Just chatting with brother500 and he tells me he’ll be coming to Taiwan in January for a visit. Good news all round, and the topic of conversation then turns to sister-in-law500.
She’s an Australian citizen but has a really odd family history. She’s New Guinea-Chinese her parents are Hakka speakers (which I already knew) but I just found out that her father is a Sze Yup (I’m not sure of the pinyin) and he speaks Hoisanese. There is some New Guinea Tribal blood in there somewhere too…
Anyway I was wondering, are there any Sze Yup in Taiwan?.. I’ve never heard of them before…
“Sze Yup” in Chinese characters is 四邑 (pinyin: si4yi4; literally, four jurisdictions), which is an area in southern Guangdong province. As you can tell by its literal meaning, the area of Sze Yup comprises of four counties (now county level cities), those counties/cities being Xin1hui4 新會, Tai2shan1 台山, Kai1ping2 開平, and En1ping2 恩平.
The reason that these four areas are grouped together is that the local population mostly speak the same dialect, that dialect being called 四邑話 (Language of Sze Yup) but it is more commonly known as 台山話 (Pinyin: Tai2shan1hua4). 台山話 is the so-called “Hoisanese” that your friend’s father speaks as 台山 pronounced in “Hoisanese” sounds like “Hoisan”. It is also commonly known in English as Toisan or Toisanese as “Toisan” is the Cantonese pronunciation of the characters 台山.
So really, “Sze Yup” people are just people from these four counties of southern Guangdong. And yes, Taiwan has its share of “Sze Yup” people although they probably tend to identify more closely with one of the four counties/cities than with the region of “Sze Yup” itself.
Because 台山話 is also spoken in big parts of He4shan1 鶴山 county/city in Guangdong, the “Hoisanese” speaking area is now sometimes referred to as 五邑 (five jurisdictions) although 四邑 is still the historical and preferred term for most residents and overseas Chinese from the area.
I wouldn’t call sister-in-law500’s family history to be odd as someone from Sze Yup marrying a Hakka speaker is not uncommon at all. The father is of Cantonese ancestry and the mother, being a Hakka speaker, is also most likely of Cantonese ancestry.
FYI, Hoisanese used to be the dominant Chinese dialect in overseas Chinese communities (excluding SE Asia) before Cantonese superseded it around the 1970’s. Sze Yup people (specifically, those from 台山) made up the bulk of Chinese overseas emigrants from the late 19th century to the first half of the 20th century.
I have to say looks-wise nobody ever guesses where she is from, and every photo of her looks different. Its going to be interesting to see what responses she gets when she comes here. Some will say she’s a Philipina, others Thai, others Japanese…