The Cantonese people () or Yue people (), are a Han Chinese sub-ethnic group originating from Guangzhou and its surrounding cities and towns (as well as Hong Kong and Macau), who natively speak Cantonese. In a more general sense, "Cantonese people" can refer to any Han Chinese originating from or residing in the provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi (collectively known as Liangguang), or it may refer to the inhabitants of Guangdong province alone.
Historically centred around Guangzhou and the surrounding Pearl River Delta, the Cantonese people established the Cantonese language as the dominant one in Hong Kong and Macau during their 19th century migrations within the times of the British and Portuguese colonial eras respectively. Cantonese remains today as a majority language in Guangdong and Guangxi, despite the increasing influence of Mandarin.
Speakers of other Yue Chinese dialects, such as the Taishanese people who speak Taishanese, may or may not be considered Cantonese. The Hakka and Min-speaking people (such as Hoklo, Teochew and Leizhounese) who also reside in Guangdong are usually differentiated from the Cantonese as they speak non-Yue Chinese languages.
Terminology "Cantonese" has been generally used to describe all Chinese people from Guangdong since "Cantonese" is commonly treated as a synonym with "Guangdong" and the Cantonese language is treated as the sole language of the region. This is inaccurate as "Canton" itself technically only refers to the capital Guangzhou, and the Cantonese language specifically refers to only the Guangzhou dialect of the Yue Chinese languages. David Faure points out that there is no direct Chinese translation of the English term "Cantonese". People living in Guangdong and Guangxi may speak other Yue dialects or dialects from other Chinese language groups such as Mandarin, Min, Hakka, and Pinghua.
The English name "Canton" derived from Portuguese or , a muddling of dialectical pronunciations of "Guangdong" (e.g., Hakka Kóng-tûng). Although it originally and chiefly applied to the walled city of Guangzhou, it was occasionally conflated with Guangdong by some authors. Within Guangdong and Guangxi, Cantonese is considered the prestige dialect and is called baahk wá, () which means "vernacular". It is also known as "Guangzhou speech" ().
Other Yue peoples are sometimes labelled as "Cantonese" such as the Taishanese people (), even though Taishanese () has low intelligibility to Standard Cantonese.
Genetics Cantonese people are predominantly of Han Chinese ancestry, with various local genetic clusters suggesting regional language-based endogamy. As with other Han Chinese from Guangdong, they have Kra-Dai ancestry and exhibit ancient admixture with Taiwanese aborigines, like Ami and Atayal, which was similarly observed for Han Chinese from Fujian and Sichuan and the ancestors of Taiwanese Han. They also have Neolithic Mekong-related ancestry but this is less significant (21.8–23.6%), which was similarly observed for Han Chinese from Fujian.
Overall, Cantonese represent the southernmost Han sub-group although other genetic studies suggest that Fujianese and Taiwanese Han are equally as southern. They allegedly split from northern Han the earliest, dating from the Qin to Tang dynasty, compared to other Guangdong sub-groups like Hakka, whom they later intermixed with along with Teochew. Out of the Sino-Tibetan-speaking groups, they share the highest affinities with Taiwanese Han and Singaporean Chinese. Han Chinese from the Pearl River Delta region also show high affinities with Han Chinese from Hainan and Xiamen and Australian Asians although the locals of Hong Kong and Macau have slight genetic differences. Along with other Lingnan Han, Cantonese people cluster with Kinh Vietnamese but other studies show higher affinities between Dai people and Kinh Vietnamese.
Because of their native southern ancestry, they slightly differ from other Han subgroups in skin tone, build, stature and having a higher incidence of certain diseases such as nasopharyngeal cancer. According to a 2012 study, Cantonese usually have similar physical characteristics to Han from Jiangxi, including the predominance of mesocephalic and hypsicephalic types, darker skin in males, thin lips, thin eye slits with higher external angles and less 'mongoloid folds', straight nasal profiles with medium-high nasal roots etc. Due to speaking a tonal language, Cantonese speakers are often better at musical pitch perception than rhythm perception, compared to English and French speakers.
Among the Han Chinese of Dongguan, Guangdong, southern-prevalent maternal haplogroups, such as R9 (20.8%), B (17.9%), M7b (14.2%) prevail. In contrast, the frequencies of northern-prevalent haplogroups (with the exception of D) are quite low: C (1.9%), G2 (1.9%) and Z (1.9%). Overall, Guangdong populations belong to the southern-prevalent maternal haplogroups B, R9, and M7 (Dongguan: 57.5%; Guangzhou: 69.3%; Hong Kong: 60.0%), except for Zhanjiang populations (46.6%). Several subhaplogroups, such as B4a, F3a, M7b, and M10, were also shared among Dongguan, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong populations but absent in Zhanjiang populations, which is consistent with their geographic proximity. Except for Hong Kong populations (5.0%), haplogroup D was also present in the rest three populations with high distribution frequencies (>14%). M8 (embracing M8a, C, and Z), a northern-prevalent haplogroup shows relatively higher frequency in the Dongguan population (9.4%). Paternal haplogroup O-M175 (89.5%) and its sublineage O3-M122 (~56%) are also common in Han Chinese from Macau and there is no evidence of male-mediated Portuguese influence despite their long-lasting presence.
History
Pre-19th century: History of Liangguang Until the 19th century, Cantonese history was largely the history of Guangdong and Guangxi, collectively known as Liangguang or Guangnan.
Throughout history, there have been multiple migrations of Han people from the Central Plains into the region that is now southeastern and southern China. The first Chinese presence in Guangdong can be traced to the conquest by the Qin general Zhao Tuo and his subsequent establishment of the Nanyue kingdom, a hybrid Han-Yue polity as an independent state.Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian, Section 112Huai Nan Zi, Section 18 There was a second wave of migration during the Han dynasty during the troubled reign of the usurper Wang Mang. However, it was only under much later dynasties such as the Jin dynasty, the Tang dynasty, and the Song dynasty, when major waves of Han Chinese began to migrate south into Guangdong and Guangxi, that the region acquired the cultural characteristics that last until the present day.
Formation of Nanyue kingdom
What is now Guangdong and later Guangxi, was first brought under Qin influence by a general named Zhao Tuo, who conquered the region in 214 BC and later, after the collapse of the Qin empire, founded the independent kingdom of Nanyue in 204 BC.Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian, section 112.Huai Nan Zi, section 18Zhang and Huang, pp. 196–200; also Shi Ji 130Records of the Grand Historian, section 97 《《史記·酈生陸賈列傳》 Zhao Tuo's retinue included hundreds of thousands of predominantly male Qin conscripts, and he is recorded as petitioning the Qin Emperor for 30,000 wives from the Central Plains for his restless soldiers. Following the collapse of central authority in the Qin Empire, the Han Chinese soldiers, conscripts, and labourers under Zhao Tuo's command were incorporated into the Nanyue kingdom and ordered to mix with the local inhabitants.
Like the founder Zhao Tuo, the aristocratic elite and military class of the newly formed Nanyue state were of Central Plains origin and mediated the transmission of Han culture to the local inhabitants. Grave goods and burial pits show a significant and immediate cultural shift at the time of Nanyue's establishment, especially in larger tombs, which began to deploy Han Chinese features such as ramps and compartmentalised coffins, and to contain traditional Han Chinese drinking vessels such as the hu, he, and ding as well as incense burners such as the xun lu. Buildings began to feature architectural elements from the Central Plains, including covered galleries, drains, stone lintels, and columnar bases.Globalization at the Crossroads, The Case of Southeast China during the pre- and early imperial period, Francis Allard, page 461-462 The Han aristocratic elite, however, did adopt features of the Bai Yue culture, including the use of feathered headdresses as represented on Nanyue cauldrons, in order to bolster their authority among the indigenous people in the new hybrid Han-Yue polity.
The Nanyue kingdom, which was led by a Han aristocracy and adopted Han bureaucratic structures,Zhang & Huang, pp. 26–31. and which adopted a policy of assimilation and fusion with the native Bai Yue, then went on to become the strongest state on the southern periphery of the Han, with many neighbouring kingdoms declaring their allegiance to Nanyue rule. Zhao Tuo took the Han territory of Hunan and defeated the Han dynasty's first attack on Nanyue, later annexing the kingdom of Minyue in the east and conquering Âu Lạc, Northern Vietnam, in the west in 179 BC.
The greatly expanded Nanyue kingdom included the territories of modern-day Guangdong, Guangxi and Northern Vietnam (Tonkin), with the capital situated at modern-day Guangzhou. The people of Liangguang remained autonomous until formally incorporated into the Han dynasty in 111 BC, following the Han–Nanyue War.
Incorporation into Han territory
Liangguang was incorporated into the Han dynasty in 111 BC, following the Han–Nanyue War. From this point on, it was directly administered by the Han Empire.
Han Empire
During the troubled period of Wang Mang's reign in the Han dynasty (206BC–220AD), there were influxes of Han Chinese migrants into Guangdong and Guangxi, western coast of Hainan, Annam (now Northern Vietnam) and Eastern Yunnan.
4th-12th century AD
During the 4th–12th centuries, yet more waves of Han Chinese people from the Central Plains migrated and settled in the South of China. This gave rise to peoples, including the Cantonese themselves,唐宋时期的北人南迁 ．内蒙古教育出版社官网．2008-01-15[引用日期2013-08-09] and the other dialect groups of Guangdong during the Tang dynasty including the Hakka and the Teochew. Waves of migration and intermarriage meant that the indigenous populations of both Guangxi and Guangdong provinces were either assimilated or displaced, but some native groups like the Zhuangs remain.
One notable migration occurred in the aftermath of the deadly An Lushan rebellion in the Tang dynasty, which led to a massive southward migration by people from the Tang heartland into the Panyu area, causing a 75% increase in the population on household registers. Unsurprisingly, the Cantonese often call themselves "people of Tang" (). This is because Han immigration and the intermarriage with and acculturation of indigenous tribes reached a critical mass during the Tang dynasty, creating a new local identity among the Liangguang peoples. The origin of the Cantonese people is thus said to be Han people from the Central Plains who migrated to Guangdong and Guangxi in multiple successive waves of settlement while it was still inhabited by Baiyue peoples.
19th–20th century: Turmoil and migration