103-741: Tsui Hark ( Chinese : 徐克 , Vietnamese : Từ Khắc , born 15 February 1950), born Tsui Man-kong ( Vietnamese : Từ Văn Quang ), is a Hong Kong filmmaker. Tsui has directed several influential Hong Kong films such as Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983), the Once Upon a Time in China film series (1991–1997) and The Blade (1995). Tsui also has been a prolific writer and producer; his productions include A Better Tomorrow (1986), A Better Tomorrow II (1987), A Chinese Ghost Story (1987), The Killer (1989), The Legend of
206-410: A Seven Swords 2 . Rumors has it that due to lack of interest by the filmmakers of finishing the hexalogy lead the project into being cancelled. In August 2008, Tsui provided art direction for the direct-to-video anime feature titled Kungfu Master (a.k.a. Wong Fei Hong vs Kungfu Panda ), an apparent unofficial sequel to Kung Fu Panda , featuring Chinese folk hero Wong Fei-hung . He also directed
309-469: A nucleus that has a vowel (which can be a monophthong , diphthong , or even a triphthong in certain varieties), preceded by an onset (a single consonant , or consonant + glide ; a zero onset is also possible), and followed (optionally) by a coda consonant; a syllable also carries a tone . There are some instances where a vowel is not used as a nucleus. An example of this is in Cantonese, where
412-457: A subject–verb–object word order , and like many other languages of East Asia, makes frequent use of the topic–comment construction to form sentences. Chinese also has an extensive system of classifiers and measure words , another trait shared with neighboring languages such as Japanese and Korean. Other notable grammatical features common to all the spoken varieties of Chinese include the use of serial verb construction , pronoun dropping , and
515-510: A Chinese character is the morpheme, as characters represent the smallest grammatical units with individual meanings in the Chinese language. Estimates of the total number of Chinese words and lexicalized phrases vary greatly. The Hanyu Da Zidian , a compendium of Chinese characters, includes 54,678 head entries for characters, including oracle bone versions. The Zhonghua Zihai (1994) contains 85,568 head entries for character definitions and
618-599: A Shanghai resident may speak both Standard Chinese and Shanghainese ; if they grew up elsewhere, they are also likely fluent in the dialect of their home region. In addition to Standard Chinese, a majority of Taiwanese people also speak Taiwanese Hokkien (also called 台語 ; 'Taiwanese' ), Hakka , or an Austronesian language . A speaker in Taiwan may mix pronunciations and vocabulary from Standard Chinese and other languages of Taiwan in everyday speech. In part due to traditional cultural ties with Guangdong , Cantonese
721-462: A central variety (i.e. prestige variety, such as Standard Mandarin), as the issue requires some careful handling when mutual intelligibility is inconsistent with language identity. The Chinese government's official Chinese designation for the major branches of Chinese is 方言 ; fāngyán ; 'regional speech', whereas the more closely related varieties within these are called 地点方言 ; 地點方言 ; dìdiǎn fāngyán ; 'local speech'. Because of
824-615: A compromise between the pronunciations of different regions. The royal courts of the Ming and early Qing dynasties operated using a koiné language known as Guanhua , based on the Nanjing dialect of Mandarin. Standard Chinese is an official language of both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan), one of the four official languages of Singapore , and one of
927-714: A corresponding increase in the number of homophones . As an example, the small Langenscheidt Pocket Chinese Dictionary lists six words that are commonly pronounced as shí in Standard Chinese: In modern spoken Mandarin, however, tremendous ambiguity would result if all of these words could be used as-is. The 20th century Yuen Ren Chao poem Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den exploits this, consisting of 92 characters all pronounced shi . As such, most of these words have been replaced in speech, if not in writing, with less ambiguous disyllabic compounds. Only
1030-471: A craze for Heroic bloodshed movies, and Ching Siu-tung's A Chinese Ghost Story (1987), which did the same for period ghost fantasies. Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain and The Swordsman (1990) birthed the modern-day special effects industry in Hong Kong. In fact, Tsui's "movie brat" nostalgia is one of the main ingredients in his work. He often resurrects and revises classic films and genres:
1133-554: A crown colony in 1843, the status of Hong Kong was changed effectively under the British Nationality Act 1981 , which came into force on 1 January 1983. The Act renamed all existing British colonies to dependent territories (similar to a current overseas territory). The renaming did not change how the government operated but it affected the nationality status of Hong Kong's then over 5 million inhabitants, most of whom were to become British Dependent Territory citizens –
SECTION 10
#17327723791051236-536: A cultural icon. The performing arts received a boost in the 1980s with the opening of numerous new Urban Council performance venues including the Tsuen Wan Town Hall (1980), Tuen Mun Town Hall (1987), Sha Tin Town Hall (1987), Hong Kong Cultural Centre (1989) and Sheung Wan Civic Centre (1989). Domestic movies in the 1980s would put Hong Kong cinema on the international map. Jackie Chan
1339-534: A darling of film critics with writers describing it as "one of those very rare films in the history of Hong Kong cinema that brims with accusation and subversion" and saying that it described "man as trapped animals — this is the popular theme of the New Wave and the one enduring image in their narratives." In 1981, Tsui joined Cinema City & Films Co. , a production company founded by comedians Raymond Wong , Karl Maka and Dean Shek . Cinema City & Films Co.
1442-601: A decade previously, inflation would also increase from 5% in the 1970s to 12.7% by 1983. The Modified Initial System, the first line of the Mass Transit Railway (MTR), was officially opened by Princess Alexandra in February 1980. Over the course of the 1980s the MTR expanded rapidly. An extension to Tsuen Wan opened in 1982, while the more technically challenging Island line opened in 1986. The new metro system
1545-581: A hundred films. In 1993, rumors circulated about Tsui's affair with Sally Yeh , allegedly causing a temporary split with Shi. In 1996, Tsui and Shi married in Beverly Hills , California . In 2008, Tsui was reported to have been living with Seven Swords (2005) actress Chen Jiajia in Beijing . When asked about their status of marriage, Shi then responded, "Let me give you a standard answer. I've been saying this for years: what happens between two people
1648-434: A major contribution to the well-known Tsui style. Film Workshop releases became consistent box office hits in Hong Kong and around Asia, drawing audiences with their visual adventurousness, their broad commercial appeal, and hectic camerawork and pace. With Tsui having been called the 'Steven Spielberg of Asia', Film Workshop became the 'Amblin of Hong Kong'. He produced John Woo 's A Better Tomorrow (1986), which launched
1751-576: A millennium. The Four Commanderies of Han were established in northern Korea in the 1st century BCE but disintegrated in the following centuries. Chinese Buddhism spread over East Asia between the 2nd and 5th centuries CE, and with it the study of scriptures and literature in Literary Chinese. Later, strong central governments modeled on Chinese institutions were established in Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, with Literary Chinese serving as
1854-703: A music judge in A Better Tomorrow and a phony FBI agent in Aces Go Places II . In the face of an industry downturn in the '90s, he produced two expensive movies. Green Snake (1993) was a poetic and lyric movie based on a favourite Chinese fairy tale. The Blade (1995) was a gory, deliberately rough-hewn revision of the 1967 wuxia classic The One-Armed Swordsman . In the mid-to-late '90s, Tsui tried Hollywood with two films starring Jean-Claude Van Damme : Double Team (1997) and Knock Off (1998). In 2002, he made Black Mask 2: City of Masks , an American market sequel to Jet Li's 1996 film . It
1957-559: A noted documentary film by Christine Choy on the history of the city's Chinatown. He also worked as an editor for a Chinese newspaper, developed a community theatre group and worked in a Chinese cable TV station. He returned to Hong Kong in 1977. Tsui returned to Hong Kong in 1977 and worked for TVB, the dominant local television station, then moved to its rival, CTV, lured by its general manager Selina Chow. Viewed as having an eye for talent (numerous future New Wave directors got their first directing gigs under Chow) she put Tsui in charge of
2060-588: A period when the territory was known for its wealth and trademark lifestyle. Still a crown colony (later dependent territory) of the United Kingdom , Hong Kong would be recognised internationally for its politics, entertainment and skyrocketing real estate prices. It would also go on to be the subject of intense negotiations between Britain and China, which would be resolved in the Sino-British Joint Declaration . After being made
2163-542: A secure reconstruction of Proto-Sino-Tibetan, the higher-level structure of the family remains unclear. A top-level branching into Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages is often assumed, but has not been convincingly demonstrated. The first written records appeared over 3,000 years ago during the Shang dynasty . As the language evolved over this period, the various local varieties became mutually unintelligible. In reaction, central governments have repeatedly sought to promulgate
SECTION 20
#17327723791052266-582: A segment based on Hong Kong history. The completed film, Septet: The Story of Hong Kong , was shown at the Busan International Film Festival on 21 October 2020 and at the annual Hong Kong International Film Festival in April 2021. In 2021 Tsui co-directed The Battle at Lake Changjin with Chen Kaige and Dante Lam . The film is the most expensive film ever produced in China, the highest-grossing Chinese film of all time , and
2369-508: A similar way to the use of Latin and Ancient Greek roots in European languages. Many new compounds, or new meanings for old phrases, were created in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to name Western concepts and artifacts. These coinages, written in shared Chinese characters, have then been borrowed freely between languages. They have even been accepted into Chinese, a language usually resistant to loanwords, because their foreign origin
2472-678: A single language. However, their lack of mutual intelligibility means they are sometimes considered to be separate languages in a family . Investigation of the historical relationships among the varieties of Chinese is ongoing. Currently, most classifications posit 7 to 13 main regional groups based on phonetic developments from Middle Chinese , of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin with 66%, or around 800 million speakers, followed by Min (75 million, e.g. Southern Min ), Wu (74 million, e.g. Shanghainese ), and Yue (68 million, e.g. Cantonese ). These branches are unintelligible to each other, and many of their subgroups are unintelligible with
2575-426: A special effects action movie. The pattern is also seen in perhaps Tsui's most successful work to date, the Once Upon a Time in China film series (1991–97). Jet Li played the role of Chinese folk hero Wong Fei-hung in the first three films and the sixth, Once Upon a Time in China and America . This series is the clearest expression in his oeuvre of Tsui's Chinese nationalism and his passionate engagement with
2678-610: A status that could no longer be transmitted by descent. Regardless of the competing claims for sovereignty, China's paramount leader Deng Xiaoping recognised that Hong Kong, with its free market economy , could not be assimilated into the People's Republic overnight and that any attempt to do so would not be in the interests of either. He advocated a more pragmatic approach known as the one country, two systems policy, in which Hong Kong (as well as Macau , and potentially also Taiwan ) would be able to retain their economic systems within
2781-418: A television series counterpart ( Seven Swordsmen ), a comic book series, a cellphone game, clothing brand, and an online multi-player video game. The film was relatively successful, and in February 2006 Tsui announced plans to begin filming the second late in the year. As of 2008, Tsui continues to work on the script for Seven Swords 2 in between filming projects. In 2011 there has been no news nor plans about
2884-631: A unified standard. The earliest examples of Old Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones dated to c. 1250 BCE , during the Late Shang . The next attested stage came from inscriptions on bronze artifacts dating to the Western Zhou period (1046–771 BCE), the Classic of Poetry and portions of the Book of Documents and I Ching . Scholars have attempted to reconstruct
2987-575: A variety of Yue from a small coastal area around Taishan, Guangdong . In parts of South China, the dialect of a major city may be only marginally intelligible to its neighbors. For example, Wuzhou and Taishan are located approximately 260 km (160 mi) and 190 km (120 mi) away from Guangzhou respectively, but the Yue variety spoken in Wuzhou is more similar to the Guangzhou dialect than
3090-602: Is Taishanese. Wuzhou is located directly upstream from Guangzhou on the Pearl River , whereas Taishan is to Guangzhou's southwest, with the two cities separated by several river valleys. In parts of Fujian , the speech of some neighbouring counties or villages is mutually unintelligible. Local varieties of Chinese are conventionally classified into seven dialect groups, largely based on the different evolution of Middle Chinese voiced initials: Proportions of first-language speakers The classification of Li Rong , which
3193-709: Is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in China , as well as by various communities of the Chinese diaspora . Approximately 1.35 billion people, or 17% of the global population, speak a variety of Chinese as their first language . Chinese languages form the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The spoken varieties of Chinese are usually considered by native speakers to be dialects of
Tsui Hark - Misplaced Pages Continue
3296-715: Is a re-imagining of his 1992 film New Dragon Gate Inn starring Tony Leung Ka-Fai , Maggie Cheung and Brigitte Lin . In 2011 Huayi Brothers announced that Tsui will be making a prequel to Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame ; shot in 3-D, it was released in 2013 as Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon . In October 2011, Tsui received the Asian Filmmaker of the Year Award at
3399-490: Is called either 华语 ; 華語 ; Huáyǔ or 汉语 ; 漢語 ; Hànyǔ ). Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. The governments of both China and Taiwan intend for speakers of all Chinese speech varieties to use it as a common language of communication. Therefore, it is used in government agencies, in the media, and as a language of instruction in schools. Diglossia is common among Chinese speakers. For example,
3502-603: Is often described as a 'monosyllabic' language. However, this is only partially correct. It is largely accurate when describing Old and Middle Chinese; in Classical Chinese, around 90% of words consist of a single character that corresponds one-to-one with a morpheme , the smallest unit of meaning in a language. In modern varieties, it usually remains the case that morphemes are monosyllabic—in contrast, English has many multi-syllable morphemes, both bound and free , such as 'seven', 'elephant', 'para-' and '-able'. Some of
3605-445: Is only about an eighth as many as English. All varieties of spoken Chinese use tones to distinguish words. A few dialects of north China may have as few as three tones, while some dialects in south China have up to 6 or 12 tones, depending on how one counts. One exception from this is Shanghainese which has reduced the set of tones to a two-toned pitch accent system much like modern Japanese. A very common example used to illustrate
3708-508: Is private and doesn't concern a third party." By 2011, Tsui began dating his assistant, Lele, whom he had met online during the filming of Flying Swords of Dragon Gate (2011). Shi announced their divorce in 2014, adding that Tsui and Lele had been together for some time. Television Chinese language Chinese ( simplified Chinese : 汉语 ; traditional Chinese : 漢語 ; pinyin : Hànyǔ ; lit. ' Han language' or 中文 ; Zhōngwén ; 'Chinese writing')
3811-668: Is specifically meant. However, when one of the above words forms part of a compound, the disambiguating syllable is generally dropped and the resulting word is still disyllabic. For example, 石 ; shí alone, and not 石头 ; 石頭 ; shítou , appears in compounds as meaning 'stone' such as 石膏 ; shígāo ; 'plaster', 石灰 ; shíhuī ; 'lime', 石窟 ; shíkū ; 'grotto', 石英 ; 'quartz', and 石油 ; shíyóu ; 'petroleum'. Although many single-syllable morphemes ( 字 ; zì ) can stand alone as individual words, they more often than not form multi-syllable compounds known as 词 ; 詞 ; cí , which more closely resembles
3914-489: Is the largest reference work based purely on character and its literary variants. The CC-CEDICT project (2010) contains 97,404 contemporary entries including idioms, technology terms, and names of political figures, businesses, and products. The 2009 version of the Webster's Digital Chinese Dictionary (WDCD), based on CC-CEDICT, contains over 84,000 entries. The most comprehensive pure linguistic Chinese-language dictionary,
4017-501: Is used as an everyday language in Hong Kong and Macau . The designation of various Chinese branches remains controversial. Some linguists and most ordinary Chinese people consider all the spoken varieties as one single language, as speakers share a common national identity and a common written form. Others instead argue that it is inappropriate to refer to major branches of Chinese such as Mandarin, Wu, and so on as "dialects" because
4120-500: Is used in education, media, formal speech, and everyday life—though Mandarin is increasingly taught in schools due to the mainland's growing influence. Historically, the Chinese language has spread to its neighbors through a variety of means. Northern Vietnam was incorporated into the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE) in 111 BCE, marking the beginning of a period of Chinese control that ran almost continuously for
4223-552: Is used in the Language Atlas of China (1987), distinguishes three further groups: Some varieties remain unclassified, including the Danzhou dialect on Hainan , Waxianghua spoken in western Hunan , and Shaozhou Tuhua spoken in northern Guangdong . Standard Chinese is the standard language of China (where it is called 普通话 ; pǔtōnghuà ) and Taiwan, and one of the four official languages of Singapore (where it
Tsui Hark - Misplaced Pages Continue
4326-428: Is very complex, with a large number of consonants and vowels, but they are probably not all distinguished in any single dialect. Most linguists now believe it represents a diasystem encompassing 6th-century northern and southern standards for reading the classics. The complex relationship between spoken and written Chinese is an example of diglossia : as spoken, Chinese varieties have evolved at different rates, while
4429-591: The Detective Dee film series , Flying Swords of Dragon Gate (2011), and The Taking of Tiger Mountain (2014). Tsui was born and raised in Saigon , Vietnam , to a large Chinese ( Hoa ) family with sixteen siblings. Tsui showed an early interest in show business and films; when he was 10, he and some friends rented an 8 mm camera to film a magic show they put on at school. He also drew comic books, an interest that would influence his cinematic style. By
4532-753: The Qieyun rime dictionary (601 CE), and a late period in the 10th century, reflected by rhyme tables such as the Yunjing constructed by ancient Chinese philologists as a guide to the Qieyun system. These works define phonological categories but with little hint of what sounds they represent. Linguists have identified these sounds by comparing the categories with pronunciations in modern varieties of Chinese , borrowed Chinese words in Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean, and transcription evidence. The resulting system
4635-533: The Korean , Japanese and Vietnamese languages, and today comprise over half of their vocabularies. This massive influx led to changes in the phonological structure of the languages, contributing to the development of moraic structure in Japanese and the disruption of vowel harmony in Korean. Borrowed Chinese morphemes have been used extensively in all these languages to coin compound words for new concepts, in
4738-710: The May Fourth Movement beginning in 1919. After the fall of the Northern Song dynasty and subsequent reign of the Jurchen Jin and Mongol Yuan dynasties in northern China, a common speech (now called Old Mandarin ) developed based on the dialects of the North China Plain around the capital. The 1324 Zhongyuan Yinyun was a dictionary that codified the rhyming conventions of new sanqu verse form in this language. Together with
4841-595: The National Language Unification Commission finally settled on the Beijing dialect in 1932. The People's Republic founded in 1949 retained this standard but renamed it 普通话 ; 普通話 ; pǔtōnghuà ; 'common speech'. The national language is now used in education, the media, and formal situations in both mainland China and Taiwan. In Hong Kong and Macau , Cantonese is the dominant spoken language due to cultural influence from Guangdong immigrants and colonial-era policies, and
4944-437: The highest-grossing non-English film . Tsui Hark has been married twice. He was briefly married during his time studying in the U.S. in the 1970s, but the marriage ended in divorce. In 1977, he met Nansun Shi while working at Commercial Television , Hong Kong and they began dating a year later. In 1984, they founded a film studio, where Shi was responsible for financing, distribution, and promotion. The couple co-produced over
5047-478: The oracle bone inscriptions created during the Shang dynasty c. 1250 BCE . The phonetic categories of Old Chinese can be reconstructed from the rhymes of ancient poetry. During the Northern and Southern period , Middle Chinese went through several sound changes and split into several varieties following prolonged geographic and political separation. The Qieyun , a rime dictionary , recorded
5150-596: The phonology of Old Chinese by comparing later varieties of Chinese with the rhyming practice of the Classic of Poetry and the phonetic elements found in the majority of Chinese characters. Although many of the finer details remain unclear, most scholars agree that Old Chinese differs from Middle Chinese in lacking retroflex and palatal obstruents but having initial consonant clusters of some sort, and in having voiceless nasals and liquids. Most recent reconstructions also describe an atonal language with consonant clusters at
5253-482: The "touch-base" policy on 23 October 1980. After this date, any illegal immigrants captured would be sent back to their originating countries immediately. There were public outcries in the early 1980s over decreasing wages due to the large influx of mainland immigrants raising supply against demand. On the other hand, citizens of Hong Kong were beginning to emigrate to the UK, Canada and United States in large numbers due to
SECTION 50
#17327723791055356-655: The 12-volume Hanyu Da Cidian , records more than 23,000 head Chinese characters and gives over 370,000 definitions. The 1999 revised Cihai , a multi-volume encyclopedic dictionary reference work, gives 122,836 vocabulary entry definitions under 19,485 Chinese characters, including proper names, phrases, and common zoological, geographical, sociological, scientific, and technical terms. The 2016 edition of Xiandai Hanyu Cidian , an authoritative one-volume dictionary on modern standard Chinese language as used in mainland China, has 13,000 head characters and defines 70,000 words. 1980s in Hong Kong 1980s in Hong Kong marks
5459-455: The 16th Busan International Film Festival for his contributions to Hong Kong cinema. He is the fifth Chinese filmmaker to receive this award at Busan. His film The Taking of Tiger Mountain premiered in China in December 2014. Tsui worked on a film with Milkyway Image alongside Ann Hui , Ringo Lam , Patrick Tam , Johnnie To , Sammo Hung and Yuen Woo-Ping . Each director created
5562-577: The 2008 thriller Missing starring Angelica Lee and the 2008 romantic comedy film All About Women featuring comic graphics and extensive ADR dubbing. Tsui's latest work in 2010 is Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame , a rare but successful blend of wuxia, suspense-thriller, mystery, and comedy, which was in competition for the Golden Lion award and was also nominated and won numerous other awards. In 2010 he announced his first 3-D film, The Flying Swords of Dragon Gate , which
5665-565: The Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet . English words of Chinese origin include tea from Hokkien 茶 ( tê ), dim sum from Cantonese 點心 ( dim2 sam1 ), and kumquat from Cantonese 金橘 ( gam1 gwat1 ). The sinologist Jerry Norman has estimated that there are hundreds of mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinese. These varieties form a dialect continuum , in which differences in speech generally become more pronounced as distances increase, though
5768-521: The PRC. On 19 December 1984, the Sino-British Joint Declaration on the Question of Hong Kong (The Joint Declaration) was signed between the PRC and UK governments. Under this agreement, Hong Kong would cease to be a British Dependent Territory on 1 July 1997 and would thenceforth be a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the PRC. Citizens who were opposed to the handover and had the means to leave led to
5871-793: The Swordsman (1992), The Wicked City (1992), Iron Monkey (1993) and Black Mask (1996). He is viewed as a major figure in the Golden Age of Hong Kong cinema and is regarded by critics as "one of the masters of Asian cinematography ". In the late 1990s, Tsui had a short-lived career in the United States, directing the Jean-Claude Van Damme –led films Double Team (1997) and Knock Off (1998). He returned to Hong Kong to continue his career, where he found commercial and critical success with blockbusters such as
5974-651: The age of 13, he and his family immigrated to Hong Kong. Tsui started his secondary education in Hong Kong in 1966. He proceeded to study film in Texas , first at Southern Methodist University and then at the University of Texas at Austin , graduating in 1975. He claims to have told his parents he wanted to follow in his father's footsteps as a pharmacist , and that it was here he changed his given name to Hark ("overcoming"). After graduation, Tsui moved to New York City , where he worked on From Spikes to Spindles (1976),
6077-399: The different spoken dialects varies, but in general, there has been a tendency to a reduction in sounds from Middle Chinese. The Mandarin dialects in particular have experienced a dramatic decrease in sounds and so have far more polysyllabic words than most other spoken varieties. The total number of syllables in some varieties is therefore only about a thousand, including tonal variation, which
6180-484: The difficulties involved in determining the difference between language and dialect, other terms have been proposed. These include topolect , lect , vernacular , regional , and variety . Syllables in the Chinese languages have some unique characteristics. They are tightly related to the morphology and also to the characters of the writing system, and phonologically they are structured according to fixed rules. The structure of each syllable consists of
6283-576: The end of the syllable, developing into tone distinctions in Middle Chinese. Several derivational affixes have also been identified, but the language lacks inflection , and indicated grammatical relationships using word order and grammatical particles . Middle Chinese was the language used during Northern and Southern dynasties and the Sui , Tang , and Song dynasties (6th–10th centuries CE). It can be divided into an early period, reflected by
SECTION 60
#17327723791056386-413: The first one, 十 , normally appears in monosyllabic form in spoken Mandarin; the rest are normally used in the polysyllabic forms of respectively. In each, the homophone was disambiguated by the addition of another morpheme, typically either a near-synonym or some sort of generic word (e.g. 'head', 'thing'), the purpose of which is to indicate which of the possible meanings of the other, homophonic syllable
6489-483: The first signs of population ageing , as the number of residents under the age of 25 fell by 1.2%. Households shrank in size from an average of 4.01 occupants in 1982 (the earliest available data) to 3.67 at decade's end. The 1980s were also characterised by the lowest population increase due to net migration (30.1%), as opposed to natural expansion. From 1978 to September 1980, nearly 23,000 illegal immigrants from Mainland China entered Hong Kong. The government abolished
6592-437: The first wave of emigration. Hong Kong's population topped five million just at the beginning of the 1980s, and rose at an annual average rate of 1.3% over the next ten years. The additional 700,000 residents raised the population to 5.73 million at the end of the decade. The population of females rose 1.5% per annum, faster than that for males (1.4% p.a.), although females would remain a minority until 1996. The decade also saw
6695-491: The form of a word), to indicate a word's function within a sentence. In other words, Chinese has very few grammatical inflections —it possesses no tenses , no voices , no grammatical number , and only a few articles . They make heavy use of grammatical particles to indicate aspect and mood . In Mandarin, this involves the use of particles such as 了 ; le ; ' PFV ', 还 ; 還 ; hái ; 'still', and 已经 ; 已經 ; yǐjīng ; 'already'. Chinese has
6798-565: The government of the People's Republic of China, with Singapore officially adopting them in 1976. Traditional characters are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and among Chinese-speaking communities overseas . Linguists classify all varieties of Chinese as part of the Sino-Tibetan language family , together with Burmese , Tibetan and many other languages spoken in the Himalayas and the Southeast Asian Massif . Although
6901-473: The handover, sent consumer confidence to an all-time low, causing Black Saturday in 1983. The end result was that Hong Kong adopted a linked exchange rate system. The exchange rate between the Hong Kong dollar and the United States dollar was fixed at HKD $ 7.8 = US$ 1. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority 's exchange fund was responsible for keeping the market rate stable. In the short period from just
7004-586: The language of administration and scholarship, a position it would retain until the late 19th century in Korea and (to a lesser extent) Japan, and the early 20th century in Vietnam. Scholars from different lands could communicate, albeit only in writing, using Literary Chinese. Although they used Chinese solely for written communication, each country had its own tradition of reading texts aloud using what are known as Sino-Xenic pronunciations . Chinese words with these pronunciations were also extensively imported into
7107-528: The late 19th century. Today Japanese is written with a composite script using both Chinese characters called kanji , and kana. Korean is written exclusively with hangul in North Korea, although knowledge of the supplementary Chinese characters called hanja is still required, and hanja are increasingly rarely used in South Korea. As a result of its historical colonization by France, Vietnamese now uses
7210-458: The mainland. Middle-aged men and women who had spent decades in manufacturing were suddenly left with no place to go. In 1960, the University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong Technical College were one of the first schools to offer real estate education, but the curriculum was considered a sub program. In 1981, the University of Hong Kong became the first institution to be accredited by the RICS . It
7313-432: The martial arts drama, The Gold Dagger Romance , which marked him as a talent to watch. Producer Ng See-yuen saw Gold Dagger Romance and hired Tsui to direct his first feature, The Butterfly Murders (1979), a technically challenging blend of wuxia , murder mystery and science fiction / fantasy elements. His second film, We're Going to Eat You (1980), was a blend of cannibal horror, black comedy and martial arts. He
7416-455: The more conservative modern varieties, usually found in the south, have largely monosyllabic words , especially with basic vocabulary. However, most nouns, adjectives, and verbs in modern Mandarin are disyllabic. A significant cause of this is phonetic erosion : sound changes over time have steadily reduced the number of possible syllables in the language's inventory. In modern Mandarin, there are only around 1,200 possible syllables, including
7519-793: The murder mystery in The Butterfly Murders (1979); the Shanghai musical comedy in Shanghai Blues (1985). Peking Opera Blues (1986) plays with and pays tribute to the traditions of the Peking opera that his mother took him to see as a small boy and which had such a strong influence on Hong Kong action cinema. The Lovers (1994) adapts a retold, cross-dressing period romance, best known from Li Han-hsiang's 1963 opera film The Love Eterne . A Chinese Ghost Story remakes Li's supernatural romance The Enchanting Shadow (1959) as
7622-425: The mutual unintelligibility between them is too great. However, calling major Chinese branches "languages" would also be wrong under the same criterion, since a branch such as Wu, itself contains many mutually unintelligible varieties, and could not be properly called a single language. There are also viewpoints pointing out that linguists often ignore mutual intelligibility when varieties share intelligibility with
7725-583: The nasal sonorant consonants /m/ and /ŋ/ can stand alone as their own syllable. In Mandarin much more than in other spoken varieties, most syllables tend to be open syllables, meaning they have no coda (assuming that a final glide is not analyzed as a coda), but syllables that do have codas are restricted to nasals /m/ , /n/ , /ŋ/ , the retroflex approximant /ɻ/ , and voiceless stops /p/ , /t/ , /k/ , or /ʔ/ . Some varieties allow most of these codas, whereas others, such as Standard Chinese, are limited to only /n/ , /ŋ/ , and /ɻ/ . The number of sounds in
7828-470: The opportunity to capitalise on realty sales. Areas like Lan Kwai Fong were improving at the time and became an "alternative" or "open" avenue to attract people who wanted things to be different. If construction was not open before, many areas found themselves redeveloping. The lack of foreign-exchange control, and low tax, contributed to the competitiveness of Hong Kong's economy. Though a floating rate, coupled with panic about intensified political talk of
7931-538: The other varieties within the same branch (e.g. Southern Min). There are, however, transitional areas where varieties from different branches share enough features for some limited intelligibility, including New Xiang with Southwestern Mandarin , Xuanzhou Wu Chinese with Lower Yangtze Mandarin , Jin with Central Plains Mandarin and certain divergent dialects of Hakka with Gan . All varieties of Chinese are tonal at least to some degree, and are largely analytic . The earliest attested written Chinese consists of
8034-410: The production company Film Workshop with Nansun Shi . He also developed a reputation as a hands-on and even intrusive producer of other directors' work, fuelled by public breaks with major filmmakers like John Woo and King Hu . His most longstanding and fruitful collaboration has probably been with Ching Siu-tung . As action choreographer and/or director on many Film Workshop productions, Ching made
8137-687: The public. More than one million residents demonstrated to express their sorrow. In the early 1980s, younger Hong Kong workers began avoiding the manufacturing industry entirely. Hong Kong's on-going evolution away from manufacturing picked up steam during the decade, as production's share of the economy fell from 22.8% in 1980 to 16.7% ten years later. Replacing it was a greater reliance on services, which rose from 68.3% to 75.4% of GDP. The fastest growing sectors were foreign trade, logistics and communications and general personal and community services. The lack of investment in domestic industry, along with China's economic reform , began opening up manufacturing to
8240-404: The rate of change varies immensely. Generally, mountainous South China exhibits more linguistic diversity than the North China Plain . Until the late 20th century, Chinese emigrants to Southeast Asia and North America came from southeast coastal areas, where Min, Hakka, and Yue dialects were spoken. Specifically, most Chinese immigrants to North America until the mid-20th century spoke Taishanese ,
8343-552: The related subject dropping . Although the grammars of the spoken varieties share many traits, they do possess differences. The entire Chinese character corpus since antiquity comprises well over 50,000 characters, of which only roughly 10,000 are in use and only about 3,000 are frequently used in Chinese media and newspapers. However, Chinese characters should not be confused with Chinese words. Because most Chinese words are made up of two or more characters, there are many more Chinese words than characters. A more accurate equivalent for
8446-509: The relationship was first proposed in the early 19th century and is now broadly accepted, reconstruction of Sino-Tibetan is much less developed than that of families such as Indo-European or Austroasiatic . Difficulties have included the great diversity of the languages, the lack of inflection in many of them, and the effects of language contact. In addition, many of the smaller languages are spoken in mountainous areas that are difficult to reach and are often also sensitive border zones. Without
8549-463: The six official languages of the United Nations . Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin and was first officially adopted in the 1930s. The language is written primarily using a logography of Chinese characters , largely shared by readers who may otherwise speak mutually unintelligible varieties. Since the 1950s, the use of simplified characters has been promoted by
8652-561: The slightly later Menggu Ziyun , this dictionary describes a language with many of the features characteristic of modern Mandarin dialects. Up to the early 20th century, most Chinese people only spoke their local variety. Thus, as a practical measure, officials of the Ming and Qing dynasties carried out the administration of the empire using a common language based on Mandarin varieties , known as 官话 ; 官話 ; Guānhuà ; 'language of officials'. For most of this period, this language
8755-432: The standard for triad films like A Better Tomorrow and The Killer . Some of the most famous movies of the decade were films like Police Story , A Better Tomorrow , Aces Go Places , Winners & Sinners , and Project A . In the 1980s, there were 10 Typhoons which had a signal of number 8 and 1 Typhoon 10, The 3 worst typhoons were Typhoon Ellen , Typhoon Gordon and Typhoon Joe . The longest typhoon 8
8858-623: The tonal distinctions, compared with about 5,000 in Vietnamese (still a largely monosyllabic language), and over 8,000 in English. Most modern varieties tend to form new words through polysyllabic compounds . In some cases, monosyllabic words have become disyllabic formed from different characters without the use of compounding, as in 窟窿 ; kūlong from 孔 ; kǒng ; this is especially common in Jin varieties. This phonological collapse has led to
8961-547: The traditional Western notion of a word. A Chinese cí can consist of more than one character–morpheme, usually two, but there can be three or more. Examples of Chinese words of more than two syllables include 汉堡包 ; 漢堡包 ; hànbǎobāo ; 'hamburger', 守门员 ; 守門員 ; shǒuményuán ; 'goalkeeper', and 电子邮件 ; 電子郵件 ; diànzǐyóujiàn ; 'e-mail'. All varieties of modern Chinese are analytic languages : they depend on syntax (word order and sentence structure), rather than inflectional morphology (changes in
9064-431: The uncertainty of the handover in 1997. From 1980 to 1986, an estimated 21,000 people left Hong Kong permanently every year. Beginning in 1987, the numbers rose sharply to 48,000 people a year. In the early 1980s, Hong Kong's education system could only accommodate 2% of the youth who wanted to seek higher education. It was not until 1989 that the government decided to expand the programmes domestically. Prior to this, it
9167-550: The upheavals of Chinese history, particularly in the face of Western power and influence. Tsui also dabbled in acting, mostly for other directors. Notable roles include one-third of the comic relief trio in Corey Yuen 's film Yes, Madam ! (1985) and a villain in Patrick Tam 's darkly comic crime story Final Victory (1987), written by Wong Kar-wai . He also made frequent cameo appearances in his own productions, such as
9270-512: The use of tones in Chinese is the application of the four tones of Standard Chinese, along with the neutral tone, to the syllable ma . The tones are exemplified by the following five Chinese words: In contrast, Standard Cantonese has six tones. Historically, finals that end in a stop consonant were considered to be " checked tones " and thus counted separately for a total of nine tones. However, they are considered to be duplicates in modern linguistics and are no longer counted as such: Chinese
9373-452: The words in newspapers, and 60% of the words in science magazines. Vietnam, Korea, and Japan each developed writing systems for their own languages, initially based on Chinese characters , but later replaced with the hangul alphabet for Korean and supplemented with kana syllabaries for Japanese, while Vietnamese continued to be written with the complex chữ Nôm script. However, these were limited to popular literature until
9476-517: The written language used throughout China changed comparatively little, crystallizing into a prestige form known as Classical or Literary Chinese . Literature written distinctly in the Classical form began to emerge during the Spring and Autumn period . Its use in writing remained nearly universal until the late 19th century, culminating with the widespread adoption of written vernacular Chinese with
9579-488: Was Hong Kong's first combination of live action and Pixar -style 3D computer animation . Era of Vampires (2002; US title, "Tsui Hark's Vampire Hunters") reworked a subgenre popular in the '80s, hybrid martial arts / supernatural horror films featuring the "hopping corpses" of Chinese folk legend. In 2005, Tsui launched the multimedia production Seven Swords , a film adaptation of Liang Yusheng 's novels Saiwai Qixia Zhuan and Qijian Xia Tianshan . The film came with
9682-501: Was Severe Tropical Storm Lynn which had Typhoon 8 status for 28 hours and 45 Minutes. In response to China's Tiananmen Square protests on 27 May 1989, over 300,000 people gathered at Victoria Park for a gathering called "Democratic songs dedicated for China". Many famous Hong Kong and Taiwan artists performed and expressed their support for the students in Beijing. The massacre in Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989 shocked
9785-453: Was a koiné based on dialects spoken in the Nanjing area, though not identical to any single dialect. By the middle of the 19th century, the Beijing dialect had become dominant and was essential for any business with the imperial court. In the 1930s, a standard national language ( 国语 ; 國語 ; Guóyǔ ), was adopted. After much dispute between proponents of northern and southern dialects and an abortive attempt at an artificial pronunciation,
9888-524: Was expected that higher education should be gained abroad. Two special institutes opened to train young athletes and performers, respectively. The Jubilee Sports Centre opened in 1982 while the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts was founded in 1984 to educate students of the performing arts, music, and related technical professions. The mid-1980s saw the popularising of the Walkman . It
9991-485: Was hidden by their written form. Often different compounds for the same concept were in circulation for some time before a winner emerged, and sometimes the final choice differed between countries. The proportion of vocabulary of Chinese origin thus tends to be greater in technical, abstract, or formal language. For example, in Japan, Sino-Japanese words account for about 35% of the words in entertainment magazines, over half
10094-706: Was instrumental in codifying the slick Hong Kong blockbuster films of the 1980s. Tsui played his part in the process with pictures like the crime farce All the Wrong Clues (1981), his first hit, and Aces Go Places 3 (1984), part of the studio's long-running spy spoof series. In 1983, Tsui directed the wuxia fantasy film Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983) for the studio Golden Harvest . Tsui imported Hollywood technicians to help create special effects whose number and complexity were unprecedented in Chinese-language cinema. In 1984, Tsui formed
10197-477: Was one of the key factors in contributing to the rise of the cantopop culture. Leslie Cheung , Anita Mui and Alan Tam were among the biggest pop stars. Other shows related to Super Sentai and Transformers were translated and broadcast regularly. The franchising of toy stores such as Toys "R" Us flooded the malls of Hong Kong. Japanese import stores like Sogo in Causeway Bay also made Hello Kitty
10300-590: Was quickly typed as a member of Hong Kong's "New Wave" of directors. Tsui's third film, Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind (1980), was a nihilistic thriller about delinquent youths on a bombing spree. Heavily censored by the British colonial government , it was released in 1981 in a drastically altered version titled Dangerous Encounter – 1st Kind (or alternatively, Don't Play with Fire ). The movie out-grossed Tsui's previous two films, however and made him
10403-446: Was recognized for his acrobatic displays and his stunts, along with his Peking Opera friends, who were also some of the heaviest hitters in the industry, Yuen Biao and Sammo Hung . Hong Kong stunts were some of the greatest trademarks the industry had. The comedy genres were also popular with actors such as Michael Hui , Richard Ng , Eric Tsang , and John Shum . Chow Yun-fat was known for his collaborations with John Woo which set
10506-489: Was released direct-to-video in the United States in December of that year before being theatrically released the next month in Hong Kong. Tsui returned to directing at home in 2000 after not having made a local film since 1996. Time and Tide (2000) and The Legend of Zu (2001) were action extravaganzas with lavish computer-generated imagery that gained cult admirers but no mass success. Tsui continues to push technical boundaries and revise old favourites. Master Q 2001
10609-408: Was the first step in connecting real estate education and the industry itself. By 1983, 61% of capital investments belonged to the real estate sector. The amount of money entering the communities for infrastructure expenses in the 1980s eclipsed the sum of all real estate investments from 1940 to 1979. An up-to-date understanding of the industry along with the high-density population provided many with
#104895