Baisha (;

Taishanese Taishanese (), alternatively romanized in Cantonese as Toishanese or Toisanese, in local dialect as Hoisanese or Hoisanwa, is a Yue Chinese language native to Taishan, Guangdong. Even though they are related, Taishanese has little mutual i ...

: Bak-sa) is a town of

Taishan __NOTOC__ Taishan may refer to: *Mount Tai Mount Tai () is a mountain of historical and cultural significance located north of the city of Tai'an. It is the highest point in Shandong province, China. The tallest peak is the ''Jade Emperor Peak ...

Guangdong ) means "wide" or "vast", and has been associated with the region since the creation of Guang Prefecture in AD 226. The name "''Guang''" ultimately came from Guangxin ( zh, labels=no, first=t, t= , s=广信), an outpost established in Han dynasty ...

province. , it has two residential communities and 18 villages under its administration. As of 2024, Baisha has a population of 90,410 residing in an area of .

History

Baisha town was the ancestral home of many of the first

Chinese Canadians Chinese Canadians are Canadians of full or partial Chinese people, Chinese ancestry, which includes both naturalized Chinese immigrants and Canadian-born Chinese. They comprise a subgroup of East Asian Canadians which is a further subgroup of ...

. Their descendants live all over Canada, and used to predominate before the 1980s in the Chinatowns of Victoria, Vancouver, Calgary, Banff and Edmonton, and US West Coast cities such as

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

and

Seattle Seattle ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the 18th-most populous city in the United States. The city is the cou ...

Economy

Baisha Town is one of the few regions in northern

province where illegal rare earth mines were operating. Baisha Town is rich in rare earth minerals such as

dysprosium Dysprosium is a chemical element; it has symbol Dy and atomic number 66. It is a rare-earth element in the lanthanide series with a metallic silver luster. Dysprosium is never found in nature as a free element, though, like other lanthanides, it ...

Dialect

The Baisha variant of

is fading amongst the descendants of Canadian-Chinese, as

Cantonese Cantonese is the traditional prestige variety of Yue Chinese, a Sinitic language belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family. It originated in the city of Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton) and its surrounding Pearl River Delta. While th ...

and

Mandarin Mandarin or The Mandarin may refer to: Language * Mandarin Chinese, branch of Chinese originally spoken in northern parts of the country ** Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Mandarin, the official language of China ** Taiwanese Mandarin, Stand ...

become more dominant. Based on observations of Chinese-Canadian elders living in Edmonton between 1980 and 2005, it would seem that the Taishan language spoken in Baisha in the mid-20th century differed somewhat from that spoken in Taicheng (Hoiseng in the Hoisan language, 台城), the county seat of Taishan (Hoisan, 台山县). Indeed, the pronunciation was more or less the same as that of people living across the river in the next county,

Kaiping Kaiping (), postal map romanization, alternately romanization of Chinese, romanized in Cantonese as Hoiping, in local dialect as Hoihen, is a county-level city in Guangdong provinces of China, Province, China. It is located in the western secti ...

(Hoiping in the Toisanese language, 开平). One notable difference can be seen in the shift of certain vowel sounds, as follows: Besides the differences in some vowel sounds, the consonant of

is usually realized as , and as .

References

Taishan, Guangdong Towns in Guangdong {{Guangdong-geo-stub