Taishan (Chinese: 台 山; Taishanese: Hoisan [hɔ̀isān]; Cantonese: Toi⁴saan¹ [tʰɔ̭ːisáːn]; Mandarin: Taishan; Other: Toishan) is a coastal county-level city in Guangdong Province, China. The city is part of the Greater Taishan Region.
The city is located in the Pearl River Delta, southwest of Jiangmen (to which it administratively belongs) and 140 kilometers west of Hong Kong. It contains 95 islands and islets, including the largest island in Guangdong, Shangchuan Island. It is one of Five Counties in Guangdong (was called Sze Yup with excluding Heshan).
Taishan is famous for being the Birthplace of Chinese Volleyball, that was brought to Taishan by overseas Chinese, and the city won many provincial and national championships. The city is also famous for being one of the Birthplaces of Guangdong music, where the other being Guangzhou.
One quarter of the “Flying Tigers”, the legendary group of American volunteer airmen who fought the Japanese during the Second World War before the US entered it, came from Taishan.[1]
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On February 12, 1499 in the 12th year of the reign of the emperor Hongzhi during the Ming Dynasty, Taishan was founded as Xinning County (新宁县) from land in the southwest of Xinhui County. Xinning has also been romanized as Sunning, Sinning, Hsinning, Hsînnîng, and Llin-nen.
From 1854 to 1867 a genocidal war broke out mainly in Taishan County between the Punti and Hakka people with disastrous results for both sides.
In 1914, Xinning was renamed Taishan to avoid confusion with the Xinnings of Hunan and Sichuan.[2] Unfortunately it is now confused in English with Taishan (Mount Tai) in Shandong Province.
In 1941 March 3, Japanese invaded TaiCheng town (the capital of Tai Shan) and killed nearly 280 people.
On April 17, 1992, Taishan's status was upgraded from county (县) to county-level city (县级市).[2]
In 2010, parts of the movie Let the Bullets Fly were filmed in Taishan.[3][4]
Owing to natural disasters and the colonization, Taishanese started to search for new lives overseas after the First Opium War.[5] The migration of Taishanese to North America started with the Gold Rush. Many Taishanese came to California as contract labourers. Later, another peak happened during the construction of the transcontinental railways in the United States and Canada.[6] In 1870, there were 63,000 Chinese in the United States, almost all in California.[7] Due to discrimination and language barriers, the first Chinatown formed to allow Taishanese (or Chinese) to live along and help each other.
Education in the city of Taishan enjoys significant support from overseas Chinese professionals and businessmen. Many secondary schools were built and financed by Chinese living in the SAR (Hong Kong and Macau) and various foreign countries, such as the US, Canada, and Brazil.
To honor their benefactors, these schools often bear their names or the names of their parents. An example is the Taishan City Peng Quan School (鹏权中学), which was constructed during 1999–2001, and is now integrated into the city's public school system. It is situated on the west side of the city, and was built by a Hong Kong businessman.[8]
Below are some of the schools in Taishan:
University:
High schools & middle schools:
Taishan is under the jurisdiction of Jiangmen. In a jurisdiction of 3,286 km², Taishan contains 16 townships (镇), which are subdivided into 313 village residential committees (村居委会) and 3,655 natural villages (自然村).[2]
These townships (镇) are:
These "natural villages" (自然村) include:
Taishan is currently accessible by bus and hydrofoil ferry (require bus connection, ferry is not direct service). There is a bus station in Taicheng and a port at GongYi on the Tan River which flows into the Pearl River Delta. The ferry service from HK to GongYi has been discontinued.
Up until the Japanese War, there was a limited railway system constructed by Chen Yixi linking various parts of Taishan with Jiangmen, then known as Kong Moon. It was one of only three built, owned and run by Chinese during the years prior to the Communist Revolution of 1949.[9]
Ferry service connects the mainland part of the Taishan county-level city with the islands of Shangchuan, which are also part of the same county-level city. The Shangchuan ferry runs from the Shanzui Harbor (山咀港) in Chuandao Town on the mainland to the Sanzhou Harbor (三洲港) on the Shangchuan island. There is also daily ferry service between Shangchuan's Sanzhou Harbor and the nearby Xiachuan Island (also part of Taishan county-level city). [10][11]
The main language of Taishan is Taishanese. While most Taishanese today use Mandarin in school or formal occasions, Taishanese is the de facto language. Taishanese is a dialect of Yue Chinese, a large group which includes, but is broader than, Cantonese spoken in Hong Kong and Guangzhou. Thus Cantonese and Taishanese are related but distinct. Before the 1980s, Taishanese was the predominant Chinese language spoken throughout North America's Chinatowns.[12] Cantonese (Guangdonghua) is also widely known in Taishan, as it serves as lingua franca of Guangdong Province.
Today, there is over 2.3 million Taishanese worldwide; some 1.3 million people living overseas can trace their ancestry to Taishan, outnumbering those who now live in Taishan, 1 million.[13]
If considering the total Greater Taishan Region or Sze Yap Region, which includes Kaiping, Xinhui, Enping and Taishan, there is about 8 to 9 Million Taishanese people worldwide. According to American historian Him Mark Lai, approximately 430,000 or 70% of Chinese Americans in the 1980s were Taishanese according to 1988 data.[14] Currently some 500,000 Chinese Americans claim Taishanese origins.[14]
Taishan has a population of 1 million, while 1.3 million overseas Taishanese distributing in 91 countries and regions.[15] It is estimated that over 75% of all overseas Chinese in North America until the mid- to late-20th century claimed origin in Taishan, the city is also known as the "Home of Overseas Chinese."[12][16] As late as 1988, those with ancestry from Taishan accounted for 70% of Chinese Americans.
An office of the local Taishan Bureau of Overseas Chinese can help to arrange visits of overseas Chinese people.[17]
| Climate data for Taicheng | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Month | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Year |
| Average high °C (°F) | 18 (65) |
18 (64) |
23 (73) |
26 (79) |
29 (85) |
31 (88) |
32 (90) |
32 (90) |
31 (87) |
28 (82) |
24 (76) |
20 (68) |
26.1 (78.9) |
| Average low °C (°F) | 10 (50) |
11 (52) |
16 (61) |
19 (67) |
23 (73) |
24 (76) |
25 (77) |
24 (76) |
24 (75) |
19 (67) |
16 (61) |
12 (53) |
18.7 (66) |
| Precipitation mm (inches) | 43 (1.7) |
69 (2.7) |
175 (6.9) |
173 (6.8) |
287 (11.3) |
302 (11.9) |
483 (19) |
462 (18.2) |
218 (8.6) |
135 (5.3) |
48 (1.9) |
15 (0.6) |
2,410 (94.9) |
| Source: Weatherbase [18] | |||||||||||||
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