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S. F. BALFOUR
The Tanka or the Tan people are the Cantonese-speaking fishing population. The word Tan is a proper name and dictionaries define it as follows:
"Tan is the name of a people. They are held to be a branch of the Man tribe. They live in boats along the coast of Fukien and Kwangtung making fishing their livelihood. They are pearl divers. Since the T'ang dynasty (A.D. 618) they have been counted by able-bodied males for purposes of taxation. In the year 1618 they were classified according to families, headmen were appointed among them and anchorages in the rivers were set apart for them. A yearly tax of fishing produce was collected.”
In 1723 an imperial edit was passed allowing them all the privileges of ordinary Chinese citizens, except the right to compete in the public examinations which they never obtained.
Let us now pass to the Hoklo. The word Hok is a dialect variation of Fukien and the Hoklo are the Fukienese fishing people of our region, but there is another term for them always used in literature, Man. We have already seen that the Tanka are considered a branch of the Man tribe. The word is very ancient and is used synonymously for "barbarian" or "uncouth". From the name alone you can judge that the Hoklo were once considered by the Chinese as barbarians.
The Punti are the Cantonese-speaking peasants. The word means "native to the country" and it is a weak adjective of the type used by one man to describe himself in relation to a different person. It therefore gives no clue to the origin of the people bearing it. They themselves claim to be of pure Chinese stock and to have colonised the province of Kwangtung from North China, and they refer to themselves as men of T'ang, meaning the T'ang dynasty. In many cases they can trace their ancestry back to Chinese settlers of northern stock, though there is no record of any arriving in the region earlier than the Sung dynasty (A.D. 960).
The word Hakka means the "stranger people", it is used to describe the peasants of a different dialect to Cantonese who have
In the topographies for instance Man is used for Hok-lo.