Guangdong - The Final Word

It's time to say joigin to Guangdong - it's been a really interesting learning experience - slightly longer than usual, because of the Christmas vacation!

A summary of the themes

During the two months that I've been blogging about Guangdong, I've tried to get my head around the sheer size of Guangdong's population and that of China in general. I also grappled with some comparative linguistics, in an attempt to understand how close (or not) Cantonese is to Mandarin.  I did some research into Guangdong's toy industry as I learned how to make Stir-fry Beef with Oyster Sauce.  

Tools for research

I read three books during my research about Guangdong:

Research on Guangdong, China

China: Culture Shock! by Angela Eagan and Rebecca Weiner (2007) which gave me a good overview of Chinese culture.

Modern China: A very short introduction by Rana Mitter (2008) - part of my favourite series of books by Oxford University Press.

I also read Fan Wu's beautiful novel, February Flowers (2006) set in Guangzhou. 

The movies I watched as part of my research included:

Happy Together (1997), dir. Wong Kar-Wai and starring Leslie Cheung (the famous Cantopop star) and Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, about a gay male couple who are trying to get by in Argentina. 

Jet Li in Once Upon a time in China

Once Upon a Time in China (1991), dir. Tsui Hark and starring Jet Li.  I never imagined I would enjoy a martial arts movie, but this movie was both funny and interesting to watch.

And I absolutely loved Ip Man (2008), dir. Wilson Yip and starring the rather gorgeous Hong Kong actor Donnie Yen. The martial arts scenes in the movie were beautifully shot and the story was incredibly moving, being mostly based on the famous master of wing chun, Yip Man (who also trained Bruce Lee)

Other Themes

If I had time to continue blogging about Guangdong, I would be interested in the pursuing the following themes:

Tea
Chinese Protestants
The Taiping rebellion
The demise of China's nationalist party, the Kuomintang
The growing African population of Guangzhou
Ching Shih and female pirates
The Dynasties of China
Wedding photography
Chinese football
Chinese surnames
The Canton Fair - China's biggest trade fair
The exotic animals of Qingping Shichang
China in the Olympics
Kwang-Chou-Wan (Guangzhouwan), the 'French Hong Kong'

Dinner Party Trivia

As usual I learned some trivia about Guangdong which, I'm sure, will come in handy for dinner party small talk:

- Guangdong's economy is equivalent to the economies of Indonesia or Turkey
- Guangzhou is known as 'the flower city'
- Overseas Chinese are called Huaqiao 华侨
- There is a 7th century mosque in Guangzhou - Arab traders settled in Guangdong 1,000 years before Europeans arrived on the scene
- Chinese law stipulates that all citizens must be cremated after death - however, exceptions are made for ethnic minorities, eg. Tibetans.
- Although only 1% of China's population is Christian, that still amounts to approximately 1.4 million people
- In 2012, Ireland helped China establish its first national equestrian facility

In the News

I've also been keeping an eye on news stories related to China over the past two months and there's been quite a lot going on, including:

- Protests in Vietnam over the Chinese Navy's activity around the disputed Spratly Islands, which both countries claim as part of their sovereign territory
- The 75th anniversary of the Nanking Massacre
- A knife-wielding madmen who stabbed children in Henan province - although this happened around the same time as the terrible shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary school in Newton, Connecticut, I wouldn't have been aware of the stabbings in China, if I hadn't been following Chinese news
- A craze amongst China's nouveau-riche for European-style butlers
- Panic-buying of baby milk in Australia, as Chinese visitors stock up on the Australian brands, not trusting baby milk produced in their own country
- Demonstrations in Guangzhou about press freedom
- A landslide in Yunnan province
- Coastal China's lowest temperatures in 28 years
- Chinese workers kidnapped in Sudan's Darfur region
- Another year of slow growth in China's economy - 2012 saw the lowest level of growth in 13 years


The Final Word on Liberty

I was really interested to read about Isaiah Berlin's 'two concepts of liberty' in Rana Mitter's Modern China: A very short introduction.  According to Mitter, China scores very low in 'positive liberty', which would include things like press freedom, the right to demonstrate and form political parties opposed to the governing party.  However, arguably, when it comes to 'negative liberty', ie. the right to be left alone, China might score a bit higher, in the sense that the state in 21st century China doesn't tend to interfere in the personal choices of its citizens (marriage, fashion, access to music etc) in the same way as in, for example, Saudi Arabia.  I thought this was an interesting theory and it reminded me a lot of how the state operates in Russia - I guess there are many similarities.  Whilst I think Mitter might be on to something, I can't help thinking that China's one-child policy and state control of the Internet constitute restrictions on its citizens' negative liberty. 

A Cantopop Swansong

And, of course, I've been listening to lots of Cantopop.  I listened to Hong Kong stars like Sammi Cheng and Leslie Cheung.  Leslie was a great artist in many ways, an actor, as well as a singer, he did a lot to challenge Chinese preconceptions on sexuality, starring in ground-breaking movies like Farewell my Concubine (1993).  He suffered terribly from depression and tragically killed himself on April Fool's day in 2003, by jumping out of the window on the 24th floor of Hong Kong's Mandarin hotel.

But I'm going to leave you with a Youtube video by one of the most famous Cantopop singers of all, Roman Tam, whose music I've grown quite fond of.  Unfortunately, I can't find my favourite Roman Tam song, World of Love on Youtube, so I'm posting another really beautiful song, so you can get an idea of what his music sounds like.


Image credits:

The photo of the books was taken by me.   

The image of the still from the movie, Once Upon a Time in China is from a photo taken by me. This image is being used to illustrate this blogpost and promote Tsui Hark's film. By publishing this image, I'm not condoning or encouraging reproduction of this image on the Internet or anywhere else. This image is not meant to bring the actors into disrepute or suggest their endorsement of this blogpost, but is meant to highlight the performances of these actors in this movie.

Guangdong - Girl Love in Guangzhou

I struggled to find a modern novel set in Guangdong.  As with Cantonese music and film, a lot of the best known works come from Hong Kong, rather than mainland China.  However, my research finally paid off and I came across a really interesting novel called February Flowers by Fan Wu.  Although she grew up in southern China, Fan Wu emigrated to the US, where she now works for Google, as well as being a writer!

A 'Who's who?' of Chinese literature

It's a real book-readers' book.  The main character, Ming Chen, is a serious student with a passion for literature and the novel contains a 'who's who?' of inspirational Chinese literature.  Ming and the other characters in the novel read Chinese classics such as, Dream of the Red Chamber and Laozi's, Tao Te Ching, but they also read modern Chinese writers, such as, Ba Jin, Lu Xun, Qian Zhongshu and Shen Congwen.  

At the beginning of the book, Ming is concerned with cleaning dust off the furniture and bookshelves, in her student dormitory.  Thoughts of 'being left on the shelf' come to mind, as Ming shows no interest in boys, or the world outside her precious books.  

Women in Love

Chrysanthemum by Juliana Coutinho

Ming's life is turned upside down when she meets an older female student, Miao Yan, who is wild and sensual, the complete opposite to Ming.  Throughout the novel, Miao is seen by Ming as a 'woman', whereas Ming is only seventeen and still a girl.  Ming falls in love with Miao or, at least, the idea of Miao and the allure of becoming a woman.  The novel is very much a coming-of-age story, set in Guangzhou during the 1990's, at a time when the city was experiencing an economic boom.   There's quite a beautiful paragraph in the book, when Ming describes the moment she first 'fell in love' with Miao.

'It was the early morning of a hot spring day.  The reddish morning light poured in through the half-opened door and there she was, whirling against it.  She looked so angelic, so delicate, the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.  I sat on the edge of my bed and watched her, my heart jumping, speechless.'

Extract from February Flowers by Fan Wu.  

Unnatural nature

Wu uses the imagery of flowers blooming in the concrete jungle, to represent Ming's coming-of-age.  The book opens with references to chrysanthemum and hibiscus, both very symbolic and sensual flowers.  Miao wears a flowery blouse that epitomises her 'womanliness'.  People in Guangdong hang flower-boxes outside their apartment windows, in an attempt to beautify an otherwise urban landscape.  Guangzhou itself is described as a forest of half-built commercial high-rises - a very unnatural version of nature!

North and South

Hibiscus by Marufish

It was interesting to see Guangdong through the eyes of characters from other parts of China.  There are very few Cantonese characters in the novel - those that are there, like Ming's room-mate Yishu, keep their distance from the non-Cantonese students.   For the other Chinese students, Guangdong is seen as a better place to live than northern or western China.  The standard of living is higher in Guangdong than in the provinces that the other students come from and many of the characters are desperate to find a job in Guangzhou or Shenzhen.  Some of students try to find Cantonese partners, so they can marry and not return to their home provinces.

The Mandarin/Cantonese divide is a strange one.  On one hand, Mandarin culture is the dominant one - the culture of the capital Beijing and the political establishment.  Whilst they look down their noses at the Cantonese and grumble about Cantonese people refusing to learn Mandarin, there is also a desire to stay in Guangdong and learn Cantonese, so they can find a long-term job in the province.  I get the impression that the Cantonese pretty much steer clear of mainstream China - doing their own thing, oblivious to what happens in Shanghai or Beijing.  The North might hold political power, but it's in the South that the real money can be made.

The lure of the Other

Tropical flower by Marufish

The book has also got a lot to say about race and, in typical Chinese fashion, people like Miao, who is from an ethnic minority, are represented as 'the exotic other'.  I explored this theme when I blogged about the 'fragrant concubine' of Xinjiang/Uyghuristan, so it's really interesting to see a similar depiction of an exotic other in Wu's novel.  Miao comes from the Miao (also known as Hmong) people of China's faraway provinces, such as Guizhou and Yunnan.  Whilst Ming is fascinated by her ethnicity, Miao seems embarrassed by it and, it's only towards the end of the novel, when Miao opens up and talks about her culture. 

Trying to understand Cantonese culture in such a short space of time has been a difficult task but, more than anything, I think Fan Wu's novel has brought me closer to an understanding of what life is like for people in Guangdong than anything else that I have read about China.  I'd definitely recommend it and I look forward to reading more Chinese literature for future blog posts. 

Image credits:

The image of the chrysanthemum was taken by flickr member, Juliana Coutinho who is from Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.  You can see more of Juliana's work on her website.  Also, if you read Portuguese, there is a nice description of chrysanthemum on this photo's page. 

The photos of the hibiscus and the tropical flower are from flickr member, Marufish who is from Alor Setar in Malaysia.  You can see more of Marufish's photos on their photo stream. 

Thanks to Juliana and Marufish for sharing these wonderful images with us, using the Creative Commons License. 

Guangdong - Stir-fry Beef with Oyster Sauce

I've only been to mainland China once (in Beijing and the North) and one of the things that surprised me most about my trip was the quality of the food!  I guess, like most Westerners, I thought that I already knew Chinese food, thanks to the myriad of Chinese restaurants I've frequented in the UK, Ireland and elsewhere.  I realise now that when we (in the West) think of Chinese food, we're mostly talking about Cantonese-style Chinese food.  A large part of the Chinese diaspora overseas came from Guangdong and brought their cooking traditions with them.

The Four Great Traditions

Whilst 'Western' Chinese cuisine is a fast food - often not very healthy - my experience in China was completely different.  Cooking is something akin to an art form in China and the Chinese expect food which is tasty, fresh and beautifully presented.  It's hardly surprising, in such a big country, that there are many different regional cuisines - the exact number is a subject of debate - but, during my research, I've come across the phrase the Four Great Traditions, time and again and I feel that this is a good starting point to understanding Chinese cuisine. 

Cantonese cuisine is, of course, the most familiar Chinese cuisine outside China.  In the hotter climate of southern China, where ingredients can spoil easily, the Cantonese tradition involves a lot of wok frying at high temperatures.  Cantonese cuisine is also characterised by small bite-sized portions of vegetables, seafood or meat, generally known as dim sum.  An ancient Chinese idiom asserts that 'In Beijing, people talk, in Shanghai, people shop but in Guangzhou, people eat!'

A Northern feast

The other three main traditions are, Sichuan (or Szechuan) - which is spicier than other Chinese cuisines and becoming increasingly popular, both outside China and in the big cities of China's eastern seaboard.  Cuisine from the Yangtze delta, around Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Shanghai is known as Huaiyang and is often seen as the most prestigious of China's four great traditions.  It seems to involve a lot of seafood and steamed dumplings!  The fourth great tradition is the one I experienced, Northern cuisine.  It might surprise many to know that this tradition isn't focused on rice, but much more so on 'bready' products like noodles - closer to Mongolian cuisine and more suitable for a colder climate.

In my very first blog post on Learning about the World, I mentioned Sweet and Sour Pork which I made as part of my research on Hong Kong.  I've also cooked a Mongolian dish called Tsuivan which included making my own noodles!

Choosing a Cantonese dish

Oyster sauce mixed with sugar and water

I was spoilt for choice when it came to Cantonese dishes.  In the end, I plumped for something very straightforward and typical, Stir-fry Beef with Oyster Sauce.  The Chinese seem to love pork and chicken, so I thought it would be nice to do something with beef instead.  Also, I'd never cooked with Oyster sauce before and I was keen to get my hands on a bottle of this curious condensed mixture! 

Like many great ingredients and recipes, Oyster sauce was the result of a culinary accident.  It's probably a good idea if I explain to casual readers, at this point, that I'm no great cook and this blog post is not meant to provide a definitive guide to making this dish but is, rather, a record of my attempts to learn about the cuisine of Guangdong!  I looked at various different recipes before I made this dish, but I was mostly influenced by a recipe on About.com

The ingredients

Stir-fry Beef with Oyster sauce, the ingredients

500g Beef frying steak (cut into thin slices)
A small piece of fresh ginger
Some mushrooms
One small carrot
Oyster sauce
Soft brown sugar
Vegetable oil
Half a cup of water

For the marinade

Dark Soy sauce
Chinese rice wine
Corn flour
Water
Vegetable oil

I haven't put exact quantities on this recipe, as I think it's matter of personal taste - less is more is often a good rule when it comes to strong ingredients, of the type found in Chinese cooking.

How I made Stir-Fry Beef with Oyster sauce

I started by slicing the beef into thin strips about 2 centimetres in length (enough for a forkful).  I mixed together the ingredients of the marinade, in the order given above and popped this in the fridge for twenty minutes or so.

Slices of beef for the stir-fry

With a marinade of rice wine, dark soy sauce, vegetable oil and corn flour

Meanwhile I prepared the ginger, mushrooms and carrot - cutting each of them into equally thin slices.  I also prepared the Oyster sauce by adding soft brown sugar and water (probably a little bit too much water). 

Prepare the ginger, carrot and mushrooms

Once the beef had marinated, I heated up oil in the wok and stir-fried the pieces of ginger, before adding the beef slices and stir-frying these until they had turned a soft brown colour. 

Cantonese cooking involves wok frying at high temperatures

Stir-fry the beef until it browns

Once the beef had fried through, I removed it, wiped down the wok and started again, with fresh vegetable oil.  I started by stir-frying the pieces of carrot, before adding the mushrooms.  Once the carrots and mushrooms had cooked a bit, I added the Oyster sauce mixture and covered the wok to bring everything to the boil.

Stir-fry the pieces of carrot

Add the mushroom

Add the Oyster sauce mixture and bring to the boil

As soon as the mixture reaching boiling point, I added the cooked beef and ginger pieces and let them heat through. 

Add the cooked slices of beef and ginger and heat through

Finally, I served the stir-fried mixture with rice - a very simple, but tasty recipe that I would recommend to anyone who wants to cook an authentic Cantonese dish. 

Stir-fry Beef with Oyster sauce - served with rice

Image credits:

All photos were taken by me, please feel free to reuse, under the Creative Commons license:

Attribution (especially to this blog post)
Share alike
Non-commercial

Guangdong - The Santa of Shantou

It's that time of the year again when Santa is getting ready for his epic annual journey, delivering toys around the world and I'm sure that his elves are very busy cataloguing, packing and piling gifts onto, what has to be, the biggest sledge in the world! 

Christmas in the 1970's

The expectations that kids have around Christmas time seem to have increased since I was a child in the late 70's and early 80's.  Actually, my generation was already spoiled.  Whilst we listened to our parents tell stories about stockings filled with sweets and the excitement of getting an orange on Christmas day, we would have been very disappointed if we didn't at least get a bike, not to mention the latest action figures, board games and the annuals of our favourite comic books, Beano for boys and Bunty for girls. 

I'm sure many of today's generation would equally be disappointed by board games or annuals, it's all about Xboxes and Kids' tablets! 

Made in the North Pole?

Despite being made in the North Pole, many of the toys delivered by Santa on Christmas Day have stickers saying Made in China.  I was four-years old when Deng Xiaoping undertook his economic reforms, which were to thrust China into the spotlight of globalisation.  Many of those 'Made in China' stickers were applied by Santa's lesser-known 'little helpers' in Guangdong's Special Economic Zones, Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Shantou. 

The Global Toy Market

Toys in the £1 shop by kkalyan

Despite Health and Safety controversies, like the one in 2007, China still dominates the world toy market, with many major brand-names having outsourced production to places like Guangdong.  The Global revenue for toy sales in 2011 was $83 billion dollars, with more than a quarter of toy sales in the North American market, including the US.  An estimated 88% of toys sold in the US were made in China.  Toy imports to Europe show similar statistics, with 86.2% of non-EU-made toys coming from China. 

It's a massive industry, employing more than 645,000 people in China - it's estimated that more than 70% of the world's toys are made in China.  Within China, Guangdong dominates the toy industry, producing 73.9% of the Made in China toys. 

A carnival of consumerism

Far from its humble religious origins (or some might say, pagan - see my earlier blog post), Christmas has escalated into a large scale consumerist carnival, which makes me feel a little bit uncomfortable. It seems especially extravagant in these (as we are constantly being reminded) 'difficult economic times'.  It's also pretty bizarre, when you sit down and think about the fact that this nominally Communist nation has fed the consumerist/capitalist shopping sprees of recent years.  Whilst toys are incredibly important for a child's development, I can't help wondering when they became so expensive!


So which toys do Chinese children play with?

Santa feeding monkeys in Xi'an by vivido

I was curious to find out about the toys that Chinese children play with and, surprise surprise, Xboxes, video games and tablets feature just as highly on a Chinese child's' 'Santa list', as they do anywhere else in the world.  Interestingly, as a result of China's economic reforms and large-scale industrialisation, provinces like Guangdong have developed a middle class which is becoming a consumer of toys, as well as the manufacturer. 

Whilst various factors (the economic crisis, aging populations) have seen the demand for toys drop recently, in traditional markets like the US and Europe, domestic demand for toys in China has been increasingly annually by about 13%.  Astute toy manufacturers and (ahem!) Santa Claus himself will have noticed that, whilst there are more children in the world than ever before, the market for toys is ever-so-slightly shifting from the traditional US and European markets, to the growing markets of countries like Russia, China and India. 

So, as you're opening your gifts on Christmas morning, spare a thought for all of Santi's helpers, in the North Pole of course, but also in Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Shantou!

Image credits:

The image of the soft toys was taken by flickr member kkalyan. a.k.a. Kalyan Kanuri, who is an engineer from Bangalore in India.  You can see more of kkalyan's images on his photostream.  

The photo of a girl in a Santa costume feeding monkeys was taken in Xi'an Qinling national park, by flickr member vivido, who is a web editor from Dublin in Ireland.  You can see more of vivido's images on her photostream. 

Thanks to kkalyan and vivido for sharing these images with us using the Creative Commons License. 

Guangdong - Neih sīkm̀hsīk góng gwóngdùngwá a?

Like most people, I commonly use the word Chinese when I'm talking about the language that people speak in China.  Of course, the reality is that there isn't one single language called Chinese, but rather a collection of dialects and topolects that, collectively, make up the Chinese 'family' of languages.  I'm sure that the distinction between a dialect and a language, is every bit as controversial and as equally dependent on the political situation, in China, as it is anywhere in the world.  I like the word topolect, as it suggests something more than a mere dialect.

Pǔtōnghuà and the rest

There's no disputing that Mandarin rules the roost in China - with more than 840 million speakers, Mandarin is, by far, the biggest Chinese topolect.  Its is also politically important, as it is the official language of the Chinese government and power structures.  Mandarin has been adopted as the 'standard' version of Chinese, called Pǔtōnghuà or 'common language'. 

Other major Chinese topolects include Wu which is spoken around Shanghai by about 90 million speakers, Yue (a.k.a. Cantonese) spoken in Guangdong and the south, including Hong Kong, by about 70 million people, Xiang (65 million) spoken in Hunan, Min (60 million) in Fujian, Hainan and parts of Taiwan, Hakka (50 million) spoken in Fujian and Guangxi and Gan (30 million) spoken in Jiangxi, Hubei and Hunan. 

The bigger linguistic picture

The Languages of China

The Chinese languages themselves belong to a wider language family that includes Tibetan and many of the languages of Myanmar (Burma).

As well as the Chinese languages, there are minority languages of hill tribe peoples, as well as Turkic languages in the west and Mongolian and Korean in the north.  The overall picture makes for a greater level of linguistic diversity than you would, at first, imagine.


Mandarin has the largest number of native speakers in the world, followed by Spanish, English, Hindi and Arabic, but Cantonese itself is a substantial language, equivalent in its number of native speakers to languages like Italian or Turkish.  Cantonese is also very much a world language and is spoken in immigrant communities all over Asia, Europe and the Americas.

Trying to learn Cantonese?

I tried to learn some Cantonese before taking a trip to Hong Kong - not so much to speak the language, as to get a sense of its sound and 'feeling'.  Whilst I have learned a tonal language before (Thai) and could, on a very basic level, understand the importance of hearing the different tones of Cantonese, it was the first time that I ever studied a language where there are two tape scripts for every listening exercise; one at the normal speed of a native Cantonese speaker and a second recording, slowed down for the benefit of the Cantonese student.  I think that says it all really! 

Lexical environment analysis

The different dialects of Yue/Yuet (Cantonese)

As part of my research, I did a very rudimentary lexical analysis of Mandarin and Cantonese, to get a sense of how different they are, at least in terms of some basic vocabulary.

I've used a simple test that I call Lexical environment analysis to determine the relationship between words in different languages.  I used a very similar test with Uighur to explore its relationship with other Turkic languages and possible influences from (Mandarin) Chinese. 

The concept is straightforward and is based on my knowledge of the relationship between English, German and French.  I believe there are certain words that are part of the Natural environment of a language - things such as body parts, natural elements, native animals etc. that surely existed in the language before colonisation or influence by another people/language.  Then there are things which are part of a Constructed environment - furniture, inventions and other innovations that were (perhaps) introduced by another people in their own language.

English, French and German

You can see what I mean by the comparison of English, French and German (below):

Natural environment lexicon

English	German	French
Finger	Finger	Doigt
Father	Vater	Père
Moon	Mond	lune
Rain	Regen	pluie
Swine	Schwein	cochon/porc
Earth	Erde	terre

It's obvious here that English has much more in common with German, which makes sense as English is, fundamentally, a Germannic language.


Constructed environment lexicon

Glove	Handschuh	gant
Boss	Chef	chef
Candle	Kerze	bougie
Umbrella	Schirm	parapluie
Pork	Schweinefleisch	porc
Chair	Stuhl	chaise

The picture is more complicated here and you can see the influence of French on English words such as pork and chair.

Mandarin and Cantonese

 Natural environment lexicon

English	Mandarin	Cantonese
Finger	shǒuzhǐ	sau ji
Father	fùqīn	foo chan
Moon	yuèliàng	yuet
Rain	yǔ	yue
Swine	zhū	jùe
Earth	Dìqiú	dei kau

At a very basic level, it's clear that Mandarin and Cantonese are incredibly close in terms of their basic natural environment lexicon.  If we look at the constructed environment lexicon however, it's clear that the two 'languages' are in a process of separating and developing lexicons which are unfamiliar to each other's native speakers.

Glove	shǒutào	sau mat
Boss	lǎobǎn	boh si
Candle	làzhú	laap juk
Umbrella	sǎn	jè
Pork	zhūròu	jue yuk
Chair	yǐzi	dang

I think it's a process that takes centuries, but you can definitely see a bigger difference with these more 'modern' words.  It's also interesting that, despite the fact that this is such a small sample, I can already see the influence of English on Cantonese, more so than on Mandarin (boss and boh si).

Cantonese Wikipedia

I think Wikipedia can be a good indication of how languages are doing in terms of their online presence, so I did a quick survey of which Chinese languages have their own Wikipedias.

Not surprisingly, Mandarin is right up there and is the 11th biggest Wikipedia in terms of the number of articles, not far behind Portuguese.  Cantonese is currently number 92 - not great in European terms (less articles than Sicilian!) but equivalent to other 'big' languages from outside Europe, eg. Gujarati, which has 49 million native speakers.  Min is also present on Wikipedia - interestingly written in a Romanised script. Wu, Hakka and Gan are also there, but with very small numbers of articles, equivalent to Maltese, Cornish and Corsican, respectively! 

It will be interesting to see how the 'other' Chinese topolects compete with Mandarin in the future - I wonder if they will forever be consigned to 'dialect' status, or whether they will become languages in their own right?

I'm going to leave you with a sample of how Cantonese sounds - you can find almost everything on YouTube, even a recital of Bai Juyi's beautiful poem, Song of Unending Sorrow, here spoken by Cantonese businessman James Chan.  Enjoy!



Image credits:

Both maps were taken from Wikimedia Commons and are in the public domain. 

Guangdong - Made in China

China is a big country!  Both in terms of its land area (third biggest in the world after Russia and Canada) but, more significantly, in terms of its population, currently more than 1.3 billion people.  I've already skirted around the edges of China, during my blog posts about Hong Kong and Xinjiang/Uyghuristan.  Guangdong 广东 (literally eastern 东 expanse 广) is also a bit like, 'the other China' - the heartland of Cantonese culture and language, as opposed to the official Mandarin.  Guangdong is 'the south', far away from the northern cultures of Beijing and Shanghai.

The capital of Guangdong is Guangzhou, a city of 12.7 million people, bigger than London, Paris or New York.  If Guangzhou doesn't ring any bells, that's probably because it's better known in English as Canton.  A European mispronunciation of the Chinese name, Canton gives us the English word for the language, Cantonese.

Actually, Guangdong has twenty cities with more than one million people, most of which you'll never have heard of.  The next biggest ones are:

Shenzhen, Guangdong's main economic powerhouse: 10.3 million
Dongguan, home to the world's largest shopping mall: 8.2 million
Foshan, famous for its tradition of martial arts: 7.2 million
Zhanjiang, the 'French Hong Kong': 6.9 million
Jieyang, where people speak the Teochow dialect: 5.9 million
Maoming, a diverse city with large minority populations (Yao, Zhuang, Miao): 5.8 million
Shantou, the toy-manufacturing hub: 5.4 million

Guangzhou waterfront by Wilson Loo

Never heard of them? Well neither had I, until I started researching for this blog post!

Guangdong itself has a population of 104 million people!  If it was a country, it would be the 12th biggest country in the world, in terms of population, almost the equivalent of Mexico!  In terms of land area, Guangdong is about the same size as Cambodia. 

Coming from Ireland, with our meagre population of just over six million (the same as a medium-sized Cantonese city!), it's hard to get my head around the number of people who live in China!

There were approximately 4.6 million people in Ireland when I was born, in 1975 and Ireland's population has increased by about 36% in that time.  China's population has increased by about 47% in the same time period but, as I'm beginning to realise with China, it's all about scale and China's 47% increase means an extra 428 million people, which is twice the population of Indonesia (the world's fourth biggest country) or 1.5 times the population of the United States!

Shenzhen skyline by Wilson Loo

The Chinese government has been trying to deal with population growth via its well-known 'one-child policy', which is especially relevant to people living in one of China's many giant cities.  The government states that a further 400 million births were prevented as a result of the 'one-child policy' between its inception in 1979 and the time of the statement, in 2011.  It's a weird thing to try to calculate, when you think about it, counting 'people who were never born'? 

Approximately 20% of the world's population (1 in 5 people) is Chinese (literally made in China!) Another interesting statistic, and something I didn't realise before now, is that 90% of China's population lives on 1/5 of Chinese territory, mostly in industrial coastal regions like Guangdong and in places like China's most populous city/state, Chongqing.  So there is a whole 4/5 of Chinese territory where a mere 10% of the population lives.  That's still 130 million people though, which is equivalent to the population of Russia or Japan!

Shenzhen modern building by Wilson Loo

Guangdong's second-biggest city, Shenzhen, didn't really exist when I was born - it was established as China's first Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in 1979 and, since then, has seen its population grow to 12 million people.  Admittedly, about half of Shenzhen's population is composed of migrant workers, who return to their villages at the weekend.  Nevertheless, it's interesting to think that, in my life-time, a city of 12 million people can 'suddenly' appear, as if out of nowhere!

It's quite a challenge taking on Guangdong and I'm sure I'll only really manage to scratch the surface of this fascinating Chinese province.  Hopefully my research will help me unlock some of the mystery that is China!

Image credits:

For this blog post, I want to highlight the photography of fellow flickr member, Wilson Loo, who is originally from Kuala Lumpur, in Malaysia, but currently lives in Singapore.  You can see Wilson's Chinese photos on his photostream.  Thanks Wilson for sharing these photos with us, using the Creative commons license. 

Fiji - the Final Word

It's time to say ni sa moce to Fiji - I've really enjoyed learning about this South Pacific nation and the thoughts of visiting Fiji have kept me warm during a dark European November!

A summary of the themes

During the month or so that I've been blogging about Fiji, I learned about the different parts of Oceania, I learned about the Indo-Fijian minority and the Gods of War.  I learned how to open a coconut and make the Pacific favourite, Palu Sami.  I also did some research into Cannibalism and Obeyesekere's theory on Cannibal Talk.

Tools for research

I used four books during my research about Fiji:


Lonely Planet: Fiji (2006, 7th Edition) which was great for background research.

Some books for research

On Fiji Islands by Ronald Wright (1986) - an amusing travelogue that inspired me to do some research into the Gods of War, amongst other things.  Wright also has a very interesting chapter on the fate of the Banabans (or Ocean Islanders)

Cannibal Talk: The Man-Eating myth and Human sacrifice in the South Seas (2005) by Sri Lankan anthropoplogist, Gananath Obeyesekere - it's an academic book, but very readable and I'm interested in reading more of Obeyesekere's work in the future.

Most interesting of all was Joseph C Veramu's novel Moving Through the Streets (1994) - perhaps the most famous novel to come out of Fiji. I really enjoyed reading it, although it tells an incredibly gritty story of life in the slums of Raiwaqa, the South Pacific's largest housing estate.  It deals with the lives of young Fijian men, who grow up in poverty, surrounded by violence and crime, it's almost impossible for them to achieve their potential.  It reminded me of several books I've read before, namely Trainspotting, Last Exit to Brooklyn, A Clockwork Orange and Angela's Ashes.  I'd highly recommend it, if you want to see life beyond the idyllic picture most of us have of Fiji.

I also watched several movies which were filmed in Fiji, although none of them specifically addressed Fijian life or culture.  Nevertheless, it was nice to get lost in images of Fiji and a chance to dream about the beach and a tropical paradise.

Milla Jovovich in Return to the Blue Lagoon

Innocence is quite a theme in the Lagoon movies, both in The Blue Lagoon (Klieser, 1980) starring Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins and its sequel, Return to the Blue Lagoon (Graham, 1991) starring Brian Krause and Milla Jovovich.  It's interesting that, whilst teenage nudity was acceptable in the 1980 movie, it had become something of a taboo by 1991!

I really enjoyed Cast Away (Zemeckis, 2000) starring Tom Hanks as the FedEx employee who gets stranded on a Pacific island, filmed in Fiji's Mamanuca Islands.  I didn't really enjoy Savage Islands (Fairfax, 1983) starring Tommy Lee Jones, which seemed derivative and unintelligent.

Other Themes

If I had time to continue blogging about Fiji, I would be interested in the following additional themes:

- Coral reefs
- Starfish
- Honeymoons
- Rugby
- the Sugar trade
- Hairstyles

Still from The Blue Lagoon

- The Lasakau Sea Warriors
- the University of the South Pacific
- the traditions of drinking Kava a.k.a. grog
- Survivor-type TV programmes
- the Japanese in the Pacific
- the cultivation of Beches-de-Mer (Sea cucumbers)
- the orange dove of Taveuni
- the Banabans of Ocean Island
- Methodism
- the people of Vaitupa in Tuvalu

Dinner Party Trivia

As usual I learned some trivia about Fiji which will come in handy for dinner party small talk:


- the word Fiji is a mispronunciation of the native word Viti, which is the name of Fiji's largest island.
- the Kaunitoni migration myth claims that the Fijians and other Pacific islanders originally came from Lake Tanganyika in East Africa
- some shipwrecked Europeans, like the Swede known as 'Charles Savage', gained a lot of power and influence over Fiji's chiefs.
- an outbreak of measles wiped out a third of Fiji's population in the late 19th century

Still from The Blue Lagoon

- Fiji became a British colony on the 10th of October 1874
- Fijians use the word kaivalagi to describe 'foreigners', literally 'people from far away'
- Kerekere is a tradition of 'unconditional giving' - it prevents any one member of a tribe from gaining too much wealth, as they are expected to share everything they own with others
- Toota-phoota is a Hindi phrase which means 'Broken Hindi'
- Bats are the only mammals which are native to Fiji
- Fiji's flag has a coat of arms with three types of food on it (sugar, coconut and bananas!)
- Degai is a Fijian snake-god who causes night and day by opening and closing his eyes
- In the 1850s, Levuka, the first European settlement and capital of Fiji had a global reputation for drunkness, violence and immorality. 
- Fiji's second-biggest island is called Vanua Levu, which means 'big island'

The Final Word

As part of my research, I read about the fire-walking tradition on the Fijian island of Beqa (pronounced Benga).  I find this tradition fascinating and it seems to be a real example of mind over matter.  I'm aware that there are fire-walking traditions in other parts of the world and that it has become quite popular as a work-place 'bonding' activity.  I was curious to see whether or not it would be possible to do some fire-walking here in London and, amazingly, there are opportunities out there, like the fire-walking evening that took place at London Zoo, last week - what a pity I missed it!

Dancing off to a not-so-traditional meke

And, of course, I've been listening to lots of Fijian music.  It's hard not to smile and feel happy, when you hear the sunny vibes of groups like Mokosoi ni delai deyo and Seru Serevi, but I really fell in love with a band called Black Rose, who are incredibly popular throughout the Pacific and combine more traditional music with pop beats and rap!  I loved their second album, Voices of Nature and I want to leave you with one of their most famous songs, Raude.  Enjoy!  And up next month, G . . .

 

Image credits:

The image of the books was taken by me.

The other images are stills from the Blue Lagoon and Return to the Blue Lagoon and are from photos taken by me. These images are being used to illustrate this blog post and promote the films. By publishing these images, I'm not condoning or encouraging reproduction of these images on the Internet or anywhere else. These images are not meant to bring the actors into disrepute or suggest their endorsement of this blog post, but are meant to highlight the performances of these actors in these movies.