Cantonese originally not Chinese???

[ppk]

i would like to post the 100th post... for the fun of it...

[ppk]

sum won,
in my understanding, the line 'cantonese are originally not chinese' can only be argued in the 'citizenship' context, and even so imo it doesnt stand, cos mainland cantonese are automatically chinese citizen as they were born under chinese rule. as i have said, race have no relevance here. 'cantonese' is a geographical term to address people living in present 'canton', which is the name of a place after the chinese conquered it. 'cantonese' does not represent a race, nor the race before the chinese came. and neither is 'chinese' a specific race. it's a mixture of races. in your logic, it's like saying (racial wise) 'londoners are originally not british' or (racial wise)'new yorkers are originally not americans'. well, you may be able to argue on that but it's a ridiculous statement to me. in general, u can only say that a londoner might not neccessarily be a british citizen cos he may have a foreign citizenship, same thing for a new yorker.

take myself as an example, if i havent got my 800yrs family records, i wouldnt know that i am a hoklo and since my ancestors had lived in canton for more than 5 generations, i am qualify to say that my hometown is in canton and i am a cantonese. anyone who has his family in a place for a few generations is qualified to say that he's a local of that place, isnt it? cantonese may have consisted of people all over china in the past generations. not only the descendents of the ancient viets and ancient qin.

the rebellion account u posted doesnt say much. it is still a rebellion to overthrow the original monarchs, and make himself the new monarch. if nong is a separatists, he'll be happy to start his own empire in present guangxi area, and defend his own garden. instead he tried to attack canton and got his troops stuck there for 2 months and finally suffered a defeat from the central govt.

regarding religious fanatics, i think there is no way to reason with them, so i would say that they acted upon their beliefs. whether their beliefs are true or not, no comments. but the rebellion in china using religion in qing dynaaty, is not started by fanatics, they still aimed to overthrow the present monarch(just that too bad its a manchurian this time) and be the new one themselves(if u are referring to 'taiping tianguo' and 'hong xiuquan', that is).

so, regarding the southerners, there are chinese immigrants in vietnam, yes, and wad does it have to do with this? no offense intended, but this is something that confused me.

[ppk]

oh, and the ancient religion thing, i am talking about ancient sites of religious rituals and burial grounds which are being unearthed in canton suggested that they are similiar and have similiar rituals to those being unearthed in central china. i am not talking about dynamic religious practices that had changed in the course of history. i am talking about different sites at different areas that are of parellel dates, say 10 000yr, 15 000 or 20 000yrs ago, maybe earlier, and they appeared to be similiar in arrangement, ornaments etc. my argument is that, yes people do trade at that time but i dont think religious rituals can be traded. these rituals identify clans from the same tribe, and different tribes will have different rituals. follow the rituals of other tribes will probably makes one a traitor.

[Sum Won]

Yes, the term "Cantonese" was an anglosized term for GuangDong. It is a term that originally only pertained to the people in GuangDong, but has spreaded to include anyone who speaks what is known as the Yue dialect. The question is, "what was I suppose to call them in first question?" From the point I started this topic 'till the very present, I have been searching for information on this area. Everytime I get new information, my theories change bit by bit. I even pick up new terms to issues that pertain to the subject. From "Cantonese originally not being Chinese", we come to the conclusion that "There was a seperate race(s) in what we now know as Southern China". From there, we spanned off several questions, "Were the Bach Viet related to the Chinese?", "Was trade a reason for cultural diffusion?", "Can we full-heartedly follow Chinese sources in calling these ancient people of the South, 'Bach Viet', and conclude that these 'Bach Viet' ultimately moved to Vietnam?" --The last three theories, which are still being debated. I admit, avoiding the use of nomenclatures on my part is hard to do. But you'll have to excuse me and take every post on a case-by-case basis. I'll explain more on this in another post for better organization

If you examine this whole topic, you'll see two major types of arguements pop up. First, I posed a cultural question. The rest that followed were mainly political arguements (Starting with Martin Lee's post on December 8, 2001). What I was trying to do with the posting on the migration of shamanist practices from China to VietNam to America, was to tell of a few other places to look for such practices in examining the possible culture of the original inhabitants of the South, who you call the Bach Viet. My intent was to gear the conversation more towards the cultural issue, instead of the political one. So you can't say that it has nothing to pertain to the topic. Sorry for the confusion.

In regards to the religious fanatics and rebellions of the Qing dynasty, I wasn't only referring only to "Tai Ping Tian Guo" or the "Boxer Rebellion". There were in fact, many other incidences of religious and non-religious factions still trying to overthrow the government, even when Kang Xi gave the Hans more rights than they had, before any other emperor in the Qing Dynasty. What I was trying to do, was present hypocracy made by these rebels. I'm sure you've heard the statement "Man-Han yi jia" ("Mancurians and Hans are of one family"); you said that the people were satisfied with their government, but then there were rebels trying to overthrow the Manchurian government when they were fully satisfied with it.

About the "Religion-diffusion through trade" issue; you'd have to look at the Ancient African nations for example at how culture could have been taken from another people. Originally, these people had their own religion, but started converting over to Islam. Japan is somewhat similar, in that originally, they had their own animistic religion (ShinTo), but began absorbing Ch'an Buddhism (Sorry for switching over from PinYIn to Wade Giles all of a sudden). Or take a more closer example: China originally had Daoism and Confucianism, but then took Buddhism from the Tibetans and Indians. How about something that's more closer to where you live. The original Malays weren't Islam; I'm not sure exactly what they practiced, but trade did play an important aspect in cultural and religious diffusion. In "Vermillion Bird", it was even noted that Muslim merchants from Arabia were found in the major port of the city in LingNam's capitol city (sorry, I don't think that's what they were called at the T'ang Dynasty, but Red Sultan might be able to correct me on this). Another religion that also reached the LingNam region during the T'ang Dynasty, was a form of Buddhism more closer to how it was in India, because many Indians had merchants and monks at the port. So cultural diffusion between the people of the South and the Chinese before the Chu country in the Spring-Fall era conquered what are now Fujian, GuangDong, and GuangXi, were a major possibility. Hence, if the trade theory holds, there still is a possibility that the Bach Viet only took from the Chinese culture, rather than actually being ethnically related before this period.

Now, even though the original inhabitants might have willingly taken a culture of another people's, I still advocate the further study of the aborigine culture. Why? Well, it's like a preference for food. If someone gave another person a BIG juicy steak, he might prefer plain old corn instead of taking the BIG juicy steak. Sounds funny, but there are such people out there.

[Sum Won]

About Nong, he was a separatist. If you read the Census around the time this took place, you'll know that about 60% of people were still non-Han. He wasn't trying to overthrow the Chinese monarchy. He was only carving up his empire, which meant taking over some Chinese territory. As stated in earlier posts, what was known as LingNam in the T'ang Dynasty was a major port from then, and possibly before then. Nong's objective in taking GuangDong was to use it as a port to export the natural resources he had. I'm doubting whether or not you read everything in that site.

[Sum Won]

On this "case by case" issue above, let me clarify a bit, and let's dissect everything that was proposed by me. First of all, the original question was whether or not Cantonese were ORIGINALLY Chinese ("Cantonese" in the context of the whole topic, to be descendants of Yue people), and proposing the possibility that they might have fled to Japan. After about seven months, my only response was to eatsee, criticizing me on my Japanese. A month later, was when the forum started boiling out more people, pushing this forum to a new limit. This was because the forum was redesigned and using new software --Many thanks to those programmers and IT guys. Here, we were still debating whether or not the Cantonese had any connection to the Japanese. Originally, I used the relations between the Cantonese "hai" and Japanese "hai". As this new rush of people came about, in one post I made, I compared the Japanese usage of "wa" to the Cantonese usage of "wa", but this proposal was still flat-out struck down by many of you, and I haven't gotten around to proving this. Immediately following this, I began concentrating more on the Qin-T'ang era for my arguements, and didn't float off to another region of the world to prove my point (I might do that later however), because even if the original inhabitants did flee, we're not sure whether or not they only fled to Indo-China, but because they were very close to a big body a water, who knows where they might have fled?

Setting aside this maritime-escape issue they might have had, we began to concentrate on the people on the land.
You brought up the fact that similar religions were practiced on both sides, and proposed that they could have been of the same culture.
I countered this, with the theory of trade and cultural/religious diffusion by means of it.

Along the way, we've brought up the point of nomenclatures. As I have constantly been referring to what I now call the "proto-Cantonese", you stick by the book and refer to everyone from ZheJiang to GuangXi as the Bach Viet.
(to clarify once again, what I mean by "proto-Cantonese", that would be the ancestors of the modern people that speak one of the Yue dialects)
Also sticking to the book, is the fact that you still agree that these same people moved to VietNam. I proposed another theory, disproving this thought here
http://www.chineselanguage.org/forum/re ... 1290&t=400
by bringing up a possibility that the term "VietNam" itself is a nomenclature, around the fifth paragraph onwards. Still you flat out deny this.
I proposed the fact that the Bach Viet term itself, could be a nomenclature, in that the Chinese tended to over-generalize things in certain areas. Remember, they referred to the Southern people as "Man" (Barbarians), regardless of what their race was. In that respect, Bach Viet could be a nomenclature.

[ppk]

on any normal day, you call them chinese in the first place. then you further classify them as cantonese or hokkien or hubei. just like you first classify an american as an american, then he's a northerner or a southerner. but for academic purpose, like looking for specific cultures or language history, the chinese called the ancient people before the conquer of canton the ancient viets. there is no way to find a pure descendant of any ancient race in china now. viets is the term they addressed themselves, not a chinese invention. bachviet or baiyue may be a chinese invention, but the vietnamese still used it. they refer themselves as the descents of bach viets. if you have been to vietnam, you will find the north vietnamese look almost identical to chinese southerners, and their accent more like cantonese.

[Sum Won]

There is also the possibility that the VietNamese were given this term, and stuck with it. As if you were isolated from the rest of the world, with only your parents to tell you how the world is. If they tell you that the color of the text is white, you'd follow. The VietNamese were conquered several times over by the Chinese, and have been fairly sinicized. So it's hard not for them to follow Chinese texts and call themselves Viets. Remember, VietNam is "South of Viet", unlike NamViet "Southern Viet". Maybe there could've been some Bach Viet located in this area, like in strips of Northern VietNam, but generally, I think they were Champa that had more contact with the Viets.

I would like to avoid using "appearance" for an arguement, because appearances don't necessarily tell one's race. (I've seen a Mexican who looked completely Oriental before, and my friend saw a Mandarin girl who looked completely caucasian.)

On accents, the northern dialect [of VietNamese] isn't closer to Cantonese in certain areas, and the southern dialect isn't closer in others.

For example, the Mandarin pronounciation "Yang"
Cantonese: Yeung
VietNamese: duong
*The "d" above is pronounced with a Z-sound in the north, and a Y-sound in the south*

And remember, the words that the Cantonese and VietNamese have in common, are all from T'ang Dynasty Chinese.

[RedSultan]

PPK, regarding your point of people in different regions having similar religious practices - this could easily have occurred through trade. In the old Roman Empire and even further back to the times of Ancient Greece, ancient Egyptian gods and even myths appeared in Roman and Greek religions. Trade brought about an exchange of not only goods but also religions. The same occurred in Africa with African cultures converting to Islam after conducting trade with the Arabs (or "Saracens" as they were known as back then). But then the similarity of religious practices could very well be a mere coincidence. For example, the appearance of massive stone megalith monuments in places all across Europe including Britain, France, Belgium, and Italy, all of which were built in different places but around similar times.

[Terence]

Dear PPK

I would like to know if 'viet' is a vietnamese sound translation from Yue ; if it is 100% equivalent to yue in vietnamese language.