Misplaced Pages

#168831

87-777: The chain was originally named China Toggery, or Chung Hing (中兴), meaning “revival” or “resurgence” of China in Chinese. The store was headquartered in San Francisco at 927-929 Market Street from 1905. In 1928, Shoong changed the name from China Toggery to the National Dollar Store. According to an article in SFGATE , the store's customers were mostly “low-income people, often minorities.” By 1959, there were 54 National Dollar Stores in six western states, employing approximately 700 workers. The stores sold clothing and small household goods, with

174-464: 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

261-457: 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

348-455: 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

435-595: 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

522-462: 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

609-597: 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

696-700: 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

783-584: A management consultant, commented in 1996 that the stores were “an archaic type of operation...I don’t think they’ve done a remodel in 30 years,” and that they had “square counters, with reserve stock underneath. Signs in the middle of the table give the price. That's not the way we do merchandising today.” On February 15, 1996, ninety-three years after its inception, the National Dollar Stores chain closed doors on its 27 remaining stores, and about 400 employees lost their jobs. These are listed in order of

870-564: 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

957-538: 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

SECTION 10

#1732858922169

1044-515: A shortage of land in Zhongshan. The World Lamp King Museum , a lamp museum in the form of a giant lamp scheduled to open in 2015, will be a major tourist attraction. Zhongshan is home to a number of forest parks which are designed to protect the natural features of the land and offer visitors a chance to get closer to nature. Zhongshan Tianxin Forest Park ( 中山田心森林公园 ) was opened in 2015 as part of

1131-503: 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

1218-678: 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

1305-610: 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

1392-563: 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

1479-596: 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

1566-491: Is a city of numerous leafy parks , wide boulevards , and monuments . Notable sights include: Zhongshan, like many cities in China, has a rapidly changing cityscape with many new buildings under construction. Currently, the tallest completed buildings in the city are the two Zhongshan International Finance Center Towers. Tower 1 and Tower 2 both reach a height of 220 meters (720 feet) and are 55 stories tall. These will be eclipsed by

1653-689: 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

1740-485: 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,

1827-595: 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

SECTION 20

#1732858922169

1914-527: Is one of the few Chinese cities to be named after a person. It was originally named Xiangshan ( 香山 , "Fragrant Mountain"; Cantonese : Heung-saan ), but was renamed in 1925 in honor of Sun Yat-sen , who is known in China as "Sun Zhongshan". Sun was the founding father of the Republic of China who is also regarded positively by the People's Republic . He was born in Cuiheng village in Nanlang Township of what

2001-445: 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

2088-668: 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

2175-424: Is the highest point in the city, at 531 metres (1,742 ft) above sea level . Like nearly all of southern China, Zhongshan's climate is warm and humid most of the year, with an average temperature of 22 °C (72 °F) and 175 centimetres (69 in) of rainfall each year. Southern China experiences fairly frequent typhoons and thunderstorms , and most rain falls between April and September. Zhongshan

2262-484: 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,

2349-496: 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

2436-497: 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

2523-540: 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

2697-735: 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

National Dollar Stores - Misplaced Pages Continue

2784-525: 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

2871-680: 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

2958-507: The Ming dynasty . The Zhongshan area was part of an extended Dongguan County during the Tang dynasty (618–907 AD), and was a significant sea salt producer. In 1082, during the Northern Song dynasty , a fortified settlement called Xiangshan was founded in the area, marking the first official use of the name by which it would be known throughout most of its modern history. The prosperous settlement

3045-579: 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

3132-473: 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

3219-591: 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

3306-459: The " Father of Modern China ", and was from Cuiheng village – now part of Nanlang Town in Zhongshan. Thousands of years ago, much of the Zhongshan area lay within the Pearl River estuary, with only scattered islands above the surface. Gradually from south to north, the area filled in with alluvial silt and became dry land. The northern parts of today's Zhongshan did not fill in until the time of

3393-501: The 'Four Little Tigers' in Guangdong. The proximity of Zhongshan to Hong Kong and Macau is an advantage to its economic development, especially in manufacturing. In the 1980s, Zhongshan had a relatively developed state-owned enterprise (SOE) sector that was used to stimulate Township and Village Enterprises (TVE) development in the countryside. Currently, the SOE sector is much weaker, and

3480-555: 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

3567-621: The National Dollar Store garment factory organized with the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) to form the Chinese Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (LGWU) Local 341. The Chinese LGWU demanded a union contract, a wage increase to $ 20 (~$ 217.00 in 2023) per 35 hour week, recognition of the union, a union shop, a union label, and better working conditions from the National Dollar Store factory managers. On February 8, 1938, Shoong sold

National Dollar Stores - Misplaced Pages Continue

3654-484: The National Dollar Stores were related to Shoong and came from his hometown of Long Tau Wan or his home district of Long Du in Zhongshan , Guangdong. Shoong provided the managers with a house with all utilities paid, a competitive annual salary, a percentage of the profits from the store that they managed, and he paid for the education of many of the managers' children. As a strategy for keeping prices low, Shoong had most of

3741-595: The Perfect Eagle Golden Square tower, which will reach 238 meters (781 feet), with an expected completion date in 2018. The International Trade Center in Guzhen Town , expected to be completed in 2019, will reach a height of 305 meters (1,001 feet) with 65 floors. Zhongshan is a prefecture-level city of the Guangdong province . An uncommon administrative feature is that it has no county-level division, but

3828-672: The Zhongshan National Torch High-Tech Industrial Development Zone ( 中山国家级火炬高技术产业开发区 ) was established in 1990 in the east of the city by the Ministry of Science and Technology and the governments of Guangdong province and Zhongshan. Zhongshan Port, which ranks among the top 10 ports nationwide in container-handling capacity, is in the zone. Since 2001, it has included the Zhongshan Electronic Base of China ( 中国电子中山基地 ) for its reputation in

3915-475: The administration of Foshan . In 1988 Zhongshan became a prefecture-level city . Zhongshan is located along the west side of the mouth of the Pearl River , directly opposite Shenzhen and Hong Kong . It lies south of Guangzhou and Foshan and north of Zhuhai and Macau . The northern part of Zhongshan, including most of the urbanized area, lies on the alluvial plains of the Pearl River Delta , while

4002-511: The aim of offering quality merchandise at affordable prices. According to a 1938 article in Time magazine, the “main thing that distinguishes [the National Dollar Stores] from competitors like J. C. Penney Co. is that they are entirely run and largely owned by Chinese,” while about 90% of the retail clerks were Caucasian. The majority of the first-generation managers and assistant managers at

4089-458: The chain’s president after his father’s passing in 1961, changed the name of the chain from "National Dollar Stores" to "National". In 1989, the San Francisco earthquake damaged 2 stores that then required major remodeling. By the 1990s, the National Dollar Stores were struggling with the recession and damages to 11 of its Los Angeles-area stores from the 1992 Los Angeles riots . Robert Kahn,

4176-876: The city of Zhongshan with seven stations. The Zhongshan Metro system is currently under planning with 2 lines. There is a bus service from Zhongshan to Shenzhen Bao'an International Airport in Shenzhen . Additionally Zhongshan is served by Hong Kong International Airport ; ticketed passengers can take ferries from the Zhongshan Ferry Terminal to the HKIA Skypier . There are also coach bus services connecting Zhongshan with HKIA. Zhongshan has seven sister cities: Chinese language Chinese ( simplified Chinese : 汉语 ; traditional Chinese : 漢語 ; pinyin : Hànyǔ ; lit. ' Han language' or 中文 ; Zhōngwén ; 'Chinese writing')

4263-911: The city's "green lung" initiative. Zhongshan Public Transport Group Co., Ltd. operates many bus routes throughout the city. Stop announcements are voiced in Mandarin and Cantonese on all buses. On BRT system buses, announcements are also voiced in English. By purchasing a Zhongshan Tong card from authorized retailers, riders can receive a discount of 50% on all bus rides. Elderly citizens are allowed to ride for free. Chu Kong Passenger Transport (CKS) connects Zhongshan with Hong Kong with multiple daily scheduled high-speed ferry services to both Hong Kong–Macau Ferry Terminal on Hong Kong Island and Hong Kong China Ferry Terminal in Kowloon . The trip by ferry takes about 1.5 hours. Guangzhou–Zhuhai Intercity Railway serves

4350-604: The creators of modern China. Xiangshan was one of the first counties in China liberated as part of the Xinhai Revolution . After Sun Zhongshan's death in 1925, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the Republic of China decided to memorialize Sun by renaming his county of birth from Xiangshan to Zhongshan. Nationalist and Communist units launched guerrilla attacks on Japanese occupancy forces and their Collaborators beginning in 1942. On August 15, 1945, Japanese forces declared an unconditional surrender, and Zhongshan

4437-399: 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

SECTION 50

#1732858922169

4524-484: 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

4611-479: The economy is dominated by foreign investment and TVEs, and by specialized 'manufacturing towns'. Each of these towns specializes in making a particular product. Most of the towns have earned a reputation as leading manufacturers in their pillar industries. These specialized manufacturing towns include: The government of Zhongshan encourages "Research and Design" in the region by setting up national level research centres and specialized industrial regions. For example,

4698-459: The electronic acoustics industry. Following possible development in Nansha , the city considers its eastern part, of which 400 square kilometres (154 square miles) of land is available, a focus of future development. Currently, the city is trying to re-organize its fragmented industrialization. Meanwhile, the light and labour-intensive industry characteristic of the local economy faces the problem of

4785-566: 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

4872-408: The factory to Golden Gate Manufacturing, a company run by the factory manager and a former National Dollar Store employee. The ILGWU viewed this move as an attempt to break the union, and on February 26, 1938, one hundred and eight workers went on strike, picketing the factory and its three retail store locations. After 13 weeks of picketing, the owner of Golden Gate Manufacturing finally negotiated with

4959-413: 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

5046-491: 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

5133-599: 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

5220-581: 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

5307-516: 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

SECTION 60

#1732858922169

5394-455: 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

5481-568: The more local Shiqi , Shatian , Longdu , Nanlang , Sanxiang , Guzhen , Sanjiao , and Zhangjiabian dialects as well as Wuiguishan , the only Hakka dialect in the city. The most common language, however, is Cantonese . Primary productions are agricultural , such as rice , lychee , banana , and sugar cane . Added to this, horticulture in Xiaolan Town is famous throughout southern China for its blooming chrysanthemum and chickens . Zhongshan, Dongguan , Nanhai , and Shunde are dubbed

5568-436: The municipal government does group the 24 township-level divisions into five district areas. The city government directly administers 8 Subdistricts and 15 towns : Although the main ethnic group in Zhongshan is Han Chinese , there is no one dominant language or dialect spoken making Zhongshan one of the most diverse cities in China. Dialects spoken in the city ranging from the more common Yue , Hakka , and Min dialects to

5655-425: 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

5742-583: 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

5829-538: 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

5916-404: 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 ,

6003-552: 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

6090-509: 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

6177-505: 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

6264-511: 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

6351-457: The southern part of the city's territory reaches into a range of coastal hills. The most notable of these are the Wugui Hills ( Chinese : 五桂山 ; pinyin : Wǔguī Shān ; Jyutping : Ng gwai Saan ). The city's current geography is typical of southern China: numerous steep mountains and hills with alluvial plains in between down to the coastline. The main summit of the Wugui Hills

6438-456: The stores’ merchandise manufactured in a company-owned factory in San Francisco's Chinatown rather than importing goods from outside of the U.S. In an interview for the Oakland Tribune in 1924, Shoong explained, “From manufacturer direct to the consumer, is the plan...This plan we know makes lower prices on dependable and fashionable merchandise for our patrons.” In 1937, Chinese workers at

6525-559: 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

6612-547: 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

6699-512: 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

6786-452: 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

6873-464: The workers. As a result of the strike, the factory workers won a 5% raise, a 40 hour work week, enforcement of health, fire, and sanitary conditions, and guaranteed employment for at least 11 months of the year. However, the National Dollar Stores started purchasing merchandise elsewhere and in 1939, Golden Gate Manufacturing went out of business, leaving many employees jobless. At some point between 1965 and 1970, Milton Shoong, Joe Shoong’s son who became

6960-508: 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

7047-586: The year each store was opened. If known, the year of a store's closing has been added. Zhongshan Zhongshan ( [ʈʂʊ́ŋ ʂán] ; Chinese : 中山 ) is a prefecture-level city in the south of the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong province , China. As of the 2020 census, the whole city with 4,418,060 inhabitants is now part of the Guangzhou–Shenzhen conurbation with 65,565,622 inhabitants. The city-core subdistricts used to be called Shiqi or Shekki ( Chinese : 石岐 ). Zhongshan

7134-453: 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,

7221-708: Was extended. Much of the First Opium War took place in and around Xiangshan. In 1839, the official Lin Zexu arrived in Xiangshan and ordered the expulsion of Sir Charles Elliot and other British traders from the area. Qing dynasty soldiers resisted British attacks on the area in 1840, but were ultimately overwhelmed. After the Opium Wars opened the region to foreign influence, a number of Xiangshan residents, including Sun Zhongshan (Yatsen), left to study overseas and were among

7308-481: 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

7395-472: Was liberated. Zhongshan was the scene of fighting during the Chinese Civil War and was held for much of the war by Nationalists. On October 30, 1949, however, the People's Liberation Army defeated Nationalist forces in Zhongshan, and the county came under the control of the People's Republic of China. In 1983, Zhongshan was elevated in administrative status from a county to a county-level city under

7482-425: Was then Xiangshan County . Until 1925, Zhongshan was generally known as Xiangshan or Heung-san (Siangshan) ( Chinese : 香山 ; lit. 'Fragrant Mountain'), in reference to the many flowers that grew in the mountains nearby. The city was renamed in honor of Sun Yat-sen, who had adopted the name Zhongshan. Sun is considered by both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China to be

7569-508: Was then upgraded to a county in 1152. After the collapse of the Southern Song dynasty , many descendants of Song court officials, including members of the imperial family, settled in Xiangshan. Significant land formation in the area of Zhongshan occurred since the Ming dynasty . Under the Qing dynasty , embankments were built to prevent flooding in the new alluvial lands, and the area of cultivation

#168831