Talk:Taishan, Guangdong

message: A recent change says the Taisanese people speak a dialect called 'sei yap'.  I kind of disagree to this change.  Sei yap (四邑 literally means 4 townships) refers to the four towns in that region where taisan is one of the four (開平 Hoi ping,恩平 Yun ping,新會 Sun Wui,臺山 Taisan).  I believe the dialects from all these towns are almost identical but still there are local variations.  So sei yap is just a collective terms for these four slightly different dialects, it is a loss of details when you say Taisanese people speak sei yap.  Likewise, when you change "Cantonese people speak Cantonese dialect" to "Cantonese people speak Chinese dialect", it is the similar kind of problem, it is still technically correct, but not as good.
Discussion on that area in Chinese
By the way, the native (i.e. local) taisanese pronounciation of the name "tai san" should be "hoi san".  So it is appropriate to use its pinyin spelling as the title of the article?--
To directly above:  No.  Standard Hanyu Pinyin (based on the Beijing dialect) should be used for the title of this article.  It's the standard across all of mainland China to simplify the myriad dialects.  People shouldn't have to search for a name based on how its said in only a small section of the country,  It should be rendered as Tai Shan or Taishan.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.69.46.240 (talk) 21:40, 26 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sei yap dialect 

message: :Because it is estimated that over 75% of all overseas Chinese until the mid- to late-20th century claimed origin in Taishan, the city is also known as the "Home of Overseas Chinese."
I think it is a good topic to expand on.  Why almost all early Chinese emmigrants were from the Sei Yap region?  What was the historical and/or economical reason behind such biased statistics?
I heard from my parents that Sei Yap was a very poor region compared to the prosperous Canton. So the relatively well-off city people stayed in China and the village people from Sei Yap "sold" themselves to the labor force that worked on the railroad in the US near the end of the 19th century.  There was a Cantonese slang called "selling piglets" which refered to the long term labor contracts to work in the US railroads and gold mines.  The men received a sum of money from some labor dealer.  They left the money to their family and then worked in the US not expecting to return.  Many settled down in the US after their labor contracts were fulfilled.  Then the Chinese Exclusion Act stopped the flow of Chinese immigrants for generations.  Those who were already in the US form communities of mostly Taisaneses.  The distribution didn't change until the lift of the exclusion act.  The iron curtain of communist China limited Chinese emmigrants to those from Hong Kong and Taiwan until the flood gate opened in the 1970s after Nixon visited China.  So the distribution of Chinese immigrants in the US were shaped by three waves, namely the early Railroad/Goldrush wave, and two other recent waves with and without the communist iron curtain.  Most old Chinatowns in the US still have a high concentration of Taisanese. The Cantonese and the Mandarin people usually form communities outside of the old Chinatowns.  
See also Chinese immigration to the United States
Can someone research more and write about this topic?
Kowloonese 02:02, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why the lopsidedness? 

message: You can certainly find the answers to many of your questions in this book and the references included therein:
* 
This book certainly cleared up many speculations that have swirled around in my family. I haven't read it for a few years, but maybe I'll take another glance sometime soon and expand the article accordingly.
Aaron Lee 18:44, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hsu (2000) 

message: The Adrienne Clarkson in Wiki says she is Hakka.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.161.63.5 (talk) 01:04, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Adrienne Clarkson 

message: Need to determine in which part of Taishan the village of Chang On is located (as well as characters). Anna May Wong's father came from there, and it was apparently located very close to Wing On. The second character for both is probably 安.  Badagnani (talk) 23:17, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Anna May Wong]]