The Boat Dwellers, also known as Shuishangren (; "people living on the water") or Boat People, or the Tankas, are an unrecognized ethnic group in China who traditionally lived on boats and junks in coastal parts of China's Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian, Hainan, Zhejiang, cities along Yangtze river, as well as Hong Kong, and Macau. The Boat Dwellers are referred to with other names outside of Guangdong.
Though many now live onshore, some from the older generations still live on their boats and pursue their traditional livelihood of fishing.
The origins of the Boat Dwellers can be traced back to the native ethnic minorities of southern China known historically as the Baiyue, who may have taken refuge on the sea and gradually assimilated into Han Chinese culture. However, they have preserved many of their native traditions not found in Han culture. A small number of Boat Dwellers also live in parts of Vietnam. There they are called Dan () and are classified as a subgroup of the Ngái ethnicity.
Historically, the Boat Dwellers were considered outcasts. Since they lived by or on the sea, they were sometimes referred to as "sea gypsies" by both Chinese and British.
Etymology and terminology According to official Liu Zongyuan (773–819) of the Tang dynasty, there were Boat Dweller people settled in the boats of today's Guangdong Province and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
The term "Tanka" (蜑家) may originate from tan (Cantonese: "egg") and ka (Cantonese: "family" or "people"), although another possible etymology is tank ("junk" or "large boat") rather than tan. "Tanka" is now considered derogatoryFarewell to Peasant China: Rural Urbanization and Social Change in ... – Page 75 Gregory Eliyu Guldin – 1997 "In Dongji hamlet, most villagers were originally shuishangren (boat people) [Also known in the West by the pejorative label, "Tanka" people. — Ed.] and settled on land only in the 1950s. Per-capita cultivated land averaged only 1 mu ..." and is no longer in common usage. The Boat Dwellers are now referred to in China as "people on/above water" (), or "people of the southern sea" (). No standardised English translation of this term exists. "Boat People" is a commonly used translation, although it may be confused with the similar term for Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong. "Boat Dwellers" was proposed by Dr. Lee Ho Yin of The University of Hong Kong in 1999, and it has been adopted by the Hong Kong Museum of History for its exhibition.Architectural Conservation Office, HKSAR Government. (2008). "Heritage Impact Assessment Report of the Yau Ma Tei Theatre & Red Brick Building", p.5 . (PDF). Retrieved on 2 March 2012.
Both the Boat Dwellers and the Cantonese speak Cantonese. However, Boat Dwellers living in Fujian speak Fuzhounese.
Boat Dwellers have lost their original language. James Hayes, the Hong Kong historian in his 1974 article in the Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, "The Hong Kong Region: Its Place in Traditional Chinese Historiography and Principal Events Since the Establishment of Hsin-an County in 1573" (Oxford University Press, 1977), notes that “By the early 20th century, most boat-dwelling families in Hong Kong spoke Cantonese fluently, and their original dialect had largely disappeared from daily use.”
Maurice Freedman, the social anthropologist on Chinese society, also observed in his 1966 work "Chinese Lineage and Society" that “The Tanka had no written language and their spoken tongue was increasingly indistinguishable from regional Cantonese by the late 19th century.”
The Boat Dwellers of the Yangtze region were called the households (), while Boat Dweller families living on land were simply , a general term for pariahs or outcastes.
In Hong Kong, there were two distinct categories of people based on their way of life: the Hakka and Cantonese lived on land, while the Boat Dwellers and the Hoklo lived on boats and were classified as boat people. Though, like the Boat Dwellers, Cantonese and Hakka sometimes fished for a living, the land fishermen did not mix with the Boat Dweller fishermen. Boat Dweller people were barred from Cantonese and Hakka celebrations.
British reports on Hong Kong described the Boat Dwellers, including Hoklo-speaking Boat Dwellers, living in Hong Kong "since time unknown." The Encyclopedia Americana asserted that Boat Dweller people lived on boats in and around Hong Kong "since prehistoric times."
Geographic distribution The Boat Dwellers live throughout China, including places such as:
Zhejiang: Zhoushan Archipelago, Taizhou Bay, Wenzhou Bay, Sanmen Bay, Hangzhou Bay, Xin'an River, Fuchun River, Lanjiang River Fujian: Min River Mouth, Fuqing Bay, Xinghua Bay, Quanzhou Bay, Amoy Bay, Zhangzhou Water Front Guangdong: Jieshi Bay, Honghai Bay, Daya Bay, Dapeng Bay, Zhujiang River Mouth, Leizhou Bay, Lingding Sea, Zhanjiang, Wanshan Archipelago Guangxi: You River Anhui: Xin'an River Jiangxi: Gan River Hainan: Qiongzhou Strait, Sanya Bay Beijing, Jiangsu, Henan, Hubei, Hunan: Grand Canal Shanghai: city river Hong Kong: Kowloon, Hong Kong Island Macau: Macau Bay
Origins
Mythical origins
Some Chinese myths claim that animals were the ancestors of the Barbarians, including the Boat Dweller people. Some ancient Chinese sources claimed that water snakes were the ancestors of the Boat Dwellers, saying that they could last for three days in the water, without breathing air.
Mongol origins After all male Mongols were killed, the few surviving female Mongols became Chinese Boat Dwellers.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_16717803
Baiyue origins in Southern China
The Boat Dwellers are considered by some scholars to be related to other minority peoples of southern China, such as the Yao and Li people (Miao). The Amoy University anthropologist Ling Hui-hsiang wrote his theory of the Fujian Boat Dwellers as descendants of the Baiyue. He claimed that Guangdong and Fujian Boat Dwellers are definitely descended from the old Baiyue peoples, and that they may have been ancestors of the Malay race.
The Boat Dwellers inherited their lifestyle and culture from the original Yue peoples who inhabited Hong Kong during the Neolithic era. After the First Emperor of China conquered Hong Kong, groups from northern and central China moved into the general area of Guangdong, including Hong Kong.
One theory proposes that the ancient Yue inhabitants of southern China are the ancestors of the modern Boat Dwellers. The majority of western academics subscribe to this theory, and use Chinese historical sources. (The ancient Chinese used the term "Yue" to refer to all southern Barbarians.) The Oxford English Dictionary states that the ancestors of the Boat Dwellers were native people.Chinese repository · 1832–1851 (20 vols.). Canton
Samuel Wells Williams · The middle kingdom; a survey of the geography, government ... of the Chinese empire and its inhabitants · 1848. New York
The Westminster gazette · 1893–1928. London [England]: J. Marshall
http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/197535
The ancestors of the Boat Dwellers were pushed to the southern coast by Chinese peasants who took over their land.
During the British colonial era in Hong Kong, the Boat Dwellers were considered a separate ethnic group from the Punti ("locals"), Hakka, and Hoklo.
The Boat Dwellers have been compared to the She people by some historians, as both are ethnic minorities descended from natives of Southern China who now practice Han Chinese culture.
Yao connections
Chinese scholars and gazettes described the Boat Dwellers as a "Yao" tribe, with some other sources noting that "Tan" people lived at Lantau, and other sources saying "Yao" people lived there. As a result, they refused to obey the salt monopoly of the Song dynasty (Sung dynasty; 960–1276/1279) government. The county gazetteer of Sun On in 1729 described the Boat Dwellers as "Yao barbarians."
In modern times, the Boat Dwellers claim to be ordinary Chinese who happen to fish for a living, and speak the local dialect.
Historiography Some southern Chinese historic views of the Boat Dwellers were that they were a separate aboriginal ethnic group, rather than a Han Chinese subgroup. Chinese Imperial records also claim that the Boat Dwellers were descendants of aboriginals. Boat Dwellers were also called "sea gypsies" ().
The Boat Dwellers were regarded as Yueh and not Chinese, and were divided into three classifications in the 12th century, "the fish-Tan, the oyster-Tan, and the wood-Tan," based on what they did for a living.
The three groups of Punti, Hakka, and Hoklo, all of whom spoke different Chinese dialects, despised and fought each other during the late Qing dynasty. However, they were all united in their overwhelming hatred for the Boat Dwellers, since the aboriginals of Southern China were the ancestors of the Boat Dwellers. The Cantonese Punti had displaced the indigenous Boat Dwellers after they began conquering southern China.
The Nankai University of Tianjin published the Nankai social and economic quarterly, Volume 9 in 1936, and it referred to the Boat Dwellers as aboriginal descendants before Chinese assimilation. The scholar Jacques Gernet also wrote that the Boat Dwellers were aboriginals known as pirates (haidao), which hindered Qing dynasty attempts to assert control in Guangdong.
Scholarly opinions on Baiyue connection The most widely held theory is that the Boat Dwellers are the descendants of the native Yue inhabitants of Guangdong before the Han Cantonese moved in. The theory states that the Yue peoples inhabited the region at the time of the Chinese conquest when they were either absorbed or expelled to southern regions. The Boat Dwellers, according to this theory, are descended from an outcast Yue tribe who preserved their separate culture.
Regarding the Fujian Minyue kingdom era Boat Dwellers it is suggested that in the southeast coastal regions of China, there were many sea nomads during the Neolithic era and they may have spoken ancestral Austronesian languages, and were skilled seafarers. In fact, there is evidence that an Austronesian language was still spoken in Fujian as late as 620 AD. Some therefore believe that the Boat Dwellers were Austronesians who could be more closely related to other Austronesian groups such as Filipinos, Javanese, or Balinese.
Eugene Newton Anderson in 1970 claimed that there was no evidence for any of the conjectures put forward by scholars on the Boat Dwellers' origins, citing Chen Xujing, who stated that "to what tribe or race they once belonged or were once akin to is still unknown".
Some researchers say the origin of the Boat Dwellers is multifaceted, with some of them having native Yueh ancestors and others having ancestors from other places.
A minority of scholars claim that the Boat Dwellers and the Han Cantonese are both descended from people indigenous to the region.
Genetics Fujian Boat Dwellers have customs similar to Daic and Austronesian peoples. They have a closer genetic affinity with Daic populations than Han Chinese in paternal lineages, but are closely clustered with southern Han populations (such as Hakka and Teochew) in maternal lineages. It is hypothesized that the Fujian Boat Dwellers mainly originate from the ancient indigenous Daic people and have only limited gene flows from Han Chinese populations.