• Source: Tanka people

The Tankas or boat people are a sinicised ethnic group in Southern China who traditionally lived on junks in coastal parts of Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian, Hainan, Shanghai, Zhejiang and along the Yangtze river, as well as Hong Kong, and Macau. The boat people are referred to with other different names outside of Guangdong. Though many now live onshore, some from the older generations still live on their boats and pursue their traditional livelihood of fishing. Historically, the Tankas were considered outcasts. Since they were boat people who lived by the sea, they were sometimes referred to as "sea gypsies" by both Chinese and British. Tanka origins can be traced back to the native ethnic minorities of southern China known historically as the Baiyue who may have taken refuge on the sea and gradually assimilated into Han Chinese culture. However, Tanka have preserved many of their native traditions not found in Han culture.
A small number of Tankas also live in parts of Vietnam. There they are called Dan (Đàn) and are classified as a subgroup of the Ngái ethnicity.




Etymology and terminology


According to official Liu Zongyuan (Liou Tsung-yüan; 柳宗元; 773–819) of the Tang dynasty, there were Tanka people settled in the boats of today's Guangdong Province and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
"Tan" is a Cantonese term for egg and "ka" means family or peoples another etymology is possibly "tank" meaning junk or large boat in Cantonese and "ka" meaning family. The term Tanka is now considered derogatory and no longer in common usage. These boat dwellers are now referred to in China as "people on/above water" (Chinese: 水上人; pinyin: shuǐshàng rén; Cantonese Yale: Séuiseuhngyàn), or "people of the southern sea" (Chinese: 南海人; Cantonese Yale: Nàamhóiyàn). No standardised English translation of this term exists. "Boat People" is a commonly used translation, although it may be confused with the similar term for Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong. The term "Boat Dwellers" was proposed by Dr. Lee Ho Yin of The University of Hong Kong in 1999, and it has been adopted by the Hong Kong Museum of History for its exhibition.
Both the Tanka and the Cantonese speak Cantonese. However, Tanka living in Fujian speak Min Chinese.
"Boat people" was a general term for the Tanka. The name Tanka was used only by Cantonese to describe the Tanka of the Pearl River Delta.
The Tanka boat people of the Yangtze region were called the Nine surnames fishermen households, while Tanka families living on land were called the Mean households.
There were two distinct categories of people based on their way of life, and they were further divided into different groups. The Hakka and Cantonese lived on land; the Tanka (including Hokkien-speaking Tanka immigrants often mistaken for being Hoklo) lived on boats and were both classified as boat people.
The differences between the sea dwelling Tanka and land dwellers were not based merely on their way of life. Cantonese and Hakka who lived on land fished sometimes for a living, but these land fishermen never mixed or married with the Tanka fishermen. Tanka were barred from Cantonese and Hakka celebrations.
British reports on Hong Kong described the Tanka including Hoklo-speaking Tanka boat people living in Hong Kong "since time unknown". The encyclopaedia Americana alleged that Tanka lived in Hong Kong "since prehistoric times".




Geographic distribution


The Tanka people are found throughout the coasts and rivers of the following regions:

Zhejiang: Zhoushan Archipelago, Taizhou Bay, Wenzhou Bay, Sanmen Bay, Hangzhou Bay, Xin'an River, Fuchun River, Lanjiang River
Fujian: Min River Mouth, Fuqing Bay, Xinghua Bay, Quanzhou Bay, Amoy Bay, Zhangzhou Water Front
Guangdong: Jieshi Bay, Honghai Bay, Daya Bay, Dapeng Bay, Zhujiang River Mouth, Leizhou Bay, Lingding Sea, Zhanjiang, Wanshan Archipelago
Guangxi: You River
Anhui: Xin'an River
Jiangxi: Gan River
Hainan: Qiongzhou Strait, Sanya Bay
Beijing, Jiangsu, Henan, Hubei, Hunan: Grand Canal
Shanghai: city river
Hong Kong: Kowloon
Macau: Macau Bay




Origin






= Mythical origins

=

Some Chinese myths claim that animals were the ancestors of the Barbarians, including the Tanka people. Some ancient Chinese sources claimed that water snakes were the ancestors of the Tanka, saying that they could last for three days in the water, without breathing air.




= Baiyue connection and origins in Southern China

=

The Tanka are considered by some scholars to be related to other minority peoples of southern China, such as the Yao and Li people (Miao). The Amoy University anthropologist Ling Hui-hsiang wrote his theory of the Fujian Tanka as descendants of the Bai Yue. He claimed that Guangdong and Fujian Tanka are definitely descended from the old Bai Yue peoples, and that they may have been ancestors of the Malay race. The Tanka inherited their lifestyle and culture from the original Yue peoples who inhabited Hong Kong during the Neolithic era. After the First Emperor of China conquered Hong Kong, groups from northern and central China moved into the general area of Guangdong, including Hong Kong.
One theory proposes that the ancient Yue inhabitants of southern China are the ancestors of the modern Tanka boat people. The majority of western academics subscribe to this theory, and use Chinese historical sources. (The ancient Chinese used the term "Yue" to refer to all southern barbarians.) The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition, states that the ancestors of the Tanka were native people.
The Tanka's ancestors were pushed to the southern coast by Chinese peasants who took over their land.
During the British colonial era in Hong Kong, the Tanka were considered a separate ethnic group from the Punti, Hakka, and Hoklo. Punti is another name for Cantonese (it means "local"), who came from mainly Guangdong districts. The Hakka and Hoklo are not considered as Puntis.
The Tanka have been compared to the She people by some historians, practising Han Chinese culture, while being an ethnic minority descended from natives of Southern China.



Yao connections


Chinese scholars and gazettes described the Tanka as a "Yao" tribe, with some other sources noting that "Tan" people lived at Lantau, and other sources saying "Yao" people lived there. As a result, they refused to obey the salt monopoly of the Song dynasty (Sung dynasty; 960–1276/1279) government. The county gazetteer of Sun On in 1729 described the Tanka as "Yao barbarians", and the Tanka were viewed as animals.
In modern times, the Tanka claim to be ordinary Chinese who happen to fish for a living, and the local dialect is used as their language.




= Historiography

=
Some southern Chinese historic views of the Tanka were that they were a separate aboriginal ethnic group, "not Han Chinese at all". Chinese Imperial records also claim that the Tanka were descendants of aboriginals. Tanka were also called "sea gypsies" (海上吉普賽人).
The Tanka were regarded as Yueh and not Chinese, they were divided into three classifications, "the fish-Tan, the oyster-Tan, and the wood-Tan" in the 12th century, based on what they did for a living.
The three groups of Punti, Hakka, and Hoklo, all of whom spoke different Chinese dialects, despised and fought each other during the late Qing dynasty. However, they were all united in their overwhelming hatred for the Tanka, since the aboriginals of Southern China were the ancestors of the Tanka. The Cantonese Punti had displaced the Tanka aboriginals, after they began conquering southern China.
The Chinese poet Su Dongpo wrote a poem which mentioned the Tanka.
The Nankai University of Tianjin published the Nankai social and economic quarterly, Volume 9 in 1936, and it referred to the Tanka as aboriginal descendants before Chinese assimilation. The scholar Jacques Gernet also wrote that the Tanka were aboriginals known as pirates (haidao), which hindered Qing dynasty attempts to assert control in Guangdong.




= Scholarly opinions on Baiyue connection

=
The most widely held theory is that the Tanka are the descendants of the native Yue inhabitants of Guangdong before the Han Cantonese moved in. The theory states that the Yue peoples inhabited the region at the time of the Chinese conquest when they were either absorbed or expelled to southern regions. The Tanka, according to this theory, are descended from an outcast Yue tribe who preserved their separate culture.
Regarding the Fujian Minyue Tanka it is suggested that in the southeast coastal regions of China, there were many sea nomads during the Neolithic era and they may have spoken ancestral Austronesian languages, and were skilled seafarers. In fact, there is evidence that an Austronesian language was still spoken in Fujian as late as 620 AD. It is therefore believed that the Tanka were Austronesians who could be more closely related to other Austronesian groups such as Filipinos, Javanese, or Balinese.
A minority of scholars who challenged this theory deny that the Tanka are descended from natives, instead claiming they are basically the same as other Han Cantonese who dwell on land, claiming that neither the land dwelling Han Cantonese nor the water dwelling Tanka have more aboriginal blood than the other, with the Tanka boat people being as Chinese and as Han as ordinary Cantonese.
Eugene Newton Anderson in 1970 claimed that there was no evidence for any of the conjectures put forward by scholars on the Tanka's origins, citing Chen, who stated that "to what tribe or race they once belonged or were once akin to is still unknown".
Some researchers say the origin of the Tanka is multifaceted, with a portion of them having native Yueh ancestors and others originating from other sources.




= Genetics

=
Fujian Tanka have customs similar to Daic and Austronesian people. They have a closer genetic affinity with Daic populations than Han Chinese in paternal lineages, but are closely clustered with southern Han populations (such as Hakka and Teochew) in maternal lineages. It is hypothesized that the Fujian Tanka mainly originate from the ancient indigenous Daic people and have only limited gene flows from Han Chinese populations.
Another study on the Tanka concluded that the Tanka people not only had a close genetic relationship with both northern Han and ancient Yellow River basin millet farmers but also possessed more southern East Asian ancestry related to Austronesian, Kra-Dai and Hmong-Mien people compared to southern Han. Tanka people had their own unique genetic structure, but kept a close relationship with geographically close southern Han Chinese populations. The results supported that the Tanka people arose from the admixture between southward migration Han Chinese and southern indigenous people.




History






= Sinicisation

=
The Song dynasty engaged in extensive sinicisation of the region with Han people. After many years of sinicisation and assimilation, the Tanka now identify as Han Chinese, though they also have non-Han ancestry from the natives of Southern China. The Cantonese would often buy fish from the Tanka. In some inland regions, the Tanka accounted for half of the total population. The Tanka of Quanzhou were registered as barbarian households.




= Ming dynasty

=
The Tanka boat population were not registered into the national census as they were of outcast status, with an official imperial edict declaring them untouchable.



Macau and Portuguese rule


The Portuguese, who were granted Macau during the Ming dynasty, often married Tanka women since Han Chinese women would not have relations with them. Some of the Tanka's descendants became Macanese people.
Some Tanka children were enslaved by Portuguese raiders.
The Chinese poet Wu Li wrote a poem, which included a line about the Portuguese in Macau being supplied with fish by the Tanka.
When the Portuguese arrived at Macau, enslaved women from Goa (part of Portuguese India), Siam, Indochina, and Malaya became their wives. Rarely were they Chinese women. The Tanka women were among the only people in China willing to mix and marry with the Portuguese, with other Chinese women refusing to do so.
The majority of marriages between Portuguese and natives was between Portuguese men and women of Tanka origin, who were considered the lowest class of people in China and had relations with Portuguese settlers and sailors. Western men like the Portuguese were refused by high class Chinese women, who did not marry foreigners.
Literature in Macau was written about love affairs and marriage between the Tanka women and Portuguese men, like "A-Chan, A Tancareira", by Henrique de Senna Fernandes.




= Qing dynasty

=
Tanka people mostly worked as fishermen and tended to gather at some bays. Some built markets or villages on the shore, while others continued to live on their junks or boats. They claimed to be Han Chinese.
The Qing edict said "Cantonese people regard the Dan households as being of the mean class (beijian zhi) and do not allow them to settle on shore. The Dan households, for their part, dare not struggle with the common people", this edict was issued in 1729.
As Hong Kong developed, some of the fishing grounds in Hong Kong became badly polluted or were reclaimed, and so became land. Those Tankas who only own small boats and cannot fish far out to sea are forced to stay inshore in bays, gathering together like floating villages.



Lifestyle and culture

Masonry was unknown by the water-dwelling Tanka.



Canton (Guangzhou)

The Tanka also formed a class of prostitutes in Canton, operating the boats in Canton's Pearl River which functioned as brothels. They did not practice foot binding and their dialect was unique. They were forbidden to marry land-dwelling Chinese or live on land. Their ancestors were the natives of Southern China before the Cantonese expelled them to their current home on the water.




= Modern China

=
Tanka were among the many people that remained in Nanjing in December 1939 before the Japanese massacred the population. Others included low-class citizens and shopkeepers who could not easily move their assets.
During the intensive reclamation efforts around the islands of Shanghai in the late 1960s, many Tanka were settled on Hengsha Island and organised as fishing brigades.




= British Hong Kong

=

In 1937, Walter Schofield, then a Cadet Officer in the Hong Kong Civil Service, wrote that at that time the Tankas were "boat-people [who sometimes lived] in boats hauled ashore, or in more or less boat-shaped huts, as at Shau Kei Wan and Tai O". They mainly lived at the harbours at Cheung Chau, Aberdeen, Tai O, Po Toi, Kau Sai Chau and Yau Ma Tei.
Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew (1845–1917) and Katharine Caroline Bushnell (5 February 1856 – January 26, 1946), who wrote extensively on the position of women in the British Empire, wrote about the Tanka inhabitants of Hong Kong and their position in the prostitution industry, catering towards foreign sailors. The Tanka did not marry with the Chinese, being descendants of the natives, they were restricted to the waterways. They supplied their women as prostitutes to British sailors and assisted the British in their military actions around Hong Kong.
Ordinary Chinese prostitutes were afraid of serving Westerners since they looked strange to them, while the Tanka prostitutes freely mingled with western men. The Tanka assisted the Europeans with supplies and providing them with prostitutes. Low class European men in Hong Kong easily formed relations with the Tanka prostitutes. The profession of prostitution among the Tanka women led to them being hated by the Chinese both because they had sex with westerners and them being racially Tanka.
The Tanka prostitutes were considered to be "low class", greedy for money, arrogant, and treating clients with a bad attitude. They were known for punching their clients or mocking them by calling them names. Though the Tanka prostitutes were considered low class, their brothels were still remarkably well kept and tidy. A famous fictional story which was written in the 1800s depicted western items decorating the rooms of Tanka prostitutes.
The stereotype among most Chinese in Canton that all Tanka women were prostitutes was common, leading the government during the Republican era to accidentally inflate the number of prostitutes when counting, due to all Tanka women being included. The Tanka women were viewed as such that their prostitution activities were considered part of the normal bustle of a commercial trading city. Sometimes the lowly regarded Tanka prostitutes managed to elevate themselves into higher forms of prostitution.
Tanka women were ostracised from the Cantonese community, and were nicknamed "salt water girls" (ham sui mui in Cantonese) for their services as prostitutes to foreigners in Hong Kong.
Tanka women who worked as prostitutes for foreigners also commonly kept a "nursery" of Tanka girls specifically for exporting them for prostitution work to overseas Chinese communities such as in Australia or America, or to serve as a Chinese or foreigner's concubine.
A report called "Correspondence respecting the alleged existence of Chinese slavery in Hong Kong: presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty" was presented to the English Parliament in 1882 concerning the existence of slavery in Hong Kong, of which many were Tanka girls serving as prostitutes or mistresses to westerners.
Ernest John Eitel claimed in 1895 that all "half caste" people in Hong Kong were descended exclusively from Europeans having relationship with Tanka women, and not Chinese women. The theory that most of the Eurasian mixed race Hong Kong people are descended only from Tanka women and European men, and not ordinary Cantonese women, is backed up by other researchers who pointed out that Tanka women freely consorted with foreigners due to the fact that they were not bound by the same Confucian traditions as the Cantonese, and having a relationship with European men was advantageous for Tanka women. The ordinary Cantonese women did not sleep with European men, so the Eurasian population was formed only from Tanka and European admixture.
During British rule some special schools were created for the Tanka. In 1962 a typhoon struck boats belonging to the Tanka, likely including Hoklo-speaking Tanka mistaken for being Hoklo, destroying hundreds.
During the 1970s the number of Tanka was reported to be shrinking.




= Shanghai

=
Shanghai, with its many international concessions, contained prostitutes from various areas of China, including Guangdong province. This included the Tanka prostitutes, who were grouped separately from the Cantonese prostitutes. The Cantonese served customers in normal brothels while the Tanka served customers in boats.




Surnames


The Fuzhou Tanka have different surnames than the Tanka of Guangdong. Qing records indicate that "Weng, Ou, Chi, Pu, Jiang, and Hai" (翁, 歐, 池, 浦, 江, 海) were surnames of the Fuzhou Tanka. Qing records also stated that Tanka surnames in Guangdong consisted of "Mai, Pu, Wu, Su, and He" (麥, 濮, 吴, 蘇, 何), alternatively some people claimed Gu and Zeng as Tanka surnames.




Dialect


The Tanka dialect is a variety of Yue Chinese. It is similar in phonology with Cantonese, with the following differences:

eu /œ/ is pronounced as o /ɔ/ (e.g. "Hong Kong")
/y/ is pronounced as /u/ or /i/
/kʷ/ is pronounced as /k/
no final -m or -p, so they are replaced by -ng /-ŋ/ or -t /-t/
/n/ is pronounced as /l/, like in some informal varieties of Cantonese
they also have the tone 2 diminutive change




DNA tests and disease


Tests on the DNA of the Tanka people found that the disease Thalassemia was common among the Tanka. Tests also stated that the ancestors of the Tanka were not Han Chinese, but were native people.
The Tanka suffer from lung cancer more than the Cantonese and Teochew. The frequency of the disease is higher among Tanka. The rate among the Teochew is lower than that of the Cantonese.




Famous Tankas


Sinn Sing Hoi
Henry Fok, Hong Kong billionaire businessman and politician
Timothy Fok




See also


Pang uk
Fuzhou Tanka
Aberdeen floating village in Hong Kong
Yau Ma Tei Boat People in Hong Kong




References






Bibliography


Chaves, Jonathan (1993). Singing of the source: nature and god in the poetry of the Chinese painter Wu Li. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-8248-1485-1.
Christina Miu Bing Cheng (1999). Macau: a cultural Janus. Hong Kong University Press. ISBN 962-209-486-4.
Great Britain. Parliament (1882). Correspondence respecting the alleged existence of Chinese slavery in Hong Kong: presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty Volume 3185 of C (Series) (Great Britain. Parliament) (reprint ed.). Printed by G.E. Eyre and W. Spottiswoode for H.M.S.O.
This article incorporates text from Europe in China: the history of Hongkong from the beginning to the year 1882, by Eitel, Ernest John, a publication from 1895, now in the public domain in the United States.
João de Pina-Cabral (2002). Between China and Europe: person, culture and emotion in Macao. Vol. 74 of London School of Economics monographs on social anthropology. Berg. ISBN 0-8264-5749-5.
Hansson, Anders (1996). Chinese outcasts: discrimination and emancipation in late imperial China. Vol. 37 of Sinica Leidensia. BRILL. ISBN 90-04-10596-4.
This article incorporates text from The Century dictionary: an encyclopedic lexicon of the English language, Part 21, by Whitney, William Dwight, a publication from 1891, now in the public domain in the United States.
This article incorporates text from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia: The Century dictionary ... prepared under the superintendence of William Dwight Whitney ... rev. & enl. under the superintendence of Benjamin E. Smith, by Whitney, William Dwight and Smith, Benjamin Eli, a publication from 1911, now in the public domain in the United States.
This article incorporates text from The Middle kingdom: a survey of the ... Chinese empire and its inhabitants ..., by Williams, Samuel Wells, a publication from 1848, now in the public domain in the United States.
This article incorporates text from The Field afar, Volumes 15–16, by Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America, Catholic Foreign Mission Bureau of Boston, a publication from 1921, now in the public domain in the United States.




External links


Media related to Tanka people at Wikimedia Commons

Kata Kunci Pencarian:

• Suku Tanka
• Subkelompok Tionghoa Han
• Isamu Yoshii
• Daftar kelompok etnik di Tiongkok
• Kelompok etnik tanpa pengakuan di Tiongkok
• Filsafat
• Macaense
• Thangka
• Agama di Amerika Serikat
• Orang Jepang
• Tanka people
• Tanka (disambiguation)
• Tanka
• Baiyue
• Boat people (disambiguation)
• Macau people
• Han Chinese
• Sama-Bajau
• Fuzhou Tanka
• List of ethnic slurs