Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Tanka people" in English language version.
shii leung (shu lang) shii miu (shu miao) shui fan (shui fen) shui kwa (shui kua) sui seung yan (shui shang jen) Shui Sin (Shui Hsien) shuk in (shu yen) ShunTe Sian Sin Ku (Hsien Ku) sin t'it (hsien t'ieh) Sin Yan (Hsien Jen) sing
are therefore despised as local aborigines. Land people commonly call boat people "Tanka" ("egg folk"), which is a derogatory reference to their alleged barbarism. The aboriginal origin of boat people is alleged in imperial Chinese edicts (see chapter 2, note 6) as well as in
The Tanka were an aboriginal population of fishermen who lived permanently in their boats (hence the name ch'uan-min, 'boat people', sometimes given to them). They were famous pearl fishermen. Their piratical activities caused many difficulties to Shang K'o-hsi, the first military governor appointed to Kwangtung by the Ch'ing, and thus indirectly helped the Southern Ming resistance and attempts at secession.
Tanka, a marginalised boat people which could be found in the Southern provinces of China.
The Tanka are boat dwellers who very seldom settle ashore. They themselves do not much use this name, which they consider derogatory, but usually call themselves 'Nam Hoi Yan (people of the southern sea) or 'Sui Seung Yan
The Tanka are among the earliest of the region's inhabitants. They call themselves 'Sui Seung Yan', signifying 'those born on the waters'; for they have been a population afloat as far back as men can remember—their craft jostle each other most closely in the fishing port
{{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)The Tanka dislike the name and prefer 'Sui seung yan', which means 'people who live on the water'. Because of their different physique and darker skin, they were traditionally thought by those living on the land to be a race of sea gypsies and not Chinese at all
The name "Hoklo" is used by the Hoklo, but the Tanka will not use the name "Tanka" which they consider derogatory, using instead "Nam hoi yan" or "Sui seung yan". Shore dwellers however have few dealings with either race of people and tend to call them both "Tanka". The Pui Tanka dialects both belong to the western section of
Far better known are the Cantonese-speaking boat people. These are the groups known as "Tanka" (Mandarin "Tanchia") in most of the literature.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)into two major groups: Cantonese ("Tanchia" or "Tanka" – a term of hatred) and Hoklo. The Hoklo speak a distinctive dialect of South Fukienese (South Min, Swatowese)
Leaving aside the settled land population Hakka and Cantonese villagers, and the trickle of newcomers into the district, there were also the boat people, of whom the Tanka and Hoklo were the two principal groups. They were numerous and to be found everywhere in its waters
In the Hong Kong region, the existence of groups of sea fishermen other than Tanka was quite common. On nearby Peng Chau, both Cantonese and Hakka villagers undertook sea fishing..... However, in all such cases... occupational blurring did not mean... intermarriage between land based fishermen, who clung to their own kind, and the Tanka. ... the Tanka boat people of Cheung Chau were excluded from participation in the ...jiao festival.
The Hoklo people, like the Tanka, have been in the area since time unknown. They too are boat-dwellers but are less numerous than the Tanka and are mostly found in eastern waters. In some places, they have lived ashore for several
In Hong Kong, the Tanka and Hoklo peoples have dwelt in houseboats since prehistoric times. These houseboaters seldom marry shore dwellers. The Hong Kong government estimated that in December 1962 there were 46,459 people living on houseboats there, although a typhoon had wrecked hundreds of boats a few months earlier.
Some are reasonable, some improbable indeed. In the latter category fall some of the traditional Chinese legends, such as the story of the descent of the "Tanka" (and other "barbarians") from animals. These traditional tales are
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)Chinese sources assert that they can stay under water for three days and that they are descendants of water snakes. Not much else is said about them in Chinese sources, especially nothing about their language.
Among the aboriginal tribes, the "Iu" (傜) tribe is the largest, then "Lai" (黎), the "Yi" (夷) or more commonly called the "Miao" (苗), and the "Tanka" (疍家) The mixture of these peoples with the "Han" people therefore caused all the cultural variations and racial complexity
which modern people are the Pai Yueh"...So is it possible that there is a relationship between the Pai Yueh and the Malay race?...Today in riverine estuaries of Fukien and Kwangtung are another Yueh people, the Tanka ("boat people"). Might some of them have left the Yueh tribes and set out on the seas? (1936: 117)
In their turn the modern-day boat people of Hong Kong, the Tanka, have derived their maritime and fishing cultural traditions from this long lineage. Little is known about the Yue, but some archaeological evidence gathered from Bronze
of China following the Emperor Qin's conquests in the second century BC, Hong Kong, now integrated into the Donguan county of Guangdong province, started to be colonised or settled by non-indigenous peoples from further north
Most scholars, basing themselves on traditional Chinese historians' work, have agreed that the boat people are descendants of the Yüeh or a branch thereof ( Eberhard 1942, 1968 ; Lo 1955, 1963 ; Ho 1965 ; and others influenced by them, such as Wiens 1954). "Yüeh" (the "Viet" of Vietnam) seems to have been a term rather loosely used in early Chinese writings to refer to the "barbarian" groups of the south coast
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)Tanka ... The boat-population of Canton, who live entirely on the boats by which they earn their living: they are descendants of some aboriginal tribe of which Tan was apparently the name.
But from the position of the sites it might be supposed that the inhabitants were pushed onto the seacoast by the pressure of other peoples and their survival may have lasted well into historic times, even possibly as late as the Sung dynasty (AD 960), the date, as we shall see, when Chinese peasants first began to migrate into this region. The Tanka might, in theory, be the descendants of these earlier peoples. They too are an ancient population living on the seaboard without any trace of their earlier habitat. But as we have seen in the first chapter they have been so
and they were probably evolved as a result of contact with foreign peoples, even as late as the Portuguese.
When the British appropriated the territory in the nineteenth century, they found these three major ethnic groups—Punti, Hakka, and Tanka—and one minority, the Hoklo, who were sea-nomads from the northern shore of Guangdong and
The Wuyi mountains were the home of the She, remnants of an aboriginal tribe related to the Yao who practiced slash and burn agriculture. Tanka boatmen of similar origin were also found in small numbers along the coast. Both the She and the Tanka were quite assimilated into Han Chinese culture.
Other sources mention "Yao" who also lived on Lantau. Chinese sources describe several efforts to bring these folk to heel and, finally, a campaign to annihilate them... Later sources refer to the Tanka boat people as "Yao" or "barbarian," and for centuries they were shunned and not allowed to settle on land. Even as late as 1729, the Sun On county gazetteer recorded that "in Guangdong there is a tribe of Yao barbarians called the Tanka, who have boats for homes and live by fishing." These presumed remnants of the Yueh and their traditional way of life were looked down upon by the Han Chinese through the centuries,
Not much else is said about them in Chinese sources, especially nothing about their language. Today, Tanka in the Canton area speak the local Chinese dialect and maintain that they are Chinese whose profession is fishery.
traditional response among the other peoples of the south China coastal region was to assert that the boat people were not Han Chinese at all, but rather a distinct minority race, the Tanka (PY: Danjia "dan people"), a people who had taken to the life on the water long ago. Often this view was embroidered with tales about how the Tanka had short legs, good only for shipboard life. Some stories alleged that they had six toes and even a tail. It was commonly asserted that they spoke their own aboriginal
the Southern Han (tenth century), government troops were sent to Ho-p'u to fish for pearls,121 it appears that operations were normally conducted, not by Chinese, but by one or other of the aboriginal (Yüeh) groups, notably the Tan. The Tan (Tan-hu, Tan-chia, Tanka) were ancient inhabitants of the littoral of South China. According to a twelfth-century source, those of Chin prefecture ( west of Lien) belonged to three groups, "the fish-Tan, the oyster-Tan, and the wood-Tan, excelling at the gathering of fish, oysters, and timber respectively."
oyster-Tan, and the wood-Tan, excelling at the gathering of fish, oysters and timber respectively
But it also increased social contact between the three largest dialect groups, and that caused trouble, Punti.... treated Hakka .... as if they were uncultured aborigines... Hakka and Hoklo battled each other...as they fought Punti... All of these groups despised the Tanka people, descendants of aborigines
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)The most widely accepted theory of the origins of these people is that they are derived from the aboriginal tribes of the area. Most scholars (Eberhard, 1942; Lo, 1955, 1963; Ho, 1965; and others influenced by them) have agreed that the
meant little more than "Barbarian." the Yueh seem to have included quite civilised peoples and also wild hill tribes. The Chinese drove them south or assimilated them. One group maintained its identity, according to the theory, and became the boat people. Ho concludes that the word Tan originally covered a specific tribe, then was extended like Man further north to cover various groups. At first it referred to the Patung Tan people, then to the Lingnan Tan, i.e.
Neither theory for the origin of the boat people has much proof. Neither would stand up in court. Chen's conclusion is still valid today: "...to what tribe or race they once belonged or were once akin to is still unknown." (Chen, 1935:272)
Tanka – They are boat-dwellers. Some of the Tanka are descendants of the Yueh ( jgi ), an aboriginal tribe in Southern China. Therefore, these Tanka can be regarded as the natives in the area. However, some Tanka came to the area in a
and boat people are such as one would expect between groups leading such different ways of life. in culture, the boat people are Chinese. Ward (1965) and McCoy (1965) point out that the land people are probably not free from aboriginal intermixture themselves, and conclude that the boat people are probably not more mixed. As Ward states, "(l)... the boat-people's descent is probably neither more nor less 'non-Han' than that of most other Cantonese-speaking inhabitants of Kwangtung.
and others, pers. comm.). Certainly the Sung court did do so (Ng, 1961), and may well have been instrumental in the settlement of the region. At the fall of the Ming dynasty almost four hundred years later, in 1644 ad, loyalists are
Historically there can be little doubt that the boat-people and a few of the hill villagers are of non-Chinese origin, but all now regard themselves as Chinese and speak Chinese dialects, the only traces of aboriginal descent (apart)
The coastal dwelling Cantonese, more shrewd than the boat people, lived off – indeed sometimes battened onto – the needs and superstitions of the Tanka and Hoklo. The Cantonese marketed the boat people's fish, supplied their wants
Some of these wants and strays found themselves in queer company and places in the course of their enforced sojourn in the Portuguese colonial empire. The Ming Shih's complain that the Portuguese kidnapped not only coolie or Tanka children but even those of educated persons, to their piratical lairs at Lintin and Castle Peak, is borne out by the fate of Barros' Chinese slave already
The prostitutes and courtezans of Canton belonged to a special ethnic group, the so-called tanka (tan-chia, also tan-hu), descendants of South- Chinese aborigines who had been driven to the coast and there engaged in fishing, especially pearl-fishing. They were subject to various disabilities, ia interdiction of marriage with Chinese, and of settling down on shore. They speak a peculiar dialect, and their women do not bind their feet. It was they who populated the thousands of floating brothels moored on the Pearl River at Canton.
but another source of supply was the daughters of the tanka, the boat population of kwangtung
The Tanka, it seems, not only supplied foreign shipping with provisions but foreigners with mistresses. They also supplied brothels with some of their inmates. As a socially disadvantaged group, they found prostitution a convenient
EJ Eitel, in the late 1890s, claims that the 'half-caste population in Hong Kong ' were from the earliest days of the settlement almost exclusively the offspring of liaisons between European men and women of outcast ethnic groups such as Tanka (Europe in China, 169). Lethbridge refutes the theory saying it was based on a 'myth' propagated by xenophobic Cantonese to account for the establishment of the Hong Kong Eurasian community. Carl Smith's study in the late 1960s on the protected women seems, to some degree, support Eitel's theory. Smith says that the Tankas experienced certain restrictions within the traditional Chinese social structure. Custom precluded their intermarriage with the Cantonese and Hakka-speaking populations. The Tanka women did not have bound feet. Their opportunities for settlement on shore were limited. They were hence not as closely tied to Confucian ethics as other Chinese ethnic groups. Being a group marginal to the traditional Chinese society of the Puntis (Cantonese), they did not have the same social pressure in dealing with Europeans (CT Smith, Chung Chi Bulletin, 27). 'Living under the protection of a foreigner,' says Smith, 'could be a ladder to financial security, if not respectability, for some of the Tanka boat girls' (13 ).
I am indebted to Dr Maria Jaschok for drawing my attention to Sun Guoqun's work on Chinese prostitution and for a reference to Tanka prostitutes who served Western clients. In this they were unlike typical prostitutes who were so unaccustomed to the appearance of western men that 'they were all afraid of them'.
This exceptional class of Chinese residents here in Hong Kong consists principally of the women known in Hong Kong by the popular nickname " ham-shui- mui " (lit. salt water girls), applied to these members of the so-called Tan-ka or boat
exceptional class of Chinese residents here in Hong Kong consists principally of the women known in Hong Kong by the popular nickname "ham-shui- mui" (lit. salt water girls), applied to these members of the so-called Tan-ka or boat
twentieth century, in women doubly marginalised: as members of a despised ethnic group of Tanka Boat people, and as prostitutes engaged in "contemptible" sexual intercourse with Western men. In the empirical work done by CT Smith (1994)
A Cantonese song tells how even low-class Tanka prostitutes could be snobbish, money-oriented, and very impolite to customers. Niggardly or improperly behaved clients were always refused and scolded as ' doomed prisoners' (chien ting) or 'sick cats' ('Shui-chi chien ch'a', in Chi- hsien-hsiao-yin c.1926: 52), and sometimes even punched (Hua-ts'ung-feˆn-tieh 1934)
Ethnic prejudice towards the Tanka (boatpeople) women persisted throughout the Republican period. These women continued to be mistaken for prostitutes, probably because most of those who peddled ferry services between Canton and
though the possibility should not be ruled out that this rather alarming estimate was based on the popular misconception that most Tanka women (women from the boat-people community) worked as prostitutes
Even the tiny floating brothels on which the 'water-chicken' (low-class Tanka prostitutes) worked were said to be beautifully decorated and impressively clean (Hu P'o-an et al. 1923 ii. 13, ch. 7).42 A 1926 Canton guidebook also
or among Chinese residents as their concubines, or to be sold for export to Singapore, San Francisco, or Australia.
He states that they had a near- monopoly of the trade in girls and women, and that: The half-caste population in Hong Kong were, from the earliest days of the settlement of the Colony and down to the present day, almost exclusively the offspring of these Tan-ka people. But, like the Tan-ka people themselves, they are happily under the influence of a process of continuous re-absorption in the mass of Chinese residents of the Colony (1895 p. 169)
"The half-caste population of Hongkong were . . . almost exclusively the offspring of these Tan-ka women." EJ Eitel, Europe in China, the History of Hongkong from the Beginning to the Year 1882 (Taipei: Chen-Wen Publishing Co., originally published in Hong Kong by Kelly and Walsh. 1895, 1968), 169.
The half-caste population in Hong Kong were, from the earliest days of the settlement of the Colony and down to the present day [1895], almost exclusively the off-spring of these Tan-ka people
The rural population is divided into two main communities: Cantonese and Hakka. There is also a floating population — now declining — of about 50.000 boat- people, most of whom are known as Tanka. In mid-1970 Hongkong seemed once again
The rural population is divided into two main communities: Cantonese and Hakka. There is also a floating population—now declining—of about 100000 boatpeople, most of whom are known as Tanka. In mid-1970 Hongkong seemed once again
The rural population is divided into two main communities: Cantonese and Hakka. There is also a floating population—now declining—of about 100000 boatpeople, most of whom are known as Tanka. In mid-1970 Hongkong seemed once again
Prominent among the regional groups were two from Guangdong province: the Tanka girls, who lived and worked on boats, and the Cantonese girls, who worked in Cantonese brothels.
Koo has found too that cancer rates differ among Hongkong's Chinese communities. Lung cancer is more prevalent among the Tanka, or boat people, than among local Cantonese. But they in turn have a higher incidence than Chiuchow (Teochew)
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of November 2024 (link)How does it come about that this pleasing mixture of American Youth camp and English public-school sports day should come to represent" the emotional high point of the year for these fifteen schools which cater for the Shui-sheung-yan (water-folk), traditionally the lowest of all Hong Kong's social strata. Organised quite separately from them.
Tanka, n.1 Pronunciation: /ˈtæŋkə/ Forms: Also tankia, tanchia. Etymology: < Chinese (Cantonese), < Chinese tan, lit. 'egg', + Cantonese ka, in South Mandarin kia, North Mandarin chia, family, people. The boat-population of Canton, who live entirely on the boats by which they earn their living: they are descendants of some aboriginal tribe of which Tan was apparently the name. Tanka boat, a boat of the kind in which these people live. 1839 Chinese Repository 7 506 The small boats of Tanka women are never without this appendage. 1848 S. W. Williams Middle Kingdom I. vii. 321 The tankia, or boat-people, at Canton form a class in some respects beneath the other portions of the community. 1848 S. W. Williams Middle Kingdom II. xiii. 23 A large part of the boats at Canton are tankia boats, about 25 feet long, containing only one room, and covered with movable mats, so contrived as to cover the whole vessel; they are usually rowed by women. 1909 Westm. Gaz. 23 Mar. 5/2 The Tankas, numbering perhaps 50,000 in all, gain their livelihood by ferrying people to and fro on the broad river with its creeks.Chinese repository · 1832–1851 (20 vols.). Canton Samuel Wells Williams · The middle kingdom; a survey of the geography, government … of the Chinese empire and its inhabitants · 1848. New York The Westminster gazette · 1893–1928. London [England]: J. Marshall http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/197535
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of November 2024 (link)How does it come about that this pleasing mixture of American Youth camp and English public-school sports day should come to represent" the emotional high point of the year for these fifteen schools which cater for the Shui-sheung-yan (water-folk), traditionally the lowest of all Hong Kong's social strata. Organised quite separately from them.