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yelosonA neat photo essay on Toisan. Though the pictures are cool, I wish there was more writing about them.
For instance, the fortified housing towers in the 9th picture? An evolution of the classic village watchtower to protect against bandits and warlords. As one of the poorer regions, Toisan villages were often left to their own in dealing with the anarchy of the times, and so, had to set up their own means of protection.
The emigrants sent back a lot of money to build schools, factories, and even a railroad. When the cultural revolution hit, a lot of these things were destroyed or dismantled and the people who built them painted as petty-boogie oppressors. So much for reunited the worker with the fruits of their labor.
I hope some linguists are doing studies in Toisanese - I heard that it has words that actually have found no translation in Cantonese or Mandarin, which would be pretty interesting to check out. Aside from Toisan, it's a scattered language, across the globe, spoken mostly by older folks in Chinatowns well pushed out by Cantonese, and now, Mandarin.
For instance, the fortified housing towers in the 9th picture? An evolution of the classic village watchtower to protect against bandits and warlords. As one of the poorer regions, Toisan villages were often left to their own in dealing with the anarchy of the times, and so, had to set up their own means of protection.
The emigrants sent back a lot of money to build schools, factories, and even a railroad. When the cultural revolution hit, a lot of these things were destroyed or dismantled and the people who built them painted as petty-boogie oppressors. So much for reunited the worker with the fruits of their labor.
I hope some linguists are doing studies in Toisanese - I heard that it has words that actually have found no translation in Cantonese or Mandarin, which would be pretty interesting to check out. Aside from Toisan, it's a scattered language, across the globe, spoken mostly by older folks in Chinatowns well pushed out by Cantonese, and now, Mandarin.
