Total population | |
---|---|
~8,000,000 | |
Regions with significant populations | |
![]() | ~6,000,000 (natives) |
![]() | 1,700,000 (rest of country) [1] [ full citation needed ] |
![]() | 288,715 (90% of Chinese population). [2] |
![]() | 60,000–100,000 [3] |
![]() | ~116,000 <70% (+ Qingtian) [4] |
![]() | as part of the mainlander population [5] |
![]() | part of Chinese Australian population |
![]() | 100,000 [6] |
![]() | part of Chinese people in the Netherlands [7] |
Languages | |
Wenzhou dialect, Zhenan Min, Standard Mandarin Chinese, etc. | |
Religion | |
Mahayana Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Irreligion, Chinese folk religion and Christianity | |
Related ethnic groups | |
Wu speaking people, Min speaking people, other Han Chinese |
Wenzhou people or Wenzhounese people is a subgroup of Oujiang Wu Chinese speaking peoples, who live primarily in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province. Wenzhou people are known for their business and money-making skills. The area also has a large diaspora population in Europe and the United States, with a reputation for being enterprising natives who start restaurants, retail and wholesale businesses in their adopted countries. About two-thirds of the overseas community is in Europe. Wenzhounese people have also made notable contributions to mathematics and technology.
Wenzhou was the home territory of the Dong'ou Kingdom, which have been conquered by the Minyue Kingdom and later by the Han dynasty.
The majority of people in Wenzhou are descendants of immigrants and about 80% came from Fujian province. From the Tang, Song to Ming and Qing dynasties, a great number of families in Fujian province immigrated to Wenzhou with all their family members. [8]
Wenzhou natives speak a unique form of Wu Chinese called Wenzhou dialect. However, geographic isolation and an admixture of Southern Min Chinese speakers from nearby Fujian Province, have caused Wenzhou's spoken language to evolve into a dialect that is notable for its highly divergent phonology. As a result, even people from other regions of Zhejiang and Fujian both have trouble understanding Wenzhounese. The Taizhou dialect, located directly to the north, has little to no mutual intelligibility with Wenzhou. Many Wenzhou natives[ quantify ] also speak a Southern Min dialect called Zhenan Min.
The Wenzhou dialect preserves a large amount of vocabulary of classical Chinese lost in most other Chinese dialects, earning itself the nickname "the living fossil", and has distinct grammatical differences from Mandarin. [9] [10]
Due to its high degree of eccentricity and difficulty for non-locals to understand,[ clarification needed ][ citation needed ] the language is reputed to have been used during the Second Sino-Japanese War during wartime communication as code talkers and in Sino-Vietnamese War for programming military code. [11] [12]
Nanxi is a form of Chinese opera developed in Wenzhou, which is the earliest form of traditional Chinese Opera in the history of China. [13] [ full citation needed ]
Wenzhou was home to the Yongjia School of thought, which emphasized pragmatism and commerce. [14] This philosophy is thought to have been a forerunner to modern capitalism in the region. [15]
There is a popular saying in China that reflects the status of the city of Wenzhou related to the Fengshui of Wenzhou which is "People of Excellence and Land of Wisdom"(人傑地靈), as the local Wenzhounese people are usually described in China as the people of excellence and the city of Wenzhou is usually praised as the city of wisdom. [16] [17] [18]
In the early days of economic reforms, local Wenzhounese took the lead in China in developing a commodity economy, household industries and specialized markets. Many thousands of people and families were engaged in household manufacturing to develop individual and private economy (private enterprise). Up till now, Wenzhou has a total of 240,000 individually owned commercial and industrial units and 130,000 private enterprises of which 180 are group companies, 4 among China's top 500 enterprises and 36 among national 500 top private enterprises. There are 27 national production bases such as "China’s Shoes Capital" and "China’s Capital of Electrical Equipment", China's 40 famous trademarks and China's famous-brand products and 67 national inspection-exempt products in the city. The development of private economy in Wenzhou has created the "Wenzhou Economic Model", which inspires the modernization drive in China.
As of 2010 [update] , 650,300 people in Wenzhou hold a college degree; 1,150,400 people hold a high school degree; 3,344,400 people hold a middle school degree; 2,679,900 people hold an elementary school degree. In every 100,000 people in Wenzhou, 7128 people hold a college degree; 12611 people hold a high school degree; 36663 people hold a middle school degree and 29379 people hold an elementary school degree. The population of illiterate people in Wenzhou is 645,100, which is 7.07% of its whole population. [19] [20]
At the time of the 2010 Chinese census, 3,039,500 people lived in Wenzhou's city proper; [21] the area under its jurisdiction (which includes two satellite cities and six counties) held a population of 9,122,100 of which 31.16% are non-local residents from outside of Wenzhou. [22]
There are around 1.7 million Wenzhounese people living in other parts of the country. In major cities such as Beijing or Shanghai there are "Zhejiang villages", enclaves where people from Wenzhou reside and do business. [23]
In 2010, an analysis conducted by the CESNUR and the University of Turin on the 4,000-strong Chinese community of Turin showed that at that time, 48% of this community was women and 30%, minors. Most of the Chinese in Italy—and virtually all of the Turin community—hail from the southeastern Chinese province of Zhejiang, primarily the city of Wenzhou. [2] The community in Turin is younger than other Chinese settlements in Italy, and for this reason it depends as a branch of the community of Milan. [24] Approximately 70% of the Chinese in Turin work in restaurant activity, and more than 20% work in commercial activity. [25]
Prato, Tuscany has the largest concentration of Chinese people in Italy, and all of Europe. It has the second largest population of Chinese people overall in Italy, after Milan. [26]
The Netherlands currently has the third largest population of Wenzhounese in Europe.
About 70% of the Chinese people in Spain are from Wenzhou or Qingtian. [4]
Wenzhou people in the United States are mostly concentrated on the East Coast, particularly around the New York City metropolitan area. Many Wenzhou people are owners of Chinese restaurants. They are the second largest group of Chinese undocumented immigrants in the United States, after Fuzhounese people. The total Wenzhou population in the US was estimated to be around 250,000 in 2016.
Japan was the destination for many Wenzhounese migrants in the beginning of the 20th century, however many of them returned following the rise of anti-foreign sentiment and ultimately the outbreak of the second Sino-Japanese War.
Zhejiang is an eastern coastal province of the People's Republic of China. Its capital and largest city is Hangzhou, and other notable cities include Ningbo and Wenzhou. Zhejiang is bordered by Jiangsu and Shanghai to the north, Anhui to the northwest, Jiangxi to the west and Fujian to the south. To the east is the East China Sea, beyond which lies the Ryukyu Islands. The population of Zhejiang stands at 64.6 million, the 8th largest in China. It has been called "the backbone of China" because it is a major driving force in the Chinese economy and being the birthplace of several notable people, including the Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek and entrepreneur Jack Ma. Zhejiang consists of 90 counties.
Wenzhou is a prefecture-level city in China's Zhejiang province. Wenzhou is located at the extreme southeast of Zhejiang, bordering Lishui to the west, Taizhou to the north, and the province of Fujian to the south. The area consists of mostly mountainous terrain, as well as hundreds of islands off the East China Sea coast, which is nearly 355 kilometres in length. It is said that the city's land is 70% mountains, 20% farmland, and 10% water. At the time of the 2010 Chinese census, 3,039,500 people lived in Wenzhou's urban area. The greater Wenzhou prefecture, which also includes three satellite cities and six counties, had a population totalling 9,122,100, of which 31.16% are residents originally from outside of Wenzhou.
Wu is a major group of Sinitic languages spoken primarily in Shanghai, Zhejiang Province, and the part of Jiangsu Province south of the Yangtze River, which makes up the cultural region of Wu. Speakers of various Wu languages sometimes labelled their mother tongue as Shanghainese when introduced to foreigners. The Suzhou dialect was the prestige dialect of Wu as of the 19th century, but had been replaced in status by Shanghainese by the turn of the 20th century. The languages of Northern Wu are mutually intelligible with each other, while those of Southern Wu are not.
The Han Chinese people can be defined into subgroups based on linguistic, cultural, ethnic, genetic, and regional features. The terminology used in Mandarin to describe the groups is: "minxi", used in mainland China or "zuqun", used in Taiwan. No Han subgroup is recognized as one of People's Republic of China's 56 official ethnic groups, in Taiwan only three subgroups, Hoklo, Hakka and Waishengren are recognized.
The Sinitic languages, often synonymous with the Chinese languages, are a group of East Asian analytic languages that constitute a major branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. It is frequently proposed that there is a primary split between the Sinitic languages and the rest of the family. This view is rejected by some researchers but has found phylogenetic support among others. The Macro-Bai languages, whose classification is difficult, may be an offshoot of Old Chinese and thus Sinitic; otherwise, Sinitic is defined only by the many varieties of Chinese unified by a shared historical background, and usage of the term "Sinitic" may reflect the linguistic view that Chinese constitutes a family of distinct languages, rather than variants of a single language.
Ouhai District is a district of Wenzhou, Zhejiang. It is an outlying district of Wenzhou urban area.
Yueqing is a county-level city under the administration of Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, in eastern China. It lies on the coast of the East China Sea, by the Yueqing Bay. Much of the Yandang Mountains lie in Yueqing.
Yongjia County is a county in Wenzhou in the southeast of Zhejiang province, People's Republic of China, located 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) north of the city proper of Wenzhou city, which administers the county. The Nanxi River Scenic Area is located within this county, and the river has been nominated on the tentative list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
Pingyang County is a county in the prefecture-level city of Wenzhou, located along the southern coast of Zhejiang province, China. There are two main cities with many surrounding villages in Pingyang. The two main settlements are called Aojiang and Kunyang. Aojiang is located ten minutes outside of Kunyang and the various villages and area's that are also classified as part of Pingyang county extend for about a 1-hour radius.
Wenzhounese, also known as Oujiang, Tong Au or Au Nyü, is the language spoken in Wenzhou, the southern prefecture of Zhejiang, China. It is the most divergent division of Wu Chinese, with little to no mutual intelligibility with other Wu dialects or any other variety of Chinese. It features noticeable elements in common with Min Chinese, which is spoken to the south in Fujian. Oujiang is sometimes used as the broader term, and Wenzhou for Wenzhounese proper in a narrow sense.
The Chinese Mathematical Society is an academic organization for Chinese mathematicians, with the official website www.cms.org.cn. It is a member of China Association of Science and Technology.
Wenzhou University is a comprehensive public university in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, China.
The Wu Chinese people, also known as Wuyue people, Jiang-Zhe people (江浙民系) or San Kiang (三江), are a major subgroup of the Han Chinese. They are a Wu Chinese-speaking people who hail from southern Jiangsu Province, the entirety of the city of Shanghai and all of Zhejiang Province, as well as smaller populations in Xuancheng prefecture-level city in southern Anhui Province, Shangrao, Guangfeng and Yushan counties of northeastern Jiangxi Province and some parts of Pucheng County in northern Fujian Province.
Ou opera, originally known as Wenzhou luantan or Yongjia luantan, is a regional form of Chinese opera from Yongjia County, Wenzhou in southeastern Zhejiang province. In addition to Wenzhou and parts of neighboring Lishui and Taizhou, it is also influential in parts of northern Fujian and northeastern Jiangxi.
Romanisation of the Wenzhou dialect of Wu Chinese, part of the greater Ōu grouping of Wu dialects centred on the city, refers to the use of the Latin alphabet to represent the sounds of the dialect group.
The Zhejiang Wenzhou High School (simplified Chinese: 浙江省温州中学; traditional Chinese: 浙江省溫州中學; pinyin: zhè jiāng shěng wēn zhōu zhōng xué ), known colloquially as Wenyizhong (WZHS), is a public senior high school located in Wenzhou, Zhejiang, China. WZHS is situated in the Ouhai District of Wenzhou, within the Sanyang Wetland Scenic Area. It is one of the first provincial first-class high schools and first provincial first-class ordinary high school model schools established by the Department of Education of Zhejiang Province. Wenzhou High School is known as the "cradle of mathematicians" for educating many famous mathematicians, such as Su Buqing and Gu Chaohao. Among the best schools in China in 2015, Zhejiang Wenzhou High School is ranked 46.
She or Shehua is an unclassified Sinitic language spoken by the She people of Southeastern China. It is also called Shanha, San-hak (山哈) or Shanhahua (山哈话). She speakers are located mainly in Fujian and Zhejiang provinces of Southeastern China, with smaller numbers of speakers in a few locations of Jiangxi, Guangdong and Anhui provinces.
Longgang is a county-level city of Zhejiang, China. As of 2018, its population was 378,000, spread across 183.99 km2 (71.04 sq mi) divided into 14 neighborhoods, 22 residential areas, and 171 villages. Longgang is administered as a part of the prefecture-level city of Wenzhou, whose downtown is about 70 kilometers (43 mi) away.
Dihua Jiang is a Chinese-born American mathematician. He is a professor of mathematics at the University of Minnesota working in number theory, automorphic forms, and the Langlands program.
Jinxiang is a town under the jurisdiction of Cangnan County, Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, People's Republic of China, bordered by the East China Sea, located at the junction of Zhejiang and Fujian, with an area of 43.55 square kilometers. Jinxiang dialect is spoken mainly in the town, and the "Man" dialects and Minnan dialects are spoken in some rural areas. Jinxiang is surrounded by mountains on three sides and the sea outside the mountains. It is originally a rocky reef area made of coastal sand and alluvial soil.
[...] la co-munità di Torino, per via delle sua origine recente, pare per molti versi essere una propaggine di quella decisa-mente più ricca e stratificata di Milano.