The Teochew Store Blog

1990s Hong Kong is best remembered as a wealthy financial hub and the centre of the Chinese film industry. People often overlooked that pre-1997 Hong Kong was also, after Thailand, home to the world's second largest Teochew diaspora that numbered about 1.2 million. Just how large was the contribution of the Teochew people's contribution to Hong Kong's prosperity?

二十世紀九十年代的香港是著名富裕的金融城市和華人電影業中心。許多人不知道，其實1997年以前的香港，還是世界第二大的潮籍僑民定居地，僅次於泰國。在香港97年的人口總數中，潮州移民就有將近一百二十萬。潮州人對香港的繁榮，貢獻究竟有多少？請觀看紀錄片《潮人》之香江處處聞潮聲。

Escaping Cambodia with five children in the 1970s, a Teochew couple were cruelly separated on the Thailand border. Yet they were miraculously reunited in Canada five years later and after much hard work, eventually came to own a supermarket. Notwithstanding its great distance from Asia, Canada is a gathering point for Teochews who resettled from Vietnam, Cambodia, Hong Kong and China. Let’s watch this video where several of them share their stories and aspirations.

一對潮州夫妻在上世紀七十年代離開柬埔寨逃往泰國，在邊境走散，不知生死。五年後，他們奇蹟地在加拿大團聚。為了生活，他們刻苦耐勞，最終成功經營自己的超市。在離亞洲數千里的加拿大是許多來自越南、柬埔寨、香港和中國潮人移民的集中地。在這片土地上，他們與我們一起分享自己的故事和夢想。

"... so I hope that young people today who have difficulty communicating with their elder relatives will recognise that they can actively do something about it..."

The Teochew Store caught up with Brandon Seah of Learn Teochew (learn-teochew.github.io), an extensive online guide for “heritage speakers”, who have “learned some of the language from their family but who have never studied it formally, and who want to improve their understanding of the language”.

Thailand has the largest Teochew diaspora in the world, with the size of the community estimated at 5 million in the mid-1990s. This documentary from 1997 by Shantou Television gives a glimpse of the lives of the Teochews in Thailand. (Audio in Mandarin, with some interviews in Teochew).

海外潮州人在泰国居多。根据上世纪90年代的统计，泰国的潮州社群约有五百万人。想了解潮州人在泰国过去的生活情况，请观看汕头电视台1997年制作的纪录片《佛國潮踪》。

The following 11 maps of the Teochew region and its counties are taken from the covers from the Volume Four issues of Teochew Home News (《潮州鄉訊》) magazine that were published between February and August 1949.

Map of all counties in Teochew 潮州各縣圖

Here’s the third and final group of our flashcard videos for English speakers. Teochew audio taken from 汕頭話音檔》 ("Archive of the Swatow vernacular").

We wish to hear from you if you find such a learning method (video flashcard with picture + English/Chinese text + English/Teochew audio) useful. Do give us your feedback in the YouTube video comments. 

Here’s the second group of our flashcard videos for English speakers. Teochew audio taken from 汕頭話音檔》 ("Archive of the Swatow vernacular").

We wish to hear from you if you find such a learning method (video flashcard with picture + English/Chinese text + English/Teochew audio) useful. Do give us your feedback in the YouTube video comments. 

The Teochew Store has produced a series of flashcard videos for English speakers to pick up some basic Teochew vocabulary. The Teochew audio is taken from a late 1990s source 《汕頭話音檔》 ("Archive of the Swatow vernacular").

There is a total of 15 videos, 5 of which have been uploaded on our YouTube channel (shown below). The other videos will be uploaded progressively over the next two weeks.

We wish to hear from you if you find such a learning method (video flashcard with picture + English/Chinese text + English/Teochew audio) useful. Do give us your feedback in the YouTube video comments. 🙂

Teochew is a language full of rich expressions. How many of the Teochew vernacular terms (土話) in this video do you know?

A fellow Teochew in the UK is running a blog, Learn Diosua Ue with Juyee 和如意學潮汕話, since 2013 to help English speakers learn and appreciate our mother tongue. Her name, you guessed it, is Juyee 如意.

Juyee's blog is at learnteochewwithjuyee.blogspot.com

Juyee grew up speaking English and picked up Teochew, both speaking, reading, writing only as an adult. The Teochew Store recently spoke with her to find out more about her blog and her personal experiences in becoming fluent in our language, a formidable task for many of us!

How did you fare in the previous rounds? This is the 6th and final challenge!

Are you getting better at this?

Are you game for one more round? 想挑戰多一輪嗎？

Today is the 15th and last day of the Chinese New Year. Also called Tsap Ngou Meh 十五暝 or Nguang Siao Zoih 元宵節. 

Teochews mark this day with prayers for the family, more feasting, riddle guessing games and open lantern parades. Because this day provided a rare opportunity for single young men and women to meet publicly in the past, it has also been compared as the "Chinese Valentine's Day".

On this beautiful note, we leave you with this wonderful Teochew language remix of Zhou Xuan's famous 1940 classic "Full Moon Blooming Flower" (月圓花好).

An animation film telling the history of the Teochew people, directed by a Teochew and dubbed entirely in Teochew language by 3 generations of Teochews living in France. How can you not be EXCITED?!

“The Forest of Miss Tang" (陳小姐的森林) is in an advanced stage of production and it needs funding support to be complete. The project has so far raised over €20,000 through crowd funding, but more support is still needed for it to be better.

The Teochew Store is lending our voice to this fund raising campaign as we believe this is a much worthy cause.

Watch the introduction video of the film by director Denis Do below (in French with English subtitles). To back the production of "The Forest of Miss Tang", click here for the project fundraising page. 

Have you ever watched a Teochew musical movie? Check out this rare classic that showcases a variety of Teochew art forms, including cross talk (相聲), bamboo clapper singing (竹板歌), Teochew classical music (潮州音樂), Teochew opera (潮劇),  Teochew narrative songbooks (潮州歌冊), ballads (歌謠), etc.