The Teochew Store Blog / roots-finding

Origins of the Teochew People - Archaeological Evidences (Part 3): The Early Teochew Culture Trilogy

Circumstances compelled a break in our Origins of the Teochew People series. But we return this week to share on more exciting discoveries on two Late Neolithic Cultures, and what they tell us!
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Teochew Documentary: Teo-yor Flute Music《潮阳笛套》

A documentary introducing our beautiful ancient Teo-yor/Chaoyang Flute Music《潮阳笛套》. Commentary in Mandarin with interviews in Teochew (Teo-yor dialect) and English subtitles.

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Teochew Nursery Rhymes Non-stop - 潮州童謠唱不停

This video, produced by a popular radio show of Shantou Radio & Television (STRTV, 汕頭電視台), strings together nearly 40 Teochew nursery rhymes.

Many of the nursery rhymes were written back in the times of an agricultural society and may be unfamiliar even to daddy or mummy. However, they could well be happy childhood memories of Ah Gong and Ah Ma, so more good reasons for big family-get-togethers.

Videos of individual nursery rhymes can be found on our The Teochew Store YouTube playlist, which can be found here.
Videos of individual nursery rhymes will also be uploaded on our The Teochew Store Facebook page, which can be found here. So look out for them! 
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Teochew Movie "Proud of Me" Theme Song: "Father Have You Eaten?" 潮州電影《爸,我一定行的》主题曲: 老父您食未

Performer 演唱:黃澤森
Lyrics 作詞:楊育挺
Music 作曲:李奕瀚
Click Read More for Full Lyrics (Teochew/Chinese and English)
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Origins of the Teochew People - Archaeological Evidences (Part 2): Our Ancient Ties with the Hokkiens

“All these turned on its head, the theory that the Teochew region was an isolated and sparsely populated backwater before supposed mass migrations from the Central Plain towards the end of the Song dynasty (960–1279).

At the same time, it should not be lost that the geographical limits of the Fubin Culture from some 3,000 years ago conforms neatly with the territory of native speakers of Teochew and Hokkien – two closely-related vernaculars, if not two branches of a same.”

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Top 100 Surnames in Teochew (updated 10 June 2018)

Update:amendments made to reflect the correct pronunciations of the following surnames - 韋, 顏, 史, 藍, 戴, 方, 倪, as well as additions of other surnames 單/单, 區/区, 查 and 費/费. Special thanks to our reader Lee Kheng Nguan for his contributions.

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Origins of the Teochew People - Archaeological Evidences (Part 1): Traces of Teochew's Oldest Inhabitants

"China has 5,000 years of history" must be a refrain thoroughly familiar to every one of us. However, archaeological discoveries since the 1920s of thousands of Neolithic (New Stone Age) sites in China prove irrefutably that the country was not only peopled as far back as ten thousand years before present, but also across several regions.  Click to read more about the earliest archaeological finds in our Teochew homeland.
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Where do the Teochew people come from? Teochew, or the Yellow River?

Where do the Teochew people come from? The Teochew region in southern China is the obvious answer.

Yet if one is to run a search on the Internet, he or she would find a string of references stating that our ancestors came hundreds of years ago from the Central Plains in the Yellow River reaches, thousands of miles away.

Click "Read more" to begin our journey of discovery

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Teochew Short Film 潮语微电影: Love in Teoswa 《缘来潮汕》

A story about a girl from Singapore who goes Swatow to learn to sing Teochew opera. Dialogues in Teochew and Mandarin language. A students' production by 汕頭職業技術學院 (Shantou Technical Vocational College).
Listen out also for a number of original Teochew songs!
 
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Full list of Towns & Villages in Hui Lai county (circa 1958) 惠來縣都村列表

Hui Lai (variant: Huilai, Hweilai, Hwelie) (惠來, in Mandarin: Huilai) was one of historical Teochew prefecture's eight counties. It was formed as a county in 1524 after being partitioned from Teo Yor (潮陽). Hui Lai is now administered as a county under Gek Yor (揭陽) prefectural city.

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Full list of Towns & Villages in Jao Peng county (circa 1958) 饒平縣都村列表

Jao Peng (variant: Jaopeng, Jaopheng, Joepen) (饒平, in Mandarin: Raoping) is the easternmost of the Teochew region's eight historical counties. Partitioned from Hai Yor county in 1476, Jao Peng was an important pottery manufacturing base in the Ming dynasty and had a prosperous port at Tsia Lim (柘林). It is now a district under Chaozhou (潮州) prefectural city.

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Full list of Towns & Villages in Hong Sung county (circa 1958) 豐順縣都村列表

Hong Sung (variant: Hongsun) (豐順, in Mandarin: Fengshun), was one of historical Teochew prefecture's eight counties. It was formed during the Qing dynasty in 1738 and  is connected to the Teochew prefectural city by an upper branch of the Hang-kang (韓江) river. Hong Sung remained part of the Teochew region, until it was carved out and placed under Meizhou in 1965.  Today close to one-fifth of the population in Hong Sung continue to speak Teochew.

 

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Full list of Towns & Villages in Pho Leng county (circa 1958) 普寧縣都村列表

Pho Leng (variant: Poleng, Poeleng) (普寧, in Mandarin: Puning), was one of historical Teochew prefecture's eight counties. Although Pho Leng is now administered as a county under Gek Yor prefectural-level city, it was originally carved out from Teo Yor county and large parts of its area fall within the Liēng-kang (練江) river basin.

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Full list of Towns & Villages in Theng Hai county (circa 1958) 澄海縣都村列表

Theng Hai (variant: Tenghai) (澄海, in Mandarin: Chenghai), was one of historical Teochew prefecture's eight counties. Occupying the Hang-kang  (韓江) river delta, it was formed from areas carved out of Hai Yor (now Teo Ann) and Gek Yor in 1563. Theng Hai is today administered as a district of the Swatow (汕頭, Shantou) prefectural-level city.

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Full list of Towns & Villages in Gek Yor county (circa 1958) 揭陽縣都村列表

After its conquest by the Han dynasty in 111 BCE, the Teochew region was incorporated into the map of imperial China for the first time as a county named Gek Yor (variant: Kityang, Kityall) (揭陽, in Mandarin: Jieyang). The origin of today's Gek Yor area is traceable to a county of the same name created in 1140, which along with Hai Yor (now Teo Ann) and Teo Yor formed the “Three Yor" (三陽) of the Song dynasty that is the core of the Teochew homeland. 

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Full list of Towns & Villages in Teo Yor county (circa 1958) 潮陽縣都村列表

Teo Yor (variant: Teoyeo, Tioyio, Teoyall) (潮陽, in Mandarin: Chaoyang), was one of historical Teochew prefecture's eight counties and its most populous. Originally formed in 413 as part of the Ngee Ann Commandery (義安郡), it is now represented by the Teo Yor and Teo Nam (潮南, Chao'nan) districts in the Swatow (汕頭, Shantou) prefectural-level city.  

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Full list of Towns & Villages in Teo Ann county (circa 1958) 潮安縣都村列表

Teo Ann (variant: Teo-an, Teoann) (潮安, in Mandarin: Chao'an), known as Hai Yor (海陽) before 1914, is the oldest of the Teochew region's eight historical counties. It was formed under the Eastern Jin dynasty in 331. The seat of the newly-created Ngee Ann Commandery (義安郡) - forerunner of Teochew Prefecture, was established here in 413. This urban centre became the Teochew prefectural capital (潮州府城), or better known today as the Teochew (Chaozhou) ancient city (潮州古城).
Map from Qianlong Teochew prefectural gazette (乾隆潮州府志) circa 1762.
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Roots-Finding: Locating Your Ancestral Village in Teochew (Part 3)

Since The Teochew Store was formed, we have received numerous requests for help from fellow Gaginangs to locate their ancestral village. Depending on the leads provided, we were able to assist many, but for others it is more difficult because some places have been renamed or now fall behind a different boundary line, other communities are unlisted on maps or the internet, or even when a place is found, there remains uncertainty if its residents have the same surname.

Fortunately the Shantou University (STU) Library has built a khieu-phue database (僑批數據庫) allowing keyword search for meta-data of some 70,000 pieces of khieu-phue (or "migrants letters", which were correspondences sent together with money remittances by Teochews living in Southeast Asia to their homes in Teochew), receipts and return letters. The site URL is  http://app.lib.stu.edu.cn/qiaopi/index.aspx.

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Swatow History: Stories Behind the Old Shops at Little Park 潮汕鄉情:汕頭小公園店鋪個故事

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Making Sense of what is “Teo-Swa”?

Visiting the Teochew region in China to “re-discover” one’s roots has become increasingly popular in recent years amongst overseas Teochews. Quite reasonably we arrive expecting our ancestral heritage to be perfectly preserved in motherland, only to find that the Teochews here no longer call the place Teochew, but Teo-Swa (潮汕, in Mandarin: Chaoshan) and themselves Teo-Swa Nang (潮汕人, Chaoshan-ren). Baffled, if not also shocked, we question how can this be?

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Principal Resident Surname(s) in Largest Teochew Villages - a non-exhaustive list

This list is a compilation findings from various internet sources. We are unable to verify all information is correct. Villages listed have populations of at least 10,000, although some communities of similar size are omitted due to lack of information. Villages from the historical counties of Hongsun (Fengshun) 豐順 and Tuapou (Dapu) 大埔, which are no longer administered as part of the Teochew region are also not included.
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New Direct Flight from Kuala Lumpur to Swatow Announced

Amidst the cheers of the ongoing Chinese New Year celebrations, Malaysian budget airline AirAsia has announced the launch of a four-times weekly direct flight from Kuala Lumpur to Swatow. Operations of the route will commence from March 25, 2016 and is expected to boost family visitations between Teochews in Malaysia and China.  

The Chaoshan Jieyang International Airport, which serves the Teochew region, is currently connected internationally to Singapore (Jetstar), Bangkok, Hong Kong and Taipei (China Southern Airlines), and domestically to a host of major cities in mainland China, including Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing.

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Understanding The Teochew Family

The nuclear family – consisting a father, a mother, and their children, is considered the building block in most modern societies. For the Teochew people however the basic family unit is the one headed by the grandfather, and not the father, a structure that is underpinned by the belief that every person shoulders three core responsibilities in life: to honour the ancestors; to practice filial piety by caring for the parents; and to raise and nurture the next generation.
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我们要听您的故事: “My Teochew Family 潮州一家人”

The Teochew Store潮舖一岁啦!

为了庆祝我们的第一周年与答谢各位读者的支持,我们希望邀请您和大家分享您对主题 “My Teochew Family 潮州一家人”的故事.

您的故事可以关于您的家人,在您生活里扮演重要角色的潮籍人士,或者是一个让您领悟的“家”的意义的社群。您可以通过以下两种方式参加...

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We want to hear your story: “My Teochew Family 潮州一家人”

The Teochew Store is turning ONE!

To celebrate this occasion and to thank all our readers, we would like to open the floor for you to share with all fellow Teochews your story on the theme “My Teochew Family 潮州一家人”.

Your story can be about your own family and relatives, any Teochew person(s) who has influenced your life, or a Teochew community that has helped you understand the meaning of “family”. Entries can be submitted in one of the following two ways...

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Top 100 Surnames in Teochew (updated 27 March 2016)

A list of the top 100 most common surnames in the Teochew region.

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List of Towns and Villages in Teochew in 1946 潮州各縣局鄉鎮名表

List of Towns and Villages in Teochew in 1946. Source: 《马来亚潮侨通鉴》, 新加坡 : 南岛出版社, 1950.

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10 Maps of Counties in Teochew, dated circa 1950

Many of us amongst the overseas Teochews are the children and grandchildren of men and women who left the Teochew region between the 1920s and the 1950s. Ever wondered what the land of our fathers was like back then, or where your ancestral village is/was located? Here are some maps to help:

To download maps in JPEG files, please click here

Source: 《马来亚潮侨通鉴》, 新加坡 : 南岛出版社, 1950.

 

Teo-an 潮安 (Chao'an)

Thenghai 澄海 (Chenghai) 

Jaopeng 饒平 (Raoping)

Gek-yor 揭陽 (Jieyang)

Teo-yor 潮陽 (Chaoyang)

Pholeng 普寧 (Puning)

Huilai 惠来 (Huilai)

Hongsun 豐順 (Fengshun)

Namoa 南澳 (Nan'ao)

Tuapou 大埔 (Dapu) - historically part of Teochew territory till 1733.

 

See also List of Towns and Villages in Teochew in 1946

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Why Teochews were called Hoklo, the Fujian men

In this age of open information, Wikipedia is often the site where people visit to seek knowledge on a new subject or topic of interest. When conducting an online search on the keyword “Teochew”, Wikipedia’s pages on “Teochew people”, “Teochew dialect” and “Chaozhou” appear on top of Google’s results. Although largely informative, the Wikipedia page on “Teochew people” contains a curious introduction to our background, stating:

“Historically, these people were called Helao or Fulao, as they came mostly from Henan and Shanxi via Fujian, with well-maintained language and customs from north-central China.”

For certain readers can testify that Helao/Fulao does not exist in our daily vocabulary. Whether in China or Southeast Asia, Teochew people uniformly identify ourselves as “Teochew”, or more recently in mainland China “Teo-swa”.

Through further research on Wikipedia, one discovers “Fulao” is actually the Mandarin rendition of the Hokkien expression Hoklo 福佬/老 – meaning literally “Fujian men”. “Helao” 河老 on the other hand is linked to “Heluo” 河洛 (pronounced “Ho-lok” in Hokkien and Teochew), an inaccurate transliteration of Hoklo that has surfaced in literate stressing the purported origin of the Hokkien (and Teochew) people from Henan, in particular the Luo River basin. (Incidentally, the river itself is called Luohe 洛河, and not Heluo).

“Hoklo” is today widely used in Taiwan as a category for the section of its Chinese population whose forefathers migrated from Fujian’s coastal areas between the Qing dynasty and the Kuomintang’s retreat to the island in 1949. It is opposed to the Hakkas whose roots are traced to adjacent inland mountains or Chinese immigrants from other provinces. In a very similar way, the tags “Hoklo” and “Hakka” were adopted by late 19th and early 20th century Western Christian missionaries working in the Teochew region to different its inhabitants in the lowland plains from migrant settlers in the highland borders, whose distinctions in language, self-identity and customs were readily recognised In this context “Hoklo” clearly referred to the Teochew people (for more see The Bible and the gun: Christianity in South China, 1860-1900 by Joseph Tse-Hei Lee).

However there is evidence that at an earlier time “Hoklo” did not apply to the Teochew people. In 1843 Baptist preacher I. J. Roberts visited Hong Kong island, shortly after it was ceded to British possession, and made a family visiting tour. In his journal he recorded an encounter in a village with a family, “who speak the Hoklo dialect; which is nearly the same as Tiéchiú, which the assistant speaks” (cited in The Baptist Missionary Magazine, Volume 23).

This passage highlights pertinently that a close resemblance in speech between Teochews and Hokkiens from southern Fujian, which third parties are often unable to tell apart. At the same time, it gives an important clue to the etymology of the “Hoklo” expression.

In common usage, the reference to a person or a collective group of people in the Teochew is “nang” 人, and the Hokkien variation is “lang”. In both sets of vernaculars “lo” 佬 is rarely spoken. In contrast the Cantonese habitually use this word in their conversations, such as “dai-lo” 大佬 (“big brother”) or “gwai-lo” 鬼佬 (“devil-people”, meaning Westerners).  As such, it is all likely that Hok-lo was in fact a nomenclature coined by Cantonese-speakers to refer to Hokkien migrants into their territory. As Hong Kong was the primary transit point for Christian preachers entering China in the past, the likelihood those who worked in the Teochew region picked up the “Hoklo” expression from their interactions with the locals or fellow missionaries who spoke Cantonese, and later wrongly applied it to the Teochews.

Besides being consistent with the fact that Teochews never call ourselves Hoklo, this is supported by the observation and writing of James Dyer Ball, an Englishman whose credentials included being chief interpreter in the Hong Kong civil service. In Things Chinese published at the turn of the 20th century, he explained:

"Teo Chews is the term applied generally to them (i.e. the Teochew people) in Singapore, Penang, and the Malay States, while “Hok-lo” is the name by which they are generally known by the Cantonese speakers in China. The former name being derived from the departmental city of Ch'ao Chao Fu (in local dialect—Tiu Chiu Fu or Teo Chew Fu) to which the different districts, from which many of the Hok-lo, came, belong; while Hok-lo means “men from the Hok province i.e. Fukien province”.

Between the Teochews and the Hokkiens, many similarities in language and manners are shared. This is unsurprising since they occupy an adjoined territory in Southeast China. However there was definitely no confusion to the distinction of their collective identities in the 19th century, as attested by major violent clashes between migrants from the two groups in Shanghai in 1850 and in Singapore in 1854 – the latter lasted for more than ten days and resulted in the destruction of 300 houses and 500 deaths. The divide in identity may be traced during the Song dynasty (960-1279) when Teochew prefecture was joined with the Cantonese heartlands to form Guangdong province, whereas Hokkien-speaking Zhangzhou and Quanzhou prefectures were made part of Fujian. If the line of separation is so clear and ancient, how could a view persist amongst the Cantonese that the Teochews were “Fujian men”.

The answer appears to lie in the districts of Haifeng and Lufeng, where a Hokkien-speaking coastal enclave exists right between the realms of the Teochews and the Cantonese. Now administered under Shanwei (or Swabue) city, this area was governed shortly under Swatow from the 1950s to 1980s. However the non-Hakka/Cantonese section of its population vigorously rejects any suggestion that they are Teochew and instead insist in emphasising their descent from migrants out of Zhangzhou about 300 years ago. Their location and background strongly suggest that they are the original Hoklo, the “Fujian men”.  

The most famous son of the Hoklos in Guangdong is arguably Chen Jiongming, one-time governor of Guangdong in Sun Yat Sen’s government. An anecdote told that Chen was once asked to play judge and suss out the guilty party of a crime between two suspects, a Teochew and a fellow Hoklo. However Chen was more interested in rescuing his own than the execution of justice. The near identical speech and accent of the two presented him the challenge of telling who was Teochew or Hoklo, since he could not openly display his bias.

Cunningly Chen ordered both men to be beaten and in an instance his answer was derived.  Because the patrilineal character of the Teochew society, the man who was Teochew yelled in his moment of anguish “ua-pe-lu” 我父噜 (Oh my father)! At the same time, the Hoklo being brought up under stronger matrilineal influence, shouted out “ua-bhou-ui” 我母喂 (oh my mother)! Things happening exactly as he expected, Chen ordered the beating for the poor Teochew to be continued, while the Hoklo was released on the sly from the backdoor.

Whether this is a true story is unknown, but it tells an important point: Teochews are Teochews, and “Hoklo” means precisely what it states: “Fujian men”. 

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Poll of the Month: Have you ever been back to visit Teochew?

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