Taishan

This article is about Taishan city. For the Taishanese language, see Taishanese. For the Taishanese people, see Taishanese people. For Taishan (disambiguation), see Taishan (disambiguation).

This article is about a city in Province. For other uses, see Tai Shan.

Taishan 台山
—  County-level city  —
台山市
Location of Taishan City (pink) within Jiangmen City (yellow), Guangdong, and the PRC
Taishan Location of the city centre in Guangdong
Coordinates: 22°15′N 112°47′E
Country	People's Republic of China
Province	Guangdong
Prefecture-level city	Jiangmen
Time zone	China Standard (UTC+8)
Postal code

Taishan (Chinese: 台 山; pinyin: Táishān; Taishanese: Hoisan [hɔ̀isān]; Cantonese: Toi⁴saan¹ [tʰɔ̭ːisáːn]), also spelled Toishan, is a coastal county-level city in southern Guangdong province, People's Republic of China. The city is part of the Greater Taishan Region.

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

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

One quarter of the “Flying Tigers”, the legendary group of American volunteer airmen who fought the Japanese during the Second World War before the US entered it, came from Taishan.

History

County history

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

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

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

In March 1941, Japanese soldiers invaded Taishan's capital and killed nearly 280 people.

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

In 2010, parts of the movie Let the Bullets Fly were filmed in Taishan.

Overseas Taishanese history

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

Education

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

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

Below are some of the schools in Taishan:

University:

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

High schools & middle schools:

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

Administration

Taishan is under the jurisdiction of Jiangmen. In a jurisdiction of {{convert/{{{2}}}|3286km²|0|||||||r=re|d=LoffAoffDbSoff|s=}}, Taishan contains 16 townships (镇), which are subdivided into 313 village residential committees (村居委会) and 3,655 natural villages (自然村).

These townships (镇) are:

• Taicheng Subdistrict (台城街道): the seat of Taishan, formerly a town
• Baisha (白沙镇)
• Beidou (北陡镇): separated from the other townships by Zhenhai Bay (镇海湾) inlet
• Chixi (赤溪镇)
• Dajiang (大江镇)
• Doushan (斗山镇)
• Duhu (都斛镇)
• Guanghai (广海镇)
• Haiyan (海宴镇): contains an overseas Chinese farm (华侨农场)
• Duanfen (端芬镇)
• Sanhe (三合镇)
• Chuandao (川岛镇): including Shangchuan and xiachuan islands; Tourism Open Integrated Experimental Zone (旅游开发综合试验区)
• Shenjing (深井镇)
• Shuibu (水步镇)
• Sijiu (四九镇)
• Wencun (汶村镇)
• Chonglou (冲蒌镇)

These "natural villages" (自然村) include:

• An Nan Jiang Chao (安南江潮)
• Bi Hou (庇厚)
• Tang Mien Pao
• Jilong
• guanbuli (官步里)

Transportation

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

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

Ferry service connects the mainland part of the Taishan county-level city with the islands of Shangchuan, which are also part of the same county-level city. The Shangchuan ferry runs from the Shanzui Harbor (山咀港) in Chuandao Town on the mainland to the Sanzhou Harbor (三洲港) on the Shangchuan island. There is also daily ferry service between Shangchuan's Sanzhou Harbor and the nearby Xiachuan Island (also part of Taishan county-level city).

Language

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

Demographics

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

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

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

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

Climate

Climate data for Taicheng
Month	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Year
Average high °C (°F)	18 (65)	18 (64)	23 (73)	26 (79)	29 (85)	31 (88)	32 (90)	32 (90)	31 (87)	28 (82)	24 (76)	20 (68)	26.1 (78.9)
Average low °C (°F)	10 (50)	11 (52)	16 (61)	19 (67)	23 (73)	24 (76)	25 (77)	24 (76)	24 (75)	19 (67)	16 (61)	12 (53)	18.7 (66)
Precipitation mm (inches)	43 (1.7)	69 (2.7)	175 (6.9)	173 (6.8)	287 (11.3)	302 (11.9)	483 (19.0)	462 (18.2)	218 (8.6)	135 (5.3)	48 (1.9)	15 (0.6)	2,410 (94.9)
Source: Weatherbase

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

Actors/actresses & singers

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

Artists

• Alan Chin - San Francisco Bay Area contemporary artist
• Tyrus Wong - painter, muralist, ceramicist, lithographer, designer and kite maker

Business

• Norman Kwong - Lieutenant-Governor of Alberta & professional football player, president & manager of the Calgary Stampeders.
• Annie Wu Suk-ching - founder of Beijing Air Catering Ltd and member of the Standing Committee of the National Committee of Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. She is the daughter of James Tak Wu.
• James Tak Wu - founder of Hong Kong's famous Maxim's Catering Limited, which is Hong Kong's largest food & beverage corporation and restaurant chain. His ancestral town is Sijiu (四九).
• Jack Yan - magazine publisher in New Zealand.

Education

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

Historical figures

• Chen Yunchang - a very famous Shanghainese actress. She starred some popular movies including Mulan Joins the Army. She is the 3rd "Chinese Film Queen"; while the 1st is Hu Die who is also of Sze Yap origin.
• Arthur Chin – America's first ace in World War II
• Raymond Kwok Chow (a.k.a. Shrimp Boy) -- San Francisco Chinatown mobster, Dragon Head of the San Francisco Chapter Chinese Freemasons
• Evan Low - the youngest Asian American mayor in the United States.
• James Wong Howe - master cinematographer of Hollywood.
• Anna May Wong - the first Chinese American movie star.

Government

• Julius Chan - former Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea of An Nan Jiang Chao village in Doushan.
• Margaret Chin - New York City-based American politician. A Democrat, she was elected to the New York City Council (First Chinese American elected to this position) on November 3, 2009, to represent District 1 in Lower Manhattan.
• Adrienne Clarkson (née Adrienne Poy]] - Governor General of Canada, 1999-2005.
• Hiram Fong (a.k.a. Hiram Kwong) (1906–2004) - former US Senator from Hawaii.
• Matt Fong (a.k.a. Matt Kwong) (1953–2011) - former Treasurer of the State of California.
• Bill Lann Lee - United States Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Clinton Administration.
• Gary Locke Governor of Washington State (1996–2006); Secretary of Commerce, US Ambassador to China (2011-)
• John Tsang - Financial Secretary of Hong Kong.
• Wong Kim Ark - defendant in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898).
• Leland Yee - California State Senator. In 2004 Yee became the first Asian American to be appointed Speaker pro Tempore.
• Patrick Yu - Hong Kong lawyer and Crown Counsel, and founder of its first law school.

External links

• China Taishan Web
• Taishan City Government
• Chinese Genealogy
• Map of Taishan
• Taishan Merchant Web
• Hoisanese to English Dictionary
• Taishan Culture & Loisirs (Association of the Taishan expatriate community)