- Xiamen Gaoqi International Airport Terminal 3
- Xiamen University campus
Hokkien architecture, also called Hoklo architecture or Minnan architecture, refers to the architectural style of the Hoklo people, a Han Chinese sub-group who have historically been the dominant demographic of the Southern Chinese province of Fujian (called "Hokkien" in the Hoklo language),and Taiwan, Singapore. This style shares many similarities with those of surrounding Han Chinese groups. There are, however, several features that are unique or mostly unique to Hoklo-made buildings, making many traditional buildings in Hokkien and Taiwan visually distinctive from those outside the region. [1]
Prior to the annexation of the Minyue Kingdom by the Han dynasty, the region was inhabited by the Minyue people, a branch of the Baiyue aboriginals. The Minyue State's Imperial City (Traditional Chinese: 閩越王城遺址) gave some clues about what their architectural style was like.[ citation needed ]
Swallowtail roof (Pe̍h-ōe-jī: ìnn-bé-tsiah; Traditional Chinese: 燕尾脊, literally "swallowtail ridge") is a feature rarely (if at all) seen in non-Hoklo Han Chinese architecture. It is very common in Hokkien and Taiwan. The term refers to a roof that has an upward-curving ridge shaped like the tail of a swallow. The degree of curving may vary. The "swallowtail" in question can be single- or double-layered and is typically decorated with a large amount of colorful carvings. [2] [3] This feature originated in 16th century (Ming Dynasty). At that time, Hoklo people were doing business with Southeast Asia, Taiwan, Ryukyu (Ryūkyū-kan) and Japan, and decided that they would like to show off their newfound wealth - resulting in this bright and elaborate architectural style. [4] Due to its bright and showy nature, this architectural feature is commonly found in major temples, mansions, and ancestral halls.
Cut porcelain carving (Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Tsián-huî-tiau; Traditional Chinese: 剪瓷雕, literally "cut porcelain carving") is also prevalent among Hoklo architecture and, to a lesser extent, Vietnamese architecture. [5] [6] Traditionally, Hoklo porcelain artists would often gather small colored porcelain artifacts (such as bowls and other eating utensils), cut and/or grind them into smaller fragments, and then paste these fragments onto sculptures attached to buildings for the purpose of decoration. This art is frequently used on the ridges, window frames, and doors of temples and larger residences, often in conjunction with swallowtail roof. The topic of these sculptures may vary - ranging from plants and animals to figures from Chinese mythology or Hoklo folktales. In Taiwan, a new style has even been formed by combining cut porcelain carving with cochin ware.
Sanheyuan (Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Sam-ha̍h-īnn; Traditional Chinese: 三合院, literally "Three-combo building") is a type of building found throughout most of the Greater China region. They are residences with structures on three sides of a courtyard, forming an inverted U-shape. While this style is shared by nearly all Han Chinese groups, Hokkien Sanheyuan have been noted by their usage of multiple wings (called "protecting dragons" in Taiwan) to spread outward, a trait quite distinctive to Hoklo Sanheyuan. [7]
Têng-á-kha (Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Têng-á-kha; Traditional Chinese: 亭仔跤) is a style of architecture found in much of Southern China and is considered the Hokkien counterpart to the Cantonese tong lau. It is a style that incorporates elements from Western European architecture, arising slowly in late 18th century due to the Hokkien contact with Western European culture in Southeast Asia. A typical têng-á-kha has a ground floor used for running some sort of business (such as a grocery store) and upper floors that are used for residential purposes. Amoy's têng-á-khas are said to be marked by having pink and white as main colorings, use of streets full of têng-á-khas such as markets, and the distribution of têng-á-khas in net-like structures. [8] The city of Chinchew has also been noted for having a well-preserved set of têng-á-khas. [9]
Hokkien earthen buildings (Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Hok-kiàn thóo-lâu; Traditional Chinese: 福建土樓, literally "Hokkien earthen building"), called "Fujian Tulou" in Mandarin Chinese, is another distinct type of architecture found in the Hokkien region. It is a set of large, enclosed and fortified earth buildings associated with the Hakka people, who speak the Hakka language, rather than Hoklo. However, it has been noted that this style of architecture is found almost exclusively among Hakka people in Fujian province and thus has become associated with the region. [10]
Taiwanese Hokkien, or simply Taiwanese, also known as Taiuanoe, Taigi, Taigu, Taiwanese Minnan, Hoklo and Holo, is a variety of the Hokkien language spoken natively by more than 70 percent of the population of Taiwan. It is spoken by a significant portion of those Taiwanese people who are descended from Hoklo immigrants of southern Fujian. It is one of the national languages of Taiwan.
Min is a broad group of Sinitic languages with about 70 million native speakers. These languages are spoken in Fujian province as well as by the descendants of Min-speaking colonists on the Leizhou Peninsula and Hainan and by the assimilated natives of Chaoshan, parts of Zhongshan, three counties in southern Wenzhou, the Zhoushan archipelago, Taiwan and scattered in pockets or sporadically across Hong Kong, Macau, and several countries in Southeast Asia, particularly Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam, Brunei. The name is derived from the Min River in Fujian, which is also the abbreviated name of Fujian Province. Min varieties are not mutually intelligible with one another nor with any other variety of Chinese.
Southern Min, Minnan or Banlam, is a group of linguistically similar and historically related Chinese languages that form a branch of Min Chinese spoken in Fujian, most of Taiwan, Eastern Guangdong, Hainan, and Southern Zhejiang. Southern Min dialects are also spoken by descendants of emigrants from these areas in diaspora, most notably in Southeast Asia, such as Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Brunei, Southern Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, Southern and Central Vietnam, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York City. Minnan is the most widely-spoken branch of Min, with approximately 48 million speakers as of 2017–2018.
Taiwanese opera commonly known as Ke-Tse opera or Hokkien opera, is a form of traditional drama originating in Taiwan. Taiwanese opera uses a stylised combination of both the literary and colloquial registers of Taiwanese Hokkien. Its earliest form adopted elements of folk songs from Zhangzhou, Fujian, China. The plots are traditionally drawn from folk tales of the southern Fujian region, though in recent years stories are increasingly set in Taiwan itself. Taiwanese opera was later exported to other Hokkien-speaking areas, such as Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Fujian, China.
Zhangzhou is a prefecture-level city in Fujian Province, China. The prefecture around the city proper comprises the southeast corner of the province, facing the Taiwan Strait and surrounding the prefecture of Xiamen.
The Hoklo people are a Han Chinese subgroup who speak Hokkien, a Southern Min language, or trace their ancestry to southeastern Fujian in China, and known by various related terms such as Banlam people, Minnan people, or more commonly in Southeast Asia as the Hokkien people. The Hokkien people are found in significant numbers in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Brunei, Myanmar, and the United States,. The Hokkien people have a distinct culture and architecture, including Hokkien shrines and temples with tilted sharp eaves, high and slanted top roofs, and finely detailed decorative inlays of wood and porcelain. The Hokkien language, which includes Taiwanese Hokkien, is the mainstream Southern Min, which is partially mutually intelligible to the Teochew language, Hainanese, Leizhou Min, and Haklau Min.
Fuchien Province, also romanized as Fujian and rendered as Fukien, is a nominal province of the Republic of China without formal administrative function. It includes three small archipelagos off the coast of the Fujian Province of the People's Republic of China, namely the Matsu Islands, which make up Lienchiang County, and the Wuqiu Islands and Kinmen Islands, which make up Kinmen County. The seat of the administrative centre is Jincheng Township of Kinmen County which serves as its de facto capital. The province is also known as the Golden Horse, after the literal reading of the Chinese character abbreviation for "Kinmen-Matsu".
Thian Hock Keng, is a temple built for the worship of Mazu, a Chinese sea goddess, located in Singapore. It is the oldest and most important temple of the Hokkien (Hoklo) people in the country. Another shrine at the back is Buddhist dedicated to Guanyin, the Mahayana Buddhist bodhisattva of mercy.
Pe̍h-ōe-jī, sometimes known as Church Romanization, is an orthography used to write variants of Hokkien Southern Min, particularly Taiwanese and Amoy Hokkien, and it is widely employed as one of the writing systems for Southern Min. During its peak, it had hundreds of thousands of readers.
The Amoy dialect or Xiamen dialect, also known as Amoyese, Amoynese, Amoy Hokkien, Xiamenese or Xiamen Hokkien, is a dialect of Hokkien spoken in the city of Xiamen and its surrounding metropolitan area, in the southern part of Fujian province. Currently, it is one of the most widely researched and studied varieties of Southern Min. It has historically come to be one of the more standardized varieties.
Singaporean Hokkien is a local variety of the Hokkien language spoken natively in Singapore. Within Chinese linguistic academic circles, this dialect is known as Singaporean Ban-lam Gu. It bears similarities with the Amoy spoken in Amoy, now better known as Xiamen, as well as Taiwanese Hokkien which is spoken in Taiwan.
Carstairs Douglas was a Scottish missionary, remembered chiefly for his writings concerning the Hokkien language of Southern Min in Southern Fujian, in particular his Chinese–English Dictionary of the Vernacular or Spoken Language of Amoy.
Hokkien is a variety of the Southern Min languages, native to and originating from the Minnan region, in the southeastern part of Fujian in southeastern mainland China. It is also referred to as Quanzhang, from the first characters of the urban centers of Quanzhou and Zhangzhou.
Bbánlám Uē Pìngyīm Hōng'àn, Bbánlám pìngyīm, Minnan pinyin or simply pingyim, is a romanization system for Hokkien Southern Min, in particular the Amoy (Xiamen) version of this language. This romanization system was devised at Xiamen University and first published in the 1982 普通話閩南方言詞典.
Huan-a is a Hokkien-language term used by Hokkien speakers in multiple countries, namely mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, etc. The word itself when dissected means 番; hoan; 'foreign', + 仔; á; 'diminutive noun suffix', but to the ethnic Chinese that settled overseas in Taiwan and Maritime Southeast Asia, it soon came to refer to the indigenous peoples (natives) in the lands where ethnic Chinese are historical immigrants.
The Ma-Cho, Mazu or Ma Cho Temple is a Taoist temple to the Chinese Sea-Goddess Mazu located on Quezon Avenue in Barangay II, San Fernando, La Union in the Philippines. It was built in 1977 by a group of Filipino-Chinese devotees under the leadership of Dy Keh Hio and with the support of former Tourism Secretary Jose D. Aspiras.
Minnan culture or Hokkien/Hoklo culture, also considered as the Mainstream Southern Min Culture, refers to the culture of the Hoklo people, a group of Han Chinese people who have historically been the dominant demographic in the province of Fujian in Southern China, Taiwan, and certain overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asia, such as Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Myanmar, Southern Thailand, Cambodia, Southern Vietnam, etc.
Lan Mu was from Dabu, Chaozhou of Guangdong Province. He was a famous craftsman of traditional architecture in Taiwan and Penghu during 1916 to 1943. According to the area of his hometown, he might be a Hakka.
Hokkien, Hoklo (Holo), and Minnan people are found in the United States. The Hoklo people are a Han Chinese subgroup with ancestral roots in Southern Fujian and Eastern Guangdong, particularly around the modern prefecture-level cities of Quanzhou, Zhangzhou, and Xiamen, along with the Chaoshan region. They are also known by various endonyms, or other related terms such as Hoklo people (河洛儂), Banlam (Minnan) people, Hokkien people or Teochew people (潮州人;Tiê-tsiu-lâng). These people usually also have roots in the Hokkien diaspora in Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia.
The Bible translations into the languages of Taiwan are into Taiwanese, Hakka, Amis, and other languages of Taiwan.