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Wikipedia

Tanka people

February 07, 2023

The Tankas or boat people are a sinicised ethnic group in Southern China[2] who have traditionally lived on junks in coastal parts of Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian, Hainan, Shanghai, Zhejiang and along the Yangtze river, as well as Hong Kong, and Macau. The boat people are referred to with other different names outside of Guangdong (not called Tanka). Though many now live onshore, some from the older generations still live on their boats and pursue their traditional livelihood of fishing. Historically, the Tankas were considered to be outcasts. Since they were boat people who lived by the sea, they were sometimes referred to as "sea gypsies" by both Chinese and British. Tanka origins can be traced back to the native ethnic minorities of southern China known historically as the Baiyue who may have taken refuge on the sea and gradually assimilated into Han culture. However, Tanka have preserved many of their native traditions that are not found in Han Chinese culture.

Tanka people
Tanka woman in Macau
Regions with significant populations
 Mainland ChinaGuangdong, Guangxi, Fujian, Hainan, Shanghai, Zhejiang, and along the Yangtze river[1]
 Hong KongKowloon
 MacauMacau Bay
Languages
Tanka dialect of Yue Chinese,
Fuzhou dialect of Eastern Min Chinese (Fuzhou Tanka), other varieties of Chinese,
for those living in the diaspora speak English, Vietnamese, Khmer, Tetun, Burmese, Thai, Hindi, Bengali, Malay (both Malaysian / Bruneian and Indonesian), Spanish, Portuguese (including Macau), French, Fijian, Creole and Dutch
Religion
Chinese folk religions (including Taoism, Confucianism, ancestral worship and others) and Mahayana Buddhism.
Tanka people
Traditional Chinese1. 蜑家
2. 艇家
3. 水上人
4. 曲蹄
5. 蜑民
6. 曲蹄囝
Literal meaning1. Dan families
2. boat households
3. people on water
4. crooked hoof, bowlegged
5. Dan people
6. crooked hoof children, bowlegged children
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu Pinyin1. Dànjiā
2. Tǐngjiā
3. Shuǐshàngrén
Yue: Cantonese
Yale Romanization1. Daahngā
2. Téhnggā
3. Séuiseuhngyàn
4. Kūktài
Jyutping1. Daan6gaa1
2. Teng5gaa1
3. Seoi2soeng6jan4
4. Kuk1tai4
Eastern Min
Fuzhou BUC4. Kuóh-dà̤
5. Dáng-mìng
6. Kuóh-dà̤-giāng

A small number of Tankas also live in parts of Vietnam. There they are called Dan (Đàn) and are classified as a subgroup of the Ngái ethnicity.

Etymology and terminology

According to official Liu Zongyuan (Liou Tsung-yüan; 柳宗元; 773–819) of the Tang Dynasty, there were Tanka people settled in the boats of nowadays Guangdong province and Guangxi Zhang autonomous region.

"Tank" is a Cantonese term for boat or junk and "ka" means family or peoples. The term Tanka is now considered derogatory and no longer in common use.[3] These boat dwellers are now referred to in China as "on-water people" (Chinese: 水上人; pinyin: shuǐshàng rén; Cantonese Yale: Séuiseuhngyàn),[4] or "people of the southern sea" (Chinese: 南海人; Cantonese Yale: Nàamhóiyàn).[5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] No standardised English translation of this term exists. "Boat People" is a commonly used translation, although it may be confused with the similar term for Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong. The term "Boat Dwellers" was proposed by Dr. Lee Ho Yin of The University of Hong Kong in 1999, and it has been adopted by the Hong Kong Museum of History for its exhibition.[13]

Both the Tanka and the Cantonese speak Cantonese.[14][15] However, Tanka living in Fujian speak Min Chinese.

"Boat people" was a general term for the Tanka. The name Tanka was used only by Cantonese to describe the Tanka of the Pearl River Delta.

The Tanka boat people of the Yangtze region were called the Nine surnames fishermen households, while Tanka families living on land were called the Mean households.

There were two distinct categories of people based on their way of life, and they were further divided into different groups. The Hakka and Cantonese lived on land; the Tanka (including Hokkien-speaking Tanka immigrants often mistaken for being Hoklo) lived on boats and were both classified as boat people.[16]

The differences between the sea dwelling Tanka and land dwellers were not based merely on their way of life. Cantonese and Hakka who lived on land fished sometimes for a living, but these land fishermen never mixed or married with the Tanka fishermen. Tanka were barred from Cantonese and Hakka celebrations.[17]

British reports on Hong Kong described the Tanka including Hoklo-speaking Tanka boat people living in Hong Kong "since time unknown".[18][19] The encyclopaedia Americana alleged that Tanka lived in Hong Kong "since prehistoric times".[20][21][22]

Geographic Distribution

The Tanka people are found throughout the coasts and rivers of the following regions:[23]

Origin

Mythical origins

 
Tanka in Hong Kong

Some Chinese myths claim that animals were the ancestors of the Barbarians, including the Tanka people.[26][27] Some ancient Chinese sources claimed that water snakes were the ancestors of the Tanka, saying that they could last for three days in the water, without breathing air.[28]

Baiyue connection and origins in Southern China

Main article: Baiyue

The Tanka are considered by some scholars to be related to other minority peoples of southern China, such as the Yao and Li people (Miao).[29][better source needed] The Amoy University anthropologist Ling Hui-hsiang wrote on his theory of the Fujian Tanka being descendants of the Bai Yue. He claimed that Guangdong and Fujian Tanka are definitely descended from the old Bai Yue peoples, and that they may have been ancestors of the Malay race.[30] The Tanka inherited their lifestyle and culture from the original Yue peoples who inhabited Hong Kong during the Neolithic era.[31] After the First Emperor of China conquered Hong Kong, groups from northern and central China moved into the general area of Guangdong, including Hong Kong.[32]

One theory proposes that the ancient Yue inhabitants of southern China are the ancestors of the modern Tanka boat people. The majority of western academics subscribe to this theory, and use Chinese historical sources. (The ancient Chinese used the term "Yue" to refer to all southern barbarians.)[33][34] The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition, states that the ancestors of the Tanka were native people.[35][36]

The Tanka's ancestors had been pushed to the southern coast by Chinese peasants who took over their land.[37][38]

During the British colonial era in Hong Kong, the Tanka were considered a separate ethnic group from the Punti, Hakka, and Hoklo.[39] Punti is another name for Cantonese (it means "local"), who came from mainly Guangdong districts. The Hakka and Hoklo are not considered as Puntis.

The Tanka have been compared to the She people by some historians, practising Han Chinese culture, while being an ethnic minority descended from natives of Southern China.[40]

Yao connections

Main article: Yao people

Chinese scholars and gazettes described the Tanka as a "Yao" tribe, with some other sources noting that "Tan" people lived at Lantau, and other sources saying "Yao" people lived there. As a result, they refused to obey the salt monopoly of the Song dynasty (Sung dynasty; 960–1276/1279) government. The county gazetteer of Sun On in 1729 described the Tanka as "Yao barbarians", and the Tanka were viewed as animals.[41]

In modern times, the Tanka claim to be ordinary Chinese who happen to fish for a living, and the local dialect is used as their language.[42]

Historiography

Some southern Chinese historic views of the Tanka were that they were a separate aboriginal ethnic group, "not Han Chinese at all".[43] Chinese Imperial records also claim that the Tanka were descendants of aboriginals.[44] Tanka were also called "sea gypsies" (海上吉普賽人).[11]

The Tanka were regarded as Yueh and not Chinese, they were divided into three classifications, "the fish-Tan, the oyster-Tan, and the wood-Tan" in the 12th century, based on what they did for a living.[45][46]

The three groups of Punti, Hakka, and Hoklo, all of whom spoke different Chinese dialects, despised and fought each other during the late Qing dynasty. However, they were all united in their overwhelming hatred for the Tanka, since the aboriginals of Southern China were the ancestors of the Tanka.[47] The Cantonese Punti had displaced the Tanka aboriginals, after they began conquering southern China.[48]

The Chinese poet Su Dongpo wrote a poem in which mentioned the Tanka.[49]

The Nankai University of Tianjin published the Nankai social and economic quarterly, Volume 9 in 1936, and it referred to the Tanka as aboriginal descendants before Chinese assimilation.[50] The scholar Jacques Gernet also wrote that the Tanka were aboriginals, who were known for being pirates (haidao), which hindered Qing dynasty attempts to assert control in Guangdong.[51]

Scholarly opinions on Baiyue connection

The most widely held theory is that the Tanka are the descendants of the native Yue inhabitants of Guangdong before the Han Cantonese moved in.[52] The theory stated that originally the Yueh peoples inhabited the region, when the Chinese conquest began, either absorbed or expelled the Yue to southern regions. The Tanka, according to this theory, are descended from an outcast Yue tribe who preserved their separate culture.[53]

Regarding the Fujian Minyue Tanka it is suggested that in the southeast coastal regions of China, there were many sea nomads during the Neolithic era and they may have spoken ancestral Austronesian languages, and were skilled seafarers.[54] In fact, there is evidence that an Austronesian language was still spoken in Fujian as late as 620 AD.[55] It is therefore believed that the Tanka were Austronesians who could be more closely related to other Austronesian groups such as native Filipinos, Javanese or Balinese.

A minority of scholars who challenged this theory deny that the Tanka are descended from natives, instead claiming they are basically the same as other Han Cantonese who dwell on land, claiming that neither the land dwelling Han Cantonese nor the water dwelling Tanka have more aboriginal blood than the other, with the Tanka boat people being as Chinese and as Han as ordinary Cantonese.[56]

Eugene Newton Anderson claimed that there was no evidence for any of the conjectures put forward by scholars on the Tanka's origins, citing Chen, who stated that "to what tribe or race they once belonged or were once akin to is still unknown".[57]

Some researchers say the origin of the Tanka is multifaceted, with a portion of them having native Yueh ancestors and others originating from other sources.[58]

Genetics

Fujian Tanka have customs similar to Daic and Austronesian people. They have a closer genetic affinity with Daic populations than with Han Chinese in paternal lineages, but are closely clustered with southern Han populations (such as Hakka and Teochew) in maternal lineages. It is hypothesized that the Fujian Tanka mainly originate from the ancient indigenous Daic people and have only limited gene flows from Han Chinese populations.[59]

Another study on the Tanka concluded that the Tanka people not only had a close genetic relationship with both northern Han and ancient Yellow River basin millet farmers but also possessed more southern East Asian ancestry related to Austronesian, Kra-Dai and Hmong-Mien people compared to southern Han. Tanka people had their own unique genetic structure, but kept a close relationship with geographically close southern Han Chinese populations. The results supported that the Tanka people arose from the admixture between southward migration Han Chinese and southern indigenous people.[60]

History

Sinicisation

The Song dynasty engaged in extensive sinicisation of the region with Han people.[61] After many years of sinicisation and assimilation, the Tanka now identify as Han Chinese, though they also have non-Han ancestry from the natives of Southern China.[62] The Cantonese would often buy fish from the Tanka.[63] In some inland regions, the Tanka accounted for half of the total population.[64] The Tanka of Quanzhou were registered as barbarian households.[65]

Ming Dynasty

The Tanka boat population were not registered into the national census as they were of outcast status, with an official imperial edict declaring them untouchable.[66][better source needed]

Macau and Portuguese rule

Main articles: Macau, History of Macau, and Macanese people
 
Traditional Tanka people clothes in a Hong Kong museum.

The Portuguese, who were granted Macau during the Ming dynasty, often married Tanka women since Han Chinese women would not have relations with them. Some of the Tanka's descendants became Macanese people.

Some Tanka children were enslaved by Portuguese raiders.[67]

The Chinese poet Wu Li wrote a poem, which included a line about the Portuguese in Macau being supplied with fish by the Tanka.[68][69][70][71]

When the Portuguese arrived at Macau, enslaved women from Goa (part of Portuguese India), Siam, Indochina, and Malaya became their wives. Rarely were they Chinese women.[72] The Tanka women were among the only people in China willing to mix and marry with the Portuguese, with other Chinese women refusing to do so.[73]

The majority of marriages between Portuguese and natives was between Portuguese men and women of Tanka origin, who were considered the lowest class of people in China and had relations with Portuguese settlers and sailors, or low class Chinese women.[74] Western men like the Portuguese were refused by high class Chinese women, who did not marry foreigners.[75]

Literature in Macau was written about love affairs and marriage between the Tanka women and Portuguese men, like "A-Chan, A Tancareira", by Henrique de Senna Fernandes.[76][77][78][79]

Qing dynasty

Tanka. Tankia (tan'ka, tan'kyä), n. [Chinese, literally, 'the Tan family or tribe'; < Tan, an aboriginal tribe who formerly occupied the region lying to the south and west of the Meiing (mountains) in southern China, + kia (pronounced ka in Canton), family, people.] The boat population of Canton in southern China, the descendants of an aboriginal tribe named Tan, who were driven by the advance of Chinese civilisation to live in boats upon the river, and who have for centuries been forbidden to live on the land. "Since 1730 they have been permitted to settle in villages in the immediate neighbourhood of the river, but are still excluded from competition for official honours, and are forbidden by custom from intermarrying with the rest of the people. (Q&es, Glossary of Reference.)[80]

[why?]

Attempts were made to free the Tanka and several other "mean" groups from this status in a series of edicts from 1723 to 1731.[81] They mostly worked as fishermen and tended to gather at some bays. Some built markets or villages on the shore, while others continued to live on their junks or boats. They claimed to be Han Chinese.[82]

The Qing edict said "Cantonese people regard the Dan households as being of the mean class (beijian zhi) and do not allow them to settle on shore. The Dan households, for their part, dare not struggle with the common people", this edict was issued in 1729.[83]

As Hong Kong developed, some of the fishing grounds in Hong Kong became badly polluted or were reclaimed, and so became land. Those Tankas who only own small boats and cannot fish far out to sea are forced to stay inshore in bays, gathering together like floating villages.[84]

Lifestyle and culture

Always there is plenty to see, as the Tanka. the people who live in the boats, are full of life. They are an aboriginal tribe, speaking an altogether different language from the Chinese. On the land they are like fish out of water. They are said never to intermarry with landlubbers, but somehow or other their tongue has crept into many villages in the Chiklung section. The Chinese say the Tanka speech sounds like that of the Americans. It seems to have no tones. A hardy race, the Tanka are untouched by the epidemics that visit our coast, perhaps because they live so much off land. Each family has a boat, its own little kingdom, and, there being plenty of fish, all look better fed than most of our land neighbours. Christianity is, with a few rare exceptions, unknown to them. The only window of our Chiklung house gives the missioner a full view of the village life of some of the boat tribe. The window at present is just the absence of the south wall of the little loft to the shop. Wooden bars can be inserted in holes against robbers.[85]

Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America in 1921

Before leaving the market, by special invitation we had a swim from off one of the sampans (a term used around Canton: here "baby boat" is the name). The water was almost hot and the current surprisingly swift. Nevertheless the Tanka men and boys go in several times a day, and wash jacket and trousers, undressing and dressing in the water. They seem to let the clothes dry on them. Women and girls also jump in daily.[86]

Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America in 1921

Masonry was unknown by the water-dwelling Tanka.[87]

Canton (Guangzhou)

The Tanka also formed a class of prostitutes in Canton, operating the boats in Canton's Pearl River which functioned as brothels. They did not practice foot binding and their dialect was unique. They were forbidden to marry land-dwelling Chinese or live on land. Their ancestors were the natives of Southern China before the Cantonese expelled them to their current home on the water.[88]

Modern China

During the intensive reclamation efforts around the islands of Shanghai in the late 1960s, many Tanka were settled on Hengsha Island and organised as fishing brigades.[89]

British Hong Kong

 
Hong Kong boat dwellings in December 1970.

In 1937, Walter Schofield, then a Cadet Officer in the Hong Kong Civil Service, wrote that at that time the Tankas were "boat-people [who sometimes lived] in boats hauled ashore, or in more or less boat-shaped huts, as at Shau Kei Wan and Tai O". They mainly lived at the harbours at Cheung Chau, Aberdeen, Tai O, Po Toi, Kau Sai Chau and Yau Ma Tei.[90]

Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew (1845–1917) and Katharine Caroline Bushnell (5 February 1856 – January 26, 1946), who wrote extensively on the position of women in the British Empire, wrote about the Tanka inhabitants of Hong Kong and their position in the prostitution industry, catering towards foreign sailors. The Tanka did not marry with the Chinese, being descendants of the natives, they were restricted to the waterways. They supplied their women as prostitutes to British sailors and assisted the British in their military actions around Hong Kong[91] The Tanka in Hong Kong were considered "outcasts" categorised low class.[92]

Ordinary Chinese prostitutes were afraid of serving Westerners since they looked strange to them, while the Tanka prostitutes freely mingled with western men.[93] The Tanka assisted the Europeans with supplies and providing them with prostitutes.[94][95] Low class European men in Hong Kong easily formed relations with the Tanka prostitutes.[96] The profession of prostitution among the Tanka women led to them being hated by the Chinese both because they had sex with westerners and them being racially Tanka.[97]

The Tanka prostitutes were considered to be "low class", greedy for money, arrogant, and treating clients with a bad attitude. They were known for punching their clients or mocking them by calling them names.[98] Though the Tanka prostitutes were considered low class, their brothels were still remarkably well kept and tidy.[99] A famous fictional story which was written in the 1800s depicted western items decorating the rooms of Tanka prostitutes.[100]

The stereotype among most Chinese in Canton that all Tanka women were prostitutes was common, leading the government during the Republican era to accidentally inflate the number of prostitutes when counting, due to all Tanka women being included.[101][102] The Tanka women were viewed as such that their prostitution activities were considered part of the normal bustle of a commercial trading city.[103] Sometimes the lowly regarded Tanka prostitutes managed to elevate themselves into higher forms of prostitution.[104][105]

Tanka women were ostracised from the Cantonese community, and were nicknamed "salt water girls" (ham sui mui in Cantonese) for their services as prostitutes to foreigners in Hong Kong.[106][107]

Tanka women who worked as prostitutes for foreigners also commonly kept a "nursery" of Tanka girls specifically for exporting them for prostitution work to overseas Chinese communities such as in Australia or America, or to serve as a Chinese or foreigner's concubine.[108]

A report called "Correspondence respecting the alleged existence of Chinese slavery in Hong Kong: presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty" was presented to the English Parliament in 1882 concerning the existence of slavery in Hong Kong, of which many were Tanka girls serving as prostitutes or mistresses to westerners.

To understand the social bearings of domestic servitude as it obtains in Hong Kong, it must be observed that although the Chinese residents of Hong Kong are under British rule and live in close proximity to English social life, there has always been an impassable gulf between respectable English and Chinese society in Hong Kong. The two forms of social life have exercised a certain influence upon each other, but the result now visible is, that while Chinese social life has remained exactly what it is on the mainland of China, the social life of many foreigners in Hong Kong has comparatively degenerated, and not on'y accommodated itself in certain respects to habits peculiar to the system of •patriarchalism, but caused a certain disrespectable but small class of Chinese to enter into a social alliance with foreigners, which, while detaching them from the restraining influence of the custom and public opinion of Chinese society, left them uninfluenced by the moral powers of foreign civilisation.[109]

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 population, the Pariahs of Cantonese society. These Tan-ka people of the Canton river are the descendants of a tribe of aborigines pushed by advancing Chinese civilisation to live on boats on the Canton river, being for centuries forbidden by law to live on shore. The Emperor Yung Ching (A.D. 1730) allowed them to settle in villages in the immediate proximity of the river, but they were left by him, and remain to the present day excluded from competition for official honours, whilst custom forbids them to intermarry with the rest of the people. These Tan-ka people were the secret but trusty allies of foreigners from the time of the East India Company to the present day. They furnished pilots and supplies of provisions to British men-of-war and troop ships when doing so was by the Chinese Government declared treason, unsparingly visited with capital punishment. They invaded Hong Kong the moment the Colony was opened, and have ever since maintained here a monopoly, so to say, of the supply of Chinese pilots and ship's crews, of the fish trade, the cattle trade, and especially of the trade in women for the supply of foreigners and of brothels patronised by foreigners. Almost every so-called "protected woman," i.e. kept mistress of foreigners here, belongs to this Tan-ka tribe, looked down upon and kept at a distance by all the other Chinese classes. It is among these Tan-ka women, and especially under the protection of those "protected T;in-ka women, that private prostitution and the sale of girls for purposes of concubinage flourishes, being looked upon by them as their legitimate profession. Consequently, almost every "protected woman keeps a nursery of purchased children or a few servant girls who are being reared with a view to their eventual disposal, according to their personal qualifications, either among foreigners here as kept women, or among Chinese residents as their concubines, or to be sold for export to Singapore, San Francisco, or Australia. Those protected women, moreover, generally act as protectors each to a few other Tanka women who live by sly prostitution. The latter, again, used to be preyed upon—till quite recently His Excellency Governor Hennessy stopped this fiendish practice—by informers paid with Government money, who would first debauch such women and then turn round against them charging them before the magistrate as keepers of unlicensed brothels, in which case a heavy fine would be inflicted, to pay which these women used to sell their own children, or sell themselves into bondage worse than slavery, to the keepers of the brothels licensed by the Government. Whenever a sly brothel was broken up these keepers would crowd the shroffs office of the police court or the visiting room of the Government Lock Hospital to drive their heartless bargains, which were invariably enforced with the weighty support of the Inspectors of brothels appointed by Government under the Contagious Diseases Ordinance. The more this Ordinance was enforced the more of this buying and selling of human flesh went on at the very doors of Government offices.

It is amongst these outcasts of Chinese society that the worst abuses of the Chinese system of domestic servitude exist, because that system is here unrestrained by the powers of traditional custom or popular opinion. This class of people, mustering perhaps here in Hong Kong not more than 2,000 persons, are entirely beyond the argument of this essay. They form a class of their own, readily recognised at a glance. They are disowned by Chinese society, whilst they are but parasites on foreign society. The system of buying and selling female children and of domestic servitude with which they must be identified is so glaring an abuse of legitimate Chinese domestic servitude that it calls for corrective measures entirely apart from any considerations connected with the general body of Chinese society.[110]

Ernest John Eitel claimed that all "half caste" people in Hong Kong were descended exclusively from Europeans having relationship with Tanka women, and not Chinese women. The theory that most of the Eurasian mixed race Hong Kong people are descended only from Tanka women and European men, and not ordinary Cantonese women, is backed up by other researchers who pointed out that Tanka women freely consorted with foreigners due to the fact that they were not bound by the same Confucian traditions as the Cantonese, and having a relationship with European men was advantageous for Tanka women. The ordinary Cantonese women did not sleep with European men, so the Eurasian population was formed only from Tanka and European admixture.[111][112][113][114][115]

The day labourers settled down in huts at Taipingshan, at Saiyingpun and at Tsimshatsui. But the largest proportion of the Chinese population were the so-called Tanka or boat people, the pariahs of South-China, whose intimate connection with the social life of the foreign merchants in the Canton factories used to call forth an annual proclamation on the part of the Cantonese Authorities warning foreigners against the demoralising influences of these people. These Tan-ka people, forbidden by Chinese law (since A.D. 1730) to settle on shore or to compete at literary examinations, and prohibited by custom from intermarrying with the rest of the people, were from the earliest days of the East India Company always the trusty allies of foreigners. They furnished pilots and supplies of provisions to British men-of war, troopships and mercantile vessels, at times when doing so was declared by the Chinese Government to be rank treason, unsparingly visited with capital punishment. They were the hangers-on of the foreign factories of Canton and of the British shipping at Lintin, Kamsingmoon, Tungkin and Hongkong Bay. They invaded Hongkong the moment the settlement was started, living at first on boats in the harbour with their numerous families, and gradually settling on shore. They have maintained ever since almost a monopoly of the supply of pilots and ships' crews, of the fish trade and the cattle trade, but unfortunately also of the trade in girls and women. Strange to say, when the settlement was first started, it was estimated that some 2,000 of these Tan-ka people had flocked to Hongkong, but at the present time they are about the same number, a tendency having set in among them to settle on shore rather than on the water and to disavow their Tan-ka extraction to mix on equal terms with the mass of the Chinese community. The half-caste population in Hongkong were, from the earliest days of the settlement of the Colony and down to the present day, almost exclusively the off-spring 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 the Chinese residents of the Colony.

During British rule some special schools were created for the Tanka.[116]

In 1962 a typhoon struck boats belonging to the Tanka, likely including Hoklo-speaking Tanka mistaken for being Hoklo, destroying hundreds.[20][21][22]

During the 1970s the number of Tanka was reported to be shrinking.[117][118][119]

Shanghai

Shanghai, with its many international concessions, contained prostitutes from various areas of China, including Guangdong province. This included the Tanka prostitutes, who were grouped separately from the Cantonese prostitutes. The Cantonese served customers in normal brothels while the Tanka served customers in boats.[120]

Commerce

...always enlivened by the fleet of Tanka boats which pass, conveying passengers to and fro, between the land and the Canton and Hong Kong steamers."[121][122]

Japan and the Japanese: a narrative of the US government expedition to Japan under Commodore Perry in 1859

Our next picture shows a Chinese tanka boat. The tanka boats are counted by thousands in the rivers and bays of China. They are often employed by our national vessels as conveyances to and. from the shore, thereby saving the health of the sailors, who would be otherwise subjected to pulling long distances under a hot sun, with a liability of contracting some fatal disease peculiar to China, and thus introducing infection in a crowded crew.[123]

Ballou's monthly magazine, Volume 8 in 1858

"Macao.

"We arrived here on the twenty-second, and dispatched a boat to the shore immediately for letters. I received three or four of those fine large letters which are the envy of all who see them, and which are readily distinguishable by their size, and the beautiful style in which they are directed. You cannot imagine the delight with which I devoured their costents. I am glad you wrote so much of our dear pet. 0, my Dita, the longing I feel to take the dear little thing to my heart is agonising! Yesterday I was on shore, and saw a beautiful child of about the same age as ours. I was almost crazy at the sight. Twenty months old! How she must prattle by this time! I fancy I can see her trotting about, following you around the house. What a recompense for the hardest toil of the day would it not be to me, could I only lie down on the floor and have a good romp with her at night!

"And now for Macao, and what I saw, felt, and did. You probably know that a very numerous Chinese population lives entirely in boots; some of them so small that one pities the poor unfortunates who live so miserably. They are born, grow up, marry, and raise children in these boats. You would be astonished to see mothers, with infants at the breast, managing the sails, oars, and rudder of the boat as expertly as any sailor. The Tanka is of very light draft, and, being able to go close in shore, is used to land passengers from the larger boats. As we neared the shore, we noticed small boats pulling toward us from all directions. Soon a boat, "manned" by two really pretty young girls pulling oars, and a third sculling, came alongside, calling out earnestly, 'Takee me boat!' 'Takee me boat!' They had beautiful teeth, white as ivory, brilliant eyes, and their pretty faces, so earnest and pleading, were wreathed in smiles as we gave them the preference over others that joined us from all quarters, clinging to the sides of our large boat, and impeding our headway. The boatmen tried in vain to drive them off. One brute of a fellow splashed repeatedly a poor girl, who. though not at all pretty, had such a depth of meaning and such a sad expression in her eyes and face as charmed me completely. It would have interested any one to hear her scold back, and to see the flashing of her eyes, and the vivid expression in every feature. When I frowned at our sailor, the sudden change in her face from anger to smiles, the earnest 'takee me boat,' as she caught evidence of sympathy from me, was beautiful. We were assailed with these cries from so many, and there was such a clamour, that, in self-defense, we had to choose a boat and go. The first-mentioned girls, on account of their beauty, won the majority, and their boat was clean and well furnished, which is more than could be said of many of them. I caught the look of disappointment which passed over the features of the girl I have described, and it haunts me even now. Trifling as it, appeared to us, such scenes constitute the great events in their poor lives, and such triumphs or defeats are all-important to them.

"Upon entering the Tanka boat, we found the mother of the young girls, and a young infant dressed heroically. The infant was the child of the prettiest one of the girls, whose husband was away fishing. The old woman was quite talkative, and undoubtedly gave us lots of news!

"They had a miniature temple on the bows of the boat, with Joss seated cross-legged, looking very fat, and very red, and very stupid. Before him was an offering of two apricots, but Joss never deigned to look at it, and apparently had no appetite. I felt a sincere respect, however, for the devotional feeling of these poor idolaters, recognising even there the universal instinct which teaches that there is a God.

"I called upon the commodore, who received me with great courtesy, and gave me a very interesting account of the voyage out, by the way of Mauritius, of the Susquehanna, to which I was first appointed. She has gone on to Amoy.

"I made the acquaintance of a Portuguese family, named Lurero. The young ladies are quite accomplished, speaking French, Spanish, and Italian, but no English. They came down to receive the visit of our consul and lady, who called while I was there. Mr. Lurero gave me some specimens of a soap-fruit, and showed me the tree. The fruit is an exceedingly fine soap, which, without any preparation, is used for washing the finest goods.

"We expect to hear of the sailing of the 'Japan Expedition' by the next mail. When Commodore Perry arrives, we shall be kept so busy that time will fly rapidly, and we shall soon be looking forward to our return home, unless Japan disturbances (which are not seriously anticipated) delay us.

"I did not tell you of my visit to 'Camoens' Cave,' the principal attraction of Macao. This 'cave' was the resort of the distinguished Portuguese poet Camoens, who there wrote the greater part of the ' Lusiad.' The cave is situated in the midst of the finest wooded walks I ever saw. The grounds are planted beautifully, and immense vases of flowers stand around. The grounds are not level, but lie up the side of a slope or hill, irregular in shape, and precipitous on one side. There are several fine views, particularly that of the harbor and surrounding islands."

I will here reproduce the following additional items regarding Camoens, from the pen of Walter A. Hose: —

"Macao had a particular interest for me as the first foothold that modern civilisation obtained upon the ancient shores of 'far Cathay,' and as the birthplace of one of the finest epic poems ever written. ... On one of those calm and beautiful nights peculiar to sub-tropical climes, I stood alone upon the white sea-wall, and no sound fell upon my ears save the whirring monotone of insects in the trees above the hills, the periodical chime of bells from anchored ships, and the low, sweet cadence of the incoming tide. I thought it must have been such a night as this that inspired Camoens when he wrote,[124][125][126][127][128][129]

Life of Capt. Joseph Fry, the Cuban martyr: Being a faithful record of his remarkable career from childhood to the time of his heroic death at the hands of Spanish executioners; recounting his experience as an officer in the US and Confederate navies, and revealing much of the inner history ... in 1875[excessive quote]

Surnames

The Fuzhou Tanka have different surnames than the Tanka of Guangdong.[130] Qing records indicate that "Weng, Ou, Chi, Pu, Jiang, and Hai" (翁, 歐, 池, 浦, 江, 海) were surnames of the Fuzhou Tanka.[131] Qing records also stated that Tanka surnames in Guangdong consisted of "Mai, Pu, Wu, Su, and He" (麥, 濮, 吴, 蘇, 何), alternatively some people claimed Gu and Zeng as Tanka surnames.[132]

Dialect

The Tanka dialect of Yue Chinese is similar in phonology with Cantonese, with the following differences:

  • eu /œ/ is pronounced as o /ɔ/ (e.g. "Hong Kong")
  • /y/ is pronounced as /u/ or /i/
  • /kʷ/ is pronounced as /k/
  • no final -m or -p, so they are replaced by -ng /-ŋ/ or -t /-t/
  • /n/ is pronounced as /l/, like in some informal varieties of Cantonese
  • they also have the tone 2 diminutive change[133]

DNA tests and disease

Tests on the DNA of the Tanka people found that the disease Thalassemia was common among the Tanka. Tests also stated that the ancestors of the Tanka were not Han Chinese, but were native people.[134][135]

The Tanka suffer from lung cancer more than the Cantonese and Teochew. The frequency of the disease is higher among Tanka. The rate among the Teochew is lower than that of the Cantonese.[136]

Famous Tankas

See also

References

  1. ^ [books.google.com.sg/books?id=HcPuCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA219]
  2. ^ Maria Jaschok; Suzanne Miers (1994). Maria Jaschok; Suzanne Miers (eds.). Women and Chinese patriarchy: submission, servitude, and escape. Zed Books. p. xvi. ISBN 1-85649-126-9. Tanka, a marginalised boat people which could be found in the Southern provinces of China.
  3. ^ Farewell to Peasant China: Rural Urbanization and Social Change in ... – Page 75 Gregory Eliyu Guldin – 1997 "In Dongji hamlet, most villagers were originally shuishangren (boat people) [Also known in the West by the pejorative label, "Tanka" people. — Ed.] and settled on land only in the 1950s. Per-capita cultivated land averaged only 1 mu ..."
  4. ^ Cornelius Osgood (1975). The Chinese: a study of a Hong Kong community, Volume 3. University of Arizona Press. p. 1212. ISBN 9780816504183. 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
  5. ^ Great Britain. Colonial Office, Hong Kong. Government Information Services (1962). Hong Kong. Govt. Press. p. 37. 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
  6. ^ National Physical Laboratory (Great Britain) (1962). Report for the year ... H.M.S.O. p. 37.
  7. ^ Hong Kong: report for the year ... Government Press. 1961. p. 40.
  8. ^ Hong Kong, Great Britain. Foreign and Commonwealth Office (1962). Hong Kong annual report. H.M.S.O. p. 37.
  9. ^ Great Britain. Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Hong Kong. Government Information Services (1960). Hong Kong. Govt. Press. p. 40.
  10. ^ Martin Hürlimann (1962). Hong Kong. Viking Press. p. 17. ISBN 9783761100301. 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
  11. ^ a b Valery M. Garrett (1987). Traditional Chinese clothing in Hong Kong and South China, 1840–1980. Oxford University Press. p. 2. ISBN 0-19-584174-3. 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
  12. ^ Far Eastern economic review, Volume 24. Review Pub. Co. Ltd. 1958. p. 280. 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
  13. ^ Architectural Conservation Office, HKSAR Government. (2008). ''Heritage Impact Assessment Report of the Yau Ma Tei Theatre & Red Brick Building'', p.5. (PDF). Retrieved on 2 March 2012.
  14. ^ Österreichische Leo-Gesellschaft, Görres-Gesellschaft, Anthropos Institute (1970). Anthropos, Volume 65. Zaunrith'sche Buch-, Kunst- und Steindruckerei. p. 249. 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)
  15. ^ Eugene Newton Anderson (1970). The floating world of Castle Peak Bay. Vol. 4 of Anthropological studies. American Anthropological Association. p. 13. ISBN 9780598271389. 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)
  16. ^ James Hayes (1996). Friends & teachers: Hong Kong and its people, 1953–87. Hong Kong University Press. p. 23. ISBN 962-209-396-5. 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
  17. ^ David Faure; Helen F. Siu (1995). David Faure; Helen F. Siu (eds.). Down to earth: the teruritorial bond in South China. Stanford University Press. p. 93. ISBN 0-8047-2435-0. 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.
  18. ^ Great Britain. Colonial Office, Hong Kong. Government Information Services (1970). Hong Kong. Govt. Press. p. 219. 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
  19. ^ Hong Kong: report for the year ... Government Press. 1970. p. 219.
  20. ^ a b Grolier Incorporated (1999). The encyclopedia Americana, Volume 14. Grolier Incorporated. p. 474. ISBN 0-7172-0131-7. 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.
  21. ^ a b Scholastic Library Publishing (2006). Encyclopedia Americana, Volume 1. Scholastic Library Pub. p. 474. ISBN 0-7172-0139-2.
  22. ^ a b The Encyclopedia Americana, Volume 14. Grolier. 1981. p. 474. ISBN 0-7172-0112-0.
  23. ^ Deng, Gang (1999). Maritime Sector, Institutions, and Sea Power of Premodern China. p. 55. ISBN 9780313307126.
  24. ^ He, Xi; Faure, David (13 January 2016). The Fisher Folk of Late Imperial and Modern China: An Historical Anthropology of Boat-and-Shed Living. ISBN 9781317409663.
  25. ^ He, Xi; Faure, David (13 January 2016). The Fisher Folk of Late Imperial and Modern China: An Historical Anthropology of Boat-and-Shed Living. ISBN 9781317409663.
  26. ^ Eugene Newton Anderson (1970). The floating world of Castle Peak Bay. Vol. 4 of Anthropological studies. American Anthropological Association. p. 13. ISBN 9780598271389. 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
  27. ^ Österreichische Leo-Gesellschaft, Görres-Gesellschaft, Anthropos Institute (1970). Anthropos, Volume 65. Zaunrith'sche Buch-, Kunst- und Steindruckerei. p. 249.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  28. ^ Wolfram Eberhard (1982). China's minorities: yesterday and today. Wadsworth. p. 89. ISBN 0-534-01080-6. 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.
  29. ^ Tê-chʻao Chêng (1948). Acculturation of the Chinese in the United States: a Philadelphia study. University of Pennsylvania. p. 27. 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
  30. ^ Murray A. Rubinstein (2007). Murray A. Rubinstein (ed.). Taiwan: a new history. M.E. Sharpe. p. 34. ISBN 978-0-7656-1494-0. 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)
  31. ^ Mike Ingham (2007). Hong Kong: a cultural history. Oxford University Press. p. 2. ISBN 978-0-19-531496-0. 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
  32. ^ Michael Ingham (18 June 2007). Hong Kong: A Cultural History. Oxford University Press, US. p. 2. ISBN 978-0-19-988624-1. 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
  33. ^ Eugene Newton Anderson (1972). Essays on south China's boat people. Vol. 29 of Asian folklore and social life monographs Dong fang wen cong. Orient Cultural Service. p. 2. 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
  34. ^ Österreichische Leo-Gesellschaft, Görres-Gesellschaft, Anthropos Institute (1970). Anthropos, Volume 65. Zaunrith'sche Buch-, Kunst- und Steindruckerei. p. 249.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  35. ^ Phil Benson (2001). Ethnocentrism and the English dictionary. Vol. 3 of Routledge studies in the history of linguistics. Psychology Press. p. 152. ISBN 0-415-22074-2. 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.
  36. ^ "Tanka, n.1". Oxford English Dictionary Online. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 12 October 2014. 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 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?rskey=FwlmXQ&result=1#eid http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/197535?result=1&rskey=FwlmXQ& http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/197535?rskey=CRdtvD&result=1#eid http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/197535?rskey=CRdtvD&result=1&isAdvanced=false#eid
  37. ^ Sun Yat-sen Institute for Advancement of Culture and Education, Nanking (1940). T'ien hsia monthly, Volume 11. Kelly and Walsh, ltd. p. 342. 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
  38. ^ Sun Yat-sen Institute for Advancement of Culture and Education, Nanking (1940). T'ien hsia monthly, Volume 11. Kelly and Walsh, ltd. p. 342. and they were probably evolved as a result of contact with foreign peoples, even as late as the Portuguese.
  39. ^ Middle East and Africa. Taylor & Francis. 1996. p. 358. ISBN 1-884964-04-4. 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
  40. ^ Susan Naquin; Evelyn Sakakida Rawski (1989). Chinese Society in the Eighteenth Century. Yale University Press. p. 169. ISBN 0-300-04602-2. 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.
  41. ^ William Meacham (2008). The Archaeology of Hong Kong. Hong Kong University Press. p. 162. ISBN 978-962-209-925-8. 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,
  42. ^ Wolfram Eberhard (1982). China's minorities: yesterday and today. Wadsworth. p. 89. ISBN 0-534-01080-6. 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.
  43. ^ Leo J. Moser (1985). The Chinese mosaic: the peoples and provinces of China. Westview Press. p. 219. ISBN 0-86531-085-8. 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
  44. ^ C. Fred Blake (1981). Ethnic groups and social change in a Chinese market town. University Press of Hawaii. p. 2. ISBN 0-8248-0720-0. 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
  45. ^ R. A. Donkin (1998). Beyond price: pearls and pearl-fishing : origins to the Age of Discoveries. Vol. 224 of Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society Held at Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge. American Philosophical Society. p. 200. ISBN 0-87169-224-4. 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."
  46. ^ American Oriental Society (1952). Journal of the American Oriental Society, Volume 72. Vol. 40 of American oriental series. American Oriental Society. p. 164. oyster-Tan, and the wood-Tan, excelling at the gathering of fish, oysters and timber respectively
  47. ^ Bob Dye (1997). Merchant prince of the Sandalwood Mountains: Afong and the Chinese in Hawaiʻi. University of Hawaii Press. p. 31. ISBN 0-8248-1772-9. 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
  48. ^ Andrew Grzeskowiak (1996). Passport Hong Kong: your pocket guide to Hong Kong business, customs & etiquette. World Trade Press. p. 25. ISBN 1-885073-31-3.
  49. ^ Shi Su; Burton Watson (1994). Selected poems of Su Tung-pʻo. Copper Canyon Press. p. 130. ISBN 1-55659-064-4. Tanka. Aboriginal people who lived on houseboats on the rivers around Canton. 103, line j.
  50. ^ Nan kai da xue (Tianjin, China). Jing ji yan jiu suo, Nankai University, Pa li-tai. Nankai Institute of Economics, Nankai University, Pa li-tai. Committee on Social and Economic Research (1936). Nankai social and economic quarterly, Volume 9. Nankai Institute of Economics, Nankai University. p. 616.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  51. ^ Jacques Gernet (1996). A history of Chinese civilization (2 ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 471. ISBN 0-521-49781-7. 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.
  52. ^ Eugene Newton Anderson (1970). The floating world of Castle Peak Bay. Vol. 4 of Anthropological studies. American Anthropological Association. p. 13. ISBN 9780598271389. 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
  53. ^ Eugene Newton Anderson (1970). The floating world of Castle Peak Bay. Vol. 4 of Anthropological studies. American Anthropological Association. p. 14. ISBN 9780598271389. 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.
  54. ^ Chen, Jonas Chung-yu (24 January 2008). "[ARCHAEOLOGY IN CHINA AND TAIWAN] Sea nomads in prehistory on the southeast coast of China". Bulletin of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association. 22. doi:10.7152/bippa.v22i0.11805.
  55. ^ Goodenough, Ward H. (1996). Prehistoric Settlement of the Pacific. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society. p. 43. ISBN 087169865X. OL 1021882M.
  56. ^ Eugene Newton Anderson (1970). The floating world of Castle Peak Bay. Vol. 4 of Anthropological studies. American Anthropological Association. p. 13. ISBN 9780598271389. 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.
  57. ^ Eugene Newton Anderson (1970). The floating world of Castle Peak Bay. Vol. 4 of Anthropological studies. American Anthropological Association. p. 15. ISBN 9780598271389. 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)
  58. ^ 梁廣漢 (1980). Profile of historic relics in the early stage of Hong Kong. 學津書店. p. 57. 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
  59. ^ Luo, Xiao-Qin; Du, Pan-Xin; Wang, Ling-Xiang; Zhou, Bo-Yan; Li, Yu-Chun; Zheng, Hong-Xiang; Wei, Lan-Hai; Liu, Jun-Jian; Sun, Chang; Meng, Hai-Liang; Tan, Jing-Ze (6 August 2020). "Uniparental Genetic Analyses Reveal the Major Origin of Fujian Tanka from Ancient Indigenous Daic Populations". Human Biology. 91 (4): 257–277. doi:10.13110/humanbiology.91.4.05. ISSN 1534-6617. PMID 32767896. S2CID 221011288.
  60. ^ He, Guanglin; Zhang, Yunhe; Wei, Lan-Hai; Wang, Mengge; Yang, Xiaomin; Guo, Jianxin; Hu, Rong; Wang, Chuan-Chao; Zhang, Xian-Qing (19 July 2021). "The genomic formation of Tanka people, an isolated "Gypsies in water" in the coastal region of Southeast China". American Journal of Biological Anthropology. 178: 154–170. doi:10.1002/ajpa.24495.
  61. ^ Eugene Newton Anderson (1970). The floating world of Castle Peak Bay. Vol. 4 of Anthropological studies. American Anthropological Association. p. 15. ISBN 9780598271389. 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
  62. ^ Far Eastern economic review, Volume 24. Review Pub. Co. Ltd. 1958. p. 280. 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)
  63. ^ Edward Stokes (2005). Edward Stokes (ed.). 逝影留踪・香港1946–47. Hongkong Conservation Photography Foundation. p. 141. ISBN 962-209-754-5. 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
  64. ^ Paine, Lincoln (6 February 2014). The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World. ISBN 9781782393573.
  65. ^ Asia Major, Friedrich Hirth, pg 215
  66. ^ "huji 戶籍 (www.chinaknowledge.de)".
  67. ^ Charles Ralph Boxer (1948). Fidalgos in the Far East, 1550–1770: fact and fancy in the history of Macau. M. Nijhoff. p. 224. 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
  68. ^ Chaves, p. 53: Wu Li, like Bocarro, noted the presence in Macau both of black slaves and of non-Han Chinese such as the Tanka boat people, and in the third poem of his sequence he combines references to these two groups: Yellow sand, whitewashed houses: here the black men live; willows at the gates like sedge, still not sparse in autumn.
  69. ^ Chaves, p. 54: Midnight's when the Tanka come and make their harbor here; fasting kitchens for noonday meals have plenty of fresh fish. . .The second half of the poem unfolds a scene of Tanka boat people bringing in fish to supply the needs of fasting Christians.
  70. ^ Chaves, p. 141: Yellow sand, whitewashed houses: here the black men live; willows at the gates like sedge, still not sparse in autumn. Midnight's when the Tanka come and make their harbor here; fasting kitchens for noonday meals have plenty of fresh fish.
  71. ^ Chaves, p. 53: The residents Wu Li strives to reassure (in the third line of this poem) consisted — at least in 1635 when Antonio Bocarro, Chronicler-in-Chief of the State of India, wrote his detailed account of Macau (without actually having visited there) — of some 850 Portuguese families with "on the average about six slaves capable of bearing arms, amongst whom the majority and the best are negroes and such like," as well as a like number of "native families, including Chinese Christians . . . who form the majority [of the non-Portuguese residents] and other nations, all Christians." 146 (Bocarro may have been mistaken in declaring that all the Chinese in Macau were Christians.)
  72. ^ João de Pina-Cabral, p. 39: To be a Macanese is fundamentally to be from Macau with Portuguese ancestors, but not necessarily to be of Sino-Portuguese descent. The local community was born from Portuguese men. [...] but in the beginning the woman was Goanese, Siamese, Indo-Chinese, Malay – they came to Macau in our boats. Sporadically it was a Chinese woman.
  73. ^ João de Pina-Cabral, p. 39: When we established ourselves here, the Chinese ostracised us. The Portuguese had their wives, then, that came from abroad, but they could have no contact with the Chinese women, except the fishing folk, the Tanka women and the female slaves. Only the lowest class of Chinese contacted with the Portuguese in the first centuries. Later the strength of Christianisation, of the priests, started to convince the Chinese to become Catholic. [...] But, when they started to be Catholics, they adopted Portuguese baptismal names and were ostracised by the Chinese Buddhists. So they joined the Portuguese community and their sons started having Portuguese education without a single drop of Portuguese blood.
  74. ^ João de Pina-Cabral, p. 164: I was personally told of people that, to this day, continue to hide the fact that their mothers had been lower-class Chinese women—often even tanka (fishing folk) women who had relations with Portuguese sailors and soldiers.
  75. ^ João de Pina-Cabral, p. 165: In fact, in those days, the matrimonial context of production was usually constituted by Chinese women of low socio-economic status who were married to or concubies of Portuguese or Macanese men. Very rarely did Chinese women of higher status agree to marry a Westerner. As Deolinda argues in one of her short stories,"8 should they have wanted to do so out of romantic infatuation, they would not be allowed to
  76. ^ João de Pina-Cabral, p. 164: Henrique de Senna Fernandes, another Macanese author, wrote a short story about a tanka girl who has an affair with a Portuguese sailor. In the end, the man returns to his native country and takes their little girl with him, leaving the mother abandoned and broken-hearted. As her sailorman picks up the child, A-Chan's words are: 'Cuidadinho . . . cuidadinho' ('Careful . . . careful'). She resigns herself to her fate, much as she may never have recovered from the blow (1978).
  77. ^ Christina Miu Bing Cheng, p. 173: Her slave-like submissiveness is her only attraction to him. A-Chan thus becomes his slave/mistress, an outlet for suppressed sexual urges. The story is an archetypical tragedy of miscegenation. Just as the Tanka community despises A-Chan's cohabitation with a foreign barbarian, Manuel's colleagues mock his 'bad taste' ('gosto degenerado') (Senna Fernandes, 1978: 15) in having a tryst with a boat girl.
  78. ^ Christina Miu Bing Cheng, p. 173: As such, the Tanka girl is nonchalantly reified and dehumanised as a thing ( coisa). Manuel reduces human relations to mere consumption not even of her physical beauty (which has been denied in the description of A-Chan), but her 'Orientalness' of being slave-like and submissive.
  79. ^ Christina Miu Bing Cheng, p. 170: We can trace this fleeting and shallow relationship in Henrique de Senna Fernandes' short story, A-Chan, A Tancareira, (Ah Chan, the Tanka Girl) (1978). Senna Fernandes (1923–), a Macanese, had written a series of novels set against the context of Macau and some of which were made into films.
  80. ^ William Dwight Whitney, ed. (1891). The Century dictionary: an encyclopedic lexicon of the English language, Part 21. Vol. The Century Dictionary: An Encyclopedic Lexicon of the English Language. The Century co. Harvard University. p. 6180.
  81. ^ Correspondence, p. 55
  82. ^ （水上居民）不见"连体船" 22 May 2011 at the Wayback Machine. Gzlib.gov.cn (25 February 2008). Retrieved on 2 March 2012.
  83. ^ Hansson, p. 119: An imperial decision in 1729 stated that "Cantonese people regard the Dan households as being of the mean class (beijian zhi liu ^i§;£. Jft) and do not allow them to settle on shore. The Dan households, for their part, dare not struggle with the common people.
  84. ^ "Life in floating village of Cambodia - Khmer Post". Archived from the original on 29 June 2013. Retrieved 3 May 2013.
  85. ^ Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America, Catholic Foreign Mission Bureau of Boston (1921). The Field afar, Volumes 15–16. Catholic Foreign Mission Bureau of Boston. p. 18. The back door of our shop opens upon the river, making it handy for the dealer in ducks, who has his headquarters in the main room. We shall have no excuse for not enjoying a daily swim with the neighbours, and the stream gives an unlimited supply of not over-clean water for drinking and cooking. The fish and mussels, the latter unusually small, are being caught all day long right under our noses, for us and others. Nets, lines, and even bare hands are so busy that one wonders why the supply does nor fail. Frequently there is fishing V torchlight. Always there is plenty to see, as the Tanka. the people who live in the boats, are full of life. They are an aboriginal tribe, speaking an altogether different language from the Chinese. On the land the; are like fish out of water. They are said never to intermarry with lar.'ilubbers, but somehow or other their tongue has crept into many villages \r. the Chiklung section. The Chinese say the Tanka speech sounds like that of the Americans. It seems to ha.e no tones. A hardy race, the Ta>ii;i are untouched by the epidemics that visit our coast, perhaps because they live so much off land. Each family has a boat, its own little kingdom, and, there being plenty of fish, all look better fed than most of our land neighbours. Christianity is, with a few rare exceptions, unknown to them. The only window of our Chiklung house gives the missioner a full view of the village life of some of the boat tribe. The window at present is just the absence of the south wall of the little loft to the shop. Wooden bars can be inserted in holes against robbers.
  86. ^ Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America, Catholic Foreign Mission Bureau of Boston (1921). The Field afar, Volumes 15–16. Catholic Foreign Mission Bureau of Boston. p. 19.
  87. ^ Sun Yat-sen Institute for Advancement of Culture and Education, Nanking (1940). T'ien hsia monthly, Volume 11. Kelly and Walsh, ltd. p. 336. The evidence of dwelling therefore supports the theory that one section of the population is culturally different from the other. On the one hand are the Tanka and Hoklo who do not know the use of stone in building, who live by fishing and who represent in fact a water culture. On the other hand is the culture of the wall-
  88. ^ Robert Hans van Gulik (1974). Sexual life in ancient China: a preliminary survey of Chinese sex and society from ca. 1500 B.C. till 1644 A.D. Brill Archive. p. 308. ISBN 90-04-03917-1. 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.
  89. ^ White, Lynn T. III. "Shanghai–Suburb Relations, 1949–1966" in Shanghai: Revolution and Development in an Asian Metropolis, p. 262. Cambridge University Press (Cambridge), 1981.
  90. ^ W. Schofield: "The islands around Hong Kong (text of a talk given in 1937)", from Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch, Vol. 23, 1983 18 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine
  91. ^ Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew; Katharine Caroline Bushnell (2006). Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers. Echo Library. p. 11. ISBN 1-4068-0431-2.
  92. ^ John Mark Carroll (2007). A concise history of Hong Kong. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 36. ISBN 978-0-7425-3422-3. Most of the Chinese who came to Hong Kong in the early years were from the lower classes, such as laborers, artisans, Tanka outcasts, prostitutes, wanderers, and smugglers. That these people violated orders from authorities in Canton
  93. ^ Maria Jaschok; Suzanne Miers (1994). Maria Jaschok; Suzanne Miers (eds.). Women and Chinese patriarchy: submission, servitude, and escape. Zed Books. p. 237. ISBN 1-85649-126-9. 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'.
  94. ^ Henry J. Lethbridge (1978). Hong Kong, stability and change: a collection of essays. Oxford University Press. p. 75. ISBN 9780195804027. but another source of supply was the daughters of the tanka, the boat population of kwangtung
  95. ^ Henry J. Lethbridge (1978). Hong Kong, stability and change: a collection of essays. Oxford University Press. p. 75. ISBN 9780195804027. 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
  96. ^ Henry J. Lethbridge (1978). Hong Kong, stability and change: a collection of essays. Oxford University Press. p. 210. ISBN 9780195804027. In the early days, such women were found usually among the Tanka boat population , a pariah group that infested the Pearl River delta region. A few of these women achieved the status of 'protected' woman (a kept mistress) and were
  97. ^ Fanny M. Cheung (1997). Fanny M. Cheung (ed.). EnGendering Hong Kong society: a gender perspective of women's status. Chinese University Press. p. 348. ISBN 962-201-736-3. 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)
  98. ^ Virgil K. Y. Ho (2005). Understanding Canton: rethinking popular culture in the republican period. Oxford University Press. p. 256. ISBN 0-19-928271-4. 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)
  99. ^ Virgil K. Y. Ho (2005). Understanding Canton: rethinking popular culture in the republican period. Oxford University Press. p. 249. ISBN 0-19-928271-4. 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
  100. ^ Australian National University. Institute of Advanced Studies (1993). East Asian history, Volumes 5–6. Institute of Advanced Studies, Australian National University. p. 110. In a late nineteenth-century popular novel, the bed-chamber of a 'saltwater girl ' (low-class Tanka prostitute who served foreigners), is described as nicely decorated with a number of Western household objects, which startles the young observer who is crazy about things western
  101. ^ East Asian history, Volumes 5–6. Institute of Advanced Studies, Australian National University. 1993. p. 102. 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
  102. ^ Virgil K. Y. Ho (2005). Understanding Canton: rethinking popular culture in the republican period. Oxford University Press. p. 228. ISBN 0-19-928271-4. 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
  103. ^ Peter Hodge (1980). Peter Hodge (ed.). Community problems and social work in Southeast Asia: the Hong Kong and Singapore experience. Hong Kong University Press. p. 196. ISBN 962-209-022-2. EJ Eitel, for example, selected the small group of Tanka people in particular as that section of the population among whom prostitution and the sale of girls for purposes of concubinage flourished. They were associated with the commerce and shipping of a busy and expanding entrepot,
  104. ^ Ejeas, Volume 1. Brill. 2001. p. 112. A popular contemporary magazine which followed closely the news in the 'flower business' (huashi) so recorded at least one case of such career advancement that occurred to a Tanka (boat-people) prostitute in Canton.44 To say that all
  105. ^ Brill Academic Publishers (2001). European journal of East Asian studies, Volumes 1–2. Brill. p. 112. at least one case of such career advancement that occurred to a Tanka (boat-people) prostitute in Canton.44 To say
  106. ^ Henry J. Lethbridge (1978). Hong Kong, stability and change: a collection of essays. Oxford University Press. p. 75. 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
  107. ^ Peter Hodge (1980). Peter Hodge (ed.). Community problems and social work in Southeast Asia: the Hong Kong and Singapore experience. Hong Kong University Press. p. 33. ISBN 962-209-022-2. 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
  108. ^ Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew; Katharine Caroline Bushnell (2006). Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers. Echo Library. p. 13. ISBN 1-4068-0431-2. or among Chinese residents as their concubines, or to be sold for export to Singapore, San Francisco, or Australia.
  109. ^ Correspondence, p. 54: To understand the social bearings of domestic servitude as it obtains in Hong Kong, it »must be observed that although the Chinese residents of Hong Kong are under British rule and live in close proximity to English social life, there has always been an impassable gulf between respectable English and Chinese society in Hong Kong. The two forms of social life have exercised a certain influence upon each other, but the result now visible is, that while Chinese social life has remained exactly what it is on the mainland of China, the social life of many foreigners in Hong Kong has comparatively degenerated, and not on'y accommodated itself in certain respects to habits peculiar to the system of patriarchalism, but caused a certain disrespectable but small class of Chinese to enter into a social alliance with foreigners, which, while detaching them from the restraining influence of the custom and public opinion of Chinese society, left them uninfluenced by the moral powers of foreign civilisation.
  110. ^ Correspondence, p. 55: 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 population, the Pariahs of Cantonese society. These Tan-ka people of the Canton river are the descendants of a tribe of aborigines pushed by advancing Chinese civilisation to live on boats on the Canton river, being for centuries forbidden by law to live on shore. The Emperor Yung Ching (A.D. 1730) allowed them to settle in villages in the immediate proximity of the river, but they were left by him, and remain to the present day excluded from competition for official honours, whilst custom forbids them to intermarry with the rest of the people. These Tan-ka people were the secret but trusty allies of foreigners from the time of the East India Company to the present day. They furnished pilots and supplies of provisions to British men-of-war and troop ships when doing so was by the Chinese Government declared treason, unsparingly visited with capital punishment. They invaded Hong Kong the moment the Colony was opened, and have ever since maintained here a monopoly, so to say, of the supply of Chinese pilots and ships' crews, of the fish trade, the cattle trade, and especially of the trade in women for the supply of foreigners and of brothels patronised by foreigners. Almost every so-called "protected woman," i.e. kept mistress of foreigners here, belongs to this Tan-ka tribe, looked down upon and kept at a distance by all the other Chinese classes. It is among these Tan-ka women, and especially under the protection of those "protected T;in-ka women, that private prostitution and the sale of girls for purposes of concubinage flourishes, being looked upon by them as their legitimate profession. Consequently, almost every "protected woman keeps a nursery of purchased children or a few servant girls who are being reared with aj view to their eventual disposal, according to their personal qualifications, either among foreigners here as kept women, or among Chinese residents as their concubines, or to be sold for export to Singapore, San Francisco, or Australia. Those protected women, moreover, generally act as protectors each to a few other Tan-ka women who live by sly prostitution. The latter, again, used to be preyed upon—till quite recently His Excellency Governor Hennessy stopped this fiendish practice—by informers paid with Government money, who would first debauch such women and then turn round against them charging them before the magistrate as keepers of unlicensed brothels, in which case a heavy fine would be inflicted, to pay which these women used to sell their own children, or sell themselves into bondage worse than slavery, to the keepers of the brothels licensed hy Government. Whenever a sly brothel was broken up these keepers would crowd the shroffs office of the police court or the visiting room of the Government Lock Hospital to drive their heartless bargains, which were invariably enforced with the weighty support of the Inspectors of brothels appointed by Government under the Contagious Diseases Ordinance. The more this Ordinance was enforced the more of this buying and selling of human flesh went on at the very doors of Government offices. It is amongst these outcasts of Chinese society that the worst abuses of the Chinese system of domestic servitude exist, because that system is here unrestraired by the powers of traditional custom or popular opinion. This class of people, mustering perhaps here in Hong Kong not more than 2,000 persons, are entirely beyond the argument of this essay. They form a class of their own, readily recognised at a glance. They are disowned by Chinese society, whilst they are but parasites on foreign society. The system of buying and selling female children and of domestic servitude with which they must be identified is so glaring an abuse of legitimate Chinese domestic servitude that it calls for corrective measures entirely apart from any considerations connected with the general body of Chinese society.
  111. ^ Meiqi Lee (2004). Being Eurasian: memories across racial divides. Hong Kong University Press. p. 262. ISBN 962-209-671-9. 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 ).
  112. ^ Maria Jaschok; Suzanne Miers (1994). Maria Jaschok; Suzanne Miers (eds.). Women and Chinese patriarchy: submission, servitude, and escape. Zed Books. p. 223. ISBN 1-85649-126-9. 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)
  113. ^ Helen F. Siu (2011). Helen F. Siu (ed.). Merchants' Daughters: Women, Commerce, and Regional Culture in South China. Hong Kong University Press. p. 305. ISBN 978-988-8083-48-0. "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.
  114. ^ Henry J. Lethbridge (1978). Hong Kong, stability and change: a collection of essays. Oxford University Press. p. 75. 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
  115. ^ Eitel, p. 169.
  116. ^ Acton, T. A. (1981). "Education as a By-product of Fish Marketing" (PDF). Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch. 21: 121. ISSN 1991-7295. 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.
  117. ^ Bill Cranfield (1984). All-Asia guide (13 ed.). Far Eastern Economic Review. p. 151. ISBN 9789627010180. 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
  118. ^ William Knox (1974). William Knox (ed.). All-Asia guide (8 ed.). Far Eastern Economic Review. p. 86. 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
  119. ^ Cheah Cheng Hye; Donald Wise (1980). All-Asia guide (11 ed.). Far Eastern Economic Review. p. 135. ISBN 9789627010081. 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
  120. ^ Bangqing Han; Ailing Zhang; Eva Hung (2005). Ailing Zhang; Eva Hung (eds.). The sing-song girls of Shanghai. Columbia University Press. p. 538. ISBN 0-231-12268-3. 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.
  121. ^ Matthew Calbraith Perry; Robert Tomes (1859). Japan and the Japanese: a narrative of the US government expedition to Japan under Commodore Perry (2, reprint ed.). ü LONDON : TRÜBNER & CO., 60, PATERNOSTER ROW.: Trübner. p. 78. of commercial activity, always enlivened by the fleet of Tanka boats which pass, conveying passengers to and fro, between the land and the Canton and Hong Kong steamers. The Chinese damsels, in gay costume, as they scnll their light craft upon the smooth and gently swelling surface of the bay, present a lively aspect, and as they are looked upon in the distance, from the verandahs above the Praya, which command a view of the bay, have a fairy-like appearance, which a nearer approach serves, however, to change into a more substantial and coarse reality. The Cave of Camoens, where the Portuguese poet is supposed to have written a portion of his Lusiad,{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
  122. ^ Matthew Calbraith Perry (1857). Robert Tomes (ed.). The Americans in Japan: an abridgment of the government narrative of the US expedition to Japan, under Commodore Perry. NEW YORK: D. APPLETON & CO., 346 & 848 BROADWAY LONDON: 16 LITTLE BRITAIN.: D. Appleton & co. p. 78. of commercial activity, always enlivened by the fleet of Tanka boats which pass, conveying passengers to and fro, between the land and the Canton and Hong Kong steamers. The Chinese damsels, in gay costume, as they scull their light craft upon the smooth aud gently swelling surface of the bay, present a lively aspect, and as they are looked upon in the distance, from the verandahs above the Praya, which command a view of the bay, have a fairy-like appearance, which a nearer approach serves, however, to change into a more substantial and coarse reality. The Cave of Camoens, where the Portuguese poet is supposed to have written a portion of his Lusiad,{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
  123. ^ Ballou's monthly magazine, Volume 8. Thomes & Talbot. 1858. p. 514. quered, gilded and ornamented. In Simoda, they take the place of horses, the latter being used only under the saddle. The third engraving represents the dinner given on board the Powhatan, in honor of the commissioners appointed by the emperor to conduct negotiations. Commodore Perry invited the officers of the squadron to meet the Japanese officials, of whom there were about seventy. A very excellent dinner was served up, to which the guests did ample justice. Toasts to the emperor and president were drank with all the honors, and the company did not disperse until a very late hour. Our next picture shows a Chinese tanka boat. The tanka boats are counted by thousands in the rivers and bays of China. They are often employed by our national vessels as conveyances to and. from the shore, thereby saving the health of the sailors, who would be otherwise subjected to pulling long distances under a hot sun, with a liability of contracting some fatal disease peculiar to China, and thus introducing infection in a crowded crew. On her voyage, the Powhatan touched at Singapore, the capital of a small island at the southern extremity of Malacca. The town stands on a point of land near a bay, affording a safe anchorage at all seasons, and commanding the navigation of the Straits of Malacca. While the Powhatan lay at anchor here, the captain permitted two jugglers to come on board to gratify the wishes of the sailors, by exhibiting their skill in legerdemain, which art they profess in a wonderful degree of perfection. The feat of swallowing a sword was performed, as exhibited in our fifth engraving. But as the weapon belonged to the juggler, the men suspected it was prepared for the purpose, and that the blade consisted of running slides, which, by the pressure of the tongue to the point, would be forced into the hilt. The Malay, however, was determined to confound the doubters, and taking up a piece of rough cast iron from the armorer's forge, swallowed it with as much ease and facility as he did the sword. The performances ended with a lively dance executed by two cobras, to the accompaniment of harsh sounds from a trumpet played by an assistant. From Singapore lev us pasS to the Sandwich Islands, those gems of the Pacific. The arrival at the Sandwich Islands is always a welcome event in a cruise—the delicious climate, the abundance of fruits, the romantic scenery, the gentle manners of the inhabitants, render this portion of the globe peculiarly attractive. Our sixth engraving represents a group of Sandwich Island girls dancing the hula-hula to the intense delight of a group of Jack tars, who probably experience as much satisfaction at the exhibition, as was ever experienced by the refined Parisians at the efforts of Taglioni, Cerito, or Fanny Ellsler. The hula-hula was formerly a favorite dance among the Sandwich Islands, but has now become nearly extinct through the influence of the missionaries. There are still, however, a few Kanakas, who are addicted to their old amusement. The dance does not admit of much grace, each female going through her gyrations with the mechanical stiffness of an automaton. The next port we shall touch at, pleading the privilege of a roving commission, is Cape Town, the capital of the Cape of Good Hope, the well-known British colony at the Southern extremity of Africa. This point early attracted the attention of the Dutch, who saw that it was of the first importance as a watering-place for their ships. They accordingly established a colony there about the middle of the 17th century. They treated the native inhabitants, the Hottentots, with great severity, driving most of them beyond the mountains, and reducing the remainder to slavery. In 1795, it was captured by the English, but restored by the peace of Amiens, in 1802. In 1806, it was again captured by the English, and has remained in their possession since. It is defended by a castle of considerable strength, and contains many fine public buildings. The harbor is tolerably secure from September to May, during the prevalence of the southeast winds ; but during the rest of the year, when the winds blow from the north and northwest, vessels are obliged to resort to Fulse Bay, on the other side of the peninsula. Our seventh engraving presents a sketch of a group of marketmen at Cape Town. We here see the native fish dealers and purchasers. A young negro in the foreground is feeding a pelican with a small fish which he has purloined from the bench. The principal market of Cape Town is not very attractive externally, but it is noted for the abundance and excellence of its fish, flesh and fowl, which supply the inhabitants and the ships touching at the port. The sales are conducted much after the manner of this country. The salesmen arc representatives of all quarters of the globe, and include specimens of the native Hottentot and the genuine Yankee, who is always found where money is to be made. The eighth engraving is a view of the natives and their huts at St. Augustine's Bay, Madagascar. The inhabitants of this remarkably fertile island are composed of two distinct classes—the Arabs, or descendants of foreign colonists, and the Negroes, or original inhabitants of the island. The character of the inhabitants differs much in the different parts of the island, and the accounts of writers vary greatly on this subject. The island is off the eastern coast of Africa, separated from the continent by the Mozambique channel, and is about 900 miles long and 200 broad. Its surface is greatly diversified, and its mountain scenery is exceedingly grand. The name and position of this island was first made known to Europeans by Marco Polo, in the 13th century, though the Arabs had been acquainted with it for several centuries. It was visited by the Portuguese in the beginning of the 16th century. The French made several attempts to found colonies there in the middle of the 17th century, but abandoned them after ineffectual struggles with the natives. In 1745, they renewed their efforts with but little better success. In 1814, it was claimed by England as a dependency of Mauritius, which had been ceded to her by France, and some settlements were established. One of the native kings of the interior, who had shown himself eager to procure a knowledge of European arts for his subjects, consented, in 1820, to relinquish the slave trade on condition that ten Madagassees should be sent to England, and ten to Mauritius, for education. Those sent to England were placed under the care of the
  124. ^ Jeanie Mort Walker (1875). Life of Capt. Joseph Fry, the Cuban martyr: Being a faithful record of his remarkable career from childhood to the time of his heroic death at the hands of Spanish executioners; recounting his experience as an officer in the U.S. and Confederate navies, and revealing much of the inner history ... J. B. Burr Pub. Co. p. 99. Macao. "We arrived here on the twenty-second, and dispatched a boat to the shore immediately for letters. I received three or four of those fine large letters which are the envy of all who see them, and which are readily distinguishable by their size, and the beautiful style in which they are directed. You cannot imagine the delight with which I devoured their costents. I am glad you wrote so much of our dear pet. 0, my Dita, the longing I feel to take the dear little thing to my heart is agonizing! Yesterday I was on shore, and saw a beautiful child of about the same age as ours. I was almost crazy at the sight. Twenty months old! How she must prattle by this time! I fancy I can see her trotting about, following you around the
  125. ^ Jeanie Mort Walker (1875). Life of Capt. Joseph Fry, the Cuban martyr: Being a faithful record of his remarkable career from childhood to the time of his heroic death at the hands of Spanish executioners; recounting his experience as an officer in the US and Confederate navies, and revealing much of the inner history ... J. B. Burr Pub. Co. p. 100. 100 MACAO: TANK A BOATS. house. What a recompense for the hardest toil of the day would it not be to me, could I only lie down on the floor and have a good romp with her at night! "And now for Macao, and what I saw, felt, and did. You probably know that a very numerous Chinese population lives entirely in boots; some of them so small that one pities the poor unfortunates who live so miserably. They are born, grow up, marry, and raise children in these boats. You would be astonished to see mothers, with infants at the breast, managing the sails, oars, and rudder of the boat as expertly as any sailor. The tanka is of very light draft, and, being able to go close in shore, is used to land passengers from the larger boats. As we neared the shore, we noticed small boats pulling toward us from all directions. Soon a boat, "manned" by two really pretty young girls pulling oars, and a third sculling, came alongside, calling out earnestly, 'Takee me boat!' 'Takce me boot!' They had beautiful teeth, white as ivory, brilliant eyes, and their pretty faces, so earnest and pleading, were
  126. ^ Jeanie Mort Walker (1875). Life of Capt. Joseph Fry, the Cuban martyr: Being a faithful record of his remarkable career from childhood to the time of his heroic death at the hands of Spanish executioners; recounting his experience as an officer in the U.S. and Confederate navies, and revealing much of the inner history ... J. B. Burr Pub. Co. p. 101. TANK A GIRLS. 101 wreathed in smiles as we gave them the preference over others that joined us from all quarters, clinging to the sides of our large boat, and impeding our headway. The boatmen tried in vain to drive them off One brute of a fellow splashed repeatedly a poor girl, who. though not at all pretty, had such a depth of meaning and such a sad expression in her eyes and face as charmed me completely. It would have interested any one to hear her scold back, and to see the flashing of her eyes, and the vivid expression in every feature. When I frowned at our sailor, the sudden change in her face from anger to smiles, the earnest 'tdkee me boat,' as she caught evidence of sympathy from me, was beautiful. We were assailed with these cries from so many, and there was such a clamor, that, in self-defense, we had to choose a boat and go. The first-mentioned girls, on account of their beauty, won the majority, and their boat was clean and well furnished, which is more than could be said of many of them. I caught the look of disappointment which passed over the features of the girl I have described,
  127. ^ Jeanie Mort Walker (1875). Life of Capt. Joseph Fry, the Cuban martyr: Being a faithful record of his remarkable career from childhood to the time of his heroic death at the hands of Spanish executioners; recounting his experience as an officer in the U.S. and Confederate navies, and revealing much of the inner history ... J. B. Burr Pub. Co. p. 102. 102 THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT. and it haunts me even now. Trifling as it, appeared to us, such scenes constitute the great events in their poor lives, and such triumphs or defeats are all-important to them. "Upon entering the tanka boat, we found the mother of the young girls, and a young infant dressed heroically. The infant was the child of the prettiest one of the girls, whose husband was away fishing. The old woman was quite talkative, and undoubtedly gave us lots of news! "They had a miniature temple on the bows of the boat, with Joss seated cross-legged, looking very fat, and'very red, and very stupid. Before him was an offering of two apricots, but Joss never deigned to look at it, and apparently had no appetite. I felt a sincere respect, however, for the devotional feeling of these poor idolaters, recognizing even there the universal instinct which teaches that there is a God. "I called upon the commodore, who received me with great courtesy, and gave me a very interesting account of the voyage out, by the way of Mauritius, of the Susquehanna, to which I was first appointed. She has gone on to Amoy.
  128. ^ Jeanie Mort Walker (1875). Life of Capt. Joseph Fry, the Cuban martyr: Being a faithful record of his remarkable career from childhood to the time of his heroic death at the hands of Spanish executioners; recounting his experience as an officer in the U.S. and Confederate navies, and revealing much of the inner history ... J. B. Burr Pub. Co. p. 103. SOAP-FRUIT. 103 "I made the acquaintance of a Portuguese family, named Lurero. The young ladies are quite accomplished, speaking French, Spanish, and Italian, but no English. They came down to receive the visit of our consul and lady, who called while I was there. Mr. Lurero gave me some specimens of a soap-fruit, and showed me the tree. The fruit is an exceedingly fine soap, which, without any preparation, is used for washing the finest goods. "We expect to hear of the sailing of the 'Japan Expedition' by the next mail. When Commodore Perry arrives, we shall be kept so busy that time will fly rapidly, and we shall soon be looking forward to our return home, unless Japan disturbances (which are not seriously anticipated) delay us. "I did not tell you of my visit to 'Camoens' Cave,' the principal attraction of Macao. This 'cave' was the resort of the distinguished Portuguese poet Camoens, who there wrote the greater part of the ' Lusiad.' The cave is situated in the midst of the finest wooded walks I ever saw. The grounds are planted beautifully,
  129. ^ Jeanie Mort Walker (1875). Life of Capt. Joseph Fry, the Cuban martyr: Being a faithful record of his remarkable career from childhood to the time of his heroic death at the hands of Spanish executioners; recounting his experience as an officer in the US and Confederate navies, and revealing much of the inner history ... J. B. Burr Pub. Co. p. 104. 104 THE POET CAMOENS. and immense vases of flowers stand around. The grounds are not level, but lie up the side of a slope or hill, irregular in shape, and precipitous on one side. There are several fine views, particularly that of the harbor and surrounding islands." I will here reproduce the following additional items regarding Camoens, from the pen of Walter A. Hose: — "Macao had a particular interest for me as the first foothold that modern civilisation obtained upon the ancient shores of 'far Cathay,' and as the birthplace of one of the finest epic poems ever written. ... On one of those calm and beautiful nights peculiar to sub-tropical climes, I stood alone upon the white sea-wall, and no sound fell upon my ears save the whirring monotone of insects in the trees above the hills, the periodical chime of bells from anchored ships, and the low, sweet cadence of the incoming tide. I thought it must have been such a night as this that inspired Camoens when he wrote,—
  130. ^ Hansson, p. 117: Unless a change of surnames occurred for some unknown reason, or unless the ' water names' are not the real names of the Fujian boat people, it would seem that the Dan people lacked Chinese-style surnames at the time the Fujian branch
  131. ^ Hansson, p. 116: In a late Qing dynasty work which has a section on boat people that mainly refers to those in Fujian, common surnames are said to be Weng 翁 ('old fisherman'), Ou 歐, Chi 池 (pond), Pu 浦 (river bank), Jiang 江 (river) and Hai 海 (sea). None of those surnames is a very common one in China and a few are very rare.
  132. ^ Hansson, p. 116: Some of them list the five names Mai 麥, Pu 濮, Wu 吴, Su 蘇 and He 何 The Huizhou prefectural gazetteer even states that there are no other boat people surnames, while others also add Gu 顧 and Zeng 曾 to make seven
  133. ^ Zhuang (2009). {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Missing or empty |title= (help)
  134. ^ McFadzean A.J.S., Todd D. (1971). "Cooley's anaemia among the tanka of South China". Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. 65 (1): 59–62. doi:10.1016/0035-9203(71)90185-4. PMID 5092429.
  135. ^ Cooley's anaemia among the tanka of South China, A.J.S. McFadzean, D. Todd[permanent dead link]. Tropicalmedandhygienejrnl.net. Retrieved on 2 March 2012.
  136. ^ Asiaweek, Volume 15. Asiaweek Ltd. 1989. p. 90. 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)
  137. ^ "白手起家、美女、兄弟鬩牆，所有戲劇元素都到齊：富可敵國的香港霍家傳奇". 5 January 2015.

Bibliography

  • Chaves, Jonathan (1993). Singing of the source: nature and god in the poetry of the Chinese painter Wu Li. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-8248-1485-1.
  • Christina Miu Bing Cheng (1999). Macau: a cultural Janus. Hong Kong University Press. ISBN 962-209-486-4.
  • Great Britain. Parliament (1882). Correspondence respecting the alleged existence of Chinese slavery in Hong Kong: presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty Volume 3185 of C (Series) (Great Britain. Parliament) (reprint ed.). Printed by G.E. Eyre and W. Spottiswoode for H.M.S.O.
  •   This article incorporates text from Europe in China: the history of Hongkong from the beginning to the year 1882, by Eitel, Ernest John, a publication from 1895, now in the public domain in the United States.
  • João de Pina-Cabral (2002). Between China and Europe: person, culture and emotion in Macao. Vol. 74 of London School of Economics monographs on social anthropology. Berg. ISBN 0-8264-5749-5.
  • Hansson, Anders (1996). Chinese outcasts: discrimination and emancipation in late imperial China. Vol. 37 of Sinica Leidensia. BRILL. ISBN 90-04-10596-4.
  •   This article incorporates text from The Century dictionary: an encyclopedic lexicon of the English language, Part 21, by Whitney, William Dwight, a publication from 1891, now in the public domain in the United States.
  •   This article incorporates text from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia: The Century dictionary ... prepared under the superintendence of William Dwight Whitney ... rev. & enl. under the superintendence of Benjamin E. Smith, by Whitney, William Dwight and Smith, Benjamin Eli, a publication from 1911, now in the public domain in the United States.
  •   This article incorporates text from The Middle kingdom: a survey of the ... Chinese empire and its inhabitants ..., by Williams, Samuel Wells, a publication from 1848, now in the public domain in the United States.
  •   This article incorporates text from The Field afar, Volumes 15–16, by Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America, Catholic Foreign Mission Bureau of Boston, a publication from 1921, now in the public domain in the United States.

External links

  •   Media related to Tanka people at Wikimedia Commons

February 07, 2023
tanka, people, this, article, contains, many, overly, lengthy, quotations, encyclopedic, entry, please, help, improve, article, presenting, facts, neutrally, worded, summary, with, appropriate, citations, consider, transferring, direct, quotations, wikiquote, . This article contains too many or overly lengthy quotations for an encyclopedic entry Please help improve the article by presenting facts as a neutrally worded summary with appropriate citations Consider transferring direct quotations to Wikiquote or for entire works to Wikisource February 2022 The Tankas or boat people are a sinicised ethnic group in Southern China 2 who have traditionally lived on junks in coastal parts of Guangdong Guangxi Fujian Hainan Shanghai Zhejiang and along the Yangtze river as well as Hong Kong and Macau The boat people are referred to with other different names outside of Guangdong not called Tanka Though many now live onshore some from the older generations still live on their boats and pursue their traditional livelihood of fishing Historically the Tankas were considered to be outcasts Since they were boat people who lived by the sea they were sometimes referred to as sea gypsies by both Chinese and British Tanka origins can be traced back to the native ethnic minorities of southern China known historically as the Baiyue who may have taken refuge on the sea and gradually assimilated into Han culture However Tanka have preserved many of their native traditions that are not found in Han Chinese culture Tanka peopleTanka woman in MacauRegions with significant populations Mainland ChinaGuangdong Guangxi Fujian Hainan Shanghai Zhejiang and along the Yangtze river 1 Hong KongKowloon MacauMacau BayLanguagesTanka dialect of Yue Chinese Fuzhou dialect of Eastern Min Chinese Fuzhou Tanka other varieties of Chinese for those living in the diaspora speak English Vietnamese Khmer Tetun Burmese Thai Hindi Bengali Malay both Malaysian Bruneian and Indonesian Spanish Portuguese including Macau French Fijian Creole and DutchReligionChinese folk religions including Taoism Confucianism ancestral worship and others and Mahayana Buddhism Tanka peopleTraditional Chinese1 蜑家2 艇家3 水上人4 曲蹄5 蜑民6 曲蹄囝Literal meaning1 Dan families2 boat households3 people on water4 crooked hoof bowlegged5 Dan people6 crooked hoof children bowlegged childrenTranscriptionsStandard MandarinHanyu Pinyin1 Danjia2 Tǐngjia3 ShuǐshangrenYue CantoneseYale Romanization1 Daahnga2 Tehngga3 Seuiseuhngyan4 KuktaiJyutping1 Daan6gaa12 Teng5gaa13 Seoi2soeng6jan44 Kuk1tai4Eastern MinFuzhou BUC4 Kuoh da 5 Dang ming6 Kuoh da giangA small number of Tankas also live in parts of Vietnam There they are called Dan Đan and are classified as a subgroup of the Ngai ethnicity Contents 1 Etymology and terminology 2 Geographic Distribution 3 Origin 3 1 Mythical origins 3 2 Baiyue connection and origins in Southern China 3 2 1 Yao connections 3 3 Historiography 3 4 Scholarly opinions on Baiyue connection 3 5 Genetics 4 History 4 1 Sinicisation 4 2 Ming Dynasty 4 2 1 Macau and Portuguese rule 4 3 Qing dynasty 4 3 1 Lifestyle and culture 4 3 2 Canton Guangzhou 4 4 Modern China 4 5 British Hong Kong 4 6 Shanghai 4 6 1 Commerce 5 Surnames 6 Dialect 7 DNA tests and disease 8 Famous Tankas 9 See also 10 References 11 Bibliography 12 External linksEtymology and terminology EditAccording to official Liu Zongyuan Liou Tsung yuan 柳宗元 773 819 of the Tang Dynasty there were Tanka people settled in the boats of nowadays Guangdong province and Guangxi Zhang autonomous region Tank is a Cantonese term for boat or junk and ka means family or peoples The term Tanka is now considered derogatory and no longer in common use 3 These boat dwellers are now referred to in China as on water people Chinese 水上人 pinyin shuǐshang ren Cantonese Yale Seuiseuhngyan 4 or people of the southern sea Chinese 南海人 Cantonese Yale Naamhoiyan 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 No standardised English translation of this term exists Boat People is a commonly used translation although it may be confused with the similar term for Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong The term Boat Dwellers was proposed by Dr Lee Ho Yin of The University of Hong Kong in 1999 and it has been adopted by the Hong Kong Museum of History for its exhibition 13 Both the Tanka and the Cantonese speak Cantonese 14 15 However Tanka living in Fujian speak Min Chinese Boat people was a general term for the Tanka The name Tanka was used only by Cantonese to describe the Tanka of the Pearl River Delta The Tanka boat people of the Yangtze region were called the Nine surnames fishermen households while Tanka families living on land were called the Mean households There were two distinct categories of people based on their way of life and they were further divided into different groups The Hakka and Cantonese lived on land the Tanka including Hokkien speaking Tanka immigrants often mistaken for being Hoklo lived on boats and were both classified as boat people 16 The differences between the sea dwelling Tanka and land dwellers were not based merely on their way of life Cantonese and Hakka who lived on land fished sometimes for a living but these land fishermen never mixed or married with the Tanka fishermen Tanka were barred from Cantonese and Hakka celebrations 17 British reports on Hong Kong described the Tanka including Hoklo speaking Tanka boat people living in Hong Kong since time unknown 18 19 The encyclopaedia Americana alleged that Tanka lived in Hong Kong since prehistoric times 20 21 22 Geographic Distribution EditThe Tanka people are found throughout the coasts and rivers of the following regions 23 Zhejiang Zhoushan Archipelago Taizhou Bay Wenzhou Bay Sanmen Bay Hangzhou Bay Xin an River Fuchun River Lanjiang River 24 Fujian Min River Mouth Fuqing Bay Xinghua Bay Quanzhou Bay Amoy Bay Zhangzhou Water Front Guangdong Jieshi Bay Honghai Bay Daya Bay Dapeng Bay Zhujiang River Mouth Leizhou Bay Lingding Sea Zhanjiang Wanshan Archipelago Guangxi You River Anhui Xin an River Jiangxi Gan River Hainan Qiongzhou Strait Sanya Bay Beijing Jiangsu Henan Hubei Hunan Grand Canal 25 Shanghai city river Hong Kong Kowloon Macau Macau BayOrigin EditMythical origins Edit Tanka in Hong Kong Some Chinese myths claim that animals were the ancestors of the Barbarians including the Tanka people 26 27 Some ancient Chinese sources claimed that water snakes were the ancestors of the Tanka saying that they could last for three days in the water without breathing air 28 Baiyue connection and origins in Southern China Edit Main article Baiyue The Tanka are considered by some scholars to be related to other minority peoples of southern China such as the Yao and Li people Miao 29 better source needed The Amoy University anthropologist Ling Hui hsiang wrote on his theory of the Fujian Tanka being descendants of the Bai Yue He claimed that Guangdong and Fujian Tanka are definitely descended from the old Bai Yue peoples and that they may have been ancestors of the Malay race 30 The Tanka inherited their lifestyle and culture from the original Yue peoples who inhabited Hong Kong during the Neolithic era 31 After the First Emperor of China conquered Hong Kong groups from northern and central China moved into the general area of Guangdong including Hong Kong 32 One theory proposes that the ancient Yue inhabitants of southern China are the ancestors of the modern Tanka boat people The majority of western academics subscribe to this theory and use Chinese historical sources The ancient Chinese used the term Yue to refer to all southern barbarians 33 34 The Oxford English Dictionary 2nd Edition states that the ancestors of the Tanka were native people 35 36 The Tanka s ancestors had been pushed to the southern coast by Chinese peasants who took over their land 37 38 During the British colonial era in Hong Kong the Tanka were considered a separate ethnic group from the Punti Hakka and Hoklo 39 Punti is another name for Cantonese it means local who came from mainly Guangdong districts The Hakka and Hoklo are not considered as Puntis The Tanka have been compared to the She people by some historians practising Han Chinese culture while being an ethnic minority descended from natives of Southern China 40 Yao connections Edit Main article Yao people Chinese scholars and gazettes described the Tanka as a Yao tribe with some other sources noting that Tan people lived at Lantau and other sources saying Yao people lived there As a result they refused to obey the salt monopoly of the Song dynasty Sung dynasty 960 1276 1279 government The county gazetteer of Sun On in 1729 described the Tanka as Yao barbarians and the Tanka were viewed as animals 41 In modern times the Tanka claim to be ordinary Chinese who happen to fish for a living and the local dialect is used as their language 42 Historiography Edit Some southern Chinese historic views of the Tanka were that they were a separate aboriginal ethnic group not Han Chinese at all 43 Chinese Imperial records also claim that the Tanka were descendants of aboriginals 44 Tanka were also called sea gypsies 海上吉普賽人 11 The Tanka were regarded as Yueh and not Chinese they were divided into three classifications the fish Tan the oyster Tan and the wood Tan in the 12th century based on what they did for a living 45 46 The three groups of Punti Hakka and Hoklo all of whom spoke different Chinese dialects despised and fought each other during the late Qing dynasty However they were all united in their overwhelming hatred for the Tanka since the aboriginals of Southern China were the ancestors of the Tanka 47 The Cantonese Punti had displaced the Tanka aboriginals after they began conquering southern China 48 The Chinese poet Su Dongpo wrote a poem in which mentioned the Tanka 49 The Nankai University of Tianjin published the Nankai social and economic quarterly Volume 9 in 1936 and it referred to the Tanka as aboriginal descendants before Chinese assimilation 50 The scholar Jacques Gernet also wrote that the Tanka were aboriginals who were known for being pirates haidao which hindered Qing dynasty attempts to assert control in Guangdong 51 Scholarly opinions on Baiyue connection Edit The most widely held theory is that the Tanka are the descendants of the native Yue inhabitants of Guangdong before the Han Cantonese moved in 52 The theory stated that originally the Yueh peoples inhabited the region when the Chinese conquest began either absorbed or expelled the Yue to southern regions The Tanka according to this theory are descended from an outcast Yue tribe who preserved their separate culture 53 Regarding the Fujian Minyue Tanka it is suggested that in the southeast coastal regions of China there were many sea nomads during the Neolithic era and they may have spoken ancestral Austronesian languages and were skilled seafarers 54 In fact there is evidence that an Austronesian language was still spoken in Fujian as late as 620 AD 55 It is therefore believed that the Tanka were Austronesians who could be more closely related to other Austronesian groups such as native Filipinos Javanese or Balinese A minority of scholars who challenged this theory deny that the Tanka are descended from natives instead claiming they are basically the same as other Han Cantonese who dwell on land claiming that neither the land dwelling Han Cantonese nor the water dwelling Tanka have more aboriginal blood than the other with the Tanka boat people being as Chinese and as Han as ordinary Cantonese 56 Eugene Newton Anderson claimed that there was no evidence for any of the conjectures put forward by scholars on the Tanka s origins citing Chen who stated that to what tribe or race they once belonged or were once akin to is still unknown 57 Some researchers say the origin of the Tanka is multifaceted with a portion of them having native Yueh ancestors and others originating from other sources 58 Genetics Edit Fujian Tanka have customs similar to Daic and Austronesian people They have a closer genetic affinity with Daic populations than with Han Chinese in paternal lineages but are closely clustered with southern Han populations such as Hakka and Teochew in maternal lineages It is hypothesized that the Fujian Tanka mainly originate from the ancient indigenous Daic people and have only limited gene flows from Han Chinese populations 59 Another study on the Tanka concluded that the Tanka people not only had a close genetic relationship with both northern Han and ancient Yellow River basin millet farmers but also possessed more southern East Asian ancestry related to Austronesian Kra Dai and Hmong Mien people compared to southern Han Tanka people had their own unique genetic structure but kept a close relationship with geographically close southern Han Chinese populations The results supported that the Tanka people arose from the admixture between southward migration Han Chinese and southern indigenous people 60 History EditSinicisation Edit The Song dynasty engaged in extensive sinicisation of the region with Han people 61 After many years of sinicisation and assimilation the Tanka now identify as Han Chinese though they also have non Han ancestry from the natives of Southern China 62 The Cantonese would often buy fish from the Tanka 63 In some inland regions the Tanka accounted for half of the total population 64 The Tanka of Quanzhou were registered as barbarian households 65 Ming Dynasty Edit The Tanka boat population were not registered into the national census as they were of outcast status with an official imperial edict declaring them untouchable 66 better source needed Macau and Portuguese rule Edit Main articles Macau History of Macau and Macanese people Traditional Tanka people clothes in a Hong Kong museum The Portuguese who were granted Macau during the Ming dynasty often married Tanka women since Han Chinese women would not have relations with them Some of the Tanka s descendants became Macanese people Some Tanka children were enslaved by Portuguese raiders 67 The Chinese poet Wu Li wrote a poem which included a line about the Portuguese in Macau being supplied with fish by the Tanka 68 69 70 71 When the Portuguese arrived at Macau enslaved women from Goa part of Portuguese India Siam Indochina and Malaya became their wives Rarely were they Chinese women 72 The Tanka women were among the only people in China willing to mix and marry with the Portuguese with other Chinese women refusing to do so 73 The majority of marriages between Portuguese and natives was between Portuguese men and women of Tanka origin who were considered the lowest class of people in China and had relations with Portuguese settlers and sailors or low class Chinese women 74 Western men like the Portuguese were refused by high class Chinese women who did not marry foreigners 75 Literature in Macau was written about love affairs and marriage between the Tanka women and Portuguese men like A Chan A Tancareira by Henrique de Senna Fernandes 76 77 78 79 Qing dynasty Edit Tanka Tankia tan ka tan kya n Chinese literally the Tan family or tribe lt Tan an aboriginal tribe who formerly occupied the region lying to the south and west of the Meiing mountains in southern China kia pronounced ka in Canton family people The boat population of Canton in southern China the descendants of an aboriginal tribe named Tan who were driven by the advance of Chinese civilisation to live in boats upon the river and who have for centuries been forbidden to live on the land Since 1730 they have been permitted to settle in villages in the immediate neighbourhood of the river but are still excluded from competition for official honours and are forbidden by custom from intermarrying with the rest of the people Q amp es Glossary of Reference 80 why Attempts were made to free the Tanka and several other mean groups from this status in a series of edicts from 1723 to 1731 81 They mostly worked as fishermen and tended to gather at some bays Some built markets or villages on the shore while others continued to live on their junks or boats They claimed to be Han Chinese 82 The Qing edict said Cantonese people regard the Dan households as being of the mean class beijian zhi and do not allow them to settle on shore The Dan households for their part dare not struggle with the common people this edict was issued in 1729 83 As Hong Kong developed some of the fishing grounds in Hong Kong became badly polluted or were reclaimed and so became land Those Tankas who only own small boats and cannot fish far out to sea are forced to stay inshore in bays gathering together like floating villages 84 Lifestyle and culture Edit Always there is plenty to see as the Tanka the people who live in the boats are full of life They are an aboriginal tribe speaking an altogether different language from the Chinese On the land they are like fish out of water They are said never to intermarry with landlubbers but somehow or other their tongue has crept into many villages in the Chiklung section The Chinese say the Tanka speech sounds like that of the Americans It seems to have no tones A hardy race the Tanka are untouched by the epidemics that visit our coast perhaps because they live so much off land Each family has a boat its own little kingdom and there being plenty of fish all look better fed than most of our land neighbours Christianity is with a few rare exceptions unknown to them The only window of our Chiklung house gives the missioner a full view of the village life of some of the boat tribe The window at present is just the absence of the south wall of the little loft to the shop Wooden bars can be inserted in holes against robbers 85 Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America in 1921 Before leaving the market by special invitation we had a swim from off one of the sampans a term used around Canton here baby boat is the name The water was almost hot and the current surprisingly swift Nevertheless the Tanka men and boys go in several times a day and wash jacket and trousers undressing and dressing in the water They seem to let the clothes dry on them Women and girls also jump in daily 86 Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America in 1921Masonry was unknown by the water dwelling Tanka 87 Canton Guangzhou Edit The Tanka also formed a class of prostitutes in Canton operating the boats in Canton s Pearl River which functioned as brothels They did not practice foot binding and their dialect was unique They were forbidden to marry land dwelling Chinese or live on land Their ancestors were the natives of Southern China before the Cantonese expelled them to their current home on the water 88 Modern China Edit During the intensive reclamation efforts around the islands of Shanghai in the late 1960s many Tanka were settled on Hengsha Island and organised as fishing brigades 89 British Hong Kong Edit Hong Kong boat dwellings in December 1970 In 1937 Walter Schofield then a Cadet Officer in the Hong Kong Civil Service wrote that at that time the Tankas were boat people who sometimes lived in boats hauled ashore or in more or less boat shaped huts as at Shau Kei Wan and Tai O They mainly lived at the harbours at Cheung Chau Aberdeen Tai O Po Toi Kau Sai Chau and Yau Ma Tei 90 Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew 1845 1917 and Katharine Caroline Bushnell 5 February 1856 January 26 1946 who wrote extensively on the position of women in the British Empire wrote about the Tanka inhabitants of Hong Kong and their position in the prostitution industry catering towards foreign sailors The Tanka did not marry with the Chinese being descendants of the natives they were restricted to the waterways They supplied their women as prostitutes to British sailors and assisted the British in their military actions around Hong Kong 91 The Tanka in Hong Kong were considered outcasts categorised low class 92 Ordinary Chinese prostitutes were afraid of serving Westerners since they looked strange to them while the Tanka prostitutes freely mingled with western men 93 The Tanka assisted the Europeans with supplies and providing them with prostitutes 94 95 Low class European men in Hong Kong easily formed relations with the Tanka prostitutes 96 The profession of prostitution among the Tanka women led to them being hated by the Chinese both because they had sex with westerners and them being racially Tanka 97 The Tanka prostitutes were considered to be low class greedy for money arrogant and treating clients with a bad attitude They were known for punching their clients or mocking them by calling them names 98 Though the Tanka prostitutes were considered low class their brothels were still remarkably well kept and tidy 99 A famous fictional story which was written in the 1800s depicted western items decorating the rooms of Tanka prostitutes 100 The stereotype among most Chinese in Canton that all Tanka women were prostitutes was common leading the government during the Republican era to accidentally inflate the number of prostitutes when counting due to all Tanka women being included 101 102 The Tanka women were viewed as such that their prostitution activities were considered part of the normal bustle of a commercial trading city 103 Sometimes the lowly regarded Tanka prostitutes managed to elevate themselves into higher forms of prostitution 104 105 Tanka women were ostracised from the Cantonese community and were nicknamed salt water girls ham sui mui in Cantonese for their services as prostitutes to foreigners in Hong Kong 106 107 Tanka women who worked as prostitutes for foreigners also commonly kept a nursery of Tanka girls specifically for exporting them for prostitution work to overseas Chinese communities such as in Australia or America or to serve as a Chinese or foreigner s concubine 108 A report called Correspondence respecting the alleged existence of Chinese slavery in Hong Kong presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty was presented to the English Parliament in 1882 concerning the existence of slavery in Hong Kong of which many were Tanka girls serving as prostitutes or mistresses to westerners To understand the social bearings of domestic servitude as it obtains in Hong Kong it must be observed that although the Chinese residents of Hong Kong are under British rule and live in close proximity to English social life there has always been an impassable gulf between respectable English and Chinese society in Hong Kong The two forms of social life have exercised a certain influence upon each other but the result now visible is that while Chinese social life has remained exactly what it is on the mainland of China the social life of many foreigners in Hong Kong has comparatively degenerated and not on y accommodated itself in certain respects to habits peculiar to the system of patriarchalism but caused a certain disrespectable but small class of Chinese to enter into a social alliance with foreigners which while detaching them from the restraining influence of the custom and public opinion of Chinese society left them uninfluenced by the moral powers of foreign civilisation 109 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 population the Pariahs of Cantonese society These Tan ka people of the Canton river are the descendants of a tribe of aborigines pushed by advancing Chinese civilisation to live on boats on the Canton river being for centuries forbidden by law to live on shore The Emperor Yung Ching A D 1730 allowed them to settle in villages in the immediate proximity of the river but they were left by him and remain to the present day excluded from competition for official honours whilst custom forbids them to intermarry with the rest of the people These Tan ka people were the secret but trusty allies of foreigners from the time of the East India Company to the present day They furnished pilots and supplies of provisions to British men of war and troop ships when doing so was by the Chinese Government declared treason unsparingly visited with capital punishment They invaded Hong Kong the moment the Colony was opened and have ever since maintained here a monopoly so to say of the supply of Chinese pilots and ship s crews of the fish trade the cattle trade and especially of the trade in women for the supply of foreigners and of brothels patronised by foreigners Almost every so called protected woman i e kept mistress of foreigners here belongs to this Tan ka tribe looked down upon and kept at a distance by all the other Chinese classes It is among these Tan ka women and especially under the protection of those protected T in ka women that private prostitution and the sale of girls for purposes of concubinage flourishes being looked upon by them as their legitimate profession Consequently almost every protected woman keeps a nursery of purchased children or a few servant girls who are being reared with a view to their eventual disposal according to their personal qualifications either among foreigners here as kept women or among Chinese residents as their concubines or to be sold for export to Singapore San Francisco or Australia Those protected women moreover generally act as protectors each to a few other Tanka women who live by sly prostitution The latter again used to be preyed upon till quite recently His Excellency Governor Hennessy stopped this fiendish practice by informers paid with Government money who would first debauch such women and then turn round against them charging them before the magistrate as keepers of unlicensed brothels in which case a heavy fine would be inflicted to pay which these women used to sell their own children or sell themselves into bondage worse than slavery to the keepers of the brothels licensed by the Government Whenever a sly brothel was broken up these keepers would crowd the shroffs office of the police court or the visiting room of the Government Lock Hospital to drive their heartless bargains which were invariably enforced with the weighty support of the Inspectors of brothels appointed by Government under the Contagious Diseases Ordinance The more this Ordinance was enforced the more of this buying and selling of human flesh went on at the very doors of Government offices It is amongst these outcasts of Chinese society that the worst abuses of the Chinese system of domestic servitude exist because that system is here unrestrained by the powers of traditional custom or popular opinion This class of people mustering perhaps here in Hong Kong not more than 2 000 persons are entirely beyond the argument of this essay They form a class of their own readily recognised at a glance They are disowned by Chinese society whilst they are but parasites on foreign society The system of buying and selling female children and of domestic servitude with which they must be identified is so glaring an abuse of legitimate Chinese domestic servitude that it calls for corrective measures entirely apart from any considerations connected with the general body of Chinese society 110 Ernest John Eitel claimed that all half caste people in Hong Kong were descended exclusively from Europeans having relationship with Tanka women and not Chinese women The theory that most of the Eurasian mixed race Hong Kong people are descended only from Tanka women and European men and not ordinary Cantonese women is backed up by other researchers who pointed out that Tanka women freely consorted with foreigners due to the fact that they were not bound by the same Confucian traditions as the Cantonese and having a relationship with European men was advantageous for Tanka women The ordinary Cantonese women did not sleep with European men so the Eurasian population was formed only from Tanka and European admixture 111 112 113 114 115 The day labourers settled down in huts at Taipingshan at Saiyingpun and at Tsimshatsui But the largest proportion of the Chinese population were the so called Tanka or boat people the pariahs of South China whose intimate connection with the social life of the foreign merchants in the Canton factories used to call forth an annual proclamation on the part of the Cantonese Authorities warning foreigners against the demoralising influences of these people These Tan ka people forbidden by Chinese law since A D 1730 to settle on shore or to compete at literary examinations and prohibited by custom from intermarrying with the rest of the people were from the earliest days of the East India Company always the trusty allies of foreigners They furnished pilots and supplies of provisions to British men of war troopships and mercantile vessels at times when doing so was declared by the Chinese Government to be rank treason unsparingly visited with capital punishment They were the hangers on of the foreign factories of Canton and of the British shipping at Lintin Kamsingmoon Tungkin and Hongkong Bay They invaded Hongkong the moment the settlement was started living at first on boats in the harbour with their numerous families and gradually settling on shore They have maintained ever since almost a monopoly of the supply of pilots and ships crews of the fish trade and the cattle trade but unfortunately also of the trade in girls and women Strange to say when the settlement was first started it was estimated that some 2 000 of these Tan ka people had flocked to Hongkong but at the present time they are about the same number a tendency having set in among them to settle on shore rather than on the water and to disavow their Tan ka extraction to mix on equal terms with the mass of the Chinese community The half caste population in Hongkong were from the earliest days of the settlement of the Colony and down to the present day almost exclusively the off spring 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 the Chinese residents of the Colony During British rule some special schools were created for the Tanka 116 In 1962 a typhoon struck boats belonging to the Tanka likely including Hoklo speaking Tanka mistaken for being Hoklo destroying hundreds 20 21 22 During the 1970s the number of Tanka was reported to be shrinking 117 118 119 Shanghai Edit Shanghai with its many international concessions contained prostitutes from various areas of China including Guangdong province This included the Tanka prostitutes who were grouped separately from the Cantonese prostitutes The Cantonese served customers in normal brothels while the Tanka served customers in boats 120 Commerce Edit always enlivened by the fleet of Tanka boats which pass conveying passengers to and fro between the land and the Canton and Hong Kong steamers 121 122 Japan and the Japanese a narrative of the US government expedition to Japan under Commodore Perry in 1859 Our next picture shows a Chinese tanka boat The tanka boats are counted by thousands in the rivers and bays of China They are often employed by our national vessels as conveyances to and from the shore thereby saving the health of the sailors who would be otherwise subjected to pulling long distances under a hot sun with a liability of contracting some fatal disease peculiar to China and thus introducing infection in a crowded crew 123 Ballou s monthly magazine Volume 8 in 1858 Macao We arrived here on the twenty second and dispatched a boat to the shore immediately for letters I received three or four of those fine large letters which are the envy of all who see them and which are readily distinguishable by their size and the beautiful style in which they are directed You cannot imagine the delight with which I devoured their costents I am glad you wrote so much of our dear pet 0 my Dita the longing I feel to take the dear little thing to my heart is agonising Yesterday I was on shore and saw a beautiful child of about the same age as ours I was almost crazy at the sight Twenty months old How she must prattle by this time I fancy I can see her trotting about following you around the house What a recompense for the hardest toil of the day would it not be to me could I only lie down on the floor and have a good romp with her at night And now for Macao and what I saw felt and did You probably know that a very numerous Chinese population lives entirely in boots some of them so small that one pities the poor unfortunates who live so miserably They are born grow up marry and raise children in these boats You would be astonished to see mothers with infants at the breast managing the sails oars and rudder of the boat as expertly as any sailor The Tanka is of very light draft and being able to go close in shore is used to land passengers from the larger boats As we neared the shore we noticed small boats pulling toward us from all directions Soon a boat manned by two really pretty young girls pulling oars and a third sculling came alongside calling out earnestly Takee me boat Takee me boat They had beautiful teeth white as ivory brilliant eyes and their pretty faces so earnest and pleading were wreathed in smiles as we gave them the preference over others that joined us from all quarters clinging to the sides of our large boat and impeding our headway The boatmen tried in vain to drive them off One brute of a fellow splashed repeatedly a poor girl who though not at all pretty had such a depth of meaning and such a sad expression in her eyes and face as charmed me completely It would have interested any one to hear her scold back and to see the flashing of her eyes and the vivid expression in every feature When I frowned at our sailor the sudden change in her face from anger to smiles the earnest takee me boat as she caught evidence of sympathy from me was beautiful We were assailed with these cries from so many and there was such a clamour that in self defense we had to choose a boat and go The first mentioned girls on account of their beauty won the majority and their boat was clean and well furnished which is more than could be said of many of them I caught the look of disappointment which passed over the features of the girl I have described and it haunts me even now Trifling as it appeared to us such scenes constitute the great events in their poor lives and such triumphs or defeats are all important to them Upon entering the Tanka boat we found the mother of the young girls and a young infant dressed heroically The infant was the child of the prettiest one of the girls whose husband was away fishing The old woman was quite talkative and undoubtedly gave us lots of news They had a miniature temple on the bows of the boat with Joss seated cross legged looking very fat and very red and very stupid Before him was an offering of two apricots but Joss never deigned to look at it and apparently had no appetite I felt a sincere respect however for the devotional feeling of these poor idolaters recognising even there the universal instinct which teaches that there is a God I called upon the commodore who received me with great courtesy and gave me a very interesting account of the voyage out by the way of Mauritius of the Susquehanna to which I was first appointed She has gone on to Amoy I made the acquaintance of a Portuguese family named Lurero The young ladies are quite accomplished speaking French Spanish and Italian but no English They came down to receive the visit of our consul and lady who called while I was there Mr Lurero gave me some specimens of a soap fruit and showed me the tree The fruit is an exceedingly fine soap which without any preparation is used for washing the finest goods We expect to hear of the sailing of the Japan Expedition by the next mail When Commodore Perry arrives we shall be kept so busy that time will fly rapidly and we shall soon be looking forward to our return home unless Japan disturbances which are not seriously anticipated delay us I did not tell you of my visit to Camoens Cave the principal attraction of Macao This cave was the resort of the distinguished Portuguese poet Camoens who there wrote the greater part of the Lusiad The cave is situated in the midst of the finest wooded walks I ever saw The grounds are planted beautifully and immense vases of flowers stand around The grounds are not level but lie up the side of a slope or hill irregular in shape and precipitous on one side There are several fine views particularly that of the harbor and surrounding islands I will here reproduce the following additional items regarding Camoens from the pen of Walter A Hose Macao had a particular interest for me as the first foothold that modern civilisation obtained upon the ancient shores of far Cathay and as the birthplace of one of the finest epic poems ever written On one of those calm and beautiful nights peculiar to sub tropical climes I stood alone upon the white sea wall and no sound fell upon my ears save the whirring monotone of insects in the trees above the hills the periodical chime of bells from anchored ships and the low sweet cadence of the incoming tide I thought it must have been such a night as this that inspired Camoens when he wrote 124 125 126 127 128 129 Life of Capt Joseph Fry the Cuban martyr Being a faithful record of his remarkable career from childhood to the time of his heroic death at the hands of Spanish executioners recounting his experience as an officer in the US and Confederate navies and revealing much of the inner history in 1875 excessive quote Surnames EditThe Fuzhou Tanka have different surnames than the Tanka of Guangdong 130 Qing records indicate that Weng Ou Chi Pu Jiang and Hai 翁 歐 池 浦 江 海 were surnames of the Fuzhou Tanka 131 Qing records also stated that Tanka surnames in Guangdong consisted of Mai Pu Wu Su and He 麥 濮 吴 蘇 何 alternatively some people claimed Gu and Zeng as Tanka surnames 132 Dialect EditThe Tanka dialect of Yue Chinese is similar in phonology with Cantonese with the following differences eu œ is pronounced as o ɔ e g Hong Kong y is pronounced as u or i kʷ is pronounced as k no final m or p so they are replaced by ng ŋ or t t n is pronounced as l like in some informal varieties of Cantonese they also have the tone 2 diminutive change 133 DNA tests and disease EditTests on the DNA of the Tanka people found that the disease Thalassemia was common among the Tanka Tests also stated that the ancestors of the Tanka were not Han Chinese but were native people 134 135 The Tanka suffer from lung cancer more than the Cantonese and Teochew The frequency of the disease is higher among Tanka The rate among the Teochew is lower than that of the Cantonese 136 Famous Tankas EditSinn Sing Hoi Henry Fok Hong Kong billionaire businessman and politician 137 Timothy FokSee also EditPang uk Fuzhou Tanka Aberdeen floating village in Hong Kong Yau Ma Tei Boat People in Hong KongReferences Edit books google com sg books id HcPuCAAAQBAJ amp pg PA219 Maria Jaschok Suzanne Miers 1994 Maria Jaschok Suzanne Miers eds Women and Chinese patriarchy submission servitude and escape Zed Books p xvi ISBN 1 85649 126 9 Tanka a marginalised boat people which could be found in the Southern provinces of China Farewell to Peasant China Rural Urbanization and Social Change in Page 75 Gregory Eliyu Guldin 1997 In Dongji hamlet most villagers were originally shuishangren boat people Also known in the West by the pejorative label Tanka people Ed and settled on land only in the 1950s Per capita cultivated land averaged only 1 mu Cornelius Osgood 1975 The Chinese a study of a Hong Kong community Volume 3 University of Arizona Press p 1212 ISBN 9780816504183 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 Great Britain Colonial Office Hong Kong Government Information Services 1962 Hong Kong Govt Press p 37 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 National Physical Laboratory Great Britain 1962 Report for the year H M S O p 37 Hong Kong report for the year Government Press 1961 p 40 Hong Kong Great Britain Foreign and Commonwealth Office 1962 Hong Kong annual report H M S O p 37 Great Britain Foreign and Commonwealth Office Hong Kong Government Information Services 1960 Hong Kong Govt Press p 40 Martin Hurlimann 1962 Hong Kong Viking Press p 17 ISBN 9783761100301 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 a b Valery M Garrett 1987 Traditional Chinese clothing in Hong Kong and South China 1840 1980 Oxford University Press p 2 ISBN 0 19 584174 3 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 Far Eastern economic review Volume 24 Review Pub Co Ltd 1958 p 280 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 Architectural Conservation Office HKSAR Government 2008 Heritage Impact Assessment Report of the Yau Ma Tei Theatre amp Red Brick Building p 5 PDF Retrieved on 2 March 2012 Osterreichische Leo Gesellschaft Gorres Gesellschaft Anthropos Institute 1970 Anthropos Volume 65 Zaunrith sche Buch Kunst und Steindruckerei p 249 Far better known are the Cantonese speaking boat people These are the groups known as Tanka Mandarin Tanchia in most of the literature a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint multiple names authors list link Eugene Newton Anderson 1970 The floating world of Castle Peak Bay Vol 4 of Anthropological studies American Anthropological Association p 13 ISBN 9780598271389 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 James Hayes 1996 Friends amp teachers Hong Kong and its people 1953 87 Hong Kong University Press p 23 ISBN 962 209 396 5 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 David Faure Helen F Siu 1995 David Faure Helen F Siu eds Down to earth the teruritorial bond in South China Stanford University Press p 93 ISBN 0 8047 2435 0 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 Great Britain Colonial Office Hong Kong Government Information Services 1970 Hong Kong Govt Press p 219 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 Hong Kong report for the year Government Press 1970 p 219 a b Grolier Incorporated 1999 The encyclopedia Americana Volume 14 Grolier Incorporated p 474 ISBN 0 7172 0131 7 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 a b Scholastic Library Publishing 2006 Encyclopedia Americana Volume 1 Scholastic Library Pub p 474 ISBN 0 7172 0139 2 a b The Encyclopedia Americana Volume 14 Grolier 1981 p 474 ISBN 0 7172 0112 0 Deng Gang 1999 Maritime Sector Institutions and Sea Power of Premodern China p 55 ISBN 9780313307126 He Xi Faure David 13 January 2016 The Fisher Folk of Late Imperial and Modern China An Historical Anthropology of Boat and Shed Living ISBN 9781317409663 He Xi Faure David 13 January 2016 The Fisher Folk of Late Imperial and Modern China An Historical Anthropology of Boat and Shed Living ISBN 9781317409663 Eugene Newton Anderson 1970 The floating world of Castle Peak Bay Vol 4 of Anthropological studies American Anthropological Association p 13 ISBN 9780598271389 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 Osterreichische Leo Gesellschaft Gorres Gesellschaft Anthropos Institute 1970 Anthropos Volume 65 Zaunrith sche Buch Kunst und Steindruckerei p 249 a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint multiple names authors list link Wolfram Eberhard 1982 China s minorities yesterday and today Wadsworth p 89 ISBN 0 534 01080 6 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 Te chʻao Cheng 1948 Acculturation of the Chinese in the United States a Philadelphia study University of Pennsylvania p 27 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 Murray A Rubinstein 2007 Murray A Rubinstein ed Taiwan a new history M E Sharpe p 34 ISBN 978 0 7656 1494 0 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 Mike Ingham 2007 Hong Kong a cultural history Oxford University Press p 2 ISBN 978 0 19 531496 0 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 Michael Ingham 18 June 2007 Hong Kong A Cultural History Oxford University Press US p 2 ISBN 978 0 19 988624 1 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 Eugene Newton Anderson 1972 Essays on south China s boat people Vol 29 of Asian folklore and social life monographs Dong fang wen cong Orient Cultural Service p 2 Most scholars basing themselves on traditional Chinese historians work have agreed that the boat people are descendants of the Yueh or a branch thereof Eberhard 1942 1968 Lo 1955 1963 Ho 1965 and others influenced by them such as Wiens 1954 Yueh 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 Osterreichische Leo Gesellschaft Gorres Gesellschaft Anthropos Institute 1970 Anthropos Volume 65 Zaunrith sche Buch Kunst und Steindruckerei p 249 a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint multiple names authors list link Phil Benson 2001 Ethnocentrism and the English dictionary Vol 3 of Routledge studies in the history of linguistics Psychology Press p 152 ISBN 0 415 22074 2 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 Tanka n 1 Oxford English Dictionary Online Oxford University Press Retrieved 12 October 2014 Tanka n 1 Pronunciation ˈtaeŋke Forms Also tankia tanchia Etymology lt Chinese Cantonese lt 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 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 rskey FwlmXQ amp result 1 eid http www oed com view Entry 197535 result 1 amp rskey FwlmXQ amp http www oed com view Entry 197535 rskey CRdtvD amp result 1 eid http www oed com view Entry 197535 rskey CRdtvD amp result 1 amp isAdvanced false eid Sun Yat sen Institute for Advancement of Culture and Education Nanking 1940 T ien hsia monthly Volume 11 Kelly and Walsh ltd p 342 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 Sun Yat sen Institute for Advancement of Culture and Education Nanking 1940 T ien hsia monthly Volume 11 Kelly and Walsh ltd p 342 and they were probably evolved as a result of contact with foreign peoples even as late as the Portuguese Middle East and Africa Taylor amp Francis 1996 p 358 ISBN 1 884964 04 4 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 Susan Naquin Evelyn Sakakida Rawski 1989 Chinese Society in the Eighteenth Century Yale University Press p 169 ISBN 0 300 04602 2 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 William Meacham 2008 The Archaeology of Hong Kong Hong Kong University Press p 162 ISBN 978 962 209 925 8 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 Wolfram Eberhard 1982 China s minorities yesterday and today Wadsworth p 89 ISBN 0 534 01080 6 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 Leo J Moser 1985 The Chinese mosaic the peoples and provinces of China Westview Press p 219 ISBN 0 86531 085 8 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 C Fred Blake 1981 Ethnic groups and social change in a Chinese market town University Press of Hawaii p 2 ISBN 0 8248 0720 0 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 R A Donkin 1998 Beyond price pearls and pearl fishing origins to the Age of Discoveries Vol 224 of Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society Held at Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge American Philosophical Society p 200 ISBN 0 87169 224 4 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 Yueh 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 American Oriental Society 1952 Journal of the American Oriental Society Volume 72 Vol 40 of American oriental series American Oriental Society p 164 oyster Tan and the wood Tan excelling at the gathering of fish oysters and timber respectively Bob Dye 1997 Merchant prince of the Sandalwood Mountains Afong and the Chinese in Hawaiʻi University of Hawaii Press p 31 ISBN 0 8248 1772 9 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 Andrew Grzeskowiak 1996 Passport Hong Kong your pocket guide to Hong Kong business customs amp etiquette World Trade Press p 25 ISBN 1 885073 31 3 Shi Su Burton Watson 1994 Selected poems of Su Tung pʻo Copper Canyon Press p 130 ISBN 1 55659 064 4 Tanka Aboriginal people who lived on houseboats on the rivers around Canton 103 line j Nan kai da xue Tianjin China Jing ji yan jiu suo Nankai University Pa li tai Nankai Institute of Economics Nankai University Pa li tai Committee on Social and Economic Research 1936 Nankai social and economic quarterly Volume 9 Nankai Institute of Economics Nankai University p 616 a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint multiple names authors list link Jacques Gernet 1996 A history of Chinese civilization 2 ed Cambridge University Press p 471 ISBN 0 521 49781 7 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 Eugene Newton Anderson 1970 The floating world of Castle Peak Bay Vol 4 of Anthropological studies American Anthropological Association p 13 ISBN 9780598271389 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 Eugene Newton Anderson 1970 The floating world of Castle Peak Bay Vol 4 of Anthropological studies American Anthropological Association p 14 ISBN 9780598271389 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 Chen Jonas Chung yu 24 January 2008 ARCHAEOLOGY IN CHINA AND TAIWAN Sea nomads in prehistory on the southeast coast of China Bulletin of the Indo Pacific Prehistory Association 22 doi 10 7152 bippa v22i0 11805 Goodenough Ward H 1996 Prehistoric Settlement of the Pacific Philadelphia American Philosophical Society p 43 ISBN 087169865X OL 1021882M Eugene Newton Anderson 1970 The floating world of Castle Peak Bay Vol 4 of Anthropological studies American Anthropological Association p 13 ISBN 9780598271389 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 Eugene Newton Anderson 1970 The floating world of Castle Peak Bay Vol 4 of Anthropological studies American Anthropological Association p 15 ISBN 9780598271389 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 梁廣漢 1980 Profile of historic relics in the early stage of Hong Kong 學津書店 p 57 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 Luo Xiao Qin Du Pan Xin Wang Ling Xiang Zhou Bo Yan Li Yu Chun Zheng Hong Xiang Wei Lan Hai Liu Jun Jian Sun Chang Meng Hai Liang Tan Jing Ze 6 August 2020 Uniparental Genetic Analyses Reveal the Major Origin of Fujian Tanka from Ancient Indigenous Daic Populations Human Biology 91 4 257 277 doi 10 13110 humanbiology 91 4 05 ISSN 1534 6617 PMID 32767896 S2CID 221011288 He Guanglin Zhang Yunhe Wei Lan Hai Wang Mengge Yang Xiaomin Guo Jianxin Hu Rong Wang Chuan Chao Zhang Xian Qing 19 July 2021 The genomic formation of Tanka people an isolated Gypsies in water in the coastal region of Southeast China American Journal of Biological Anthropology 178 154 170 doi 10 1002 ajpa 24495 Eugene Newton Anderson 1970 The floating world of Castle Peak Bay Vol 4 of Anthropological studies American Anthropological Association p 15 ISBN 9780598271389 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 Far Eastern economic review Volume 24 Review Pub Co Ltd 1958 p 280 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 Edward Stokes 2005 Edward Stokes ed 逝影留踪 香港1946 47 Hongkong Conservation Photography Foundation p 141 ISBN 962 209 754 5 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 Paine Lincoln 6 February 2014 The Sea and Civilization A Maritime History of the World ISBN 9781782393573 Asia Major Friedrich Hirth pg 215 huji 戶籍 www chinaknowledge de Charles Ralph Boxer 1948 Fidalgos in the Far East 1550 1770 fact and fancy in the history of Macau M Nijhoff p 224 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 Chaves p 53 Wu Li like Bocarro noted the presence in Macau both of black slaves and of non Han Chinese such as the Tanka boat people and in the third poem of his sequence he combines references to these two groups Yellow sand whitewashed houses here the black men live willows at the gates like sedge still not sparse in autumn Chaves p 54 Midnight s when the Tanka come and make their harbor here fasting kitchens for noonday meals have plenty of fresh fish The second half of the poem unfolds a scene of Tanka boat people bringing in fish to supply the needs of fasting Christians Chaves p 141 Yellow sand whitewashed houses here the black men live willows at the gates like sedge still not sparse in autumn Midnight s when the Tanka come and make their harbor here fasting kitchens for noonday meals have plenty of fresh fish Chaves p 53 The residents Wu Li strives to reassure in the third line of this poem consisted at least in 1635 when Antonio Bocarro Chronicler in Chief of the State of India wrote his detailed account of Macau without actually having visited there of some 850 Portuguese families with on the average about six slaves capable of bearing arms amongst whom the majority and the best are negroes and such like as well as a like number of native families including Chinese Christians who form the majority of the non Portuguese residents and other nations all Christians 146 Bocarro may have been mistaken in declaring that all the Chinese in Macau were Christians Joao de Pina Cabral p 39 To be a Macanese is fundamentally to be from Macau with Portuguese ancestors but not necessarily to be of Sino Portuguese descent The local community was born from Portuguese men but in the beginning the woman was Goanese Siamese Indo Chinese Malay they came to Macau in our boats Sporadically it was a Chinese woman Joao de Pina Cabral p 39 When we established ourselves here the Chinese ostracised us The Portuguese had their wives then that came from abroad but they could have no contact with the Chinese women except the fishing folk the Tanka women and the female slaves Only the lowest class of Chinese contacted with the Portuguese in the first centuries Later the strength of Christianisation of the priests started to convince the Chinese to become Catholic But when they started to be Catholics they adopted Portuguese baptismal names and were ostracised by the Chinese Buddhists So they joined the Portuguese community and their sons started having Portuguese education without a single drop of Portuguese blood Joao de Pina Cabral p 164 I was personally told of people that to this day continue to hide the fact that their mothers had been lower class Chinese women often even tanka fishing folk women who had relations with Portuguese sailors and soldiers Joao de Pina Cabral p 165 In fact in those days the matrimonial context of production was usually constituted by Chinese women of low socio economic status who were married to or concubies of Portuguese or Macanese men Very rarely did Chinese women of higher status agree to marry a Westerner As Deolinda argues in one of her short stories 8 should they have wanted to do so out of romantic infatuation they would not be allowed to Joao de Pina Cabral p 164 Henrique de Senna Fernandes another Macanese author wrote a short story about a tanka girl who has an affair with a Portuguese sailor In the end the man returns to his native country and takes their little girl with him leaving the mother abandoned and broken hearted As her sailorman picks up the child A Chan s words are Cuidadinho cuidadinho Careful careful She resigns herself to her fate much as she may never have recovered from the blow 1978 Christina Miu Bing Cheng p 173 Her slave like submissiveness is her only attraction to him A Chan thus becomes his slave mistress an outlet for suppressed sexual urges The story is an archetypical tragedy of miscegenation Just as the Tanka community despises A Chan s cohabitation with a foreign barbarian Manuel s colleagues mock his bad taste gosto degenerado Senna Fernandes 1978 15 in having a tryst with a boat girl Christina Miu Bing Cheng p 173 As such the Tanka girl is nonchalantly reified and dehumanised as a thing coisa Manuel reduces human relations to mere consumption not even of her physical beauty which has been denied in the description of A Chan but her Orientalness of being slave like and submissive Christina Miu Bing Cheng p 170 We can trace this fleeting and shallow relationship in Henrique de Senna Fernandes short story A Chan A Tancareira Ah Chan the Tanka Girl 1978 Senna Fernandes 1923 a Macanese had written a series of novels set against the context of Macau and some of which were made into films William Dwight Whitney ed 1891 The Century dictionary an encyclopedic lexicon of the English language Part 21 Vol The Century Dictionary An Encyclopedic Lexicon of the English Language The Century co Harvard University p 6180 Correspondence p 55 水上居民 不见 连体船 Archived 22 May 2011 at the Wayback Machine Gzlib gov cn 25 February 2008 Retrieved on 2 March 2012 Hansson p 119 An imperial decision in 1729 stated that Cantonese people regard the Dan households as being of the mean class beijian zhi liu i Jft and do not allow them to settle on shore The Dan households for their part dare not struggle with the common people Life in floating village of Cambodia Khmer Post Archived from the original on 29 June 2013 Retrieved 3 May 2013 Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America Catholic Foreign Mission Bureau of Boston 1921 The Field afar Volumes 15 16 Catholic Foreign Mission Bureau of Boston p 18 The back door of our shop opens upon the river making it handy for the dealer in ducks who has his headquarters in the main room We shall have no excuse for not enjoying a daily swim with the neighbours and the stream gives an unlimited supply of not over clean water for drinking and cooking The fish and mussels the latter unusually small are being caught all day long right under our noses for us and others Nets lines and even bare hands are so busy that one wonders why the supply does nor fail Frequently there is fishing V torchlight Always there is plenty to see as the Tanka the people who live in the boats are full of life They are an aboriginal tribe speaking an altogether different language from the Chinese On the land the are like fish out of water They are said never to intermarry with lar ilubbers but somehow or other their tongue has crept into many villages r the Chiklung section The Chinese say the Tanka speech sounds like that of the Americans It seems to ha e no tones A hardy race the Ta gt ii i are untouched by the epidemics that visit our coast perhaps because they live so much off land Each family has a boat its own little kingdom and there being plenty of fish all look better fed than most of our land neighbours Christianity is with a few rare exceptions unknown to them The only window of our Chiklung house gives the missioner a full view of the village life of some of the boat tribe The window at present is just the absence of the south wall of the little loft to the shop Wooden bars can be inserted in holes against robbers Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America Catholic Foreign Mission Bureau of Boston 1921 The Field afar Volumes 15 16 Catholic Foreign Mission Bureau of Boston p 19 Sun Yat sen Institute for Advancement of Culture and Education Nanking 1940 T ien hsia monthly Volume 11 Kelly and Walsh ltd p 336 The evidence of dwelling therefore supports the theory that one section of the population is culturally different from the other On the one hand are the Tanka and Hoklo who do not know the use of stone in building who live by fishing and who represent in fact a water culture On the other hand is the culture of the wall Robert Hans van Gulik 1974 Sexual life in ancient China a preliminary survey of Chinese sex and society from ca 1500 B C till 1644 A D Brill Archive p 308 ISBN 90 04 03917 1 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 White Lynn T III Shanghai Suburb Relations 1949 1966 in Shanghai Revolution and Development in an Asian Metropolis p 262 Cambridge University Press Cambridge 1981 W Schofield The islands around Hong Kong text of a talk given in 1937 from Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch Vol 23 1983 Archived 18 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew Katharine Caroline Bushnell 2006 Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers Echo Library p 11 ISBN 1 4068 0431 2 John Mark Carroll 2007 A concise history of Hong Kong Rowman amp Littlefield p 36 ISBN 978 0 7425 3422 3 Most of the Chinese who came to Hong Kong in the early years were from the lower classes such as laborers artisans Tanka outcasts prostitutes wanderers and smugglers That these people violated orders from authorities in Canton Maria Jaschok Suzanne Miers 1994 Maria Jaschok Suzanne Miers eds Women and Chinese patriarchy submission servitude and escape Zed Books p 237 ISBN 1 85649 126 9 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 Henry J Lethbridge 1978 Hong Kong stability and change a collection of essays Oxford University Press p 75 ISBN 9780195804027 but another source of supply was the daughters of the tanka the boat population of kwangtung Henry J Lethbridge 1978 Hong Kong stability and change a collection of essays Oxford University Press p 75 ISBN 9780195804027 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 Henry J Lethbridge 1978 Hong Kong stability and change a collection of essays Oxford University Press p 210 ISBN 9780195804027 In the early days such women were found usually among the Tanka boat population a pariah group that infested the Pearl River delta region A few of these women achieved the status of protected woman a kept mistress and were Fanny M Cheung 1997 Fanny M Cheung ed EnGendering Hong Kong society a gender perspective of women s status Chinese University Press p 348 ISBN 962 201 736 3 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 Virgil K Y Ho 2005 Understanding Canton rethinking popular culture in the republican period Oxford University Press p 256 ISBN 0 19 928271 4 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 Virgil K Y Ho 2005 Understanding Canton rethinking popular culture in the republican period Oxford University Press p 249 ISBN 0 19 928271 4 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 Australian National University Institute of Advanced Studies 1993 East Asian history Volumes 5 6 Institute of Advanced Studies Australian National University p 110 In a late nineteenth century popular novel the bed chamber of a saltwater girl low class Tanka prostitute who served foreigners is described as nicely decorated with a number of Western household objects which startles the young observer who is crazy about things western East Asian history Volumes 5 6 Institute of Advanced Studies Australian National University 1993 p 102 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 Virgil K Y Ho 2005 Understanding Canton rethinking popular culture in the republican period Oxford University Press p 228 ISBN 0 19 928271 4 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 Peter Hodge 1980 Peter Hodge ed Community problems and social work in Southeast Asia the Hong Kong and Singapore experience Hong Kong University Press p 196 ISBN 962 209 022 2 EJ Eitel for example selected the small group of Tanka people in particular as that section of the population among whom prostitution and the sale of girls for purposes of concubinage flourished They were associated with the commerce and shipping of a busy and expanding entrepot Ejeas Volume 1 Brill 2001 p 112 A popular contemporary magazine which followed closely the news in the flower business huashi so recorded at least one case of such career advancement that occurred to a Tanka boat people prostitute in Canton 44 To say that all Brill Academic Publishers 2001 European journal of East Asian studies Volumes 1 2 Brill p 112 at least one case of such career advancement that occurred to a Tanka boat people prostitute in Canton 44 To say Henry J Lethbridge 1978 Hong Kong stability and change a collection of essays Oxford University Press p 75 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 Peter Hodge 1980 Peter Hodge ed Community problems and social work in Southeast Asia the Hong Kong and Singapore experience Hong Kong University Press p 33 ISBN 962 209 022 2 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 Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew Katharine Caroline Bushnell 2006 Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers Echo Library p 13 ISBN 1 4068 0431 2 or among Chinese residents as their concubines or to be sold for export to Singapore San Francisco or Australia Correspondence p 54 To understand the social bearings of domestic servitude as it obtains in Hong Kong it must be observed that although the Chinese residents of Hong Kong are under British rule and live in close proximity to English social life there has always been an impassable gulf between respectable English and Chinese society in Hong Kong The two forms of social life have exercised a certain influence upon each other but the result now visible is that while Chinese social life has remained exactly what it is on the mainland of China the social life of many foreigners in Hong Kong has comparatively degenerated and not on y accommodated itself in certain respects to habits peculiar to the system of patriarchalism but caused a certain disrespectable but small class of Chinese to enter into a social alliance with foreigners which while detaching them from the restraining influence of the custom and public opinion of Chinese society left them uninfluenced by the moral powers of foreign civilisation Correspondence p 55 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 population the Pariahs of Cantonese society These Tan ka people of the Canton river are the descendants of a tribe of aborigines pushed by advancing Chinese civilisation to live on boats on the Canton river being for centuries forbidden by law to live on shore The Emperor Yung Ching A D 1730 allowed them to settle in villages in the immediate proximity of the river but they were left by him and remain to the present day excluded from competition for official honours whilst custom forbids them to intermarry with the rest of the people These Tan ka people were the secret but trusty allies of foreigners from the time of the East India Company to the present day They furnished pilots and supplies of provisions to British men of war and troop ships when doing so was by the Chinese Government declared treason unsparingly visited with capital punishment They invaded Hong Kong the moment the Colony was opened and have ever since maintained here a monopoly so to say of the supply of Chinese pilots and ships crews of the fish trade the cattle trade and especially of the trade in women for the supply of foreigners and of brothels patronised by foreigners Almost every so called protected woman i e kept mistress of foreigners here belongs to this Tan ka tribe looked down upon and kept at a distance by all the other Chinese classes It is among these Tan ka women and especially under the protection of those protected T in ka women that private prostitution and the sale of girls for purposes of concubinage flourishes being looked upon by them as their legitimate profession Consequently almost every protected woman keeps a nursery of purchased children or a few servant girls who are being reared with aj view to their eventual disposal according to their personal qualifications either among foreigners here as kept women or among Chinese residents as their concubines or to be sold for export to Singapore San Francisco or Australia Those protected women moreover generally act as protectors each to a few other Tan ka women who live by sly prostitution The latter again used to be preyed upon till quite recently His Excellency Governor Hennessy stopped this fiendish practice by informers paid with Government money who would first debauch such women and then turn round against them charging them before the magistrate as keepers of unlicensed brothels in which case a heavy fine would be inflicted to pay which these women used to sell their own children or sell themselves into bondage worse than slavery to the keepers of the brothels licensed hy Government Whenever a sly brothel was broken up these keepers would crowd the shroffs office of the police court or the visiting room of the Government Lock Hospital to drive their heartless bargains which were invariably enforced with the weighty support of the Inspectors of brothels appointed by Government under the Contagious Diseases Ordinance The more this Ordinance was enforced the more of this buying and selling of human flesh went on at the very doors of Government offices It is amongst these outcasts of Chinese society that the worst abuses of the Chinese system of domestic servitude exist because that system is here unrestraired by the powers of traditional custom or popular opinion This class of people mustering perhaps here in Hong Kong not more than 2 000 persons are entirely beyond the argument of this essay They form a class of their own readily recognised at a glance They are disowned by Chinese society whilst they are but parasites on foreign society The system of buying and selling female children and of domestic servitude with which they must be identified is so glaring an abuse of legitimate Chinese domestic servitude that it calls for corrective measures entirely apart from any considerations connected with the general body of Chinese society Meiqi Lee 2004 Being Eurasian memories across racial divides Hong Kong University Press p 262 ISBN 962 209 671 9 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 Maria Jaschok Suzanne Miers 1994 Maria Jaschok Suzanne Miers eds Women and Chinese patriarchy submission servitude and escape Zed Books p 223 ISBN 1 85649 126 9 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 Helen F Siu 2011 Helen F Siu ed Merchants Daughters Women Commerce and Regional Culture in South China Hong Kong University Press p 305 ISBN 978 988 8083 48 0 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 Henry J Lethbridge 1978 Hong Kong stability and change a collection of essays Oxford University Press p 75 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 Eitel p 169 Acton T A 1981 Education as a By product of Fish Marketing PDF Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch 21 121 ISSN 1991 7295 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 Bill Cranfield 1984 All Asia guide 13 ed Far Eastern Economic Review p 151 ISBN 9789627010180 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 William Knox 1974 William Knox ed All Asia guide 8 ed Far Eastern Economic Review p 86 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 Cheah Cheng Hye Donald Wise 1980 All Asia guide 11 ed Far Eastern Economic Review p 135 ISBN 9789627010081 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 Bangqing Han Ailing Zhang Eva Hung 2005 Ailing Zhang Eva Hung eds The sing song girls of Shanghai Columbia University Press p 538 ISBN 0 231 12268 3 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 Matthew Calbraith Perry Robert Tomes 1859 Japan and the Japanese a narrative of the US government expedition to Japan under Commodore Perry 2 reprint ed u LONDON TRUBNER amp CO 60 PATERNOSTER ROW Trubner p 78 of commercial activity always enlivened by the fleet of Tanka boats which pass conveying passengers to and fro between the land and the Canton and Hong Kong steamers The Chinese damsels in gay costume as they scnll their light craft upon the smooth and gently swelling surface of the bay present a lively aspect and as they are looked upon in the distance from the verandahs above the Praya which command a view of the bay have a fairy like appearance which a nearer approach serves however to change into a more substantial and coarse reality The Cave of Camoens where the Portuguese poet is supposed to have written a portion of his Lusiad a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint location link Matthew Calbraith Perry 1857 Robert Tomes ed The Americans in Japan an abridgment of the government narrative of the US expedition to Japan under Commodore Perry NEW YORK D APPLETON amp CO 346 amp 848 BROADWAY LONDON 16 LITTLE BRITAIN D Appleton amp co p 78 of commercial activity always enlivened by the fleet of Tanka boats which pass conveying passengers to and fro between the land and the Canton and Hong Kong steamers The Chinese damsels in gay costume as they scull their light craft upon the smooth aud gently swelling surface of the bay present a lively aspect and as they are looked upon in the distance from the verandahs above the Praya which command a view of the bay have a fairy like appearance which a nearer approach serves however to change into a more substantial and coarse reality The Cave of Camoens where the Portuguese poet is supposed to have written a portion of his Lusiad a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint location link Ballou s monthly magazine Volume 8 Thomes amp Talbot 1858 p 514 quered gilded and ornamented In Simoda they take the place of horses the latter being used only under the saddle The third engraving represents the dinner given on board the Powhatan in honor of the commissioners appointed by the emperor to conduct negotiations Commodore Perry invited the officers of the squadron to meet the Japanese officials of whom there were about seventy A very excellent dinner was served up to which the guests did ample justice Toasts to the emperor and president were drank with all the honors and the company did not disperse until a very late hour Our next picture shows a Chinese tanka boat The tanka boats are counted by thousands in the rivers and bays of China They are often employed by our national vessels as conveyances to and from the shore thereby saving the health of the sailors who would be otherwise subjected to pulling long distances under a hot sun with a liability of contracting some fatal disease peculiar to China and thus introducing infection in a crowded crew On her voyage the Powhatan touched at Singapore the capital of a small island at the southern extremity of Malacca The town stands on a point of land near a bay affording a safe anchorage at all seasons and commanding the navigation of the Straits of Malacca While the Powhatan lay at anchor here the captain permitted two jugglers to come on board to gratify the wishes of the sailors by exhibiting their skill in legerdemain which art they profess in a wonderful degree of perfection The feat of swallowing a sword was performed as exhibited in our fifth engraving But as the weapon belonged to the juggler the men suspected it was prepared for the purpose and that the blade consisted of running slides which by the pressure of the tongue to the point would be forced into the hilt The Malay however was determined to confound the doubters and taking up a piece of rough cast iron from the armorer s forge swallowed it with as much ease and facility as he did the sword The performances ended with a lively dance executed by two cobras to the accompaniment of harsh sounds from a trumpet played by an assistant From Singapore lev us pasS to the Sandwich Islands those gems of the Pacific The arrival at the Sandwich Islands is always a welcome event in a cruise the delicious climate the abundance of fruits the romantic scenery the gentle manners of the inhabitants render this portion of the globe peculiarly attractive Our sixth engraving represents a group of Sandwich Island girls dancing the hula hula to the intense delight of a group of Jack tars who probably experience as much satisfaction at the exhibition as was ever experienced by the refined Parisians at the efforts of Taglioni Cerito or Fanny Ellsler The hula hula was formerly a favorite dance among the Sandwich Islands but has now become nearly extinct through the influence of the missionaries There are still however a few Kanakas who are addicted to their old amusement The dance does not admit of much grace each female going through her gyrations with the mechanical stiffness of an automaton The next port we shall touch at pleading the privilege of a roving commission is Cape Town the capital of the Cape of Good Hope the well known British colony at the Southern extremity of Africa This point early attracted the attention of the Dutch who saw that it was of the first importance as a watering place for their ships They accordingly established a colony there about the middle of the 17th century They treated the native inhabitants the Hottentots with great severity driving most of them beyond the mountains and reducing the remainder to slavery In 1795 it was captured by the English but restored by the peace of Amiens in 1802 In 1806 it was again captured by the English and has remained in their possession since It is defended by a castle of considerable strength and contains many fine public buildings The harbor is tolerably secure from September to May during the prevalence of the southeast winds but during the rest of the year when the winds blow from the north and northwest vessels are obliged to resort to Fulse Bay on the other side of the peninsula Our seventh engraving presents a sketch of a group of marketmen at Cape Town We here see the native fish dealers and purchasers A young negro in the foreground is feeding a pelican with a small fish which he has purloined from the bench The principal market of Cape Town is not very attractive externally but it is noted for the abundance and excellence of its fish flesh and fowl which supply the inhabitants and the ships touching at the port The sales are conducted much after the manner of this country The salesmen arc representatives of all quarters of the globe and include specimens of the native Hottentot and the genuine Yankee who is always found where money is to be made The eighth engraving is a view of the natives and their huts at St Augustine s Bay Madagascar The inhabitants of this remarkably fertile island are composed of two distinct classes the Arabs or descendants of foreign colonists and the Negroes or original inhabitants of the island The character of the inhabitants differs much in the different parts of the island and the accounts of writers vary greatly on this subject The island is off the eastern coast of Africa separated from the continent by the Mozambique channel and is about 900 miles long and 200 broad Its surface is greatly diversified and its mountain scenery is exceedingly grand The name and position of this island was first made known to Europeans by Marco Polo in the 13th century though the Arabs had been acquainted with it for several centuries It was visited by the Portuguese in the beginning of the 16th century The French made several attempts to found colonies there in the middle of the 17th century but abandoned them after ineffectual struggles with the natives In 1745 they renewed their efforts with but little better success In 1814 it was claimed by England as a dependency of Mauritius which had been ceded to her by France and some settlements were established One of the native kings of the interior who had shown himself eager to procure a knowledge of European arts for his subjects consented in 1820 to relinquish the slave trade on condition that ten Madagassees should be sent to England and ten to Mauritius for education Those sent to England were placed under the care of the Jeanie Mort Walker 1875 Life of Capt Joseph Fry the Cuban martyr Being a faithful record of his remarkable career from childhood to the time of his heroic death at the hands of Spanish executioners recounting his experience as an officer in the U S and Confederate navies and revealing much of the inner history J B Burr Pub Co p 99 Macao We arrived here on the twenty second and dispatched a boat to the shore immediately for letters I received three or four of those fine large letters which are the envy of all who see them and which are readily distinguishable by their size and the beautiful style in which they are directed You cannot imagine the delight with which I devoured their costents I am glad you wrote so much of our dear pet 0 my Dita the longing I feel to take the dear little thing to my heart is agonizing Yesterday I was on shore and saw a beautiful child of about the same age as ours I was almost crazy at the sight Twenty months old How she must prattle by this time I fancy I can see her trotting about following you around the Jeanie Mort Walker 1875 Life of Capt Joseph Fry the Cuban martyr Being a faithful record of his remarkable career from childhood to the time of his heroic death at the hands of Spanish executioners recounting his experience as an officer in the US and Confederate navies and revealing much of the inner history J B Burr Pub Co p 100 100 MACAO TANK A BOATS house What a recompense for the hardest toil of the day would it not be to me could I only lie down on the floor and have a good romp with her at night And now for Macao and what I saw felt and did You probably know that a very numerous Chinese population lives entirely in boots some of them so small that one pities the poor unfortunates who live so miserably They are born grow up marry and raise children in these boats You would be astonished to see mothers with infants at the breast managing the sails oars and rudder of the boat as expertly as any sailor The tanka is of very light draft and being able to go close in shore is used to land passengers from the larger boats As we neared the shore we noticed small boats pulling toward us from all directions Soon a boat manned by two really pretty young girls pulling oars and a third sculling came alongside calling out earnestly Takee me boat Takce me boot They had beautiful teeth white as ivory brilliant eyes and their pretty faces so earnest and pleading were Jeanie Mort Walker 1875 Life of Capt Joseph Fry the Cuban martyr Being a faithful record of his remarkable career from childhood to the time of his heroic death at the hands of Spanish executioners recounting his experience as an officer in the U S and Confederate navies and revealing much of the inner history J B Burr Pub Co p 101 TANK A GIRLS 101 wreathed in smiles as we gave them the preference over others that joined us from all quarters clinging to the sides of our large boat and impeding our headway The boatmen tried in vain to drive them off One brute of a fellow splashed repeatedly a poor girl who though not at all pretty had such a depth of meaning and such a sad expression in her eyes and face as charmed me completely It would have interested any one to hear her scold back and to see the flashing of her eyes and the vivid expression in every feature When I frowned at our sailor the sudden change in her face from anger to smiles the earnest tdkee me boat as she caught evidence of sympathy from me was beautiful We were assailed with these cries from so many and there was such a clamor that in self defense we had to choose a boat and go The first mentioned girls on account of their beauty won the majority and their boat was clean and well furnished which is more than could be said of many of them I caught the look of disappointment which passed over the features of the girl I have described Jeanie Mort Walker 1875 Life of Capt Joseph Fry the Cuban martyr Being a faithful record of his remarkable career from childhood to the time of his heroic death at the hands of Spanish executioners recounting his experience as an officer in the U S and Confederate navies and revealing much of the inner history J B Burr Pub Co p 102 102 THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT and it haunts me even now Trifling as it appeared to us such scenes constitute the great events in their poor lives and such triumphs or defeats are all important to them Upon entering the tanka boat we found the mother of the young girls and a young infant dressed heroically The infant was the child of the prettiest one of the girls whose husband was away fishing The old woman was quite talkative and undoubtedly gave us lots of news They had a miniature temple on the bows of the boat with Joss seated cross legged looking very fat and very red and very stupid Before him was an offering of two apricots but Joss never deigned to look at it and apparently had no appetite I felt a sincere respect however for the devotional feeling of these poor idolaters recognizing even there the universal instinct which teaches that there is a God I called upon the commodore who received me with great courtesy and gave me a very interesting account of the voyage out by the way of Mauritius of the Susquehanna to which I was first appointed She has gone on to Amoy Jeanie Mort Walker 1875 Life of Capt Joseph Fry the Cuban martyr Being a faithful record of his remarkable career from childhood to the time of his heroic death at the hands of Spanish executioners recounting his experience as an officer in the U S and Confederate navies and revealing much of the inner history J B Burr Pub Co p 103 SOAP FRUIT 103 I made the acquaintance of a Portuguese family named Lurero The young ladies are quite accomplished speaking French Spanish and Italian but no English They came down to receive the visit of our consul and lady who called while I was there Mr Lurero gave me some specimens of a soap fruit and showed me the tree The fruit is an exceedingly fine soap which without any preparation is used for washing the finest goods We expect to hear of the sailing of the Japan Expedition by the next mail When Commodore Perry arrives we shall be kept so busy that time will fly rapidly and we shall soon be looking forward to our return home unless Japan disturbances which are not seriously anticipated delay us I did not tell you of my visit to Camoens Cave the principal attraction of Macao This cave was the resort of the distinguished Portuguese poet Camoens who there wrote the greater part of the Lusiad The cave is situated in the midst of the finest wooded walks I ever saw The grounds are planted beautifully Jeanie Mort Walker 1875 Life of Capt Joseph Fry the Cuban martyr Being a faithful record of his remarkable career from childhood to the time of his heroic death at the hands of Spanish executioners recounting his experience as an officer in the US and Confederate navies and revealing much of the inner history J B Burr Pub Co p 104 104 THE POET CAMOENS and immense vases of flowers stand around The grounds are not level but lie up the side of a slope or hill irregular in shape and precipitous on one side There are several fine views particularly that of the harbor and surrounding islands I will here reproduce the following additional items regarding Camoens from the pen of Walter A Hose Macao had a particular interest for me as the first foothold that modern civilisation obtained upon the ancient shores of far Cathay and as the birthplace of one of the finest epic poems ever written On one of those calm and beautiful nights peculiar to sub tropical climes I stood alone upon the white sea wall and no sound fell upon my ears save the whirring monotone of insects in the trees above the hills the periodical chime of bells from anchored ships and the low sweet cadence of the incoming tide I thought it must have been such a night as this that inspired Camoens when he wrote Hansson p 117 Unless a change of surnames occurred for some unknown reason or unless the water names are not the real names of the Fujian boat people it would seem that the Dan people lacked Chinese style surnames at the time the Fujian branch Hansson p 116 In a late Qing dynasty work which has a section on boat people that mainly refers to those in Fujian common surnames are said to be Weng 翁 old fisherman Ou 歐 Chi 池 pond Pu 浦 river bank Jiang 江 river and Hai 海 sea None of those surnames is a very common one in China and a few are very rare Hansson p 116 Some of them list the five names Mai 麥 Pu 濮 Wu 吴 Su 蘇 and He 何 The Huizhou prefectural gazetteer even states that there are no other boat people surnames while others also add Gu 顧 and Zeng 曾 to make seven Zhuang 2009 a href Template Cite journal html title Template Cite journal cite journal a Cite journal requires journal help Missing or empty title help McFadzean A J S Todd D 1971 Cooley s anaemia among the tanka of South China Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 65 1 59 62 doi 10 1016 0035 9203 71 90185 4 PMID 5092429 Cooley s anaemia among the tanka of South China A J S A McFadzean D A Todd permanent dead link Tropicalmedandhygienejrnl net Retrieved on 2 March 2012 Asiaweek Volume 15 Asiaweek Ltd 1989 p 90 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 白手起家 美女 兄弟鬩牆 所有戲劇元素都到齊 富可敵國的香港霍家傳奇 5 January 2015 Bibliography EditChaves Jonathan 1993 Singing of the source nature and god in the poetry of the Chinese painter Wu Li University of Hawaii Press ISBN 0 8248 1485 1 Christina Miu Bing Cheng 1999 Macau a cultural Janus Hong Kong University Press ISBN 962 209 486 4 Great Britain Parliament 1882 Correspondence respecting the alleged existence of Chinese slavery in Hong Kong presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty Volume 3185 of C Series Great Britain Parliament reprint ed Printed by G E Eyre and W Spottiswoode for H M S O This article incorporates text fromEurope in China the history of Hongkong from the beginning to the year 1882 by Eitel Ernest John a publication from 1895 now in the public domain in the United States Joao de Pina Cabral 2002 Between China and Europe person culture and emotion in Macao Vol 74 of London School of Economics monographs on social anthropology Berg ISBN 0 8264 5749 5 Hansson Anders 1996 Chinese outcasts discrimination and emancipation in late imperial China Vol 37 of Sinica Leidensia BRILL ISBN 90 04 10596 4 This article incorporates text fromThe Century dictionary an encyclopedic lexicon of the English language Part 21 by Whitney William Dwight a publication from 1891 now in the public domain in the United States This article incorporates text fromThe Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia The Century dictionary prepared under the superintendence of William Dwight Whitney rev amp enl under the superintendence of Benjamin E Smith by Whitney William Dwight and Smith Benjamin Eli a publication from 1911 now in the public domain in the United States This article incorporates text fromThe Middle kingdom a survey of the Chinese empire and its inhabitants by Williams Samuel Wells a publication from 1848 now in the public domain in the United States This article incorporates text fromThe Field afar Volumes 15 16 by Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America Catholic Foreign Mission Bureau of Boston a publication from 1921 now in the public domain in the United States External links Edit Media related to Tanka people at Wikimedia Commons Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Tanka people amp oldid 1133301696, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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