Dear Dr. Li,
Thank you very much for your quick response. I think we are nearer after
the change of opinion.
>I don't think one can exclude Yue from Guangdong population. Guangdong after
all IS still a Hundred Yue region even after the infusion of northern
people. And DEFINITELY we cannot exclude Yue from Chinese. Chinese is an
integrated name for all ethnic groups.
As illustrated by my figures, Yue was important before the arrival of Han
Chinese, say before the Tang dynasty. They were living in Guangdong for
thousands of years, but most of them were assimilated into Chinese after
the Song period. Nowadays there are some of them in the extreme Northwest
part of Guangdong as "Yao", "Zhuang" etc. Cantonese speakers, expecially
those around the Pearl River delta, has almost nothing to do with the old
Yue tribes. They are in broad sense (such as Mr. Chung's interpretation),
as "Hakka" as you and me. To exclude Cantonese from "borad sense Hakka" is
wrong.
>I do not agree in contrasting Cantonese with Hakka. This can be a very
dangeroous statement. We are not master of any region but an inhabitant of
a region that encompasses other ethnic groups, although Hakka may be more
concentrated in certain areas.
The contrast between Cantonese and Hakka was established only about 300
years ago, when Hakka speakers moved into the Cantonese speaking area for
new living space. Otherwise you can see no "Punti" and "Hakka" in
historical documents. I agree with you that the cantonese who identified
themselves as Punti was wrong, because they were also "immigrants", but it
is a usual practise for those who live there for more than three
generations to view themselves as natives. Just compare this sentiment with
the white people of USA. In this sense, we are at least native to Eastern
Guangdong. To treat our homeland as Northern plain is not practical and
dangerous. We don't want to claim any land in Henan or Shanxi because our
ancestor lived there a millennium ago.
The contrast between Cantonese and Hakka is artificial but it is now there.
This is an irony for you and me, who want to downgrade the dispute but want
to keep the difference. This is not a natural science discipline and you
cannot solve with scientic rations. We are looking for peaceful
coexistence, and as emphasised before, the only way is to respect each
other as equal groups. this can only be achieved by a Hakka province,
because of the Cantonese chavinism mentioned elsewhere. If we choose to
stay in Guangdong, there is little hope for our culture to survive
according to Chinese/Cantonese mentality.
>I never said that Guangdong was highly popuated. I said Guangdong was
quite developed compared to other parts of China even in the neolithic era.
It was
already developed before the infusion of northern Chinese. Chinese
culture/civilization seems to have multiple origins.
The expression "highly populated" is relative and depend on the
productivity. Yue was a clever people, but they were eventually either
chased away to other province, in the mountains or got assimilated into the
mainstream Chinese (Cantonese or Hakka) society. I do not see any
importance of their culture after the Song dynasty. The competition was
darwinistic and today only a few traces of their culture and language was
left. In the past few years, I published many papers to show that Modern
Cantonese had little to do with the Old Yue languages, and both Cantonese
and Hakka coincide well with the official tongue of Song dynasty, as
relected by the phonological book Guangyun (1006). I emphasize here once
more, Cantonese is Chinese, no Yue.
>It seems that I only have disagreement with you in this msg. But one thing
I do agree is we have to consider Hakka culture as an important element of
Chinese culture. But please do not think of it as the dominant culture or
the only culture. There is a subtle balance between preserving Hakka
culture and becoming a Hakka chauvinist.
That is good. We can exchange our ideas. I am doing everything to downgrade
any kind of chavinism. It is ouseless to preserve our culture without
considering the destruction from other people's chavinism. On the other
hand, Luo's view of Cantonese as genetically different from Hakka is also a
kind of chavinism.
I am sorry that I missed some words in a sentence in my last message. Here
my revised verion of my message again:
Dear Dr. Li,
Thank you very much for your comments.
The term Hakka is often abused among us. You can see in Mr. Chung's message
that follows you, he interprets "Hakka" as anyone who came from the north
irrespective of the date in the pasty two thousand years. This means:
except for the aboringinal Yue people, all "Chinese" are Hakka!!! "Chinese"
means Cantonese, Min, Hakka and other Chinese dialects speakers. This is
even broad than the sense of what Luo Xianglin wanted to bring.
I do not agree that Guangdong is already densely populted before the
arrival of Chinese (Cantonese and Hakka speakers), here are figures quoted
from a historical census by Liang Fangzhong (1980) for the Guangdong Province:
Table 1
Year AD2 AD140 AD464 AD742 AD820 AD980 1080 1180 1230
Population 242K 632K 212K 1.28M 67K 41.6K 2.6M 2.3M 2.0M
The figures shows that although Guangdong faced population blooms in
Eastern Han (AD140) and Middle Tang (AD742), it was NEVER densely populated
before the massive immigration at the beginning of the Song Dynasty
(AD980-1080). Note that it was strongly depopulated between Tang and Song
(AD820-980). The mass immigration from the north coincide with Luo's "Third
Wave". But one thing to remind is that these people concentrate themselves
in the Pearl River Delta, not Jiaying prefecture. From 980 to 1080,
Guangzhou's population rose from 8K to 64K, which is about one fourth of
the whole province. These people were definitely Chinese, not YUE. These
are also proved by their genealogical records. Even if you assume that ALL
the people left in Guangdong in AD980 are Yue (which is IMPOSSIBLE),
Chinese from the North are five times the aboringines in a matter of a
century. The case in Guangzhou is even more extreme. Therefore, it is
almost safe to say that the people are at least 83% Chinese in Guangdong at
the beginning. For Cantonese speakers (Guangzhou residents), their Chinese
blood should be more than 87.5%. Although it is more difficult to
calculate such figures for Hakka speakers, Zhao et al's report is a very
good reference (see bleow) to show that Hakka and Cantonese are more or
less the same in human genetics.
If we cannot distinguish Cantonese from YUE, then we are not in a good
position to study Hakka. Please read the paper by Zhao et al, 1991 (Acta
genetica sinica, [Yichuan Xuebao], 18(2), 97-108). They showed that among
blood samples in 74 locations, Guangzhou is most similar to Meixian in the
immunoglobins, a reliable indicator of the relatedness.
Even if you don't like it, I would conclude that both Cantonese and Hakka
speakers are blood-related, but bloodily spearated. We were brothers of the
Tang tribe, but view each other as barbarians. The only different between
Cantonese and Hakka lies in the mentality: Cantonese emphasise that they
are master of Guangdong, but we are misled to think that our homes are in
the far north.
Don't view your Cantonese brothers as barbarians, they are not YUE, they
are as Chinese as you and me. Love your neighbour, teach your children that
we are the master of Eastern Guangdong, or a future Jiaying Province.
Claiming a separate province will end the dispute, otherwise we will be
force-assimilated. In 2200 there will be hardly any people speaking our
tongue.
Liu Zinfad
http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/in...ntonese-and-hakkas-are-closest-to-each-other/