Some more videoclips

[niuc]

I think it was when the European notion version nation-states arrived in SEA that all the trouble started, and people began to talk in terms of different races and being bumiputera and so on.

Differentiation between "races" may not be as today, yet I think more or less it should be there, but may be more fluid and open, may be more based on culture and allegiance. During Roman empire, people of different races could become Romans by citizenship and culture. Even its emperors, especially Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, were from different races. Tang dynasty was the golden age of Chinese civilization and at the same time "cosmopolitan". I ever read, forget where, that Tang emperors had some Turkic blood, not sure how true.

In Siam there were anti-Chinese incidents also, around the beginning of Chakri dynasty (itself had some Teochew blood), not sure if this was due to European influence or "natively" grown.

Some Indonesians prefer to be under Dutch, may be they enjoyed certain priviledges. Majority obviously do not. All bad things about colonialism aside, without Dutch there would be no Indonesia, but kingdoms of Mataram Java, Pajajaran Sunda, Aceh, Banjar, Bone, and many more. Without British colonialism, there would be no Singapore or Malaysia but Johor, Melaka, Pahang etc, and Brunei would have been still much bigger.

Interesting observations on the changes in Riau. I read a book (can't remember the title or author) describing how a certain kind of Wahhabi Islam is sweeping through the Islamic world b/c of the power of the Saudis, and the Saudis have so much power b/c of their US ties. So no dangdut on Sumatra, huh?

Yes, Wahhabism indeed is plaguing the Islamic world. US troops were too busy guarding oil wells while Sumerian/Babylonian artefacts in Iraqi museums were looted... so hardly a surprise that US is so close to oil-rich Saudis.

Late Gus Dur (Abdulrahman Wahid) was a rare and unique Islamic leader. He was very tolerant, taking care of minorities such as Chinese (he said his ancestral surname was Tan) and other religions. He often criticized radical Muslims. He dared to tell jokes about Islam on national tv, and even visited Israel. Some Muslims accused him of being a Zionist. If Islamic leaders are like him, the image of Islam will be much better. Alas, currently the prevailing interpretation of Islam is unlike his.

Not sure about Sumatra, but dangdut was not popular in Riau.

Absolutely. My impression (from the literature) is that most of the Hoklo families trace their bloodlines back to Ciangciu at a time-depth of 300-350 years. Seems like Bânlâm was a horrible place to live back then.

I see. So they came later than Teochews? Was Bânlâm area over-populated while arable land was scarse?

There were also imperial edicts that uprooted coastal villages and moved everybody xx li inland so they wouldn't (A) get attacked by pirates OR (B) work together with the pirates. A typical "Mandarin" way to solve a "wet" problem. I think this is why so much of the coastal countryside became settled by 閩 speakers: b/c they went sailing around anyway, and they came across all this deserted countryside...

Some original Min people were transported (during Han dynasty?) to somewhere around Shanghai, right?

[amhoanna]

I googled 舊時正話, seems like it was a kind of Mandarin? Interesting.

The language I was talking about is called 海話——same as a dozen other languages in the area. It's spoken in 呉川, in the village of 吉兆. Here is a cite for the Ostapirat paper:

Ostapirat, W. (1998). A mainland Bê language? Journal of Chinese linguistics, 26 (2) , 338-344,.

Ostapirat is also known as 許家平. Sino-Thai, maybe? Very interesting paper, if you can get your hands on it. I remember her tentative conclusion was that a Bê-like language or set of languages used to be widely spoken all over western 廣東, maybe up until not that long ago...

Possibly even contiguous with Cueng-speaking turf to the west. (My speculation.)

without Dutch there would be no Indonesia, but kingdoms of Mataram Java, Pajajaran Sunda, Aceh, Banjar, Bone, and many more. Without British colonialism, there would be no Singapore or Malaysia but Johor, Melaka, Pahang etc, and Brunei would have been still much bigger.

Cool. Does that mean MY and ID are going to fall apart when people "grow out of" the colonial mindset? And PH!

Interesting, about Gus Dur. Wikipedia says his có͘kong migrated from Bânlâm to Jawa in 1417 ... to preach Islam!

I see. So they came later than Teochews? Was Bânlâm area over-populated while arable land was scarse?

Right, much later.

What you said was probably it. There's a book out there describing Bânlâm in the Míng/Qing era. Bânlâm is hilly to begin with. Add to that deforestation and soil erosion as well as gov't policy——choking maritime trade, high taxes ... in an area that had probably been densely populated since the heyday of Coânciu. Speaking of policy, it's interesting that there were no migrants from the provincial capitals——Kwóngcau, Hokciu——till the end of the Qing. There was probably a transfer of wealth to those two cities via taxation that made it OK to stay, as well as a transfer of wealth to Beijing...

Some original Min people were transported (during Han dynasty?) to somewhere around Shanghai, right?

I heard about that. He sī lán ê hoanná có͘kong!

[niuc]

Cool. Does that mean MY and ID are going to fall apart when people "grow out of" the colonial mindset? And PH!

Not without much blood shed, like the case of East Timor. Those in any current government will try all ways to maintain and enlarge their power, they will not just let any area to go for independence.

Interesting, about Gus Dur. Wikipedia says his có͘kong migrated from Bânlâm to Jawa in 1417 ... to preach Islam!

Indeed. But it is not clear if his ancestor was Hokkien or Hui, most probably the latter. Cuanciu (Chi3-tong5 ~> Zayton) had Muslim merchants, so no surprise if some Hokkien converted, but they didn't have much impact on Minnan culture, did they? Some say that part/most of the early preachers of Islam in Java (Wali Songo -> nine "guardians") were Hui Chinese, but usually Muslims in Indonesia deny this as a hoax, insisting them to be Arab.

Speaking of policy, it's interesting that there were no migrants from the provincial capitals——Kwóngcau, Hokciu——till the end of the Qing. There was probably a transfer of wealth to those two cities via taxation that made it OK to stay, as well as a transfer of wealth to Beijing...

That is still happening in Indonesia, most money goes to Jakarta. So most Bagan people moved to Jakarta too.

I heard about that. He sī lán ê hoanná có͘kong!

Yes, more or less we all have genes of Uat/Viet or Tai/Austroasian/Austronesian or Siberian & Mongol & Manchu etc. I often told my friends that Chinese came from merging of so many tribes sharing & exchanging cultures (thong1-hua3). I can't understand those who insist on racial purity, as if it ever existed!

[Ah-bin]

I spent a lot of time on a reply, but the system logged me out an I lost it.

Thanks so much for the reference, I fund a bit on the Hai-hua in Chinese, and I'll find the English one in the library when I get back. Just two short things:

I googled 舊時正話, seems like it was a kind of Mandarin? Interesting.

In this case they meant "official language" for 官話 rather than Mandarin. The language has entering tones and shares its phonology with surrounding varieties of Sinitic, but the vocabulary is more like Mandarin than Cantonese. It's a bit like that odd sort of Cantonese you get when people read out Mandarin texts word-for-word in Cantonese pronunciation.

as for Cueng (and I wrote a lot on this) I had a big rant. Here is the main outline....

I'll just say that "Cueng" is fiction dreamt up by the local CCP in Kwangsi in the 1950's so that Wei Guoqing (a local party magnate who was responsible for some of the worst mass killings in the Cultural Revolution, and was never brough to justice) could be the king of his own autonomous region you had to have a certain percentage of a certain minority to be allowed to have one of these, and Kwangsi had nothing like it, so they just lumped all the Tai-speaking people (and some reluctant Chinese too) into one big group and gave it a new name. Before this time only a very small area used this name, and it was to the north of Nanning. Other people had other names for themselves, and spoke widely divergent languages from different branches of the Tai tree (Northern and Central Tai to be specific)

In China it is strictly forbidden to disagree with the CCP's ethnic classification, and the resulting academic consensus on the historical existence of the "Cueng" has been regrettably transferred to countries where disagreement is possible. I have yet to find out exactly why this is the case by asking them in person.

P.S.
Here is a link to a recent article about the Tai-Kadai language of Wu-ch'uan.

http://www.gdzjdaily.com.cn/zjnews/zjcu ... 237842.htm

[amhoanna]

It's late, and I'll give a better reply in the fullness of time. Let me just say this: Ah-Bin, if you will let us know what you really think about the Northern/Central Tai speakers in what is today Kwongsai, as well as what they think about themselves, I'll do my part to end the fiction of the Cueng. Goá khahcá íkeng thiaⁿkóng.kờ, thiaⁿkóng he sĩ phiànsiáu.ẻ...

[Ah-bin]

The way Chinese ethnic identities developed after 1952 is an interesting subject. One good book on this, relating to the Cueng in particular is Katherine Palmer Kaup's Creating the Zhuang.

If you think of the gap between reality and fact as regards the Formosan Aboriginals referred to everywhere here as the "Gaoshan" people - a name for a non-existent ethnic group in Taiwan, much the same gap exists under CCP control, although over half a century of repeated teaching has had its results.
The whole thing reminds me of the conversation between Winston Smith and O'Brian in 1984 "How many fingers am I holding up?" "Four." "and if the Party says it isn't four, but five, then how many?" "five." The Party here has been saying five for so many years, that I suppose Cueng isn't really a complete fiction any more.

I remember in the book 壯語方言研究 the author hinted "over the years people have been made conscious of their Zhuang identity", I found that rather amusing. So today it is not entirely fictional, because the people do actually say it know, and many young people know no different.

Before 1952 the history of the Cueng is certainly fictional though, and linguistically it is fictional to this day. When people write histories of the Cueng from before 1952, what they basically go and do is take whatever record they have of indigenous people from the Kwangsi area in the past, and change the name used for them in the text to "Cueng" . This is called "backstreaming".

Okay....let's begin with the name. The most important names are those the Tai speaking peoples used for themselves, and until "Cueng" was used only by the people of a small area in Kwangsi up north of Nanning. Even the people of Wuming, 武鳴 where they took the local language and made it into standard Cueng, used to call themselves T'o 土 "locals" rather than Cueng. To the north of these people were the Yay, this is the word they still use for themselves. It is the same Yay as in Bouyei in Kweichow. Besically if you are from that province then you became Bouyei, and if you were from Kwangsi you became Cueng. South and west of Nanning, the people call themselves Nung 農, which is also the name for the people across the border in Vietnam. Some other areas call themselves baan people - meaning "people of the villages" in contrast to "people of the cities". The Nung actually ave their own famous historical figure Nung Chih-kao (Nung Tri-cao) who came down with an army from the mountains and laid siege to Canton in Sung times. It's one of the most significant events in the history of Kwangsi....and 95% of people have never heard of it in the province, because only national history is taught in schools, never local history, not even in primary schools or as part of social studies classes. The Sha are another group, that lives in Yunnan.

Then there's the language. What you see written on various official signs in Kwangsi is the romanised form of a language no-one speaks. It is a modified form of the Tai spoken in Wuming, north of Nanning, but it is not the same as what the people there actually speak. Wuming had no historical status as a centre of Cueng culture or language before the 1950's, it was chosen by Soviet linguists as the basis for "standard Cueng" because it lies along the line dividing northern Tai from central Tai. Actually no-one can understand the broadcasts in Cueng outside this area, although I have met people who learnt it in school, usually they don't even bother teaching it outside Wuming because its seen as useless, and bears little relationship to the language spoken at home.

The dividing line between northern and central Tai starts at Nanning and follows the Right-hand River 右江 all the way up to Yunnan. Communication between the two groups has to be carried on in Mandarin, because the variation in vocabulary and phonology is too great. Nung from China can easily understand Nung from Vietnam, I saw them doing it in a border town a few years back. Yay can also understand Bouyei from Kweichow. If you put and Chinese Nung and a Yay together as Cueng and expect them to have a language in common, you'll be disappointed.

As for old cultural similarities, such as bronze drums, the most famous style (there are three or four styles, cast in different areas centuries apart from each other) aren't really from the areas known as Cueng today, and they were not cast north of the West River, so they don't really belong to the history of the Cueng, but more to the history of the people who lived along the Kwangsi/Kwangtung boundary. The descendents of these people believe they are the descendents of migrants from the north. If this were the case then there is a whole unrecorded driving out or massacre of the local people, because no-one in these areas claims anything other than Han ancestry. I've never been able to find any records of large scale massacres, although there are plenty of small-scale ones from the T'ang and before. The more likely scenario is that people in Sung and especially Ming times took Chinese surnames and faked family trees in order to comply with government demands. Most families in western Kwangtung claim that they came in Ming times, but actually it was because this was the time when the government was interested in "civilising" people. David Faure has researched quite a lot about this, his book Emperor and Ancestor: State and Lineage in South China, is a very interesting read.

[amhoanna]

Thanks for the links and the inside scoop, Ah-bin. That's not the kind of thing that's easy to come by just searching on Google.

I actually have some info on the "Cueng" bookmarked: http://mcel.pacificu.edu/as/resources/z ... tents.html. You've probably already seen this.

...only national history is taught in schools, never local history, not even in primary schools or as part of social studies classes.

Harry Lee would be proud.

This is called "backstreaming".

What a relief to know that there's a word for that. It used to take me a paragraph.

...David Faure has researched quite a lot about this, his book Emperor and Ancestor: State and Lineage in South China...

Thanks, I just bookmarked it. Another cruel and unusual farang-ângmo͘ attempt to undermine the Middle Kingdom.

The descendents of these people believe they are the descendents of migrants from the north. If this were the case then there is a whole unrecorded driving out or massacre of the local people, because no-one in these areas claims anything other than Han ancestry.

Wait, who are "the descendants of these people"? This is interesting.

And by "these areas", you mean the 西江 valley at the province line? Or going all the way down toward the sea close to Pak Hoi?

I often told my friends that Chinese came from merging of so many tribes sharing & exchanging cultures (thong1-hua3). I can't understand those who insist on racial purity, as if it ever existed!

Right!

But then again, the whole concept of Tn̂glâng or Hoâjîn or Tiongkoklâng or Tionghoâ bînco̍k or bangsa Cina is based on this fiction of shared blood.

Someday the whole thing will unravel and we'll all go back to being ... hoanná. In the original sense of the word.

The more likely scenario is that people in Sung and especially Ming times took Chinese surnames and faked family trees in order to comply with government demands.

I always thought family trees were fishy as hell. Supposedly, everybody comes from the banks of the Yellow River. As they migrated south, the indigenous people just instantly vanished ... b/c we all know that Chinese people are too gentle to conquer or overrun anybody.

One thing I noticed is that in the Deep South of China, the distribution of last names is mostly covered by just a handful of names. Another thing is that in certain areas there are common last names that are pretty exotic elsewhere in China. 雷, 黎, and 藍 come to mind——the lucky L's. Also 符.

Another part of what is today China that seems to have some kind of Tai-Kadai connection is the region around what is today Zhejiang. I vaguely recall seeing a paper on this in the field of genetics. The first time I went to central Zhejiang, I thought the local language sounded like "Thai meets Shanghainese".

Kwongsai and Hainam seem like really fascinating places, overall. I'd also like to cut loose at some point in time and go spend some quality time in those places, esp western Hainam and western and southern Kwongsai. I'm guessing that there are lots of Tai-speakers in the streets of Nanning and Pak Hoi, but they're probably functionally Chinese and don't really think ethnicity is that interesting of a topic. They probably look exactly like the Cantonese-speakers and Hakkas too?

[Ah-bin]

Thanks, I just bookmarked it. Another cruel and unusual farang-ângmo͘ attempt to undermine the Middle Kingdom.

Oh, he has plenty of traitorous Chinese colleagues who do the same sort of thing!

I actually have some info on the "Cueng" bookmarked: http://mcel.pacificu.edu/as/resources/z ... tents.html. You've probably already seen this.

I didn't want to go naming names....

Wait, who are "the descendants of these people"? This is interesting.

And by "these areas", you mean the 西江 valley at the province line? Or going all the way down toward the sea close to Pak Hoi?

Basically the people who live south of Wuchow 梧州 all the way down to the sea. At the moment I have only tracked the people up into the Sung, but these places are chock full of 夷 I 蠻 Man 獠 Lao and 俚 Li in the Sung Geographical Encyclopedias 太平寰宇記 (T'ai-p'ing huan-yü-chi) and 輿地紀勝 (yü-ti-chi-sheng). I have yet to look closely at exactly what happened in the area after the Sung, There were records of Yao people, but this was just a term for people who lived in the mountains, and didn't imply that the people spoke a Yao language. There were Yao mountains (many with Tai names) recorded in the Hsin-i 信宜area all the way up into the Ch'ing, but they had gone by the end of the 19th Century.

[amhoanna]

Now THIS is fascinating!

I took a look at the Faure book. It seems that for most of its history, Canton was a Han outpost in a sea of hoanná.

Sịtcãi ũ kàu chùbị.

Oh, he has plenty of traitorous Chinese colleagues who do the same sort of thing!

[niuc]

Amhoanna, one of my Teochew friends said that he could understand the 陸豐 video.

But then again, the whole concept of Tn̂glâng or Hoâjîn or Tiongkoklâng or Tionghoâ bînco̍k or bangsa Cina is based on this fiction of shared blood.

I don't believe the "official" concept fully, but personally I also don't think they are totally wrong. Aren't there some tests done showing different mitochondria for Northern & Southern Han Chinese but both sharing similar Y-chromosome? I am not an expert and I forget where I read these... anyway from physical features we also can see that generally speaking Southern Han are somewhere in between Northern Han and Tai/Austroasian/Austronesian, and Northern Han also somewhere in between Southern Han and Mongols/Altaic, right?

Rather than seeing that as a fiction of shared blood, I tend to think of 四海皆兄弟 , that all human beings are related in blood, but of different degree e.g. Hokkiens and Teochews surely are closer to each other than to Beijingers, and in turn they are closer to each other than to Japanese or Javanese, and so on... an overlapping continuum rather than clearly segragated groups.

Someday the whole thing will unravel and we'll all go back to being ... hoanná. In the original sense of the word.

Hoanná in the sense of non-Han? Or another sense?

Personally, with my limited knowledge, I don't think that will happen. Aside from my personal view that generally speaking all Han Chinese do have some Han blood (surely mixed with others, and in fact many non-Chinese have some Han ancestors), I think "hoanná" is more about self-identification & culture rather than blood, e.g. when a tribe was sinizied and became part of Han, they identified themselves with Han, and in turn would intermarry with other Han, so the cultural indentity would result in shared blood also.