90-542: The Golden Dragon Museum ( Chinese : 金龙博物馆 ) is a museum in the city of Bendigo , Victoria, Australia, dedicated to the culture and history of Chinese Australians , particularly in the region. Built on the historical site of one of Bendigo's Chinatowns , the museum's precinct also includes Chinese Gardens and a temple to Kuan Yin . Through the museum accreditation program, it was the first accredited museum in Victoria. The Golden Dragon Museum opened in 1991. The site of
180-547: 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
270-464: 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
360-457: 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
450-505: 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
540-595: 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
630-462: 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
720-422: A comprehensive collection of Chinese currency. He donated this to the museum in 1991. The collection contains several Zhou dynasty era pieces of knife money . The earliest round coins in the collection are two Qin dynasty ones. From there the collection of ancient Chinese coinage is vast and comprehensive. Bridges also collected paper money. All of the paper items are from the 20th century. There are notes from
810-597: 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
900-700: 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
990-659: A likeness of Sun Yat-sen . All these figures were given into the care of the Bendigo Chinese Association and when the Golden Dragon Museum opened they were an important part of the displays. These wax figures were made in Hong Kong by Vivian Sun. They arrived in Bendigo in 1973. Horrie Bridges was a local Bendigo man with a passion for collecting foreign currency. Over many years and several trips to China he amassed
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#17328552795701080-575: A long history of parades and celebrations in their camps on the goldfields. These were usually for Chinese New Year or other Chinese cultural events. Later in the 1870s when the Easter Parade became an annual institution in Bendigo, the Chinese joined. The Chinese section of the parade soon became one of the parade's most elaborate sections. In these early performances the Chinese used regalia they had made in Australia or brought with them from China. In 1880
1170-564: 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
1260-501: A private collector from Adelaide began donating pieces of his collection to the museum. Acquired from Chinese dealers in the 20th century this collection contains lavish furniture and adornments from palaces and temples of the late Qing dynasty . Such large pieces are rarely seen on public display in collections outside of China. These include screens, thrones and chairs made of Huanghuali wood. Many ornate silver, cloisonné and bronze incense burners. Jade carvings have been inlaid on both
1350-538: 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
1440-503: 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
1530-610: 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
1620-563: 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
1710-596: 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
1800-485: 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,
1890-573: Is no longer held. The 2010 parade contained a section in which a number of past Popular Girls paraded once again. The Popular Girl contest was preceded by the Queens' competition from about 1916 to 1929. The winner was selected by receiving the most votes which translated to funds raised for their respective charities. It included Queen of ANZAC , Queen of Victory, Queen of Eaglehawk , Queen of Red Cross , etc. Originally held in several locations, including Rosalind Park , Bendigo Showgrounds and, more recently
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#17328552795701980-595: 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
2070-445: 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
2160-668: 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
2250-484: 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,
2340-496: 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
2430-497: 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
2520-540: 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
2610-428: 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
2700-735: 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
2790-636: The Bendigo Easter Fair , is an annual event held in Bendigo, Victoria , Australia , since 1871 with the exception of 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic . The festival includes the Easter procession which sees Dai Gum Loong , the world's longest imperial dragon , dance through the streets along with An extensive program of activities and attractions such as an Easter Egg hunt . On 1 January 1871 discussion
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2880-610: 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 a single language. However, their lack of mutual intelligibility means they are sometimes considered to be separate languages in
2970-453: The Guangdong province. They were seeking better economic opportunities for themselves and their families. Once they arrived in Bendigo, the Chinese formed their own community and began raising money for charities. In the 1870s, the local Chinese were invited to take part in the annual Easter festival. The Chinese elders of the region raised money to purchase extravagant costumes and regalia for
3060-525: 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
3150-680: 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
3240-579: 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
3330-473: 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
3420-591: 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
3510-678: 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. Bendigo Easter Festival The Bendigo Easter Festival , also known as
3600-591: The Bendigo Central Business District, the carnival features a large number of sideshow alley attractions and children's rides. The Chinese Spring Festival has been held every Easter Sunday in the Yi Yuan Gardens since 1996. It includes many cultural performers who demonstrate martial arts , lion dancing , storytelling and traditional Chinese dancing which includes the fan dance, ribbon dance and drum dance. In this ceremony unique to Bendigo,
3690-519: The Borough of Sandhurst . Mr. William Heffernan, licensee of the hotel, suggested a fair based loosely on the Donnybrook Fair of Dublin, Ireland which ran from 1204 until about 1868. He also offered the use of a room for meetings and £10 to kick off the fundraising effort. Heffernan and his business partner Mr. Hadley had previously established and run an Easter sports carnival in 1869 and 1870 known as
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3780-450: The Chinese community leaders in Bendigo decided to place a levy on all Chinese in the region to buy items for use in the Easter Parade. Through this levy £750 was raised. It was sent to China and used to acquire a number of crates full of richly embroidered theatrical costumes. There were enough costumes to fit hundreds of players into a theatrical Chinese court, with scholars, generals, soldiers, princesses and an emperor. Some positions within
3870-555: 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
3960-549: The Republic of China era, 1912–1949, there are notes from the People's Republic as well as some rare notes from Manchukuo . This collection is believed to be the largest collection of Chinese currency on display anywhere in Australia. The Golden Dragon Museum hosts tour groups from schools throughout Australia. It contains several displays which portray the success and value of multiculturalism . The museum also contains displays which show
4050-791: The Sandhurst Easter Holiday Sports. The Easter Fair was initially known by several names, but by 1880 it was generally referred to as the Bendigo Easter Fair. The first Easter Fair was held on 10–11 April 1871. Originally it was held at the lower end of Pall Mall around the current site of the Conservatory Gardens and lower Rosalind Park , later moving to the old showgrounds, now the Tom Flood Sports Centre. The first Easter Fair raised £2560 (£1280 for each institution) through admissions fees. In its first 21 years
4140-564: The Southern Lions perform, accompanied by cymbals and drums, in order to awaken the dragon who will then walk in the Gala Parade which culminates in the explosion of tens of thousands of firecrackers. The Chinese Association Lion Team perform the donation dance which is unique to Bendigo's Chinese community. The dance began as a way for the Chinese community to raise money for local hospitals and benevolent societies. In order to be recognized as
4230-481: The annual parade. The three principal golden dragons are Loong (1892–1970), Sun Loong (1970–2019) and Dai Gum Loong (2019–present), housed at the Golden Dragon Museum in Bendigo. The torchlight procession is a nighttime parade which began before 1900. It features local emergency services, with local volunteer and professional fire brigade members marching with flaming brass torches. In recent times
4320-399: 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
4410-484: 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
4500-566: 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
4590-431: The event as an opportunity to raise funds. In 1893 The Weekly Advertiser described a procession which included a large and colourful Chinese section that delighted crowds. Since that time, the Chinese community has been an integral part of the festival. The procession features upwards of 100 floats entered by local community groups , schools , emergency services and businesses . The procession traditionally ends with
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#17328552795704680-526: The event raised £23,000 for the hospital and asylum (some $ 3 million dollars in 2020). The first parade assembled at Market Square. It then moved to the railway station to receive the governor, proceeded down Mitchell Street, along Pall Mall to Mundy Street, up Mundy Street to Hargreaves Street, along to Williamson Street and dispersed at the Shamrock Hotel. The first procession featured the following: The Easter Fair Society The Easter Fair Committee
4770-592: The event. These costumes form the basis of the museum's collection and are well-preserved garments made from silk and gold bullion thread. In 1988, the Chinese year of the Golden Dragon, official fundraising for the museum by the Chinese of Bendigo began. The most significant artifact in the museum's collection was to be the processional dragon Loong ( Chinese : 華人金龍 ; pinyin : Huárén jīnlóng ; Jyutping : waa4 jan4 gam1 lung4 ; lit. 'The Chinese Golden Dragon'). The Golden Dragon Museum
4860-533: The fair. It was a major sponsor of the 150th Easter Fair in conjunction with its own group of sponsors and supporters, providing over $ 100,000 to the 150th anniversary event in 2020, which ended up being postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In the 1980s, the charitable nature of the festival was discontinued in favour of a focus on tourism. Many community groups such as the Rotary Club and Vision Australia still use
4950-413: 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
5040-491: 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
5130-550: 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
5220-464: The hardships and racism many Chinese faced because of the White Australia policy at the beginning of the 20th century. Alongside these specific displays the assorted Chinese artifacts are great examples of Chinese culture and history. The Golden Dragon Museum also offers educational craft workshops to tour groups and it also offers its expertise to other community museums around Australia. In 2013
5310-581: 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
5400-399: The large Chinese section, which has grown to showcase over one thousand elements and participants. Chinese cultural groups from Bendigo and Melbourne participate in the parade, demonstrating lion and dragon dances . Traditionally the procession was held on Easter Monday, but since 2011, when it clashed with Anzac Day , it has been held on Easter Sunday. A team of radio-equipped marshals
5490-516: 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
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#17328552795705580-505: The mayor, 2 from the borough of Eaglehawk, 2 from the benevolent asylum, 2 from the hospital and 9 from the community elected at the annual general meeting . It was also decided that the funds raised would be distributed 60% to the hospital and 40% to the asylum. The society was later to become a company in 1966 and an incorporated association in 1984. The society had ultimate control of the fair's operations until 2003 when insurance costs made it financially nonviable to continue. The committee
5670-455: 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
5760-488: The museum began running night time Chinese language classes. Chinese language Chinese ( simplified Chinese : 汉语 ; traditional Chinese : 漢語 ; pinyin : Hànyǔ ; lit. ' Han language' or 中文 ; Zhōngwén ; 'Chinese writing') 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
5850-402: The museum is the area of one of Bendigo's Chinatowns. The Bridge Street Chinatown was the centre for Chinese activity in the region from the late 19th century to 1964. The old buildings of Chinatown were bulldozed by the city council to make room for a car park. In the 1980s, Russell Jack pushed forward his vision for a Chinese museum in the area. Once the funding was acquired, Harry Charalambous
5940-425: 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
6030-583: 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
6120-538: 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
6210-404: The parade became highly sought after. The Chinese of the region would bid for the honour of wearing certain costumes. All the money would go to local charities. Much of this collection remains today. The Golden Dragon Museum houses what are believed to be the oldest and the longest imperial dragons in the world. Sun Loong , the longest imperial dragon, is over 100 metres (330 ft) long and
6300-459: The parade has ended at Lake Weeroona where entertainment, activities and fireworks have been held. The torchlight procession is held on Easter Saturday each year. A fundraising event called the Popular Girl was held from 1930 to 1996 in which well-known local young ladies raised money for charity. The woman who raised the largest amount of money was crowned as Miss Popular Girl. The competition
6390-404: 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 ,
6480-552: 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
6570-509: 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
6660-505: 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
6750-557: 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
6840-609: 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
6930-547: 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
7020-512: 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
7110-454: The wooden pieces and elsewhere throughout the collection, as well as some Jade pieces which stand on their own. There are also cloisonné bronze and marble statues of guardians and religious icons. Porcelain items were also donated. One dish has been dated back to the Song dynasty . The Dai Gum San Wax Works in Bendigo closed down in the late 1980s. It contained a range of wax Chinese figures including
7200-452: 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
7290-508: 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
7380-453: 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,
7470-584: Was brought out every year for the Bendigo Easter Festival until Sun Loong was retired in favor of the 125 m (410 ft) long Dai Gum Loong in 2019. Loong , the oldest imperial dragon, is heritage listed. Loong is an important part of Australian history thanks to his presence at the parades for Federation in 1901 and the Centenary of Federation in 2001. The museum also contains other dragons which all still perform today. In 2001, John St Alban,
7560-457: Was chosen as the architect. His design incorporated Chinese symbolism and architecture with distinctly Australian materials such as corrugated iron and red brick reflecting the history of the Chinese of Bendigo. Chinese heritage constitutes a significant part of the town of Bendigo's cultural identity. The Victorian gold rush saw thousands of Chinese migrate to Bendigo in the latter half of the 19th century. Most of these people were young men from
7650-501: Was established in 1978 for the purpose of improving entry movements and reducing parade gaps. By the early 1990s, it had evolved into a separate, incorporated entity known as the Dragon City Marshals Inc. (DCMs), with a much wider geographical sphere of activity. By 1994 DCMs were assisting many other events around Victoria, including Melbourne's Moomba Festival . In 1892, large processional dragons became an integral part of
7740-650: Was founded to protect, preserve and teach the history of the Chinese in Bendigo. It inherited the large and significant collection of Chinese processional regalia from the Bendigo Chinese Association . These formed the basis of the museum's collection. The collection has grown significantly since then with both small and large donations. The basis for the museum's collection. This vast collection contains theatrical costumes made from materials including silk, furs and gold bullion thread. These pieces were once used in Bendigo's Easter Parade. The Chinese of Bendigo had
7830-687: Was held at the Shamrock Hotel regarding a fundraiser for the Bendigo Hospital and Benevolent Asylum . Representatives from the hospital, asylum and various friendly societies such as the St. Andrews Society , the Irish Australian Society, the Independent Order of Oddfellows Manchester Unity (MUIOOF), and Independent Order of Rechabites were in attendance. At the time Bendigo was known as
7920-481: 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
8010-473: Was initially elected annually at community meetings. The results were published after each Easter, following which the committee stood down and a new committee was elected the next year, often chaired by the mayor. In 1926 a permanent body to be known as the Bendigo Easter Fair Society was established. It was to be made up of 18 executive members — 3 representatives of the city of Bendigo, including
8100-439: Was to remain as the core of a section 86 committee of council to direct the event's content and policy whilst council staff were to implement the practical aspects. The executive of the society still sits on the community consultative committee/reference group, an advisory body to council in the running of the fair. The Easter Fair Society, a volunteer group, still maintains its role as custodian and continues to operate elements of
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