Tanka people

Mythical origins

Some Chinese myths claim that animals were the ancestors of the Barbarians,^{[definition needed]} including the Boat Dweller people.^[26][27] 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.^[28]

Baiyue connection and 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).^{[29][better source needed]} 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.^[30] The Tanka inherited their lifestyle and culture from the original Yue peoples who inhabited Hong Kong during the Neolithic era.^[31] 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.^[32]

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.)^[33][34] The Oxford English Dictionary states that the ancestors of the Boat Dwellers were native people.^[35][36]

The ancestors of the Boat Dwellers were pushed to the southern coast by Chinese peasants who took over their land.^[37][38]

During the British colonial era in Hong Kong, the Tanka were considered a separate ethnic group from the Punti ("locals"), Hakka, and Hoklo.^[39]

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.^[40]

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.^[43] Chinese Imperial records also claim that the Boat Dwellers were descendants of aboriginals.^[44] Tanka were also called "sea gypsies" (海上吉普賽人).^[11]

The Boat Dwellers were regarded as Yueh and not Chinese, they were divided into three classifications, "the fish-Tan, the oyster-Tan, and the wood-Tan" in the 12th century, based on what they did for a living.^[45][46]

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.^[47] The Cantonese Punti had displaced the indigenous Boat Dwellers after they began conquering southern China.^[48]

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.^[49] 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.^[50]

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.^[51] 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.^[52]

Regarding the Fujian Minyue 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.^[53] In fact, there is evidence that an Austronesian language was still spoken in Fujian as late as 620 AD.^[54] 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.^{[citation needed]}

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,^[who?] who stated that "to what tribe or race they once belonged or were once akin to is still unknown".^[55]

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.^[56]

A minority of scholars claim that the Boat Dwellers and the Han Cantonese are both descended from people indigenous to the region.^[57]

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.^[58]

Another study on the Boat Dwellers concluded that the Tanka people not only had a close genetic relationship with both northern Han and ancient Yellow River basin millet farmers but also possessed more southern East Asian ancestry related to Austronesian, Kra-Dai and Hmong-Mien people compared to southern Han. Boat Dweller people had their own unique genetic structure, but kept a close relationship with geographically close southern Han Chinese populations. The results supported the claim that the Boat Dweller people arose from the admixture between southward migration Han Chinese and southern indigenous people.^[59]

Sinicisation

The Song dynasty engaged in extensive sinicisation of the region with Han people.^[60] After many years of sinicisation and assimilation, the Tanka now identify as Han Chinese, though they also have non-Han ancestry from the natives of Southern China.^[61] The Cantonese would often buy fish from the Tanka.^[62] In some inland regions, the Tanka accounted for half of the total population.^[63] The Tanka of Quanzhou were registered as barbarian households.^[64]

Ming dynasty

The Tanka boat population were not registered into the national census as they were of outcast status, with an official imperial edict declaring them untouchable.^{[65][better source needed]}

Macau and Portuguese rule

Main articles: Macau, History of Macau, and Macanese people

When the Portuguese arrived at Macau, enslaved women from Goa (part of Portuguese India), Siam, Indochina, and Malaya became their wives.^[66] However, Tanka people also mixed and married with the Portuguese, though many other Chinese women did not.^[67] This is likely because the lower-class Tanka people were less tightly bound by expectations prohibiting exogamy than higher-class people were.^[68][69] Some of the Tankas' descendants became Macanese people.

Tanka people would also supply fish for the Portuguese, as they did for the Cantonese, an activity which is mentioned in a poem by Chinese poet Wu Li.^{[70][71][72][73]}

Some Tanka children were kidnapped and enslaved by Portuguese raiders.^[74]

Literature in Macau was written about love affairs and marriage between the Tanka women and Portuguese men, like "A-Chan, A Tancareira", by Henrique de Senna Fernandes.^{[75][76][77][78]}

Qing dynasty

Tanka people mostly worked as fishermen and tended to gather at some bays. Some built markets or villages on the shore, while others continued to live on their junks or boats. They claimed to be Han Chinese.^[79]

The Qing edict said "Cantonese people regard the Dan households as being of the mean class (beijian zhi) and do not allow them to settle on shore. The Dan households, for their part, dare not struggle with the common people", this edict was issued in 1729.^[80]

As Hong Kong developed, some of the fishing grounds in Hong Kong became badly polluted or were reclaimed, and so became land. Those Tankas who only own small boats and cannot fish far out to sea are forced to stay inshore in bays, gathering together like floating villages.^[81]

Modern China

Tanka were among the many people that remained in Nanjing in December 1939 before the Japanese massacred the population.^[83]

During the intensive land reclamation efforts around the islands of Shanghai in the late 1960s, many Tanka were settled on Hengsha Island and organised as fishing brigades.^[84]

British Hong Kong

In 1937, Walter Schofield, then a Cadet Officer in the Hong Kong Civil Service, wrote that at that time the Tankas were "boat-people [who sometimes lived] in boats hauled ashore, or in more or less boat-shaped huts, as at Shau Kei Wan and Tai O". They mainly lived at the harbours at Cheung Chau, Aberdeen, Tai O, Po Toi, Kau Sai Chau and Yau Ma Tei.^[85]

Many Tanka women worked as prostitutes to British sailors, and Tankas assisted the British in their military actions around Hong Kong.^[86] The Tanka also assisted the Europeans with supplies.^[87][88] Due to their marginal position in Chinese society, and the fact that they lacked access to many of the privileges that societal integration could afford them, Tanka people were not as tightly bound by social pressure and Confucian ethics as other ethnic groups when interacting with foreigners. In many cases, closeness with foreigners could serve as a "ladder to financial security, if not respectability," especially for women, many of whom became sex workers.^[89]

Other Chinese prostitutes were afraid of serving Westerners since they looked strange to them, but the Tanka prostitutes freely mingled with Western men.^[90] Tanka people were already ostracized from the Cantonese community, and the perception of women as prostitutes compounded this. Tanka women were criticized as "low-class" and rude, and were nicknamed "saltwater girls" (ham sui mui in Cantonese).^{[91][92][93][94]} Stereotypes about Tanka women were so common among Chinese people in Canton that, during the Republican era, the Chinese government inflated their count of prostitutes by assuming large numbers of Tanka women were prostitutes without evidence.^[95][96]

Despite the negative perspective of them, the brothels run by Tanka prostitutes were reportedly very well kept and tidy.^[97]

Some Tanka women who worked as prostitutes for foreigners also kept a "nursery" of Tanka girls in order to export them for prostitution work in overseas Chinese communities, such as in Australia or America, or to serve as concubines.^[98] In 1882, a report ("Correspondence respecting the alleged existence of Chinese slavery in Hong Kong: presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty") was presented to the English Parliament concerning the existence of slavery in Hong Kong, of which many were Tanka girls serving as prostitutes or mistresses to Westerners.^{[citation needed]}

Ernest John Eitel claimed in 1895 that all "half-caste" people in Hong Kong were descended exclusively from Europeans' relationships with Tanka women, rather than Chinese women. Though this claim is somewhat historically supported, it has also been criticized as a "myth" spread by other Chinese peoples to express xenophobia towards Hong Kong's Eurasian community.^{[89][99][100][101][102]}

During British rule some special schools were created for the Tanka.^[103] In 1962 a typhoon struck boats belonging to the Tanka, likely including Hoklo-speaking Tanka mistaken for being Hoklo, destroying hundreds.^[20][21][22]

During the 1970s the number of Tanka living on boats was reported to be shrinking.^{[104][105][106]}

Shanghai

Tanka women also worked as prostitutes in Shanghai, where they were grouped separately from the Cantonese prostitutes. They continued to live on boats.^[107]