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120-611: Kumemura ( 久米村 , Okinawan : Kuninda ; Middle Chinese : Kjú-méi ts'won ) was an Okinawan community of scholars, bureaucrats, and diplomats in the port city of Naha near the royal capital of Shuri , which was a center of culture and learning during the time of the Ryukyu Kingdom . The people of Kumemura, traditionally believed to all be descendants of the Chinese immigrants who first settled there in 1392, came to form an important and aristocratic class of scholar-bureaucrats ,

240-620: A humid subtropical climate (Köppen: Cfa ) influenced by the East Asian monsoon ; the summers are long, very hot and humid, and the winters are short, mild and dry. In most years, torrential rain occurs during the monsoon in the second half of May. Fuzhou is also liable to typhoons in late summer and early autumn. The monthly 24-hour average temperature ranges from 11.4 °C (52.5 °F) in January to 29.4 °C (84.9 °F) in July, while

360-469: A Chinese geographical treatise published in the 9th century, says that Fuzhou's name came from Mount Futo a mountain northwest of the city. The mountain's name was then combined with - zhou , meaning "settlement" or "prefecture", in a manner similar to many other Chinese cities. During the Warring States period , the area of Fuzhou was sometimes referred to as Ye ( Chinese : 冶 ), and Fuzhou

480-473: A Japanese landing force on May 13, 1938. The fall of Amoy instantly threatened the security of Fuzhou. On May 23, Japanese ships bombarded Mei-Hua, Huang-chi and Pei-Chiao while Japanese planes continued to harass Chinese forces. Between May 31 and June 1, Chinese gunboats Fu-Ning , Chen-Ning and Suming defending the blockade line in the estuary of the Min River were successively bombed and sunk. Meanwhile,

600-579: A campaign of both passive and active Sinification. The fall of the Ming dynasty in 1644 to the Manchu Qing dynasty , however, brought with it a cultural dilemma for the people of Kumemura who, though many generations removed from their Chinese ancestors, still felt very close ties to that country. The new Manchu government demanded that all Chinese subjects adopt certain Manchu customs and dress, including

720-556: A distinction between the terminal form ( 終止形 ) and the attributive form ( 連体形 ), the genitive function of が ga (lost in the Shuri dialect), the nominative function of ぬ nu (cf. Japanese: の no ), as well as honorific/plain distribution of ga and nu in nominative use. Classical Japanese: 書く kaku One etymology given for the -un and -uru endings is the continuative form suffixed with uri ("to be; to exist", cf. Classical Japanese : 居り wori ): -un developed from

840-404: A family of his own. One night, he dreamt of a silver-haired elderly man, who told him that he has very good fortune, the young man then asked him what he can do to obtain good luck, the elderly man then floated away. That's when the young man notice the setting moon, and after the moon sank under the clouds, rose from the east a golden sun, he was inspired by the dream and invented oyster cake, which

960-672: A few years of their lives studying in Fuzhou; a few traveled to Beijing , and beginning in the 17th century, some studied in Japan, in Kagoshima . Only a few hundred Ryukyuans were ever resident in Fuzhou at a time, and only eight at the imperial university in Beijing, where they were allowed to stay for three years, or up to eight in exceptional circumstances. Education inevitably led to either Chinese Imperial examinations taken in Beijing, or

1080-532: A formal audience at the age of fifteen. At this point they would be formally added to the register of yukatchu scholar-bureaucrats and could begin their government careers. One of the defining features of the scholar community at Kumemura, and its relationship with China was the system by which students and scholars of Kumemura spent periods in Fuzhou , both as students and as members of tributary missions. Most if not all students and scholar-bureaucrats spent at least

1200-497: A kind of mildly savory pastry), Buddha Jumps over the Wall (佛跳墙), and pork floss ( 肉鬆 ). Many of these street food dishes have a long history and their own local legend; an example would be the oyster cake, according Fuzhou local folklore, in the early Qing dynasty, there was a young man who inherited his father's dim sum business, despite all his hard works, he only managed to earn enough money to feed himself, not enough to raise and feed

1320-599: A less rigorous set of examinations underwent in Shuri. As in China, these exams were the gateway to placement in the government bureaucracy. In addition to serving as bureaucrats in Shuri, many took positions as teachers in Kumemura or diplomats. The area encompassing Kumemura and nearby Naha and Shuri was, metaphorically, a cultural island. Descendants of the original Chinese immigrants studied alongside Ryukyuan youths, and any number of rites, rituals, and celebrations, along with

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1440-517: A major dramatic surge in its refined culture and educational institutions throughout the Song dynasty as Fuzhou produced 10 Fuzhounese zhuangyuan scholars (scholar who is ranked the top first place in the imperial examinations), a large number for a city in the country during that dynasty. The "Hualin" Temple ( 華林寺 , not to be confused with the temple of the same name in Guangzhou ), founded in 964,

1560-416: A method of dying clothes. And before alveolar and alveolo-palatal consonants, it becomes a syllabic alveolar nasal /n̩/ , as in /kaɴda/ [kan̩da] kanda "vine". In some varieties, it instead becomes a syllabic uvular nasal [ɴ̩] . Elsewhere, its exact realization remains unspecified, and it may vary depending on the first sound of the next word or morpheme. In isolation and at the end of utterances, it

1680-419: A mixed sweet and sour taste. Soup, served as an indispensable dish in meals, is cooked in various ways with local seasonal fresh vegetables and seafood and often added with local cooking wine ( 福建老酒 ). Fuzhou is famous for its street food and snacks. Some notable street food dishes include Fuzhou fish balls ( 魚丸 ), meat-pastry dumplings ( 扁肉燕 ), oyster cake (海蛎饼), rice scroll soup ( 鼎邊糊 ), guong bian ( 光餅 ;

1800-544: A myriad of other elements of Chinese culture, were largely unknown outside of this area. This generated something of a schism within the country, as Chinese culture came to dominate life in the region immediately around the capital, while the rest of the kingdom remained devoted to traditional, native beliefs and ways of life. As all the government bureaucrats and officials came from Kumemura and Shuri, policies came to be increasingly guided by Confucian values and ideas, particularly under Shō Shōken and Sai On , widely considered

1920-479: A number of sumptuary laws intended to reduce gratuitous spending; the bureaucratic elite may have been more wealthy than the Ryukyuan peasantry, but they were by most scholarly accounts still quite poor compared to the aristocrats in China and Japan. Over the course of this period, the aristocratic class of Shuri, the anji , gained influence and power, and eclipsed Kumemura. In 1729, the government put an end to

2040-611: A number of people still speak the Okinawan language, most often the elderly. Within Japan, Okinawan is often not seen as a language unto itself but is referred to as the Okinawan dialect ( 沖縄方言 , Okinawa hōgen ) or more specifically the Central and Southern Okinawan dialects ( 沖縄中南部諸方言 , Okinawa Chūnanbu Sho hōgen ) . Okinawan speakers are undergoing language shift as they switch to Japanese, since language use in Okinawa today

2160-603: A process of glottalization of word-initial vowels. Hence, all vowels in Okinawan are predictably glottalized at the beginning of words ( */ame/ → /ʔami/ ami "rain"), save for a few exceptions. High vowel loss or assimilation following this process created a contrast with glottalized approximants and nasal consonants. Compare */uwa/ → /ʔwa/ Q wa "pig" to /wa/ wa "I", or */ine/ → /ʔɴni/ Q nni "rice plant" to */mune/ → /ɴni/ nni "chest". The moraic nasal /N/ has been posited in most descriptions of Okinawan phonology. Like Japanese, /N/ (transcribed using

2280-508: A province or prefecture—and the Fujian area was organized as Minzhong Commandery ( 閩中郡 ). The area seems to have continued mostly independent of Chinese control for the next century. The Han dynasty followed the short-lived Qin, and Emperor Gaozu of Han declared both Minyue and neighboring Nanyue to be autonomous vassal kingdoms. In 202 BC, Emperor Gaozu enfeoffed a leader named Wuzhu ( 無諸 ; Old Chinese : Matya ) as King of Minyue, and

2400-1062: A rich heritage in Fuzhou's Protestant culture. They supported the creation of hospitals and schools, including the Woolston Memorial Hospital , run by the American-trained Hü King Eng . On August 23, 1884, the Battle of Fuzhou broke out between the French Far East Fleet and the Fujian Fleet of the Qing dynasty. As the result, the Fujian Fleet, one of the four Chinese regional fleets, was destroyed completely in Mawei Harbor. On November 8, 1911, revolutionaries staged an uprising in Fuzhou. After an overnight street battle,

2520-526: A stone stele at the Tamaudun mausoleum, dating back to 1501. After the invasion of Okinawa by the Shimazu clan of Satsuma in 1609, Okinawan ceased to be used in official affairs. It was replaced by standard Japanese writing and a form of Classical Chinese writing known as kanbun . Despite this change, Okinawan still continued to prosper in local literature up until the nineteenth century. Following

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2640-423: A subject of a sentence Pronouns are classified the same as nouns, except that pronouns are more broad. Adverbs are classified as an independent, non-conjugating part of speech that cannot become a subject of a sentence and modifies a declinable word (用言; verbs, adverbs, adjectives) that comes after the adverb. There are two main categories to adverbs and several subcategories within each category, as shown in

2760-400: A subject of debate among historians, the kingdom did develop economically in some ways. The anji of Shuri and the yukatchu of Kumemura developed into a semi-wealthy middle class, the economic gap between those in the cities and those in the countryside grew, as did the cities themselves. In 1653, the government forbade anyone from moving their residence to one of the major cities, and imposed

2880-584: A walled city called Ye ( 冶 ; Old Chinese: Lya ; literally: Beautiful) was built. The founding of Ye in 202 BC has become the traditional founding date of the city of Fuzhou. In 110 BC, the armies of Emperor Wu of Han defeated the Minyue kingdom's armies during the Han–Minyue War and annexed its territory and people into China. Many Minyue citizens were forcibly relocated into the Jianghuai area, and

3000-518: Is a Japonic language , derived from Proto-Japonic and is therefore related to Japanese . The split between Old Japanese and the Ryukyuan languages has been estimated to have occurred as early as the 1st century AD to as late as the 12th century AD. Chinese and Japanese characters were first introduced by a Japanese missionary in 1265. Hiragana was a much more popular writing system than kanji ; thus, Okinawan poems were commonly written solely in hiragana or with little kanji. Okinawan became

3120-472: Is also a major city for scientific research, appearing in the global top 50 cities as tracked by the Nature Index . The city is home to several major universities , notably Fuzhou University , one of China's key universities and other public universities, including Fujian Normal University and Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University . The Yuanhe Maps and Records of Prefectures and Counties ,

3240-544: Is also home to many Buddhist monasteries, Taoist temples and Buddhist monks. Apart from mainstream religions, a number of religious worship sites of various local religions are situated in the streets and lanes of Fuzhou. The origins of local religion can be dated back centuries. These diverse religions incorporated elements such as gods and doctrines from other religions and cultures, such as totem worship and traditional legends. For example, Monkey King , originated to monkey worship among local ancients, gradually came to embody

3360-463: Is distinct from the mainstream inland cultures of central China, and in details vary from other areas of the Chinese coast. Besides Mandarin Chinese , the majority local residents of Fuzhou ( Fuzhou people ) also speak Fuzhounese ( 福州話 ), the prestige form of Eastern Min . Min opera , also known as Fuzhou drama, is one of the major operas in Fujian Province. It enjoys popularity in

3480-477: Is far from stable. Okinawans are assimilating and accenting standard Japanese due to the similarity of the two languages, the standardized and centralized education system, the media, business and social contact with mainlanders and previous attempts from Japan to suppress the native languages. Okinawan is still kept alive in popular music, tourist shows and in theaters featuring a local drama called uchinā shibai , which depict local customs and manners. Okinawan

3600-403: Is largely due to the shift to Standard Japanese. Throughout history, Okinawan languages have been treated as dialects of Standard Japanese. For instance, in the 20th century, many schools used "dialect tags" to punish the students who spoke in Okinawan. Consequently, many of the remaining speakers today are choosing not to transmit their languages to younger generations due to the stigmatization of

3720-408: Is narrated by American naval officer, Houghton Freeman. The date is given as October 5, 1944. Fuzhou remained under Japanese control until May 18, 1945, months before the atomic bombings. Following the restoration of Republic control (1946), the administration divisions of Fuzhou were annexed, and administration level was promoted from county-level to city-level officially. Fuzhou was occupied by

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3840-445: Is one of the eight Chinese regional cuisines. Dishes are light but flavorful, with particular emphasis on umami taste , known in Chinese cooking as xianwei (simplified Chinese: 鲜味 ; traditional Chinese: 鮮味 ; pinyin: xiānwèi ), as well as retaining the original flavor of the main ingredients instead of masking them. In Fuzhou cuisine, the taste is light compared to that of some other Chinese cooking styles, and often have

3960-542: Is one of the oldest and surviving wooden structures in China. New city walls were built in 282, 901, 905, and 974, so the city had many layers of walls – more so than the Chinese capital. Emperor Taizong of the Song dynasty ordered the destruction of all the walls in Fuzhou in 978 but new walls were rebuilt later. The latest was built in 1371. During the Southern Song dynasty , Fuzhou became more prosperous; many scholars came to live and work. Among them were Zhu Xi ,

4080-501: Is realized as a velar nasal [ŋ̍] . The Okinawan language was historically written using an admixture of kanji and hiragana . The hiragana syllabary is believed to have first been introduced from mainland Japan to the Ryukyu Kingdom some time during the reign of king Shunten in the early thirteenth century. It is likely that Okinawans were already in contact with hanzi (Chinese characters) due to extensive trade between

4200-517: Is said that there remains an expectation among Okinawans that people from Kume remain more Chinese, or at least different, from the other people of the islands. According to traditional accounts, the community was founded in 1392 when a number of Chinese bureaucrats and craftsmen, under orders from the Ming Chinese Imperial government, traveled to Okinawa from Fujian and settled there. Historian Takashi Uezato, however, writes that it

4320-487: Is unknown exactly when the community was established. He points out that, in any case, Chinese communities in Ryukyu would have grown in the 14th-15th centuries as communities along the south China coast moved southward, and trade expanded between that region and Ryukyu. The three kingdoms of Ryukyu, which would be united within the next thirty years after the traditional date of Kumemura's founding, like many other states in

4440-583: Is unmotivated. Consequently, the existence of /ɸ/ must be regarded as independent of /h/ , even though the two overlap. Barring a few words that resulted from the former change, the aspirate /h/ also arose from the odd lenition of /k/ and /s/ , as well as words loaned from other dialects. Before the glide /j/ and the high vowel /i/ , it is pronounced closer to [ç] , as in Japanese. The plosive consonants /t/ and /k/ historically palatalized and affricated into /t͡ɕ/ before and occasionally following

4560-401: Is white like the moon before being lowered into hot grease and coming out golden as the morning sun. According to the legend, after the young man made a fortune out of his invention and his oyster cake was imitated by many others, which was passed down till this day. another example of a Fuzhou street food with a long history is rice scroll soup, which became popular in Fuzhou in the early part of

4680-474: The yukatchu , who dominated the royal bureaucracy, and served as government officials at home, and as diplomats in relations with China, Japan, and others. The community's special function came to an end in 1879, with Okinawa's formal annexation to Japan, and it has since been geographically absorbed into the prefectural capital of Naha; the area is now known simply as Kume. However, its association with scholarship and culture, or at least with China, remains. It

4800-765: The Chinese heartland . The administrative and economic center of the Fujian area was still the Ye area during the Sui dynasty (581–618). In 725, the city was formally renamed "Fuzhou". Throughout the mid- Tang dynasty , Fuzhou's economic and cultural institutions grew and developed. The later years of the Tang saw a number of political upheavals in the Chinese heartland such as the An Lushan Rebellion and Huang Chao Rebellion, prompting another wave of northerners to immigrate to

4920-422: The Chinese language and educated in the Chinese classics , thus represented a close community of most of the country's most educated people. The original immigrants, and later their descendants, taught the Chinese language and administrative methods and structures, to Ryukyuan officials and others. Many were also considered experts in a variety of skills, such as astronomy, navigation, geomancy , shipbuilding, and

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5040-669: The Meiji Restoration , the Japanese government abolished the domain system and formally annexed the Ryukyu Islands to Japan as the Okinawa Prefecture in 1879. To promote national unity, the government then introduced standard education and opened Japanese-language schools based on the Tokyo dialect . Students were discouraged and chastised for speaking or even writing in the local "dialect", notably through

5160-479: The Min Kingdom in 909. The Wang brothers enticed more immigrants from the north, though their kingdom only survived until 945. In 978, Fuzhou was incorporated into the newly founded Song dynasty , though their control of the mountainous regions was tenuous. Fuzhou prospered during the Tang dynasty. Buddhism was quickly adopted by citizens who quickly built many Buddhist temples in the area. Fuzhou underwent

5280-660: The People's Liberation Army with little resistance on 17 August 1949. In the 1950s, the city was on the front line of the conflict with the KMT in Taiwan , as hostile KMT aircraft frequently bombed the city. The bombing on 20 January 1955 was the most serious one, killing hundreds of people. Fuzhou was also involved in violent mass chaos during the Cultural revolution . Different groups of Red Guards fought with each other using guns on

5400-787: The Qing army surrendered. On November 22, 1933, Eugene Chen and the leaders of the National Revolutionary Army 's 19th Army set up the short-lived People's Revolutionary Government of Republican China . Blockaded by Chiang Kai-shek and left without support from the nearby Soviet Republic of China , the PRGRC collapsed within two months. With the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937 , hostilities commenced in Fujian Province. Xiamen (Amoy) fell to

5520-479: The Ryukyuans who welcomed them, as cultural envoys, bringing civilization to a lesser nation. The immigrants were given tax-free lands on which to build their homes, the community was granted a rice stipend from the government to help support it, and the people of Kumemura soon came to bear great status and prestige in the royal government, though the community as a whole functioned somewhat independently of any of

5640-536: The Shuri – Naha variant is generally recognized as the de facto standard, as it had been used as the official language of the Ryukyu Kingdom since the reign of King Shō Shin (1477–1526). Moreover, as the former capital of Shuri was built around the royal palace, the language used by the royal court became the regional and literary standard, which thus flourished in songs and poems written during that era. Today, most Okinawans speak Okinawan Japanese , although

5760-668: The Yue Kingdom (present-day Zhejiang ) fell to the state of Chu . Han dynasty historian Sima Qian wrote that the surviving members of the Yue royal family fled south to what is now Fujian, where they settled alongside the native Yue people, joining Chinese and Yue culture to create Minyue. The First Emperor of Qin unified ancient China in 221 BC and desired to bring the southern and southeast regions under Chinese rule. The Qin dynasty organized its territory into "Commanderies" (Chinese: 郡 ; pinyin: jùn )—roughly equivalent to

5880-456: The island of Okinawa , as well as in the surrounding islands of Kerama , Kumejima , Tonaki , Aguni and a number of smaller peripheral islands. Central Okinawan distinguishes itself from the speech of Northern Okinawa, which is classified independently as the Kunigami language . Both languages are listed by UNESCO as endangered . Though Okinawan encompasses a number of local dialects,

6000-547: The phonemic and allophonic level. Namely, Okinawan retains the labialized consonants /kʷ/ and /ɡʷ/ which were lost in Late Middle Japanese , possesses a glottal stop /ʔ/ , features a voiceless bilabial fricative /ɸ/ distinct from the aspirate /h/ , and has two distinctive affricates which arose from a number of different sound processes . Additionally, Okinawan lacks the major allophones [t͡s] and [d͡z] found in Japanese, having historically fronted

6120-688: The British Vice-Consul in Fuzhou) involved in aid to the Nationalist resistance to Japanese forces in Fujian Province. As part of Operation Ichi-Go (1944), the last large-scale Japanese offensive in China in World War II, Japanese troops intended to isolate Fuzhou and the Fujian Province corridor to Nationalist forces in western China and the wartime capital of Chongqing. One account of Japanese troops re-taking of Fuzhou city itself

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6240-790: The Central Government. In 1990, Xi Jinping served as the Secretary of the CPC Fuzhou Municipal Committee. He proposed the Fuzhou 3820 Project to establish Fuzhou as the political economic cultural educational transportation and technological center of Fujian Province and the West Coast Economic Zone of the Taiwan Straits. He also planned the development of Fuzhou for the next hundred years. He believed that, with Guangzhou to

6360-480: The Chinese ship Chu-Tai berthed at Nan-Tai was damaged. The Chinese Navy's Harbor Command School, barracks, shipyard, hospital and marine barracks at Ma-Wei were successively bombed. Fuzhou is recorded as having fallen to Japanese forces in 1938. The extent of Japanese command and control of the city of Fuzhou itself as opposed to the port at Mawei and the Min River Estuary is uncertain. By 1941 (5/7),

6480-723: The East Lake and West Lake were constructed in Ye, as well as a canal system. The core of modern Fuzhou grew around these three water systems, though the East and West Lakes no longer exist. In 308, during the War of the Eight Princes at the end of the Jin dynasty, the first large-scale migration of Chinese immigrants moved to the south and southeast of China began, followed by subsequent waves during later periods of warfare or natural disaster in

6600-721: The Fuzhou area and in neighboring parts of Fujian such as the northeast and northwest areas where the Fuzhou language is spoken, as well as in Taiwan and the Malay Archipelago . It became a fixed opera in the early 20th century. There are more than 1,000 plays of Min opera, most of which originate from folk tales, historical novels, or ancient legends, including such traditional plays as "Making Seal", "The Purple Jade Hairpin" and "Switching Fairy Peach with Litchi". The two traditional mainstream religions practiced in Fuzhou are Mahayana Buddhism and Taoism . Traditionally, many people practice both religions simultaneously. The city

6720-627: The Fuzhou current administrative divisions were formed officially, namely, 5 districts and 8 counties. In 1990 and 1994, Fuqing ( Foochow Romanized : Hók-chiăng ) and Changle (Foochow Romanized: Diòng-lŏ̤h ) counties were promoted to county-level cities ; Changle became a district in 2017. Despite these changes, the administrative image of "5 districts and 8 counties" is still held popularly among local residents. Fuzhou's entire area only covers 9.65 percent of Fujian Province. The city of Fuzhou has direct jurisdiction over 6 districts , 1 county-level city , and 6 counties : The culture of Fuzhou

6840-610: The God of Wealth in Fuzhou after the novel Journey to the West was issued in Ming dynasty . As the most popular religion in the Min River Valley, the worship of Lady Linshui is viewed as one of the three most influential local religions in Fujian, the other two being the worship of Mazu and Baosheng Dadi ( 保生大帝 ). Fuzhou cuisine is most notably one of the four traditional cooking styles of Fujian cuisine , which in turn

6960-601: The Japanese government annexed Ryukyu and established Okinawa Prefecture. The prefectural office mainly consisted of people from Kagoshima Prefecture where the Satsuma Domain used to be. This caused the modernization of Okinawa as well as language shift to Japanese. As a result, Japanese became the standard language for administration, education, media, and literature. In 1902, the National Language Research Council ( 国語調査委員会 ) began

7080-474: The Northern Ryukyuan languages. Since the creation of Okinawa Prefecture, Okinawan has been labeled a dialect of Japanese as part of a policy of assimilation. Later, Japanese linguists, such as Tōjō Misao , who studied the Ryukyuan languages argued that they are indeed dialects. This is due to the misconception that Japan is a homogeneous state (one people, one language, one nation), and classifying

7200-560: The Ryukyu Kingdom was colonized by the Satsuma Domain in the south of Japan. However, Satsuma did not fully invade the Ryukyu in fear of colliding with China, which had a stronger trading relationship with the Ryukyu at the time. When Ryukyu was annexed by Japan in 1879, the majority of people on Okinawa Island spoke Okinawan. Within 10 years, the Japanese government began an assimilation policy of Japanization , where Ryukyuan languages were gradually suppressed. The education system

7320-439: The Ryukyu Kingdom and China, Japan and Korea. However, hiragana gained more widespread acceptance throughout the Ryukyu Islands, and most documents and letters were exclusively transcribed using this script, in contrast to in Japan where writing solely in hiragana was considered "women's script". The Omoro Sōshi ( おもろさうし ), a sixteenth-century compilation of songs and poetry, and a few preserved writs of appointments dating from

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7440-662: The Ryukyuan group linguistically. The Yonaguni dialect is very different in phonetics from the other groups but it comes closest to the Yaeyama dialect lexically. Outside Japan, Okinawan is considered a separate language from Japanese. This was first proposed by Basil Hall Chamberlain , who compared the relationship between Okinawan and Japanese to that of the Romance languages . UNESCO has marked it as an endangered language. UNESCO listed six Okinawan language varieties as endangered languages in 2009. The endangerment of Okinawan

7560-458: The Ryukyuan languages as such would discredit this assumption. The present-day official stance of the Japanese government remains that Okinawan is a dialect, and it is common within the Japanese population for it to be called 沖縄方言 ( okinawa hōgen ) or 沖縄弁 ( okinawa-ben ) , which means "Okinawa dialect (of Japanese )". The policy of assimilation, coupled with increased interaction between Japan and Okinawa through media and economics, has led to

7680-535: The Tanshishan Culture ( 曇石山文化 ), from around 3000 BC—have been discovered and excavated in the Fuzhou area. During the Warring States period (c. 475–221 BC), Chinese began referring to the modern Fujian area as Min Yue ( 閩越 ), suggesting that the native inhabitants of the area were a branch of the Yue peoples , a diverse population of non-Chinese tribes who once inhabited most of southern China. In 306 BC,

7800-578: The West since Marco Polo . The Ryukyu Kingdom established an embassy in Fuzhou. In 1839, Lin Zexu , who himself was a Fuzhou native, was appointed by the Daoguang Emperor to enforce the imperial ban on the opium trade in Canton . His unsuccessful actions, however, precipitated the disastrous First Opium War with Great Britain, and Lin, who had become a scapegoat for China's failure in war,

7920-419: The Yue ethnic group was mostly assimilated into the Chinese, causing a sharp decline in Ye's inhabitants. The area was eventually re-organized as a county in 85 BC. During the Three Kingdoms period , southeast China was nominally under the control of Eastern Wu , and the Fuzhou area had a shipyard for the coastal and Yangtze River fleets. In 282, during the Jin dynasty , two artificial lakes known simply as

8040-542: The airport in Changle was built to support the city's expansion towards the sea. On December 13, 1993, a raging fire swept through a textile factory in Fuzhou and claimed the lives of 60 workers. On October 2, 2005, floodwaters from Typhoon Longwang swept away a military school , killing at least 80 paramilitary officers. Fuzhou is located in the northeast coast of Fujian province, connects jointly northwards with Ningde and Nanping, southwards with Quanzhou and Putian, westwards with Sanming respectively. Fuzhou has

8160-578: The annual mean is 20.5 °C (68.9 °F). With monthly percent possible sunshine ranging from 24 percent in March to 54 percent in July, the city receives 1,607 hours of bright sunshine annually. Extremes since 1951 have ranged from −1.9 °C (29 °F) on 25 January 2016 to 41.7 °C (107 °F) on 26 July 2003. Snow is very rare, having covered the ground last times in February 1957, December 1975 and December 1991. See or edit raw graph data . The administrative divisions of Fuzhou have been changed frequently throughout history. From 1983,

8280-441: The biggest chickens in the world. Between 1405 and 1433, a fleet of the Ming Imperial navy under Admiral Zheng He sailed from Fuzhou to the Indian Ocean seven times; on three occasions the fleet landed on the east coast of Africa. Before the last sailing, Zheng erected a stele dedicated to the goddess Tian-Fei (Matsu) near the seaport . The Ming government gave a monopoly over Philippine trade to Fuzhou, which at times

8400-400: The capital, and thus gaining the same opportunities offered those originally from Shuri, but while this benefited individual scholar-bureaucrats, on the whole it only served to accelerate the decline of Kumemura's prestige and power as its formerly uniquely important role in the country's government, education and culture came to be shared, or even taken over, by Shuri. Protests were organized at

8520-407: The chart below, with major allophones presented in parentheses. The only consonant that can occur as a syllable coda is the archiphoneme |n| . Many analyses treat it as an additional phoneme /N/ , the moraic nasal , though it never contrasts with /n/ or /m/ . The consonant system of the Okinawan language is fairly similar to that of standard Japanese, but it does present a few differences on

8640-557: The city and soon set up the first missionary station there. ABCFM was followed by the Methodist Episcopal Missionary Society that was led by Revs. M. C. White and J. D. Collins , who reached Fuzhou in early September 1847. The Church Missionary Society also arrived in the city in May 1850. These three Protestant agencies remained in Fuzhou until the communist revolution in China in the 1950s, leaving

8760-649: The city is recorded as having returned to Nationalist control. The British Consulate in Fuzhou is noted as operational from 1941 to 1944 after the United Kingdom Declaration of War on Japan in December 1941. Western visitors to Fuzhou in the period 1941–1944 include the Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett in 1942 and the British scientist Joseph Needham in May 1944. Both visitors record

8880-535: The community fled to China, both out of a distaste for the idea of joining Japan, and out of fear of Chinese reprisals against Ryukyu for allowing the annexation. At the same time, as part of the wide-reaching reforms of the Meiji Restoration , a public school system was established across Japan; though education was meant to be uniform across the country, exceptions were made in Okinawa, as they were for most Meiji era policies, which were more gradually introduced there. Academies were established in Shuri and Kumemura, and

9000-431: The countryside and reserving this production for the people of Kumemura and other towns. Some townsmen were encouraged to leave the towns for the countryside, to pursue lives as artisans, without any formal loss of status. The Kingdom was dissolved, and Ryukyu became formally annexed to Japan as Okinawa Prefecture in 1879. Kumemura, bearing close ties to China, became a center for anti-Japanese sentiment, and many members of

9120-408: The curriculum based in the Chinese classics was maintained there for a time. By the first years of the 20th century, it is said that Kumemura's traditional scholarship had disappeared. Okinawan language The Okinawan language ( 沖縄口 , ウチナーグチ , Uchināguchi , [ʔut͡ɕinaːɡut͡ɕi] ) or Central Okinawan is a Northern Ryukyuan language spoken primarily in the southern half of

9240-449: The development of Okinawan Japanese , which is a dialect of Japanese influenced by the Okinawan and Kunigami languages. Japanese and Okinawan only share 60% of the same vocabulary, despite both being Japonic languages. Okinawan linguist Seizen Nakasone states that the Ryukyuan languages are in fact groupings of similar dialects. As each community has its own distinct dialect, there is no "one language". Nakasone attributes this diversity to

9360-454: The first becoming a flap in word-medial position, and the second sometimes becoming a plosive in word-initial position. For example, /ɾuː/ rū "dragon" may be strengthened into /duː/ dū , and /hasidu/ hashidu "door" conversely flaps into /hasiɾu/ hashiru . The two sounds do, however, still remain distinct in a number of words and verbal constructions. Okinawan also features a distinctive glottal stop /ʔ/ that historically arose from

9480-611: The glide /j/ and the high vowel /i/ : */kiri/ → /t͡ɕiɾi/ chiri "fog", and */k(i)jora/ → /t͡ɕuɾa/ chura- "beautiful". This change preceded vowel raising, so that instances where /i/ arose from */e/ did not trigger palatalization: */ke/ → /kiː/ kī "hair". Their voiced counterparts /d/ and /ɡ/ underwent the same effect, becoming /d͡ʑ/ under such conditions: */unaɡi/ → /ʔɴnad͡ʑi/ Q nnaji "eel", and */nokoɡiri/ → /nukud͡ʑiɾi/ nukujiri "saw"; but */kaɡeɴ/ → /kaɡiɴ/ kagin "seasoning". Both /t/ and /d/ may or may not also allophonically affricate before

9600-448: The high vowel /u/ , and /ɸ/ does not occur before the rounded vowel /o/ . This suggests that an overlap between /ɸ/ and /h/ exists, and so the contrast in front of other vowels can be denoted through labialization. However, this analysis fails to take account of the fact that Okinawan has not fully undergone the diachronic change */p/ → /ɸ/ → */h/ as in Japanese, and that the suggested clusterization and labialization into */hw/

9720-498: The idea of building a high-speed rail corridor to Taipei . Xi Jinping served as the Secretary of the Fuzhou Municipal Committee for more than six years and lived in Fuzhou for nearly thirteen years, developing a deep affection for the city. When he visited Fuzhou again in 2021, he remarked that Fuzhou could make significant contributions to the great rejuvenation and unification of the Chinese nation, noting that

9840-622: The island from southeast to northwest; the Taoist Tensonbyō temple lay at the north end of the street, while a pair of Tenpigū shrines devoted to Tenpi , Taoist deity of the sea, lay at the south end of the road. During the period when Ryukyu was controlled by the Shimazu clan of Japan (1603-1868), the people of Kumemura came to serve an even more direct role in government and in diplomacy, at least initially. Ryukyu's strong connections to China were crucial for Japan, and were contingent upon China's ignorance of Ryukyu's subordination. Thus,

9960-494: The isolation caused by immobility, citing the story of his mother who wanted to visit the town of Nago but never made the 25 km trip before she died of old age. The contemporary dialects in Ryukyuan language are divided into three large groups: Amami-Okinawa dialects, Miyako-Yaeyama dialects, and the Yonaguni dialect. All of them are mutually unintelligible. Amami is located in the Kagoshima prefecture but it belongs to

10080-407: The king in performing the rituals. For much of the medieval period (c. 1390s to 1609), the port city of Naha was located on a small island called Ukishima, connected to the mainland of Okinawa Island by a narrow causeway called chōkōtei (長虹堤, lit. "long rainbow embankment"); the center of the island was dominated by the walled community of Kumemura. A main thoroughfare, Kume Ōdōri (久米大通り) ran across

10200-482: The king. Native beliefs were seen as primitive, uncivilized, and potentially embarrassing in the eyes of both China and Japan. Thus, the system of noro priestesses was forcibly reduced in prominence, and many royal rituals were made to be performed at the Confucian temple, in a more Chinese manner, or were all but eliminated entirely, transformed into mere gestures by which junior officials would officially represent

10320-400: The language using hiragana with kanji. In any case, no standard or consensus concerning spelling issues has ever been formalized, so discrepancies between modern literary works are common. Technically, they are not syllables, but rather morae . Each mora in Okinawan will consist of one or two kana characters. If two, then a smaller version of kana follows the normal sized kana. In each cell of

10440-572: The language. The Okinawan language is still spoken by communities of Okinawan immigrants in Brazil . The first immigrants from the island of Okinawa to Brazil landed in the Port of Santos in 1908 drawn by the hint of work and farmable land. Once in a new country and far from their homeland, they found themselves in a place where there was no prohibition of their language, allowing them to willingly speak, celebrate and preserve their speech and culture, up to

10560-674: The languages in the past. There have been several revitalization efforts made to reverse this language shift. However, Okinawan is still poorly taught in formal institutions due to the lack of support from the Okinawan Education Council: education in Okinawa is conducted exclusively in Japanese, and children do not study Okinawan as their second language at school. As a result, at least two generations of Okinawans have grown up without any proficiency in their local languages both at home and school. The Okinawan language has five vowels, all of which may be long or short, though

10680-461: The linguistic unification of Japan to Standard Japanese. This caused the linguistic stigmatization of many local varieties in Japan including Okinawan. As the discrimination accelerated, Okinawans themselves started to abandon their languages and shifted to Standard Japanese. Okinawan dialect card , similar to Welsh Not in Wales, were adopted in Okinawa, Japan. Under American administration, there

10800-469: The mid vowel /e/ , though this pronunciation is increasingly rare. Similarly, the fricative consonant /s/ palatalizes into [ɕ] before the glide /j/ and the vowel /i/ , including when /i/ historically derives from /e/ : */sekai/ → [ɕikeː] shikē "world". It may also palatalize before the vowel /e/ , especially so in the context of topicalization : [duɕi] dushi → [duɕeː] dusē or dushē "( topic ) friend". In general, sequences containing

10920-434: The modern-day Northern Min and Eastern Min areas. In 879, a large part of the city was captured by the army of Huang Chao during their rebellion against the Tang government. In 893, the warlord brothers Wang Chao and Wang Shenzhi captured Fuzhou in a rebellion against the Tang dynasty, successfully gaining control of the entire Fujian Province and eventually proclaiming their founding of an independent kingdom they called

11040-530: The most celebrated Chinese philosopher after Confucius , and Xin Qiji , the greatest composer of the ci form of poetry. Marco Polo , an Italian guest of the Emperor Kubilai , transcribed , after the conventions of Italian orthography , the place name as Fugiu . This was not the local Min pronunciation but that of the mandarin administrative class. According to Odoric of Pordenone , Fuzhou had

11160-484: The official language under King Shō Shin . The Omoro Sōshi , a compilation of ancient Ryukyuan poems, was written in an early form of Okinawan, known as Old Okinawan. After Ryukyu became a vassal of Satsuma Domain , kanji gained more prominence in poetry; however, official Ryukyuan documents were written in Classical Chinese . During this time, the language gradually evolved into Modern Okinawan. In 1609,

11280-421: The palatal consonant /j/ are relatively rare and tend to exhibit depalatalization. For example, /mj/ tends to merge with /n/ ( [mjaːku] myāku → [naːku] nāku " Miyako "); */rj/ has merged into /ɾ/ and /d/ ( */rjuː/ → /ɾuː/ rū ~ /duː/ dū "dragon"); and /sj/ has mostly become /s/ ( /sjui/ shui → /sui/ sui " Shuri "). The voiced plosive /d/ and the flap /ɾ/ tend to merge, with

11400-448: The people of Kumemura served not only in the royal government, and as diplomats, but also as cultural agents. The Ryukyuan people were forbidden to speak Japanese, to wear Japanese clothes, or, in a variety of other ways, to reveal the Japanese influence upon them. Thus, the magistrate of the Kumemura community took on an unofficial role comparable to a minister of education , and the Ryukyuan people, even more so than before, were exposed to

11520-737: The presence of a British Consul and a Fuzhou Club comprising western businessmen. In The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom , author Simon Winchester relates the visit of Dr Needham in 1944. Needham encountered the American government agent (John Caldwell) and the British SIS agent ( Murray MacLehose working undercover as

11640-578: The present day. Currently the Okinawan-Japanese centers and communities in the State of São Paulo are a world reference to this language helping it to stay alive. Okinawan is sometimes grouped with Kunigami as the Okinawan languages; however, not all linguists accept this grouping, some claiming that Kunigami is a dialect of Okinawan. Okinawan is also grouped with Amami (or the Amami languages) as

11760-422: The production of ink and paper. By the middle of the fifteenth century, the community was enclosed within earthen walls, and consisted of over one hundred homes, inhabited by not only Chinese immigrants (and their descendants) but Koreans as well. No remains of the earthen walls have been found, however. Children in Kumemura began their formal studies at the age of five, and would travel to the palace at Shuri for

11880-453: The region at the time, were tributary states in the Chinese world order ; Chinese culture, and its political and economic structures, were seen as the very definition of civilization and modernity, a view cultivated by the Chinese imperial government throughout much of its history. Thus, even though these Chinese immigrants were hardly more than ordinary citizens back home in Fujian, they were regarded by their government which sent them, and by

12000-497: The rice stipends which had supported the people of Kumemura since the community's founding, paying it instead to the people of Shuri. Around 1801, young men from Shuri began to be sent abroad to study in Fuzhou and Beijing, breaking the monopoly on Chinese scholarship held by Kumemura for roughly four centuries. A variety of government positions came to be open only to those living in Shuri, and of anji lineage. Allowances were made for men of Kumemura to formally change their residence to

12120-459: The same century were written solely in Hiragana. Kanji were gradually adopted due to the growing influence of mainland Japan and to the linguistic affinity between the Okinawan and Japanese languages. However, it was mainly limited to affairs of high importance and to documents sent towards the mainland. The oldest inscription of Okinawan exemplifying its use along with Hiragana can be found on

12240-417: The short vowels /e/ and /o/ are quite rare, as they occur only in a few native Okinawan words with heavy syllables with the pattern /Ceɴ/ or /Coɴ/ , such as /m e ɴsoːɾeː/ m e nsōrē "welcome" or /t o ɴɸaː/ t o nfā . The close back vowels /u/ and /uː/ are truly rounded, rather than the compressed vowels of standard Japanese. The Okinawan language counts some 20 distinctive segments shown in

12360-422: The small capital /ɴ/ ) occupies a full mora and its precise place of articulation will vary depending on the following consonant. Before other labial consonants, it will be pronounced closer to a syllabic bilabial nasal [m̩] , as in /ʔɴma/ [ʔm̩ma] Q nma "horse". Before velar and labiovelar consonants, it will be pronounced as a syllabic velar nasal [ŋ̍] , as in /biɴɡata/ [biŋ̍ɡata] bingata ,

12480-848: The south and Shanghai to the north Fuzhou's geographical location was ideal for becoming an international metropolis between the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta. He proposed supporting strategies such as the Fujian-Zhejiang-Jiangxi-Anhui Fuzhou Economic Cooperation Zone the Fuzhou Metropolitan Circle, Maritime Fuzhou the Minjiang Estuary Golden Triangle and a Modern International City as well as

12600-476: The streets of the city, and even attacking the People's Liberation Army. Under the reform and opening policy since the late 1970s, Fuzhou has developed rapidly. In 1982, Fuzhou became the first city in China where the stored program control was introduced, which marked a milestone in the history of telecommunications in China. In 1984, Fuzhou was chosen as one of the first branches of Open Coastal Cities by

12720-601: The table below, the top row is the kana (hiragana to the left, katakana to the right of the dot), the middle row in rōmaji ( Hepburn romanization ), and the bottom row in IPA. Okinawan follows a subject–object–verb word order and makes large use of particles as in Japanese. Okinawan retains a number of Japonic grammatical features also found in Old Japanese but lost (or highly restricted) in Modern Japanese , such as

12840-706: The table below. あぬ Anu 夫婦 （ ふぃとぅんだー ） Fuzhou Fuzhou is the capital of Fujian , China. The city lies between the Min River estuary to the south and the city of Ningde to the north. Together, Fuzhou and Ningde make up the Mindong linguistic and cultural region. Fuzhou's population was 8,291,268 as of the 2020 Chinese census . Like other prefecture-level cities in China, its administrative area contains both urban and rural areas: in 2020, 72.49% of inhabitants (6,010,242) were urban, while 27.51% (2,281,026) were rural. As of 31 December 2018,

12960-457: The terminal form uri ; -uru developed from the attributive form uru , i.e.: A similar etymology is given for the terminal -san and attributive -saru endings for adjectives: the stem suffixed with さ sa (nominalises adjectives, i.e. high → height, hot → heat), suffixed with ari ("to be; to exist; to have", cf. Classical Japanese: 有り ari ), i.e.: Nouns are classified as independent, non-conjugating part of speech that can become

13080-403: The three kingdoms. All three kingdoms cultivated diplomatic and trade relationships with members of Kumemura's intercultural and maritime oriented community. These conditions would remain unchanged for several centuries, as Kumemura grew more established in its importance and influence. On Okinawa, as in most pre-modern societies , literacy was rare; the people of Kumemura, literate and fluent in

13200-436: The time, but had very little impact. These developments were the metaphorical nails in the coffin of the Kumemura community, which had relied heavily on rice stipends from the government, and on its monopoly on its unique role in government. For centuries, the people had devoted themselves to scholarly pursuits, not to economic production. Shō Shōken attempted to alleviate this problem somewhat, curtailing production of crafts in

13320-584: The total population was estimated at 7,740,000 whom 4,665,000 lived in the built-up ( or metro ) area made of five urban districts plus Minhou County. In 2015, Fuzhou was ranked as the 10th fastest growing metropolitan area in the world by Brookings Institution . Fuzhou is listed as No. 20 in the China Integrated City Index 2016's total ranking, a study conducted by the National Development and Reform Commission . Fuzhou

13440-478: The two most influential officials in the kingdom's history. A Confucian temple was gifted to the community by the Chinese Kangxi Emperor in 1671, and extensive efforts were made by Shō Shōken and others to turn the country into one heavily based on Confucian guidelines. Among Shō Shōken's many reforms was a series of attempts to root out native animistic rituals, particularly those involving

13560-437: The use of " dialect cards " ( 方言札 ). As a result, Okinawan gradually ceased to be written entirely until the American takeover in 1945. Since then, Japanese and American scholars have variously transcribed the regional language using a number of ad hoc romanization schemes or the katakana syllabary to demarcate its foreign nature with standard Japanese. Proponents of Okinawan tend to be more traditionalist and continue to write

13680-439: The vowel /u/ to /i/ after the alveolars /t d s z/ , consequently merging [t͡su] tsu into [t͡ɕi] chi , [su] su into [ɕi] shi , and both [d͡zu] dzu and [zu] zu into [d͡ʑi] ji . It also lacks /z/ as a distinctive phoneme, having merged it into /d͡ʑ/ . The bilabial fricative /ɸ/ has sometimes been transcribed as the cluster /hw/ , since, like Japanese, /h/ allophonically labializes into [ɸ] before

13800-459: The wearing of the queue . Though those in Kumemura still considered themselves Ryukyuans after a fashion, they refused to follow these orders, and adopted manners and dress more in line with native Ryukyuan traditions. The kingdom's development was inevitably affected quite profoundly by policies imposed by Satsuma , and by the reforms instituted by Sai On, Shō Shōken and others. Though the overall economic prosperity of Ryukyu in this period remains

13920-634: Was an attempt to revive and standardize Okinawan, but this proved difficult and was shelved in favor of Japanese. General Douglas MacArthur attempted to promote Okinawan languages and culture through education. Multiple English words were introduced. After Okinawa's reversion to Japanese sovereignty, Japanese continued to be the dominant language used, and the majority of the youngest generations only speak Okinawan Japanese . There have been attempts to revive Okinawan by notable people such as Byron Fija and Seijin Noborikawa , but few native Okinawans know

14040-464: Was exiled to the northwestern section of the empire. The Treaty of Nanjing (1842), which put an end to the conflict, made Fuzhou (then known to Westerners as Foochow) one of five Chinese treaty ports , and it became completely open to Western merchants and missionaries. Fuzhou was one of the most important Protestant mission fields in China. On January 2, 1846, the first Protestant missionary, Rev. Stephen Johnson (missionary) from ABCFM , entered

14160-673: Was incorporated into China proper during Qin dynasty . The city's name was changed numerous times between the 3rd and 9th centuries before finally settling on Fuzhou in 948. In Chinese, the city is sometimes referred to by the poetic nickname Rongcheng (Chinese: 榕城 ; Foochow Romanized: Ṳ̀ng-siàng ), lit. 'The Banyan City'. In older English publications, the name is variously romanized as Foochow , Foo-Chow , Fuchow , Fūtsu , Fuh-Chow , Hock Chew , and Hokchew . The remains of two Neolithic cultures—the Huqiutou Culture ( 虎丘頭文化 ), from around 5000 BC, and

14280-554: Was shared with Quanzhou . Galeote Pereira , a Portuguese soldier and trader, was taken prisoner during the pirate extermination campaign of 1549 and imprisoned in Fuzhou. Later transferred to a form of internal exile elsewhere in the province, Pereira escaped to Langbaijiao in 1553. The record of his experiences in the Ming Empire, logged by the Jesuits at Goa in 1561, was the first non-clerical account of China to reach

14400-476: Was the heart of Japanization, where Okinawan children were taught Japanese and punished for speaking their native language, being told that their language was just a "dialect". By 1945, many Okinawans spoke Japanese, and many were bilingual. During the Battle of Okinawa , some Okinawans were killed by Japanese soldiers for speaking Okinawan. Language shift to Japanese in Ryukyu/Okinawa began in 1879 when

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