Amoinese

Koxinga
Chinese: 国姓爷; Traditional Chinese: 國姓爺; Pinyin: Gúoxìngyé; Minnan Dialect: Go Seng Ya.

Koxinga is Zheng Chenggong, but most of the people worship him as koxinga.
“Ko” means country or kingdom, “xing” means one’s surname of family name, “a” at the end just like the “sir” before a knight’s name at western culture.

Zheng Chenggong was given the emperor’s surname “Zhu” by the emperor of Ming Dynasty. The emperor relied on him for the renaissance of Ming Dynasty, and sure wanted him to fight Manchu Army.

Yes, here we are, Koxinga means the knight who was given a emperor’s family name. And Zheng Chenggong is the only Koxinga in the history. So Koxinga is Zheng Chenggong.

Zheng Chenggong  (1624 - 1662)
Chinese: 郑成功; Traditional Chinese: 鄭成功; Pinyin: Zhèng Chénggōng; Minnan Dialect: Din Seng Gong.

He was born at Aug. 28, 1624, Hirado, Japan, died June 23, 1662, Taiwan, China.
He was the “Chinese military leader of the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. After the Ming dynasty fell to the Manchu, Zheng refused Manchu offers of rank and power and launched a military campaign against the new dynasty in 1659, taking a large force from his base in Fujian province up the Yangtze River (Chang Jiang). Initial success turned into failure, but, undaunted, Zheng took Taiwan from the Dutch in 1662 to use as a secure rear base area. Further glory was cut short by his death later that year. He became a popular deity and cultural hero to the Chinese on Taiwan, and even the Qing court honoured him as a paragon of loyalty. In Japan the playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon celebrated him on the stage (Zheng had a Japanese mother)”. In the 20th century all the Chinese embraced him as a national hero.

When you arrive at xiamen by ship, the first one and city symbol to welcome you is the hugh stone statuary of Koxinga. Xiamen was once his base, when fighting with Manchu Army. Gulangyu was the place he trained his army and took off to Taiwan.

His stay at xiamen really brought lots of diversity culture to this town. From food to technical.

I will blog more about his influence to xiamen later.

PS: I source and quote some words from Wikipedia and Britannica Concise. But the Wikipedia source misslist the Minnan Dialect as Taiwanese. I dont like it. They should repect the truth and history.

I met Miss Lim Chern Chern at Hong Kong. Stephen Noton, my friend, introduced three of his Global Sources colleagues to me. Chern Chern was one of them, a pretty chinese looking lady. Yes, she is chinese, and also amoinese.

Her monther’s family immigrated from xiamen to Singapore. Chern can still speak Minnan dialect ( xiamen local language ). Her name, like most of my acquaintances in Singapore of Philipines, was named be the pronounciation of Minnan dialect.

If not, her name should look and sound like Lin Zhen Zhen in Mandarin.

Chern Chern asked me a very challenging question. Why they called the language Hokkien.

Hokkien, according to the pronounciation, means Fujian. Fujian stands for the whole province. Fujian’s dialects diverse from city to city, even town to town.

Yes, I would like to regard naming the Minnan Dialect as Hokkien as sort of bueatiful mistake. Just like the English name for Xiamen, Amoy.

From north to south, dialects of Fujian can be divided into 3 different main group. Fuzhou dialect, Putian (Puxian) dialect and Minnan Dialect. And the west part of Fujian, Hakka dialect. So there are four main dialect groups in Fujian province, they differ from each other, and sure they cant understand each other.

Minnan, “Min” is the shortened form for Fujian, “nan” means south. Minnan dialect is the dominant dialect in the south of Fujian province, groups by three cities and their near-by territories. There are Quanzhou, Zhangzhou and Xiamen. Minnan dialect is also the dominant dialect in Taiwan island. But they decided to replace the name Minnan Dialect with Taiwan Dialect after KMT lost their power.

Yes, once again, Hokkien is the dominant dialect only in south of Fujian province, not for all. Hokkien language’s root is Minnan Dialect.

Sure, the most and earliest immigrants from Fujian province to southeast of Asia came from south of Fujian.

(photo from offical site of World Choir Games)

World Choir Games is the former Choir Olympics.

World Choir Games is the former Choir Olympics.World Choir Games 2006 will be held at Xiamen, China. It’s really a good time to make friends. Most of the amoinese are very excited about the up coming games. Sure friends from all nations with different culture background will be enchanted by the bueaty of Xiamen and China.

More than 400 choirs with about 20,000 singers from all over the world will be here at xiamen then.

Xiamen is one the most bueatiful coastal islands, located in South China nearly the same latitude as Taiwan island. About one hour and twenty minutes fly from HongKong or Shanghai.

The city has outstanding infrastructure and highly modern congress and concert halls to support World Choir Games.

(photo from offical site of World Choir Games)

“The subtropical gardens and squares will be the ideal background for open-air concerts. Supporting acts and additional event and sight-seeing programmes will make the World Choir Games also a touristic highlight. Xiamen offers a multitude of interesting sights to its guests. The extensive and beautiful parks should be mentioned here as well as the Nanputao Temple with its Buddha statues, which are several meters high, and the beauty of the architecture of the University of Xiamen. Situated directly off the coast of Xiamen, there is the small island of Gulangyu, which is known all over China as the “Island of the Pianos”. Gulangyu has got China’s highest density of pianos per square kilometre and the only piano museum of the whole country can be found here. ”
(quoted from the offcial site of World Choir Games )

Amoinese is how I call and name those resident in Xiamen. Xiamen is also called Amoy in the past.

Amoy or Xiamen
“Xiamen” is the manderin pinyin for the name of this city. Amoy should be the first English name for Xiamen, a saying tell us that it came from Fuzhou dialect. Fuzhou is about 600 miles away from Xiamen. Residents there speak a total different dialect from xiamen. The first English speaking foreign asked a Fuzhou resident about the name of xiamen city. Sure the guy answered with his local dialect and accent, that was Amoy. Here comes the first English name for xiamen, and it did last for a very long history, and became the real English name for xiamen.
If the foreign asked a xiamen resident first, I believed xiamen’s English name now should be Emeng, nearly the same as an Ariabian country. Emeng is the Minnan ( Hokkien ) dialect pronounciation for the xiamen.

Amoinese
I like the pronounciation of Amoinese, it can be stands for both an noun or an adj. Amoinese is the thing of xiamen and resident of xiamen. According to the manderine pronounciation, that can be “Xiamen Ren”, to Minnan ( Hokkien ) dialect will be “e meng lang”.

Who are Amoinese
Amoinese is quite unique residents in China. Xiamen has migration history for hundreds of years. Most of the residents here came from Minnan district (Minnan means South of Fujian), they shares the same unique local language, Minnan dialect ( also called Hokkien in Southeast of Asia ). There are Quanzhou city and Zhangzhou city, both have a longer city history than xiamen. More than 70% of the xiamen residents are the offsprings of immigrants from Quanzhou and Zhangzhou. Quanzhou, Zhangzhou, Xiamen are connected by their border lines, together they were the famous Minnan Golden Triangle Districe. Which stands for their fast developing economy and industrial union relationship. The rest 30% are Aboriginal, and resident from all over china.
Here we are, we know who is amoinese. Due to the immigration history, Xiamen became a city with open mind. So Amoinese is very open-minded and friendly.

This blog will note all the morden life of Amoinese and their city, sure part of the related history will be reminded time to time.