046年，周朝建立後，周武王把首席功臣姜尚（姜太公）分封於此，建立了侯國齊國，定都營丘。六世齊胡公遷薄姑。七世齊獻公遷回營丘，因其地臨淄水，遂改名為臨淄，此後臨淄之名一直延用至今。

齊國是有周一代東方第一大國，春秋戰國時為「五霸」之首、「七雄」之一，因此臨淄作為其都城，歷史上極為繁榮。目前臨淄齊國故城的城址尚存，分民眾生活的大城和國君居住的小城，兩城相連，周長21公里，面積15平方公里，共有十三座城門。城內幹道縱橫交錯，排成「井」字形，並有完善的供水、排水系統。城外還有埋葬齊國六位君主的田齊王陵等多處先秦墓葬。

東周時的臨淄人物阜盛，齊相國管仲著《管子》。孔子曾來此聞韶樂，孟子也曾為齊王擔任客卿。莊子曾被齊湣王聘為相。戰國時臨淄設稷下學宮，以招徠諸子百家來此講學辯論、著書立說，荀子即為稷下的祭酒之一。遊學於此的還有騶衍、宋鈃、尹文、彭蒙、田駢、慎到等，號為稷下學派。當時的臨淄鄰近渤海，因而兼具魚鹽之利，經濟繁榮、貿易發達，各種冶鐵、煉銅、鑄錢、制陶、紡織的作坊遍布城市內外。

臨淄作為齊國的都城，共延續了八百餘年歷史，直到被秦國所滅。秦置臨淄縣，屬齊郡。兩漢時，臨淄為五都之一。漢高祖劉邦封韓信為齊王，都臨淄。韓信死後，高祖將長子劉肥封於臨淄，建齊國，轄七十餘城。文帝時將齊國一分為七。據史載，當時的臨淄約有十萬戶人家，依然是東部地區最大的城市。及至晉代，臨淄多遭兵禍，政權更迭頻繁，其中南燕曾短暫地建都於此。此後臨淄在青州的地位被益都所取代。南北朝後的歷代，臨淄先後屬齊郡、青州、益都府、益都路、青州府等管轄。元末原城址被廢棄，而在東南部另築新城，即今臨淄城區。

戰國時，齊國臨淄即為東方工商業中心之一。在漢代，齊郡號為“冠帶衣履天下”。臨淄與陳留襄邑（今河南睢縣一帶）為全國兩大官辦紡織業中心。西漢時，少府在臨淄設立了三服官，以生産刺繡、紈素（魏晉以後謂之絹）、縑、綾為主。刺繡在漢代是非常昂貴的織品，價格在錦之上，大約是一般繒帛的二十餘倍。“齊細繡文，上價匹二萬，中萬，下五千也”。時人稱：“齊郡世刺繡，恆女無不能；襄邑俗織錦，鈍女無不巧。”齊郡出產的紈素亦知名于世，其上品為冰紈，極爲潔白細密，《文選》所收古詩《怨歌行》有“新裂齊紈素，皎潔如霜雪”之句。東漢章帝時，曾下令齊國服官“省冰紈方空彀吹綸絮”。新疆曾出土漢代齊郡出產的絹疋，標明了產地、規格，作為商品銷往西域或外國。漢元帝時，諫大夫貢禹上書說：“故時齊三服官輸物不過十笥，方今齊三服官作工各數千人，一歲費數巨萬”，足見其規模之大。

漢代齊郡制陶業也有所發展。窩托村西漢齊王陵出土的陶器主要為禮器和日用陶器。金嶺東漢齊王墓則出土了不少陶製明器，有陶樓、陶屋、陶井、圈竈等，器形高大，工藝較為複雜。

臨淄故城遺址內有多處冶鐵和鑄銅作坊遺址。漢代鐵官即設于大城東南一帶，有“齊鐵官丞”、“齊採鐵印”等封泥出土。大城東北的鑄錢遺址曾出土半兩、五銖及新莽大泉五十的錢範。

 

 

 

Ancient DNA from Linzi (Yixi), Shandong Peninsula

* Molecular Genetic Analysis of Remains of a 2,000-year-old Human Population in China-and Its Relevance for the Origin of the Modern Japanese Population by H. Oota, et al. (1999)

Abstract: We extracted DNA from the human remains excavated from the Yixi site (approximately 2,000 years before the present) in the Shandong peninsula of China and, through PCR amplification, determined nucleotide sequences of their mitochondrial D-loop regions. Nucleotide diversity of the ancient Yixi people was similar to those of modern populations. Modern humans in Asia and the circum-Pacific region are divided into six radiation groups, on the basis of the phylogenetic network constructed by means of 414 mtDNA types from 1, 298 individuals. We compared the ancient Yixi people with the modern Asian and the circum-Pacific populations, using two indices: frequency distribution of the radiation groups and genetic distances among populations. Both revealed that the closest genetic relatedness is between the ancient Yixi people and the modern Taiwan Han Chinese. The Yixi people show closer genetic affinity with Mongolians, mainland Japanese, and Koreans than with Ainu and Ryukyu Japanese and less genetic resemblance with Jomon people and Yayoi people, their predecessors and contemporaries, respectively, in ancient Japan."

 

* Genetic Structure of a 2,500-Year-Old Human Population in China and Its Spatiotemporal Changes by Li Wang, et al.

A Neighbor-joining Tree for 19 Human Populations

Abstract: To examine temporal changes in population genetic structure, we compared the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences of three populations that lived in the same location, Linzi, China, in different periods: 2,500 years ago (the Spring–Autumn era), 2,000 years ago (the Han era), and the present day. Two indices were used to compare the genetic differences: the frequency distributions of the radiating haplotype groups and the genetic distances among the populations. The results indicate that the genetic backgrounds of the three populations are distinct from each other. Inconsistent with the geographical distribution, the 2,500-year-old Linzi population showed greater genetic similarity to present-day European populations than to present-day east Asian populations. The 2,000-year-old Linzi population had features that were intermediate between the present-day European/2,500-year-old Linzi populations and the present-day east Asian populations.

Result: The smallest genetic distance for the present-day Linzi population was that from the Mongols, followed by those from mainland Japanese and Koreans. Surprisingly, the three smallest genetic distances for the 2,000-year-old Linzi population were from the present-day central Asian populations: the Kirghiz (Sary-Tash), followed by the Kazakh and the Uighurs. Even more surprisingly, the three smallest genetic distances for the 2,500-year-old Linzi population were from the Turkish, Icelander, and Finnish, rather than from the east Asian populations.

 

* Reconstructing the Evolutionary History of China: A Caveat About Inferences Drawn from Ancient DNA by Yong-Gang Yao, et al. (2003)

Abstract: The decipherment of the meager information provided by short fragments of ancient mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is notoriously difficult but is regarded as a most promising way toward reconstructing the past from the genetic perspective. By haplogroup-specific hypervariable segment (HVS) motif search and matching or near-matching with available modern data sets, most of the ancient mtDNAs can be tentatively assigned to haplogroups, which are often subcontinent specific. Further typing for mtDNA haplogroup-diagnostic coding region polymorphisms, however, is indispensable for establishing the geographic/genetic affinities of ancient samples with less ambiguity. In the present study, we sequenced a fragment (982 bp) of the mtDNA control region in 76 Han individuals from Taian, Shandong, China, and we combined these data with previously reported samples from Zibo and Qingdao, Shandong. The reanalysis of two previously published ancient mtDNA population data sets from Linzi (same province) then indicates that the ancient populations had features in common with the modern populations from south China rather than any specific affinity to the European mtDNA pool. Our results highlight that ancient mtDNA data obtained under different sampling schemes and subject to potential contamination can easily create the impression of drastic spatiotemporal changes in the genetic structure of a regional population during the past few thousand years if inappropriate methods of data analysis are employed.

 

* Reanalysis of Eurasian Population History: Ancient DNA Evidence of Population Affinities by C.C. Bennett, F.A. Kaestle (2006)

Abstract: Mitochondrial hypervariable region I genetic data from ancient populations at two sites in Asia-Linzi in Shandong (northern China) and Egyin Gol in Mongolia-were reanalyzed to detect population affinities. Data from 51 modern populations were used to generate distance measures (F^sub ST^'s) to the two ancient populations. The tests first analyzed relationships at the regional level and then compiled the top regional matches for an overall comparison to the two probe populations. The reanalysis showed that the Egyin Gol and Linzi populations have clear distinctions in genetic affinity. The Egyin Gol population as a whole appears to bear close affinities with modern populations of northern East Asia. The Linzi population seems to have some genetic affinities with the West, as suggested by the original analysis, although the original attribution of "European-like" seems to be misleading. We suggest that the Linzi individuals are potentially related to early Iranians, who are thought to have been widespread in parts of Central Eurasia and the steppe regions in the first millennium B.C., although some significant admixture between a number of populations of varying origin cannot be ruled out. We also examine the effect of sequence length on this type of genetic data analysis and discuss the results of previous studies on the Linzi sample.

Results:

Table 4 contains the comparisons of the Linzi and Egyin Gol samples to East and Central Asia .... The top half of the Linzi list is dominated by Southeast Asians, southern Chinese, and Central Asians. The lower half is dominated by northern Asians (save for the lowland Kirghiz and Akha). It is not clear how and why both Southeast Asians (and southern Chinese) and Central Asians are similar to the Linzi population, although this is only a relative comparison within the region. However, there is some debate over the nature of ancient East Asian genetic history, so possibly there are issues here that have yet to be illuminated ....

Table 5 is the total comparison of modern populations to Linzi and Egyin Gol from a composite of the top matches from each region, .... As for the Linzi individuals, they seem to be most highly related to Near Easterners (Turks, Iranians, and Iraqis), Armenians, and Eastern Europeans (Slavs, Hungarians), although others, such as Catalans and Iraqis, are mixed in. The Icelanders are twelfth on this list. The high placement of the Vietnamese may be an anomaly, error, or some element of ancient genetic history that is not clear ....

 

* Mitochondrial DNA Analysis of Yayoi Period Human Skeletal Remains from the Doigahama Site by Kazunari Igawa, et al.

Excerpt: The 2500-year-old Linzi population (group I: 15%, group II: 6%, group III: 3%, group IV: 65%, group V: 3%, group VI: 9%) resembled the 2000–2300-year-old Doigahama Yayoi population with respect to the high frequency for group IV. It was suggested that there were phylogenetically similar populations in China and Japan during the ancient period, from 2500 to 2000 years ago.

On the other hand, the low frequencies of group IV in the modern East-Asian populations were reported by Wang et al. In addition, their study indicated that the 2500-year-old Linzi populations showed less genetic resemblance to modern East-Asian populations. These findings suggest that more than one ancient population, which had different phylogenetic characteristics from modern East-Asian populations, existed in the past in East Asia. This is informative for estimating the phylogenetic relationships among ancient East-Asian populations. The resemblance between the ancient populations in China and Japan might support the notion that ancient China is the place from which the Doigahama Yayoi population immigrated. The amount of genetic data is still not sufficient enough to discuss the phylogenetic relationships among the ancient East-Asian populations. Further genetic studies are required to shed light on the phylogenetic relationships among the ancient East-Asian populations.

 

Geographicl Distribution of HVI Sequence Types Observed in Doigahama Yayoi Specimens

Individual Number	Sharing Populations (number of individuals)
1, 124, 1601	Vietnam (1)
1301, 1405, 1406, 1903, 88A	Thai (15), China Nei Mongol (11), China Xinjiang (11), China Hainan (10), China Yunnan (8), Vietnam (7), China Guizhou (6), Russia Buryat (6), Japan Okinawa (4), China Shandong (3), China Shanghai (2), Indonesia (1), China Bouyei (1), China Dai (1), Taiwan Yami (1) and other China (2)
914, 1604	China Guangxi (4), China Nei Mongol (4), China Guizhou (2), China Xinjiang (2), Taiwan Chinese (1), China Hubei (1), and other China (1)
1904	China Xinjiang (1)
1305	China Yunnan (7), China Shandong (4), Japan mainland (3), China Hainan (3), Thai (3), China Liaoning (2), China Guangxi (2), Russia Nivhi (2), South Korea (1), Taiwan Chinese (1), Indonesia (1) and other China (4)
913	Not found in East-Asian Population

 

 

Ancient Iranian peoples who settled Greater Iran in the 2nd millennium BC first appear in Assyrian records in the 9th century BC. They remain dominant throughout Classical Antiquity in Scythia and Persia.

The Iranian languages form a sub-branch of the Indo-Iranian sub-family, which is a branch of the family of Indo-European languages. Having descended from the Proto-Indo-Iranians, the Proto-Iranians separated from the Indo-Aryans around in the early 2nd millennium BC. The Proto-Iranians are traced to the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex, a Bronze Age culture of Central Asia. The area between northern Afghanistan and the Aral Sea is hypothesized to have been the region where the Proto-Iranians first emerged, following the separation of Indo-Iranian tribes.

By the 1st millennium BC, Medes, Persians, Bactrians and Parthians populated the Iranian plateau, while others such as the Scythians, Sarmatians, Cimmerians and Alans populated the steppes north of the Black Sea. The Saka and Scythian tribes remained mainly in the south and spread as far west as the Balkans and as far east as Xinjiang.

 

 

Scythians

Approximate extent of Scythia and the Scythian languages (orange) in the 1st century BC

The Scythians (斯基泰人) or Scyths were an Iranian speaking people of horse-riding nomadic pastoralists who dominated the Pontic steppe throughout Classical Antiquity. By Late Antiquity the closely-related Sarmatians came to dominate the Scyths in this area. Much of the surviving information about the Scyths comes from the Greek historian Herodotus (c. 440 BC) in his Histories, and archaeologically from the exquisite goldwork found in Scythian burial mounds in Ukraine and Southern Russia

The name "Scythian" has also been used to refer to various peoples seen as similar to the Scythians, or who lived anywhere in a vast area covering present-day Ukraine, Russia and Central Asia — known until medieval times as Scythia. The name was also used among early scholars studying the Proto Indo-Europeans, and within the framework of the Kurgan hypothesis the Scythians are considered a reasonable analogue for their Proto Indo-European ancestors.

Scholars generally classify the Scythian language as a member of the Eastern Iranian languages, and the Scythians as a branch of the ancient Iranian peoples expanding into the steppe regions north of Greater Iran from around 1000 BC.

Asians, especially Persians, knew the Scythians in Asia as Sakas. The Indo-Scythians had the name "Shaka" in South Asia, an extension on the name "Saka".

Ruled by small numbers of closely-allied élites, Scythians had a reputation for their archers, and many gained employment as mercenaries. Scythian élites had kurgan tombs.

In Late Antiquity the notion of a Scythian ethnicity grew more vague, and outsiders might dub any people inhabiting the Pontic-Caspian steppe as "Scythians", regardless of their language. Thus, Priscus, a Byzantine emissary to Attila, repeatedly referred to the latter's followers as "Scythians". In Attila's regime Edekon was the king of Scythians.

The Goths had displaced the Sarmatians in the 2nd century from most areas near the Roman frontier, and by early medieval times, the Turkic migration marginalized East Iranian dialects, and assimilated the Saka linguistically.

Archaeological remains of the Scythians include kurgan tombs (ranging from simple exemplars to elaborate "Royal kurgans" containing the "Scythian triad" of weapons, horse-harness, and Scythian-style wild-animal art, gold, silk, and animal sacrifices, in places also with suspected human sacrifices. Mummification techniques and permafrost have aided in the relative preservation of some remains. Scythian archaeology also examines the remains of North Pontic Scythian cities and fortifications.

Carbon-14 dating of kurgans has allowed archaeologists to trace their emergence in the Sayan-Altay area from about 3,000 BC, and their westward spread starting about 900 BC

Some of the first Bronze Age Scythian burials documented by modern archaeologists include the kurgans at Pazyryk in the Ulagan district of the Altay Republic, south of Novosibirsk in the Altay Mountains of southern Siberia. Archaeologists have extrapolated the Pazyryk culture from these finds: five large burial mounds and several smaller ones between 1925 and 1949, one opened in 1947 by Russian archaeologist Sergei Rudenko. Pazyryk culture flourished between the 7th and 3rd centuries BC in the area associated with the Sacae (Saka).

Genetic research in modern populations reveals that the same paternal Y-chromosome haplogroup (R1a1) represents a genetic lineage currently found in central, western and south Asia, and in Slavic populations of Europe. The distribution of this haplogroup has been posited to represent the spread of peoples from the Ukrainian steppelands which served as an ice-age refuge during the LGM, in the eneolithic succeeded by the Pit Grave ("Kurgan") culture. This latter culture is associated with the spread of Indo-European languages in the "Kurgan hypothesis". The R1a allele thus far predates the Scythians, and its distribution consequently cannot be used simplistically to trace Scythian migrations in particular.

The distribution of Y-chromosome haplogroup (G2) from Pakistan and northwest India and out to Spain rather closely mirrors the spread of the Scythians, Sarmatians, and their offshoot, the Alans. Haplogroup G2 reaches its highest worldwide concentration in the Caucasian Russian Republic of North Ossetia-Alania, and the present-day Ossetians, who speak a Scythian Northeast Iranic language are the last remnant of the ancient Alans. Although this may be indirect evidence of Scythian "genetic legacy", it is likewise of Neolithic origin and cannot be used as a one-to-one identification of Scythian ancestry.

Mitochondrial DNA extracted from skeletal remains obtained from excavated Scythian kurgans have produced a myriad of results and conclusions. Analysis of the HV1 sequence obtained from a male Scytho-Siberian's remains at the Kizil site in the Altai Republic revealed the individual possessed the N1a maternal lineage. The study also noted that haplogroup mtDNA N1a was found at a relatively high frequency in the southern fringes of the Eurasian steppe, Iran (8.3%), and within the Indian Havik group (8.3%), an upper Brahman caste. From this, a possible link to ancient populations presumed to have come from Europe that lived in the neighboring Central Asian parts of India and Iran was suggested.

Additionally, mitochondrial DNA has been extracted from two Scytho-Siberian skeletons found in the Altai Republic (Russia) dating back 2,500 years. Both remains were determined to be of males from a population who had characteristics "of mixed Euro- Mongoloid origin." One of the individuals was found to carry the F2a maternal lineage, and the other the D lineage, both of which are characteristic of East Eurasian populations.

Maternal genetic analysis of Saka period male and female skeletal remains from a double inhumation kurgan located at the Beral site in Kazakhstan determined that the two were most likely not closely related and were possibly husband and wife. The HV1 mitochondrial sequence of the male was similar to the Anderson sequence which is most frequent in European populations. Contrary, the HV1 sequence of the female suggested a greater likelihood of Asian origins. The study's findings were in line with the hypothesis that mixings between Scythians and other populations occurred. This was buttressed by the discovery of several objects with a Chinese inspiration in the grave. No conclusive associations with haplogroups were made though it was suggested that the female may have derived from either mtDNA X or D.

 

 

* 中 華 百 家 姓 一 覽 by greatchinese.com

「姓氏」在現代漢語中是一個詞，但在秦漢以前，姓和氏有明顯的區別。姓源於母系社會，同一個姓表示同一個母系的血緣關係。中國最早的姓，大都從「女」旁，如：姜，姚，姒，媯，嬴等，表示這是一些不同的老祖母傳下的氏族人群。而氏的產生則在姓之後，是按父系來標識血緣關係的結果，這只能在父權家長制確立時才有可能。因此，當我們讀到「黃帝軒轅氏，姬姓」以及「炎帝列山氏，薑姓」時，可以明白，中華民族共同始祖炎黃二帝原分屬兩個按母系血緣關係組織起來的部落或部落聯盟，一姓薑，一姓姬，而他們又分別擁有表示自己父權家長制首領的氏稱;列山，軒轅。姓和氏有嚴格區別又同時使用的的局面表明，母權制已讓位於父權制，但母系社會的影響還存在，這種影響一直到春秋戰國以後才逐漸消亡。

 

* The Ancestor of Zhou Dynasty's Royal Family, 后稷 by China History Forum

Excerpt: 姜 Jiang was a great clan in pre-Qin China. They helped the forming of Zhou dynasty and were given several states to rule. The famous state in the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring State period, 齊 (Qi State), was one of the 姜 (Jiang) states. They were also famous for their tall and fair women. A few famous Zhou dynasty beauties came from this clan, and not a few poems were written about them in the Book of Poems. The Zhou’s royal families of 姬 Ji and the families of 姜 Jiang frequently married each other. This custom was based on the ancient marriage traditions that two clans would establish the marriage relationship and married each other throughout the generations. Later on, the so-called “親上加親”(closeness added on closeness) in Chinese culture of marrying cousins at the mother’s side of family was the extension of this old custom. This custom was practiced till modern era.

Many scholars believed that 姜 (Jiang) belonged to the ethnic group of 羌 (Qiang) and probably was originally a nomadic tribe. Zhou people also claimed that they were originally descendents of 夏 Xia people and they lived (mixed) among the 戎 (rong – ancient tribes at the west of China) and 狄 (di – ancient tribes at the north of China) and had close relationships with 羌 (qiang) people.

 

 

Zhou Dynasty

The Zhou Dynasty (周朝; 1045 BC to 256 BC) was preceded by the Shang Dynasty and followed by the Qin Dynasty in China. The Zhou dynasty lasted longer than any other dynasty in Chinese history—though the actual political and military control of China by the dynasty only lasted during the Western Zhou. During the Zhou, the use of iron was introduced to China, while this period of Chinese history produced what many consider the zenith of Chinese bronze-ware making. The dynasty also spans the period in which the written script evolved from the ancient stage as seen in early Western Zhou bronze inscriptions, to the beginnings of the modern stage, in the form of the archaic clerical script of the late [Warring States period].

During the Zhou Dynasty, the origins of native Chinese philosophy developed, its initial stages beginning in the 6th century BC. The greatest Chinese philosophers, those who made the greatest impact on later generations of Chinese, were Kong Fuzi (Latin: Confucius), founder of Confucianism, and Laozi, founder of Daoism. Other philosophers, theorists, and schools of thought in this era were Mozi (Latin: Micius), founder of Mohism, Mengzi (Latin: Mencius), a famous Confucian who expanded upon Kong Fuzi's legacy, Shang Yang and Han Feizi, responsible for the development of ancient Chinese Legalism (the core philosophy of the Qin Dynasty), and Xunzi, who was arguably the center of ancient Chinese intellectual life during his time, even more so than iconic intellectual figures such as Mencius.

The Yongzheng emperor (fourth emperor of the Manchu Qing Dynasty) proclaimed that that the Chinese were not superior to the barbarians. To justify his statements, he declears that the Zhou dynasty, which much of Chinese civilization is descended from was a "barbarian state" because he alleged it had been part of the Xirong (西戎), who were barbarians.

* Video: Schythians or Huns?

 

 

Seima-Turbino Phenomenon

The Altai Mountains (阿爾泰山脈,) are a mountain range in central Asia, where Russia, China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan come together, and where the rivers Irtysh, Ob and Yenisei have their sources. The Altai Mountains are known as the Turkic peoples' birthplace. The proposed Altaic language family (include the Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, Korean, and Japonic languages) takes its name from the mountain range.

The population during the Copper Age has been described as paleomongolid in the east of what is now Mongolia, and as Europid in the west.

The Altai Mountains in what is now southern Russia and central China have been identified as the point of origin of a cultural enigma termed the Seima-Turbino Phenomenon. It is conjectured that climatic problems in this region around the start of the second millennium BC created ecological, economic and political changes which triggered a rapid and massive migration of peoples westward into northeast Europe and eastward into southeast China, Vietnam and Thailand across a frontier of some 4,000 miles. This migration took place in just five to six generations and led to peoples from Finland in the west to Thailand in the east employing the same metal working technology and, in some areas, horse breeding and riding. It is further conjectured that this phenomenon may have been the medium through which the Uralic group of languages spread across Europe and Asia, ultimately producing 39 modern languages including Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian and Lappish.

 

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Fuzhou

Map Showing City of Fuzhou (Foochow)

Fuzhou (福州; also seen as Foochow, Fuchow, Fuh-chau or Hokchew in earlier Western documents) is the capital and the largest prefecture-level city of Fujian (福建) province. It is also referred to as Rongcheng (榕城) which means "city of banyan trees" and Mindong (闽东} (lit. East of Fujian) along with Ningde.

It is the capital of the province, and is situated on the north bank of the estuary of Fujian's largest river, the Min River, which gives access to the interior and to the neighboring provinces of Jiangxi and Zhejiang.

Pre-Han: The exact foundation date of this city is not known however when the Yue Kingdom to the north of Fujian was annexed by the Chu Kingdom in 306 BC, a branch of the royal family of the defeated Yue fled to Fujian and became the Minyue (闽越) tribe.

The first city wall of Fuzhou was built in 202 BC when Liu Bang, the founding emperor of the Han Dynasty, gave permission to Wuzhu (无诸), the king of Minyue, to set up his capital in Fuzhou. The city was named Ye (冶), meaning "The Beautiful". The name has changed many times, but the city has been continuously occupied since 202 BC and has never suffered major destruction by wars or natural disasters.

The Minyue was annexed by Han in 110 BC.

Han to Song: Under the Han, Fuzhou became Ye County.

During the Jin Dynasty, West Lake, East Lake (now silted up) and numerous canals in the city were constructed (282 AD). When the Jin Dynasty collapsed, the first wave of immigrants of the gentile class arrived in Fujian (308 AD).

Hualin Temple in the original Ye city, which has been declared a national heritage site, was built in 964 AD according to documentation, but was carbon-dated to the 4th or 5th century AD. It is probably the oldest existing wooden structure in China.

During the Tang Dynasty (725 AD), the city started to be called Fuzhou.

More immigrants arrived from the north starting from 892 as the Tang Dynasty was collapsing. After the Tang Dynasty fell in 907, the Wang family managed to establish a kingdom called Min (909 – 945) with its capital in Fuzhou, then known as Changle. Min is still used as another name for the province of Fujian, in names of region such as minnan, and the river that runs through Fuzhou is called Min Jiang.

New city walls were built in 282 AD, 901 AD, 905 AD, and 974 AD, so the city had many layers of walls — more than the Chinese capital.

Emperor Taizong of the Song Dynasty (宋) ordered the destruction of all the walls in Fuzhou in 978 AD but new walls were rebuilt later. The latest was built in 1371 AD.

During the Southern Song Dynasty, Fuzhou became more prosperous; many scholars came here to live and work. Among them were Zhu Xi (朱熹), the most celebrated Chinese philosopher after Confucius, and Xin Qiji (辛弃疾), the greatest composer of ci (a specialized form of poem).

Mongolian Yuan Dynasty: Marco Polo, an Italian guest of the Emperor Kubilai, transcribed, after the conventions of Italian orthography, the place name as Fugiu. This was not the local Min pronunciation but that of the Mandarin administrative class.

Ming: Between 1405 and 1433 AD, a fleet of the Ming Imperial navy under Admiral Zheng He sailed from Fuzhou to the Indian Ocean seven times; on three occasions the fleet landed on the east coast of Africa. Before the last sailing, Zheng erected a stele dedicated to the goddess Tian-Fei (Matsu) near the seaport.

In the so-called "Fujian Palace", unearthed during runway construction in Zhanggang Town in 2001, are statues of Zheng and other navy officers -- and of Niccolò da Conti, a Venetian merchant who joined the Ming fleet in Kozhikode in 1421.

Galeote Pereira, a Portuguese soldier and trader, was taken prisoner during the pirate extermination campaign of 1549 and imprisoned here. Later transferred to a sort of internal exile elsewhere in the province, Pereira escaped to Macau in 1553. The record of his experiences in the Ming Empire, logged by the Jesuits at Goa in 1561, was the first non-clerical account of China to reach the West since Polo's.

Galeote Pereira was a 16th century Portuguese soldier of fortune who has left us one of the earliest accounts by a westerner of life in China's Ming Dynasty, indeed the first detailed observation of that civilisation by a non-cleric since that of Marco Polo.

Pereira and other Portuguese mercenaries defended the Siamese Ayutthaya Kingdom against the invading army of King Tabinshwehti of Bago in the 1540s. Pereira engaged in smuggling along the Ming Empire's South China Seacoast, for which enterprise one notorious centre was the isle of Wuyu in Xiamen Bay. He was aboard one of two junks seized in Ming Shizong (the Jiajing Emperor)'s Pirate Extermination Campaign of 1549. Happily not among the crewmembers executed extrajudicially, Pereira and others were incarcerated at Fuzhou. During and subsequent to his trial, the detained aliens were taken out "many times .. and were brought to the palaces of noblemen to be seen of them and their wives." Finally the prisoners were despatched to live out their sentences of separate internal exile.

By 1553 Pereira, knowing nothing of the fate of the others, had made his way by bribe and stealth to his countrymen's base at Macau. In mid-February he was in the Chuanshan Archipelago, assisting at the exhumation of the incorrupt remains of Francis Xavier. Sometime in the eight years following his reappearance at Macau, Pereira wrote down his tale of prison and exile (and hearsay) in the Ming Empire. His account was logged at the Goa Inquisition in 1561, and a copy of it appendixed in that year's report. Fernão Mendes Pinto's Peregrinação ("Pilgrimage", 1614) depends heavily on Pereira at several points.

Qing: In the 19th century, Lin Zexu, a native of Fuzhou, led an unsuccessful attempt to resist the British fleet at Canton Bay, and Lin was exiled to the Russian border. At the end of the First Opium War, Fuzhou became one of the five Chinese treaty ports opened by the Treaty of Nanjing (signed in 1842).

Culture: Fuzhou, also known as the City of Banyan after the many Banyan trees that dot the city landscape, may not be as rich in history as some other ancient Chinese cities but still boasts a fair number of historical sights.

People in Fuzhou mostly speak Min Dong (閩東語̄) and Fuzhou dialect is consider the standard form of Min Dong language.

Min opera, known as Fuzhou drama, is one of major operas in Fujian Province. It enjoys a good popularity in Fuzhou, Middle Fujian, East Fujian and North Fujian where Fuzhou dialect is spoken, as well as in Taiwan and Malay Archipelago. It became a fixed opera in the early 20th Century. There are more than 1000 plays of Min Opera, most of which originates from folk tales, historical novels or ancient legends, including such traditional plays as "Making Seal", "The Purple Jade Hairpin" and "Switching Fairy Peach with Litchi".

姓氏

根據2006年的人口數據，福州人口最多的首十個姓氏依次是林、陳、黃、鄭、王、張、李、吳、劉、楊。這個排名與全國十大姓頗為不同，但與鄰近的台灣相近。

 

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Fuzhou Dialect

 

Fuzhou dialect (福州話), also known as Foochow dialect, Foochow, Foochowese, Fuzhounese, or Fuzhouhua, is considered the standard dialect of Min Dong, which is a branch of Min Chinese mainly spoken in the eastern part of Fujian Province. Native speakers also call it Bàng-uâ (平話), meaning the language spoken in everyday life. In Singapore and Malaysia, the language is known as Hokchiu, which is the Min Dong pronunciation of Fuzhou.

Although traditionally called a dialect, Fuzhou dialect is actually a separate language according to linguistic standards, because it is not mutually intelligible with other Min languages, let alone other Chinese languages. Therefore, whether Fuzhou dialect is a dialect or a language is highly disputable.

Centered in Fuzhou City, Fuzhou dialect mainly covers eleven cities and counties, viz.: Fuzhou (福州), Pingnan (屏南), Gutian (古田), Luoyuan (羅源), Minqing (閩清), Lianjiang (連江, Matsu included), Minhou (閩侯), Changle (長樂), Yongtai (永泰), Fuqing (福清) and Pingtan (平潭). Fuzhou dialect is also the second local language in northern and middle Fujian cities and counties, like Nanping (南平), Shaowu (邵武), Shunchang (順昌), Sanming (三明) and Youxi (尤溪).

Fuzhou dialect is also widely spoken in some regions abroad, especially in Southeastern Asian countries like Malaysia and Indonesia. The city of Sibu in Malaysia is called "New Fuzhou" due to the influx of immigrants there in the early 1900s. Similarly, the language has spread to the USA, UK and Japan as a result of immigration in recent decades.

By the end of the Qing Dynasty, Fuzhou society had been largely monolingual. But for decades the Chinese government has discouraged the use of the colloquial in school education and in media, so the number of Mandarin speakers has been greatly boosted. It is reported that merely less than half of the children and youngsters in Fuzhou are able to speak this language.

Nevertheless, it should be noted that Fuzhou dialect is currently widely spoken among some native speakers as an "endearing" language. Speaking Fuzhou dialect in Fuzhou often allows mutual speakers a certain level of familiarity. Even though Mandarin Chinese is more often heard in casual conversations on the city streets, the careful observer will notice that in more communal settings, such as small neighborhoods in the city or the surrounding countryside, Fuzhou dialect is often the dominant language.

In Mainland China, Fuzhou dialect has been officially listed as Intangible Cultural Heritage and its promotion work is being systematically carried out. In Matsu, Taiwan, the teaching of Fuzhou dialect has been successfully introduced into elementary schools, alongside the Taiwanese localization movement.

 

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Min (Ten Kingdoms)

Min (閩) was one of the Ten Kingdoms which was in existence between the years of 909 and 945. It existed in a mountainous region of modern day Fujian province and had a history of quasi-independent rule. Its capital was Fuzhou 福州. It was founded by Wang Shenzhi (王审知).

Wang Shenzhi’s father was given the title of Surveillance Commissioner in 892. Wang Shenzhi himself was named military commissioner, and in 909, in the wake of the collapse of the Tang Dynasty two years earlier, named himself the Prince of Min. Wang Shenzhi’s son declared himself the Emperor of Min in 933. At that point, his father was posthumously named Min Taizu.

The capital of the Min Kingdom was Changle, now known as Fuzhou. The kingdom was essentially limited to modern-day Fujian Province in China’s southeast.

The territory of the Min was relatively isolated and rugged, thus not as economically prosperous as other regions of the Chinese realm. The Min court attempted to attract scholars that would assist in constructing an effective bureaucratic and tax system to bring the kingdom up to contemporary standards. Maritime trade developed over this period of time. This would set the stage for a successful regional maritime trade that could continue during future Chinese dynasties.

In 943, one of Wang Shenzhi’s sons rebelled and declared independence from the Min in the northwest of the territory of the kingdom. The Min court asked the Southern Tang for assistance in quelling the rebellion in Yin. Rather than assisting the Min government, the Southern Tang came in and absorbed the territory into its own holdings.

Seeing the threat posed by the Southern Tang, the Min court declared its allegiance to the Wuyue kingdom to its north. However, this did not stop the Southern Tang from marching in and incorporating the remainder of the Min Kingdom into its holdings in 945

 

Sovereigns in Min (Ten Kingdoms) Kingdom 909-945 (including Yin (943-945)

Temple Names ( Miao Hao 廟號 miao4 hao4)	Posthumous Names ( Shi Hao 諡號 )	Personal Names	Period of Reigns	Era Names (Nian Hao 年號) and their according range of years
太祖	忠懿王 zhong1 yi4 wang2	王審知	909-925	Did not exist
Did not exist	Did not exist	王延翰	925-926	Did not exist
Tai Zong (太宗)	Hui Di (惠帝 hui4 di4)	王延鈞	926-935	Longqi (龍啟) 933-935 Yonghe (永和) 935
Kang Zong (康宗)	Too tedious thus not used when referring to this sovereign	王繼鵬	935-939	Tongwen (通文) 936-939
Jing Zong (景宗)	Too tedious thus not used when referring to this sovereign	王延羲	939-944	Yonglong (永隆) 939-944
Did not exist	Tian De Di (天德帝) (as Emperor of Yin)	王延政	943-945	Tiande (天德) 943-945

 

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Western Influence in Fujian

That people from the Western hemisphere have been visiting China from before the Christian era is beyond doubt. The first known name of a westerner is that of Alopen and he came from Syria in about 635. He may have been a Nestorian priest and his visit is recorded on the Nestorian Stone tablet, now in Xi’an. But before that it is recorded that an unnamed ambassador from the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius arrived in Beijing in 166. The scarcity of records of Western visitations means little, since it is known for example that the upper classes in the Tang dynasty favored the employment of westerners as servants. When Alopen arrived in Chang An (Xi’an) it is very unlikely that he would find himself the sole representative of a foreign land as did many later arrivals in the last couple of centuries.

The first tangible record, for what it is worth, of Westerners in Fuzhou is that of Marco Polo, in about 1285 when he visited Fujiu. He observed that the people were the subjects of Kublai Khan, were ‘idolaters’, and much engaged in commerce and manufacture. ‘In these parts the tigers are of great size and strength. Ginger and galangal are produced in great quantities as well as other drugs.’ He did not seem to be very impressed with Fuzhou and barely gives the city a mention other than to remark that, ‘The people in this part of the country are addicted to eating human flesh, esteeming it more delicate than any other, provided that the person has not been occasioned by disease … They are a most savage race of men, insomuch that when they slay their enemies in battle, they are anxious to drink their blood and afterwards they devour their flesh.’

Given that Marco Polo dictated his book in prison several years after he returned from China, the accuracy of his remarks may be suspect. Either his memory was clouded by that time, or his ghost writer was more imaginative than he was. Some suggest that he did not visit this part of China at all. Nevertheless, he was impressed with Quanzhou (Zaiton), two hundred kilometres to the south of Fuzhou and according to Marco Polo, fifteen miles from Guangzhou. He claims to have visited Quanzhou, after leaving Fuzhou and making a detour that takes in Guilin and Guangzhou. He found Quanzhou to be a bustling port, was impressed by the quantity of pepper imports and noted that sugar was produced.

"There is a remarkable passage by Rustichello of Pisa, the "as-told-to" author of The Travels of Marco Polo, that appears to have escaped the attention of Jewish historians altogether. It tells how, when Messer Maffeo, Marco's uncle, and Messer Marco himself were in the city of Fu-Chau, there was in their company a certain Saracen who spoke to them as follows: "In such-and-such a place there is a community whose religion nobody knows. It is evidently not idolatrous, since they keep no idols. They do not worship fire. They do not profess Mahomet. And they do not appear to observe the Christian order. I suggest that we should go and have a talk with them. "Marco Polo and his uncle did just that. At first, writes Rustichello, the members of this mysterious community were reluctant to talk, for they were afraid that their visitors had been sent by the Great Khan to make this investigation in order to get them into trouble. But Maffeo and Marco attended the place regularly day after day, familiarizing themselves with these people and inquiring about their affairs. They discovered that they did indeed hold the Christian faith. For they possessed books and Maffeo and Marco, poring over them, began to interpret the writing. Translating it word by word from one language to another, till they found that they were the words of the Psalter.

A Psalter is a volume containing the Book of Psalms and which often contains other devotional material. Psalms (Hebrew: Tehilim‎, תהילים, or "praises") is a book of the Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament), included in the collected works known as the "Writings" or Ketuvim.

They inquired from what source they had received their faith and their rule; and their informants replied: "From our forefathers." It came out that they had in a certain temple of their three pictures representing three apostles of the seventy who went through the world, preaching. They declared that it was these three who had instructed their ancestors in this faith long ago, and that it had been preserved among them for 700 years. For a long time they had been without teaching, so that they were "ignorant of the cardinal doctrines." In other words, it seems that their ancestors in China were practicing a form of Judaism but were unaware of the events of the Christian era.

The Moroccan traveller Ebn-e Batutta visited the port of Zaytun - (modern day Quanzhou) and still known as Citong - in the mid-fourteenth century. He encountered a certain Shaykh Borhã noddin who gathered donations for the Sufi congregation of the Shrine of Abu Es’hã q-e Kã zeruni in Kã zerun, Iran.

During the period of the Mongol Yuan dynasty, China was open for trade and foreign intercourse of all kinds, including religious tolerance. The Jesuits were most successful in introducing Christianity, but the inroads made and the accumulated trust that might just have encouraged trade were lost when the Pope decided to undo a couple of hundred years of the work of his missionaries by countermanding their acceptance of ancestor worship.

The Mongol empire fell and China officially closed its doors to foreign trade for 500 years. Many tried to engage in trade throughout the Ming and the early parts of the Qing dynasties, but the Chinese simply did not require to trade with the West or any other foreign trader, being satisfied that their own products satisfied their needs. For centuries the West failed to appreciate the validity of such a position and did not recognise the highly sophisticated systems that existed for trade and commerce in China. In 1000 years the only contribution that the West made was through the correction of the calendar by the Jesuits. Many an Emperor told Western ambassadors that he was not interested in the gadgets and toys that the West had to offer.

It was not until the 17th Century that Fujian started to feel pressure from the West to trade. The first probably came in the form of the Portuguese based in Macao who were not averse to raiding and pillaging along the southeast coast. When Portuguese influence was in decline, the Dutch in 1602 made their mark when the viceroy of Fujian Province reported to the Court in Beijing that the ‘Hong Mao’ (Red heads), had attempted to establish a base. He reported to the Emperor that they had been dissuaded from doing so. Whether they established a base or not, the Dutch were apparently in Fuzhou long enough to be able to make an extraordinarily detailed and accurate survey of the mouth of the Min River and Fuzhou District, as shown on Bellini's map of 1773 'suivant les Hollandois'. The Dutch were evidently in Fuzhou for some considerable time and were accepted by the Chinese generally. One could hardly create such a chart without the consent and assistance of the local people. This map and others created in the 16th to 18th centuries suggest that foreigners were in China in considerable numbers, sufficient to map accurately much of mainland China and not only the coastal areas.

In the ensuing years from the visit of Marco Polo and the opening of Fuzhou as a Treaty port in 1843, there were many other foreign visitors to Fuzhou, but there is little in the literature other than intense mapping, to mark such occasions. The reasons for this may be twofold. The first is the positioning of Fuzhou City. Fuzhou was established in 202 BC as the City of Ye. It is surrounded by mountains and the approach to the city by sea is through a narrow swift flowing passage of the Min River that is difficult to navigate. Furthermore, by land routes Fuzhou was, as it is now, the end of the line and not part of any major trading route. The second reason is that the only foreign trade port permitted in China was Guangdong (Canton) and foreigners were not supposed to be roaming freely around China.

Immediately before the First Opium War there was considerable visible activity. Opium receiving stations of the great trading houses floated offshore Fuzhou and handled about $2 million of business annually by the mid 1840s - before the port was officially opened.

Problems for the Chinese with foreigners started in the late 18th Century. The British East India Company trading in India, China and Indonesia was prohibited by protectionist Acts of Parliament from importing into Britain any textiles, silks and the like, that would compete with local industry. This left the Company with only tea as a commodity of importance that could be sold in Britain. Since China demanded in exchange for tea, only gold or silver and would not accept any trade materials other than materials from India, the company was left with a serious imbalance in their dealings. From 1792 to 1807 imports to England were valued at 27 million pounds while exports to China were worth only 16 million pounds.

At first diplomatic representations to the Court were made, first by Lieutenant-Colonel Cathcart in 1788 who died on the way to China, and then by Lord Macartney in 1792. Lord Macartney was unsuccessful in obtaining any of the concessions that the Company had hoped for from the Chinese Government and the Company had to take other measures to improve the balance of trade. Two products from India found acceptance in China, one was raw cotton and the other was opium. As the Chinese took up the use of opium for recreational rather than medicinal purposes, imports increased from 600 cases in 1750 to 5000 cases in 1815. In that year a further attempt was made to open trade by diplomatic means through Lord Amherst. He was even less successful than Lord Macartney.

Nonetheless, attempts were made to trade in Fujian before Fuzhou was 'officially' opened to trade. In 1832 the redoubtable Prussian missionary doctor cum diplomat interpreter and later opium trader Karl Friedrich August Gutslaff visited Fuzhou with Captain Lindsey of the British ship Lord Amherst. Lindsey managed to sell some of his trade goods but Gutslaff distributed Christian tracts 'to eager and grateful readers'. Gutslaff also reported that the common people were very friendly, but they received a less friendly welcome from the City’s officials.

By 1825 the balance of trade had swung in the other direction, wherein the demand for silver to pay for opium was beginning to affect the national economy. The trade in opium was made illegal in 1798 but little was done to enforce the law. In 1838 the Emperor appointed Lin Zexu, a highly respected official from Fuzhou to put a halt to the opium trade. Lin had gained some credibility as an honest dealer through the suppression of salt smuggling.

Lin first appealed to the populous to stop using opium, and to the Chinese traders to stop dealing in opium with foreign traders. He even wrote to Queen Victoria threatening to cut off the trade in tea and rhubarb. He felt that to withhold the laxative might bring the constipated nation to reason. In 1839 Lin Zexu finally took decisive action. He demanded that the dealers hand over their opium but for six weeks they refused to comply. He tried to arrest Lancelot Dent, one of the major opium dealers and then blockaded the factories. The dealers persuaded by the British resident handed over some three million pounds of raw opium that Lin Zexu contrived with some difficulty to destroy.

By a curious sleight of mind, the opium traders persuaded the British Government that it was unreasonable to destroy the goods that they intended to smuggle into China. The British Superintendent of Trade in China wrote to the ‘Minister of the Emperor of China’ protesting against the violent outrages against British residents. In response, in June 1840, the British, with 4,000 troops backed by four armed steam ships, blockaded Guangzhou’s harbour and so the First Opium War began. The war ended after the British supported by a number of other nations looking for spoils, had destroyed defences in Guangzhou and Tianjin, and had taken part of Guangzhou city. The Treaty of Nanjing was signed in August 1842. This treaty stipulated the opening of Guangzhou, Fuzhou, Xiamen, Ningbo and Shanghai to Foreign trade and the ceding of Hong Kong in perpetuity. The treaty provisions were then extended to the Americans, the French and later to other nations. From that time on, but only for another twenty or so years, the name of the city of Fuzhou – or Foochow - became well recognised in England.

 

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Matsu Islands

The Matsu Islands (馬祖群島; Ma-tsu Tao) are a minor archipelago of 19 islands and islets in the Taiwan Strait administered as Lienchiang County (連江縣), Fujian Province of the Republic of China (Taiwan).

They are named after the goddess Mazu. Kinmen is the other archipelago on the Fujian coast controlled by the ROC.

History: Fujianese Mainlanders started migrating to the islands during the Yuan Dynasty. Most people on Matsu came from Houguan (侯官) (today Changle County (長樂縣), Fujian).

長樂市是中國福建省福州市轄下的一個縣級市。 位於中國東南沿海，處於長江口與珠江口海岸線的正中。屬於中國頒布的沿海開放市（縣）之一。長樂是明代著名航海家鄭和七下西洋的啟錨地，也是福建省著名僑鄉，海外及港澳僑民近40萬人。通行閩東方言福州話，洋嶼琴江村為北方官話方言島。

Some crewmen of Zheng He temporarily stayed on the islands. In early Qing Dynasty, pirates gathered here and residents temporarily left.

As part of Fujian, Matsu Islands were not colonised by Japan, as the island of Taiwan and Penghu (from 1895 onwards) were; or occupied by Japan as in the case of Kinmen during World War II.

After the Kuomintang (KMT) retreated to Taiwan in 1949, the ROC retained the part of Lienchiang County offshore (and the entire Kinmen County as well).

Demographics: The language spoken by Matsu residents is Fuzhou dialect (福州話), a dialect of Min Dong Language.

Chen (陳) is the most common surname, then Lin (林), Wang (王), Tsao (曹), and Liu (劉).

Several islands are not inhabited permanently, some of which are stationed by Republic of China soldiers.

Connection to the Goddess: Matsu, though named after the goddess Matsu, is written with a different character that has a different tone. But the Matsu Islands are not the birthplace of the goddess as the human Lin Muoniang -- Meizhou Island is—but her death place (on a seaport named after her on Nangan Island).

The Matsu Nangan Heavenly Empress Palace (馬祖南竿天后宮), a temple dedicated to the goddess, contains the sarcophagus of Lin Muoniang. It is, however, not as popular as the Meizhou temple.

Most Taiwanese pilgrims to Meizhou start off their journey in the Matsu Islands because they are the closest Taiwan-controlled base to Meizhou, which is controlled by the PRC.

* 台湾的福州籍移民

 

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Hainanese and Eastern Min in Singapore

This group constitutes 5% of the Chinese Singaporean population. Of them, the majority are Hainanese, from Hainan, speaking Hainanese.

The others, who included the Hockchew (Fuzhou), Hockchia and the Hinghwas, who came from Northeastern Fujian and Southern Zhejiang. They spoke various Eastern Min languages. As late-comers to Singapore (late 19th century), most of them worked as shop helpers, chefs, and waiters in the hospitality sector. Hainanese Chicken Rice is a famous dish.

The Singaporean Hainanese were also known for their Western food, as many of the early Hainanese migrants worked as cooks on European ships.

 

 

Sibu, Sarawak

Sibu is a town, and the capital of Sibu District in Sibu Division, Sarawak, east Malaysia. It is located at the confluence of the Rajang and Igan Rivers, some 60 kilometers from the ocean. The population is dominated by Chinese especially the Fuzhou as well as indigenous Melanau, Malay, and Iban.

Sibu has a reputation as a rough, frontier town on the riverside. Even today, it is one of the most bustling towns in East Malaysia. It was originally called “New Foochow” after the Foochow (福州) immigrants from the Fujian province of China, who settled in Sibu in the early 20th century at the invitation of Rajah Charles Brooke. However, there were many ethnic groups immigrant from China at that time, such as Heng Hua (兴化), Hokkien (福建) and others. These people brings a lot of positive changes to Sibu town, putting effort to make a greater SIBU. The new settlement was located next to a small Melanau village that had been established in the 1850s. The first group of Chinese immigrants from Fuzhou,China , led by Pastor Wong Nai Siong (黄乃裳牧师), reached Sarawak in year 1900.

With the Rajang River becoming increasingly bustling with economic activity, Sibu served an important role in the Brooke administration as a trading centre between the coast and the vast upriver hinterland. Sibu continues to fulfill this role today.

Sibu Fort, which was built by Rajah Brooke in 1862, and once located at Race Course Road, no longer exists.

There are a few cultural attractions of the local Chinese community, especially the Foochows. The Sungai Merah Heritage Walk is a landscaped park situated in a township called Sungai Merah where the earliest Foochow settlers first landed when they arrived in 1902. The Foochow Centennial Celebration Building commemorates 100 years of Foochow immigration to Sibu. Another landmark of Sibu is the century old Tua Pek Kong Temple with Sibu’s landmark 7-storey pagoda. Sibu Gateway, which is located on Pedada Road and Kampung Nyabor Road, houses displays of the twelve Chinese zodiac animals.

 

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Chinatown (Manhattan)

Photo from newyorkchinatown.org

New York's Chinatown (紐約華埠) — a neighborhood of Manhattan — is an ethnic Chinese enclave with a large population of Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans as well as a long-standing Chinese cultural influence. Manhattan's Chinatown is one of the largest ethnic Chinese communities outside of Asia.

Ah Ken and early Chinese immigration: Although Quimbo Appo is claimed to have arrived in the area during the 1840s, the first Chinese person credited as having permanently immigrated to Chinatown was Ah Ken, a Cantonese businessman, who eventually founded a successful cigar store on Park Row. He first arrived in New York around 1858 where he was "probably one of those Chinese mentioned in gossip of the sixties [1860s] as peddling 'awful' cigars at three cents apiece from little stands along the City Hall park fence -- offering a paper spill and a tiny oil lamp as a lighter", according to author Alvin Harlow in Old Bowery Days: The Chronicles of a Famous Street (1931).

Later immigrants would similarly find work as "cigar men" or carrying billboards and Ah Ken's particular success encouraged cigar makers William Longford, John Occoo and John Ava to also ply their trade in Chinatown eventually forming a monopoly on the cigar trade. It has been speculated that he may have been Ah Kam who kept a small boarding house on lower Mott Street and rented out bunks to the first Chinese immigrants to arrive in Chinatown. It was with the profits he earned as a landlord, earning an average of $100 a month, that he was able to open his Park Row smoke shop around which modern-day Chinatown would grow.

Chinese Exclusion Period: Faced with increasing discrimination and new laws which prevented participation in many occupations on the West Coast, some Chinese immigrants moved to the East Coast cities in search of employment. Early businesses in these cities included hand laundries and restaurants. Chinatown started on Mott Street, Park, Pell and Doyers streets, east of the notorious Five Points district. By 1870, there was a Chinese population of 200. By the time the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was passed, the population was up to 2,000 residents. By 1900, there were 7,000 Chinese residents, but fewer than 200 Chinese women.

The early days of Chinatown were dominated by Chinese "tongs" (now sometimes rendered neutrally as "associations"), which were a mixture of clan associations, landsman's associations, political alliances (Kuomintang (Nationalists) vs Communist Party of China) and (more secretly) crime syndicates. The associations started to give protection from harassment due to anti-Chinese sentiment. Each of these associations was aligned with a street gang. The associations were a source of assistance to new immigrants - giving out loans, aiding in starting business, and so forth.

Post-immigration Reform: In the years after the United States enacted the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, allowing many more immigrants from Asia into the country, the population of Chinatown exploded. Geographically, much of the growth was to neighborhoods to the north. In the 1990s, Chinese people began to move into some parts of the western Lower East Side, which 50 years earlier was populated by Eastern European Jews and 20 years earlier was occupied by Hispanics. Although very much diminished from its hey-day at the turn of the century, there is still a small Jewish community primarily on eastern part of Grand Street as well as some businesses on Grand and Essex and elsewhere, such as the famous Katz's Deli and a number of synagogues and other old religious establishments (see The Lower East Side Remembered & Revisited, Joyce Mendelsohn, Columbia University Press, revised edition, 2009.

By 2009 many newer Chinese immigrants settled along East Broadway instead of the historic core west of the Bowery. In addition Mandarin began to eclipse Cantonese as the predominant Chinese dialect in New York's Chinatown during the period. The New York Times says that the Flushing Chinatown now rivals Manhattan's Chinatown in terms of being a cultural center for Chinese-speaking New Yorkers' politics and trade.

Demographics: Until the 1960s, the majority of the Chinese population in Chinatown emigrated from Guangdong province and Hong Kong, thus they were native speakers of Cantonese, especially the Canton and Taishan dialects. A minority of Hakka was also represented. Mandarin was rarely spoken by residents even well into the 1980s. Most recent immigrants are from Mainland China, and hence speak Mandarin, the official spoken language of China. Immigration reform in 1965 opened the door to a huge influx of Cantonese speakers from Hong Kong, and Cantonese became the dominant tongue. But since the late 1980s and 1990s, the vast majority of new Chinese immigrants have come from mainland China, especially Fujian Province, and tend to speak Mandarin along with their regional dialects. Most Fuzhou immigrants are illegal immigrants while most of the Cantonese immigrants are legal immigrants in Manhattan's Chinatown. With the coming of illegal Fuzhou immigrants during the 1990s, there is now a Fuzhou Community within the eastern portion of Manhattan's Chinatown which started on the East Broadway portion during the early 1990s and later emerged north onto the Eldridge Street portion of Manhattan's Chinatown by the late 1990s and early 2000s. Although the Fuzhou community and its population — which is now hardly growing — have emerged within Manhattan's Chinatown, the Cantonese population successfully still remains stable and large and successfully continues to retain the large stable Cantonese community identity where the Cantonese residents still have a place of gathering that was established decades ago in the western portion/main section of Manhattan's Chinatown — unlike the Cantonese population/community identity that is declining very rapidly in Brooklyn's Chinatown.

Now the increasing Fuzhou influx has shifted into Brooklyn's Chinatown in the Sunset Park section of Brooklyn and replacing the Cantonese population more significantly than Manhattan's Chinatown. Since Brooklyn's Chinatown is smaller than Manhattan's Chinatown, and given its rapidly increasing Fuzhou population than in Manhattan's Chinatown and all other Chinese communities in NYC, Brooklyn's Chinatown is quickly becoming the new Little Fuzhou in NYC or Brooklyn's East Broadway (布鲁克東百老匯). In the past during the late 1980s and 1990s most of the new Fuzhou immigrants arriving into NYC were settling in Manhattan's Chinatown and later formed the first Fuzhou community in NYC within Manhattan's Chinatown after the waves of Cantonese settled and formed their own community in Manhattan's Chinatown, but by the 2000s the Fuzhou population/community growth slowed. As the Fuzhou community within Manhattan's Chinatown slowed in growth in the 2000s, the Fuzhou population began to increase in Brooklyn's Chinatown and is now home to the fastest growing Fuzhou population than Manhattan's Chinatown and all other Chinese communities in NYC and is replacing the Little Fuzhou already established within Manhattan's Chinatown as the largest Fuzhou population/community in NYC at a tremendous rate. Even though Brooklyn's Chinatown now has fewer Cantonese people than Manhattan's Chinatown, there are still many Cantonese shops between 50th-62nd streets on 8th Avenue.

Snakeheads (蛇頭) are Chinese gangs that smuggle people to other countries. They are found in the Fujian region of China and smuggle their customers into wealthier Western countries in Western Europe, North America or Australasia. The rate of payment for successful smuggling can be as high as US$70,000. Snakeheads use various methods to get their customers to the West. They may employ the use of stolen or altered passports, improperly obtained visas, and bribes to move people from nation to nation until they arrive at their final destination.

One notable Snakehead member is Cheng Chui Ping or "Sister Ping".

* 紐約50萬福州人受社區關注 by www.ntdtv.com

* Journey to the Golden Mountain

* Clinical, Social, and Service Use Characteristics of Fuzhounese Undocumented Immigrant Patients by Samuel Law, et al.

* Forbidden Workers and the U.S. Labor Movement: Fuzhounese in New York City by Peter Kwong

 

 

Lin Zexu

Photo by RK Chin, A Journey Through Chinatown

Lin Zexu (林則徐) was a Chinese scholar and official during the Qing dynasty. He is most recognized for his conduct and his constant position on the "high moral ground" in his fight, as a "shepherd" of his people, against the opium trade in Guangzhou. Although the non-medicinal consumption of opium was banned by Emperor Yongzheng in 1729, by the 1830s China's economy and society were being seriously affected by huge imports of opium from British and other traders based in the city. Lin's forceful opposition to the trade on moral and social grounds is considered to be the primary catalyst for the First Opium War of 1839–42. Because of this firm stance, he has subsequently been considered as a role model for moral governance, particularly by Chinese people.

Early Life and Career: Lin was born in Fuzhou, in Fujian province. In 1811, he received the Jinshi degree, the highest in the imperial examinations, and the same year, he was appointed to the prestigious Hanlin Academy. He rose rapidly through various grades of provincial service and became Governor-General of Hunan and Hubei in 1837, where he launched an opium suppression campaign.

Campaign to Suppress Opium: A formidable bureaucrat known for his competence and high moral standards, Lin was sent to Guangdong as imperial commissioner by the Daoguang Emperor in late 1838 to halt the illegal importation of opium from the British. He arrived in March 1839 and made a huge impact on the opium trade within a matter of months. He arrested more than 1,700 Chinese opium dealers and confiscated over 70,000 opium pipes. He initially attempted to get foreign companies to forfeit their opium stores in exchange for tea, but this ultimately failed and Lin resorted to using force in the western merchants' enclave. It took Lin a month and a half before the merchants gave up nearly 1.2 million kilograms (2.6 million pounds) of opium. 500 workers laboured for 22 days in order to destroy all of it, mixing the opium with lime and salt and throwing it into the ocean outside of Humen Town. Finally, Lin pressured the Portuguese government of Macau to deport the British, resulting in their settlement of then still barren Hong Kong.

Lin also wrote an extraordinary "memorial" (摺奏), by way of open letter published in Canton, to Queen Victoria of Britain in 1839 urging her to end the opium trade. The letter is filled with Confucian concepts of morality and spirituality. As a representative of the Imperial court, Lin adopts a position of superiority and his tone is condescending, despite the British clearly having the upper hand when the event is examined with hindsight. His primary line of argument is that China is providing Britain with valuable commodities such as tea, porcelain, spices and silk, while Britain sends only "poison" in return. He accuses the "barbarians" (i.e. private merchants) of coveting profit and lacking morality. His memorial expressed a desire that Victoria would act "in accordance with decent feeling" and support his efforts. He writes:

We find that your country is sixty or seventy thousand li from China. Yet there are barbarian ships that strive to come here for trade for the purpose of making a great profit. The wealth of China is used to profit the barbarians. That is to say, the great profit made by barbarians is all taken from the rightful share of China. By what right do they then in return use the poisonous drug to injure the Chinese people? Even though the barbarians may not necessarily intend to do us harm, yet in coveting profit to an extreme, they have no regard for injuring others. Let us ask, where is your conscience?

—Lin Zexu, Open letter addressed as if to the "King" of England but only published in Canton (1839)

The memorial was never delivered to the queen, though it was later published in The Times. Open hostilities between China and Britain started in 1839.

Exile in Xinjiang: Lin made significant preparation for war against the possible British invasion. As a result the British force was defeated numerous times in the battles in the Canton region. The British force was compelled to sail north to attack JiangSu and Zhejiang. The governors of these two provinces failed to heed a warning from Lin, however. As a result, they were unprepared, and the British easily landed and occupied Dinghai.

Because of this defeat, and also because of the corrupt political structure of the Qing Dynasty, Lin was used as a scapegoat for these losses. He was replaced by Qishan in September 1840. As punishment for his failures, Lin was demoted and sent to exile in Ili in Xinjiang. However, the Chinese government still considered Lin to be an official of rare virtue and eventually reinstated him to take care of several difficult situations.

While in Xinjiang, Lin was the first Chinese scholar to take note of several aspects of Muslim culture there. In 1845 he noted in a poem that the Muslims in Ili did not worship idols, but bowed and prayed to tombs decorated with poles that had the tails of cows and horses attached to them. This was the widespread shamanic practice of erecting a tugh, but this was its first recorded appearance in Chinese writings. He also recorded several Kazakh oral tales, such as one concerning a green goat spirit of the lake whose appearance is a harbinger of hail or rain.

Death and Legacy: He died in 1850 while on the way to Guangxi, where the government was sending him to help put down the Taiping Rebellion. He was a patriot of ability who attained an international reputation as "Commissioner Lin." He was opposed to the opening of the country but felt the need of a better knowledge of foreigners, which drove him to collect much material for a geography of the world. He later gave this material to Wei Yuan, who published an Illustrated Treatise on the Maritime Kingdoms (Hǎiguó túzhì 海國圖志) in 1844.

June 3, the day when Lin confiscated the crates of opium, is celebrated as Anti-Smoking Day in the Republic of China in Taiwan. Manhattan's Chatham Square, in Chinatown, contains a statue of Lin, commemorating his early struggle against drug use. Although he has in essence led the war against the debilitating drug with some initial success, with the arrest of 1,700 opium dealers and destruction of 2.6 million pounds of opium, he had been made the scapegoat for the actions leading to British retaliation, and ultimately failing to stem the tide of opium import and use in China. Nevertheless, Lin Zexu is popularly viewed as a hero of superlative conduct and national service, and whose likeness have been immortalized at various locations around the world.

Despite the antagonism between the Chinese and the British at the time, the renowned English sinologist Herbert Giles, who was active in the later period of the century and was the co-creator of Wade-Giles transliteration, praised and admired Lin. He wrote: "He was a fine scholar, a just and merciful official and a true patriot." A wax statue of Lin also appeared in Madame Tussauds Wax Museum in London.

Influence: Although he was not seen as such until well into the twentieth century, Lin Zexu is now seen as a National hero for Chinese people; no less than three films have been made on his role in the Opium Wars; and he is now one of the symbols of modern China's resistance to European imperialism.

 

 

Brooklyn's Chinatown (布鲁克華埠 ) / Emerging Fuzhou Town (福州埠)

Since the 1980s, the neighborhood has attracted many East Asian immigrants, along 8th Avenue from 42nd to 68th Street. Some claim the reason the Chinese settled on 8th Avenue is because in Chinese folklore, the number eight is lucky for financial matters, and "8th Avenue" can be loosely interpreted as "road to wealth". Another explanation is the direct subway ride to Manhattan's Chinatown (紐約華埠) on the N/R and D lines.

8th Avenue is lined with Chinese businesses, including grocery stores, restaurants, Buddhist temples, video stores, bakeries, and community organizations, and even Hong Kong Supermarket. Some Chinese businesses are also appearing on parts of 7th Avenue, and east on 9th Avenue. Recently in the community, the issues of overcrowding and more efficient sanitation have been raised.

Like the traditional Chinatown in Manhattan, Brooklyn's Chinatown was originally settled by Cantonese immigrants. In recent years, however, an influx of Fuzhou immigrants have been supplanting the Cantonese at a significantly faster rate than in Manhattan's Chinatown. The majority of Cantonese residents have moved to other parts of Brooklyn and other areas and 8th Avenue is now home to mostly Fuzhou immigrants. In the past during the late 1980s and 1990s, the Little Fuzhou(小福州) on East Broadway and Eldridge Street portion was the fastest emerging Fuzhou population/community within Manhattan's Chinatown in NYC after the waves of Cantonese immigrants settled in Manhattan's Chinatown. It was the first Fuzhou community established and carried the largest Fuzhou population in NYC; however there is now hardly any growth in the Fuzhou immigrant community within Manhattan's Chinatown.

Brooklyn's Chinatown is now very quickly becoming the New Little Fuzhou (小福州) or Brooklyn's East Broadway (布鲁克東百老匯) and is now surpassing the one within Manhattan's Chinatown as the largest Fuzhou community in NYC. Unlike the Little Fuzhou within Manhattan's Chinatown, which remains surrounded by areas that are mostly Cantonese, The Fuzhou population in Brooklyn is spreading into the surrounding areas as well, past the current borderlines of the Chinese community on 7th and 9th Avenues and north onto 50th-42nd streets. Even though the Chinese community is starting to become a Chinese Fuzhou community and there are now hardly any Cantonese residents residing there, there are still many Cantonese people living in ethnic-integrated areas near the Chinese community and there are still many Cantonese shops between 50th-62nd streets on 8th Avenue.

 

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沈葆禎

沈葆禎，福建省閩侯縣人，清末重臣，諡文肅。葆禎妻林普晴是清朝著名大臣林則徐的女兒。沈葆禎是晚清「同治中興」時洋務運動的重臣之一，先後曾任總理船政大臣及南洋大臣。

1874年牡丹社事件時被清廷任命為欽差大臣到台灣督辦軍務。在其任內曾修築今台南市內的億載金城，廢除限制漢人渡台禁令。

牡丹社事件: 1874年5月，日本派兵攻打台灣，清廷聞訊後派遣時任福建船政大臣的沈葆楨，緊急前往台灣籌辦防務。不久之後，清廷獲知日軍已登陸台灣，且與原住民發生激戰，因此改授沈葆楨為「欽差辦理台灣等處海防兼理各國事務大臣」，將福建所有鎮、道歸其節制，江蘇、廣東沿海各口輪船准其調遣，以便與日本及各國按約交涉。沈葆楨受命後，便與福州將軍文煜、閩浙總督兼署福建巡撫李鶴年聯合上奏，提出聯外交、儲利器、儲人才、通消息等四項要求，清廷均予以嘉許，並命迅速辦理。

6月，沈葆楨與福建布政使潘霨一同來台。沈葆楨以軍備刻不容緩，府城為根本之地，遂於安平興建砲台，置放西洋巨砲以為防禦（即「億載金城」），同時派兵分駐枋寮、東港等地，並請調淮軍最精銳的武毅銘軍（劉銘傳部）唐定奎部隊六千餘人，及總兵張其光、吳光亮等洋槍隊及粵勇共八千餘人先後抵台，積極備戰。

雖然此時台灣情勢一觸即發，但清廷本身海防空虛，新疆回亂未平，不希望與日本發生正面衝突；日本也因飽受台灣南部瘴癘之氣所苦，同時並未具備大規模對外征戰能力，雙方遂簽訂北京專約，日軍撤離台灣。

行政區劃的調整: 牡丹社事件後，沈葆楨決定在日軍登陸的瑯嶠地區設置恆春縣，同時奏請在台灣北部設立台北府，將淡水廳及噶瑪蘭廳分別改為淡水縣及宜蘭縣。另將淡水廳頭前溪以南地區單獨劃設為新竹縣，雞籠地區單獨設廳，並改名為基隆。於是大甲溪以北地區新設台北府，下設淡水、新竹、宜蘭三縣及基隆廳，以淡水縣為附郭縣，使北部在行政組織上的比重大為增強，以配合其在台灣開港以後的迅速發展。

除北部外，沈葆楨為解決台灣行政組織與移墾開發速度脫節的問題，也對中南部的行政區劃加以調整。由於當時嘉義縣南部的曾文溪以南地區距離縣治過遠，且為加強台灣府之附郭縣台灣縣的轄境，因此將此一地區劃入台灣縣。此外又將彰化縣埔里地區單獨設立埔里社廳，改「北路撫民理蕃同知」為「中路撫民理蕃同知」，移駐埔里。另在後山地區設置卑南廳，移「南路撫民理蕃同知」駐守。於是大甲溪以南的中南部地區仍設台灣府，下轄彰化縣、嘉義縣、台灣縣、鳳山縣、恆春縣五縣及埔里社廳、澎湖廳、卑南廳三廳。

開山「撫蕃」: 沈葆楨除奏請增設台北府，以平衡南北地位的失調外，也亟思改善台灣前山、後山的地形阻隔、交通困難的問題。他認為開山、「撫蕃」必須同時進行，且必須積極開發後山地區，以免為外人所佔，因此他急於打通前後山的通道，分北路、中路、南路同時進行。北路由噶瑪蘭廳蘇澳至花蓮奇萊，共計205里、中路由彰化林圮埔至花蓮璞石閣，共計265里，以及南路由屏東射寮至台東卑南，共計214里，其中中路即是三路中碩果僅存，現今為國家一級古蹟的八通關古道。

沈葆楨所謂的「撫蕃」，乃是有計畫的使「蕃」民漢化，其所擬定的計畫包括選土目、查蕃戶、定蕃業、通語言、禁仇殺、設「蕃學」、修道路、易冠服等。他在開山深入山地之時，道路所經之處，隨時隨地招撫當地「蕃社」，使其承諾願意接受漢化，不再以武力狙殺漢人，若有不服招撫或仍以武力抵抗者，便以兵力展開討伐。

此外，沈葆楨認為若要徹底落實「撫蕃」工作，則必須將過去限制漢人攜眷入台、禁止漢人偷渡、禁止漢人進入山地、禁止漢人娶原住民女子為妻等禁令加以解除，否則漢人對山地的開墾仍將裹足不前。因此沈葆楨於1875年2月奏准解除對台灣的一切禁令。