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Taishan, Guangdong

Coordinates: 22°15′N 112°47′E / 22.250°N 112.783°E / 22.250; 112.783
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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Douglas the Comeback Kid (talk | contribs) at 16:21, 26 May 2011 (Many Hong Kongers quoted are not from Taishan. They were Hong Kong-born and Hong Kong-raised; their only connection with Taishan is their ancestry.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

This article is about Taishan city. For the Taishanese language, see Taishanese. For the Taishanese people, see Taishanese people. For Taishan (disambiguation), see Taishan, Guangdong (disambiguation).
This article is about a city in Guangdong Province. For other uses, see Tai Shan.
Location of Taishan within Guangdong province.

Taishan (Chinese: 台 山; Taishanese: Hoisan [hɔ̀isān]; Cantonese: Toisaan [tʰɔ̭ːisáːn]; Mandarin: Taishan; Other: Toishan) is a coastal county-level city in Guangdong Province, China. The city is part of the Greater Taishan Region.

The city is located in the Pearl River Delta, southwest of Jiangmen (to which it administratively belongs) and 140 kilometers west of Hong Kong. It contains 95 islands and islets, including the largest island in Guangdong, Shangchuan Island. It is one of Five Counties in Guangdong (was called Sze Yup with excluding Heshan).

Taishan is famous for being the Birthplace of Chinese Volleyball, that was brought to Taishan by overseas Chinese, and the city won many provincial and national championships. The city is also famous for being one of the Birthplaces of Guangdong music, where the other being Guangzhou.

History

Taishan History

On February 12, 1499 in the 12th year of the reign of the emperor Hongzhi during the Ming Dynasty, Taishan was founded as Xinning County (新宁县) from land in the southwest of Xinhui County. Xinning has also been romanized as Sunning, Sinning, Hsinning, Hsînnîng, and Llin-nen.

From 1854 to 1867 a genocidal war broke out mainly in Taishan County between the Punti and Hakka people with disastrous results for both sides.

In 1914, Xinning was renamed Taishan to avoid confusion with the Xinnings of Hunan and Sichuan.[1] Unfortunately it is now confused in English with Taishan (Mount Tai) in Shandong Province.

In 1941 March 3, Japanese invaded TaiCheng town (the capital of Tai Shan) and killed nearly 280 people.

On April 17, 1992, Taishan's status was upgraded from county (县) to county-level city (县级市).[1]

In 2010, parts of the movie Let the Bullets Fly were filmed in Taishan.[2][3]

Overseas Taishanese history

Owing to natural disasters and the colonization, Taishanese started to search for new lives overseas after the First Opium War.[4] The migration of Taishanese to North America started with the Gold Rush. Many Taishanese came to California as contract labourers. Later, another peak happened during the construction of the transcontinental railways in the United States and Canada.[5] In 1870, there were 63,000 Chinese in the United States, almost all in California.[6] Due to discrimination and language barriers, the first Chinatown formed to allow Taishanese (or Chinese) to live along and help each other.

Education

Education in the city of Taishan enjoys significant support from overseas Chinese professionals and businessmen. Many secondary schools were built and financed by Chinese living in the SAR (Hong Kong and Macau) and various foreign countries, such as the US, Canada, and Brazil.

To honor their benefactors, these schools often bear their names or the names of their parents. An example is the Taishan City Peng Quan School (鹏权中学), which was constructed during 1999–2001, and is now integrated into the city's public school system. It is situated on the west side of the city, and was built by a Hong Kong businessman.[7]

Below are some of the schools in Taishan:

University:

  • Deng Xiaoping-era Television University (磐石电视大学).

High schools & middle schools:

  • Taishan No. 1 High School (台山第一中学)
  • Taishan Overseas Chinese Middle School (台山市华侨中学)
  • Peiying Middle School (台山培英职业高级中学)
  • Taishan Teaching School (台山师范学校)
  • Taishan City Peng Quan School(台山市鹏权中学)
  • Taishan Shi Li Tan Geng kai Jinian Zhong Xue (台山市李谭更开纪念中学)

Administration

Taishan is under the jurisdiction of Jiangmen. In a jurisdiction of 3,286 km², Taishan contains 16 townships (镇), which are subdivided into 313 village residential committees (村居委会) and 3,655 natural villages (自然村).[1]

These townships (镇) are:

These "natural villages" (自然村) include:

Transportation

Taishan is currently accessible by bus and hydrofoil ferry (require bus connection, ferry is not direct service). There is a bus station in Taicheng and a port at GongYi on the Tan River which flows into the Pearl River Delta. The ferry service from HK to GongYi has been discontinued.

Up until the Japanese War, there was a limited railway system constructed by Chen Yixi linking various parts of Taishan with Jiangmen, then known as Kong Moon. It was one of only three built, owned and run by Chinese during the years prior to the Communist Revolution of 1949.[8]

Language

The main language of Taishan is Cantonese, though minor accent and regional differences occur. While most Taishanese today use Mandarin in school or formal occasions, Taishanese is the de facto language. Taishanese is a dialect of Yue Chinese, a large group which includes, but is broader than, Cantonese spoken in Hong Kong and Guangzhou. Thus Cantonese and Taishanese are related but distinct. Before the 1980s, Taishanese was the predominant Chinese language spoken throughout North America's Chinatowns.[9] Cantonese (Guangdonghua) is also widely known in Taishan, as it serves as lingua franca of Guangdong Province.

Demographics

Today, there is over 2.3 million Taishanese worldwide; some 1.3 million people living overseas can trace their ancestry to Taishan, outnumbering those who now live in Taishan, 1 million.[10]

If considering the total Greater Taishan Region or Sze Yap Region, which includes Kaiping, Xinhui, Enping and Taishan, there is about 8 to 9 Million Taishanese people worldwide. According to American historian Him Mark Lai, approximately 430,000 or 70% of Chinese Americans in the 1980s were Taishanese according to 1988 data.[11] Currently some 500,000 Chinese Americans claim Taishanese origins.[11]

Taishan has a population of 1 million, while 1.3 million overseas Taishanese distributing in 91 countries and regions.[12] It is estimated that over 75% of all overseas Chinese in North America until the mid- to late-20th century claimed origin in Taishan, the city is also known as the "Home of Overseas Chinese."[9][13] As late as 1988, those with ancestry from Taishan accounted for 70% of Chinese Americans.

An office of the local Taishan Bureau of Overseas Chinese can help to arrange visits of overseas Chinese people.[14]

List of notable people from or with ancestry traced back to Taishan

Historical figures

Actors/actresses & singers

  • Tony Leung - Hong Kong actor.
  • Shawn Yue - Hong Kong actor and singer.
  • Donnie Yen - Hong Kong Chinese martial artist and actor, film director, fight choreographer, and producer.
  • Wong Ka Keung - member of Hong Kong band Beyond.
  • Wong Ka Kui - lead singer of Hong Kong band Beyond.
  • Wong Koon Chung - member of Hong Kong band Beyond.
  • Yip Sai Wing - member of Hong Kong band Beyond.
  • Myolie Wu - Hong Kong actress and singer.
  • Danny Chan - Hong Kong singer.
  • James Hong - actor in United States famous for roles in Big Trouble in Little China, Balls of Fury and others.
  • Andrea Louie - scholar, actress, model, singer and fashion designer.
  • Flora Chan - Hong Kong actress and singer.

Politicians

  • John Tsang - Financial Secretary of Hong Kong.
  • Leland Yee - California State Senator. In 2004 Yee became the first Asian American to be appointed Speaker pro Tempore.
  • Margaret Chin - New York City-based American politician. A Democrat, she was elected to the New York City Council (First Chinese American elected to this position) on November 3, 2009, to represent District 1 in Lower Manhattan.
  • Bill Lann Lee - United States Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Clinton Administration.
  • Julius Chan - former Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea of An Nan Jiang Chao village in Doushan.
  • Hiram Fong (a.k.a. Hiram Kwong) - former US Senator from Hawaii.
  • Matt Fong (a.k.a. Matt Kwong) - former Treasurer of the State of California.
  • Wong Kim Ark - defendant in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898).
  • Patrick Yu - Hong Kong lawyer and Crown Counsel, and founder of its first law school.

Education

  • Li Enliang - Chinese civil engineer and educator.
  • Chin Siu Dek (aka Jimmy H. Woo) - martial artist of Sanba and a Grandmaster of Kung Fu San Soo.
  • Alan Chin - San Francisco Bay Area contemporary artist
  • William Poi Lee - San Francisco author who wrote The Eighth Promise.
  • Ken Hom - Chinese American chef, author and British television-show presenter. In 2009 he was awarded by Queen Elizabeth II with an honorary OBE for ‘services to culinary arts’.

Business

  • Eric Kwong - investor.
  • Norman Kwong - Lieutenant-Governor of Alberta & professional football player, president & manager of the Calgary Stampeders.
  • Justin Lee - cardiovascular specialist of Seattle, Washington.
  • Jack Yan - magazine publisher in New Zealand.
  • James Tak Wu - founder of Hong Kong's famous Maxim's Catering Limited, which is Hong Kong's largest food & beverage corporation and restaurant chain. His ancestral town is Sijiu (四九).
  • Annie Wu Suk-ching - founder of Beijing Air Catering Ltd and member of the Standing Committee of the National Committee of Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. She is the daughter of James Tak Wu.
  • Luis Chi - Taishan businessman in Miami and International Commerce Representative for Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado

References

  1. ^ a b c Official Web of Taishan,Introduction
  2. ^ Kaiping "Diaolou" - Location of "Let the Bullets Fly", CRI English.com, December 3, 2010
  3. ^ Travel Around Taishan, CNTV, March 2011
  4. ^ Official Web of Taishan-Overseas Chinese Hometow
  5. ^ Mutze. "Remembering origins from Taishan, China" DailyQi. 2008-11-03
  6. ^ "From Gold Rush to Golden State". California history Collection
  7. ^ Peng Quan School Website
  8. ^ Chinese Emigration, the Sunning Railway and the Development of Toisan by Lucie Cheng and Liu Yuzun with Zheng Dehua, Amerasia 9(1): 59-74, 1982.
  9. ^ a b Pierson, David (2007-05-11). "Taishan's U.S. well runs dry". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2008-11-11.
  10. ^ Taishan International Web
  11. ^ a b Wu, Olivia (February 18, 2007). "Young Americans find roots in China: S.F. program offers history and genealogy, helps locate relatives". San Francisco Chronicle. p. 1. Retrieved 2008-12-24.
  12. ^ Official Web of Taishan in English Version
  13. ^ Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home by Madeline Y. Hsu, Stanford University Press, Stanford CA 2000, page 3.
  14. ^ Wudunn, Sheryl (1992-11-15). "You Can Go Home Again, Even to China". New York Times. Retrieved 2008-11-14.
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22°15′N 112°47′E / 22.250°N 112.783°E / 22.250; 112.783

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