This article needs additional citations for verification .(January 2013) |
Total population | |
---|---|
Overseas Taiwanese in Canada (2016 estimate) | 173,000 [1] |
Taiwan-born Canadians (2021 census) | 65,365 [2] |
Ethnic Taiwanese Canadians [lower-alpha 1] (2021 census) | 64,020 [2] |
Regions with significant populations | |
Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal | |
Languages | |
Chinese (Mandarin, Hokkien, Hakka), Formosan languages, English, French | |
Religion | |
Chinese folk religions, Buddhism, Christianity, Taoism |
Taiwanese Canadians | |||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Traditional Chinese | 台灣 裔 加拿大人 | ||||||||||
Simplified Chinese | 台湾裔加拿大人 | ||||||||||
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Taiwanese Canadians are Canadians who carry full or partial ancestry from the East Asian country of Taiwan. There are over one hundred thousand Taiwanese who have gained citizenship or permanent residency status in Canada. [3] [4] [5]
Taiwanese people have been present in Canada since the 1970s but many of those immigrants have since moved to the United States and have become part of the Taiwanese American and Chinese American communities. Starting from the late 1980s,many Taiwanese people immigrated to Canada,especially Vancouver,British Columbia,and to the adjacent cities of Burnaby,Richmond,and Coquitlam to form a permanent Taiwanese Canadian community. The Greater Vancouver metropolitan area now has the largest Taiwanese community in Canada. There is also an established Taiwanese community in Toronto,but more spread out than its counterpart in Vancouver. Unlike the Taiwanese American community with a longer history in North America,the majority of the younger Taiwanese Canadians are either first generation or 1.5 generation immigrants who have either grown up entirely in Taiwan or have completed at least some elementary or junior high school education in Taiwan prior to immigrating to Canada. This is because many Taiwanese Canadian households are made up of households where the providers are people retired from their businesses and occupations in Taiwan,and decided to move their families (many with adolescent or grown-up children) to Canada. There are also many Taiwanese Canadian households where the primary provider (usually the father) is not retired and still conducts business in Taiwan which requires frequent travel between Taiwan and Canada and maybe even require living away from their families for part of the year or longer (this situation is typical of many of the Hong Kong Chinese as well). There is a sizable Waisheng Taiwanese community as well in Vancouver that may rival the Bensheng community in size,but they tend to identify themselves more as Chinese Canadians.
First-generation or 1.5-generation Taiwanese Canadians (especially Bensheng Taiwanese) are often fluent in both Mandarin as well as Hokkien. To a lesser extent,Hakka is also spoken by those of Taiwanese Hakka heritage. Among the second generation,English often becomes their preferred language and linguistic fluency in the heritage language varies. Thus,many second-generation Taiwanese Canadians either speak Taiwanese as their heritage language and may not know any Mandarin or speak Mandarin as their heritage language and know little Taiwanese (the latter is particularly common among families from the Taipei Metropolitan Area). Maintaining their heritage language depends on the efforts of their parents and whether the individuals are exposed to Mandarin through Mandarin Chinese schools. Second-generation Taiwanese of Hakka descent tend to speak better Mandarin as their heritage language. According to the 2011 census,9,635 reported to speak Taiwanese as their mother tongue. [6]
Many Taiwanese immigrants have recently (as of 2011) settled in Vancouver, B.C., forming a growing and stable Taiwanese Canadian community; however, it is often overlooked due to the presence of a larger Hong Kong Chinese immigrant base. Many of these immigrants from Taiwan, especially those without family or relatives in United States, find it easier to immigrate to Canada. These Taiwanese immigrants are also relatively wealthy and like many of the Hong Kong Chinese can afford Vancouver's high cost of living. The Greater Vancouver metropolitan area offers comfortable living and the conveniences of modern Chinese shopping centers with a vast array of restaurants, eateries, and grocery stores that provide the foods and entertainment that reflect the modern trends that the Hong Kong Chinese and Taiwanese were accustomed to prior to arriving in Canada. Because Vancouver has more Hong Kong Chinese than Taiwanese, the fashions and products available largely reflect the modern trends of Hong Kong more so than Taiwan. This is in contrast to the Santa Clara Valley/Silicon Valley and San Gabriel Valley in California where there are concentrated communities with larger proportions of people of Taiwanese heritage and where many Chinese shopping centers, restaurants, supermarkets, and other retail businesses tend to reflect more of the modern Taiwanese trends. There are T & T Supermarkets in Canada as opposed to 99 Ranch Markets in the United States.
Greater Vancouver also attracts Taiwanese American visitors from the Greater Seattle Area in the United States (approximately 200 km south of the Canada–US border). Vancouver is the only large Canadian city that is close in proximity to another large city just south of the Canada–US border and where both cities have well-established Chinese and Taiwanese communities.
The Greater Seattle Area overall has a larger and longer established Taiwanese population than Vancouver, but its Taiwanese residents are spread out over a vast area and not as highly concentrated in one area as those in Vancouver. The few "Chinese" shopping center complexes in Seattle's International District (Chinatown) may be owned by Taiwanese and/or Chinese people but cater mostly to other Asians such as first-generation Southeast Asians of Vietnamese and Cambodian heritage. Shops particularly in the heart of the International District are owned by older-established Cantonese/Toisan Chinese Americans (the descendants of the first Chinese who built up most of the Chinatowns in many American cities). Seattle is much closer to Vancouver than to San Francisco, San Jose, and Los Angeles (all located in California with large Chinese and Taiwanese communities).
The Greater Vancouver area has amenities for Taiwanese and Chinese communities quite similar to these large California metropolitan areas. Despite the long wait times at the Canada–United States border customs, it is still worth a road trip up to Vancouver for food and commercial products (i.e., music CDs, books, snack items) from Taiwan and Hong Kong. Many Taiwanese Americans from the Greater Seattle Area and other Asian American hubs also have business and social connections and family ties to the Taiwanese Canadian families in Vancouver. University and college students of Chinese and Taiwanese heritage (primarily from the University of Washington's Seattle campus) make frequent road trips to Vancouver.
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.
The Hakka, sometimes also referred to as Hakka Han, or Hakka Chinese, or Hakkas, are a Han Chinese subgroup whose ancestral homes are chiefly in the Hakka-speaking provincial areas of Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Sichuan, Hunan, Zhejiang, Hainan, and Guizhou in China, as well as in Taoyuan City, Hsinchu County, Miaoli County, Pingtung County, and Kaohsiung City in Taiwan. Unlike other Han Chinese subgroups, the Hakkas are not named after a geographical region, e.g. a province, county or city, in China. That is because their origins were of northern Chinese refugees fleeing social unrest, upheaval and invasions throughout the northern parts of China throughout history who then sought sanctuary in the south where the Cantonese speaking provinces such as Guangdong and Guangxi are. The Chinese characters for Hakka literally means "guest families". The word is Cantonese in origin and as the name implies, they are the guest of the Cantonese people. Over the centuries though, they have since more or less assimilated with the Cantonese speaking population. Modern day Hakka are generally identified by both full Hakka and by different degrees of Hakka ancestry and usually speak Hakka Chinese.
There has been a significant history of Chinese immigration to Canada, with the first settlement of Chinese people in Canada being in the 1780s. The major periods of Chinese immigration would take place from 1858 to 1923 and 1947 to the present day, reflecting changes in the Canadian government's immigration policy.
Taiwanese Americans are Americans who carry full or partial ancestry from Taiwan. This includes American-born citizens who descend from migrants from Taiwan.
Toronto Chinatowns are ethnic enclaves in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, with a high concentration of ethnic Chinese residents and businesses. These neighbourhoods are major cultural, social and economic hubs for the Chinese-Canadian communities of the region. In addition to Toronto, several areas in the Greater Toronto Area also hold a high concentration of Chinese residents and businesses.
Fairchild TV or FTV is a Canadian Cantonese language exempt specialty channel. It is owned by Fairchild Group, with Hong Kong broadcaster TVB holding a 20% minority stake. Fairchild TV has studios in the Greater Toronto Area and Greater Vancouver.
Cài is a Chinese-language surname that derives from the name of the ancient Cai state. In 2019 it was the 38th most common surname in China, but the 9th most common in Taiwan, where it is usually romanized as "Tsai", "Tsay", or "Chai" and the 8th most common in Singapore, where it is usually romanized as "Chua", which is based on its Teochew and Hokkien pronunciation. Koreans use Chinese-derived family names and in Korean, Cai is 채 in Hangul, "Chae" in Revised Romanization, It is also a common name in Hong Kong where it is romanized as "Choy", "Choi" or "Tsoi". In Macau, it is spelled as "Choi". In Malaysia, it is romanized as "Choi" from the Cantonese pronunciation, and "Chua" or "Chuah" from the Hokkien or Teochew pronunciation. It is romanized in the Philippines as "Chua" or "Chuah", and in Thailand as "Chuo" (ฉั่ว). Moreover, it is also romanized in Cambodia as either "Chhay" or "Chhor" among people of full Chinese descent living in Cambodia and as “Tjhai”, "Tjoa" or "Chua" in Indonesia.
The languages of Taiwan consist of several varieties of languages under the families of Austronesian languages and Sino-Tibetan languages. The Formosan languages, a geographically designated branch of Austronesian languages, have been spoken by the Taiwanese indigenous peoples for thousands of years. Owing to the wide internal variety of the Formosan languages, research on historical linguistics recognizes Taiwan as the Urheimat (homeland) of the whole Austronesian languages family. In the last 400 years, several waves of Han emigrations brought several different Sinitic languages into Taiwan. These languages include Taiwanese Hokkien, Hakka, and Mandarin, which have become the major languages spoken in present-day Taiwan.
Taiwanese units of measurement are the customary and traditional units of measure used in Taiwan. The Taiwanese units formed in the 1900s when Taiwan was under Japanese rule. The system mainly refers to Japanese system. The measurement refers to the traditional size of a Japanese flooring mat called a Tatami mat which were positioned to completely cover the floor of traditional Japanese homes, therefore it became a convenient measurement tool as mat area was standardised hundreds of years ago. In Taiwan the measurement units are pronounced in Taiwanese Hokkien and Hakka before the World War II and adopted by the Mandarin speaking immigrants from China in 1949. Today, the Taiwanese units are used exclusively, in some cases alongside official SI units, and in other cases they have been replaced by SI.
Taiwanese drama refer to dramatic programming of television programming extended stories usually dramatizing relationships through the general range of ten to forty one-hour episodes. They are produced in Taiwan and have gained increasing popularity in the Mandarin-speaking community internationally. The term "Taiwanese drama" is applied to Taiwanese miniseries in general, even including those with greater elements of comedy than of drama.
Taiwanese Canadian Association of Toronto (TCAT), the largest general-purpose all-ages Taiwanese organization in the Greater Toronto Area, was established back in 1963 and later registered as a non-profit organization in the Province of Ontario in 1975.
The Chinese Canadian community in the Greater Toronto Area was first established around 1877, with an initial population of two laundry owners. While the Chinese Canadian population was initially small in size, it dramatically grew beginning in the late 1960s due to changes in immigration law and political issues in Hong Kong. Additional immigration from Southeast Asia in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and related conflicts and a late 20th century wave of Hong Kong immigration led to the further development of Chinese ethnic enclaves in the Greater Toronto Area. The Chinese established many large shopping centres in suburban areas catering to their ethnic group. There are 679,725 Chinese in the Greater Toronto Area as of the 2021 census, second only to New York City for largest Chinese community in North America.
Chinese Canadians are a sizable part of the population in Metro Vancouver, especially in the Chinese communities in the city of Vancouver and the two adjoining suburban cities of Richmond and Burnaby. The legacy of Chinese immigration is prevalent throughout the Vancouver area.
Han Taiwanese, Taiwanese Han, Taiwanese Han Chinese, or Han Chinese are Taiwanese people of full or partial ethnic Han descent. According to the Executive Yuan of Taiwan, they comprise 95 to 97 percent of the Taiwanese population, which also includes Austronesians and other non-Han people. Major waves of Han immigration occurred since the 17th century to the end of Chinese Civil War in 1949, with the exception of the Japanese colonial period (1895-1945). Han Taiwanese mainly speak three languages of Chinese: Mandarin, Hokkien and Hakka.
Hakka Americans, also called American Hakka, are Han people in the United States of Hakka origin, mostly from present-day Guangdong, Fujian, and Taiwan. Many Hakka Americans have connections to Hakka diaspora in Jamaica, the Caribbean, South East Asia, Latin America, and South America. The Han characters for Hakka (客家) literally mean "guest families". Unlike other Han ethnic groups, the Hakkas are not named after a geographical region, e.g. a province, county or city. The Hakkas usually identify with people who speak the Hakka language or share at least some Hakka ancestry. The earliest Hakka immigrants to what is now the United States mostly went to Hawaii, starting when the Kingdom of Hawaii was an independent sovereign state. After the lifting of the Chinese Exclusion Act by the passage of the Magnuson Act in 1943, the Hakka began to come to the US from Taiwan and to a lesser extent Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, Jamaica and the Caribbean.
The usage of Chinese by the Chinese diaspora and their descendants has been determined by a large number of factors, including their ancestry, their migrant ancestors' "regime of origin", assimilation through generational changes, and official policies of their country of residence. The general trend is that more established Chinese populations in the Western world and in many regions of Asia have Cantonese as either the dominant variety or as a common community vernacular, while Mandarin is much more prevalent among new arrivals, making it increasingly common in many Chinatowns, though still not dominant.
Philosophy in Taiwan is the set of philosophical traditions in Taiwan, while Taiwanese philosophy is taken to mean philosophical work from the country. Philosophical thought in Taiwan is diverse, drawing influence from Chinese philosophy during Qing rule from the 17th and 18th century, and Western philosophy through the Kyoto School during Japanese rule in the 19th and early 20th century. Taiwanese philosophy took a more endogenous turn during the modern era, with burgeoning philosophical debate regarding Taiwanese Gemeinschaft.
Chinatown, Toronto is a Chinese ethnic enclave located in the city's downtown core of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is centred at the intersections of Spadina Avenue and Dundas Street, West.
Columbia Records was a record company that was once active in the manufacture and distribution of wormwood records in Taiwan under Japanese rule, and was a pioneer of Taiwan's modern pop music industry.
Hakka popular music is a genre of popular music composed and performed in the Hakka language, also known as modern Hakka music. It is mainly prevalent in Malaysia, Taiwan, Indonesia, and Guangdong, with Taiwanese Hakka popular music being the most vibrant and developed.