The Minnanese Hokkien people lived remarkable lives in the 17th century. According to Taiwanese historian Fabio Yu-chung Lee, their business network extended from China to the Philippines and the West. They also spoke several languages.
Lee, an associate professor at the Institute of History at Tsinghua University, will share his insights on Saturday (August 31) in a free talk at Vancouver TAIWANfest. Entitled How Minnanese Survived Abroad During the Age of Exploration, it takes place at 2 p.m. in the Montalbano Family Room (Level 8) at the Vancouver Public Library Central branch.
Lee headed an international team of researchers that published the nine-volume Hokkien Spanish Historical Document Series, which examined the first contact between the imperial languages of China and Spain. One of their major discoveries was the world’s oldest Spanish-Chinese dictionary, Dictionario Hispanico Sinicum.
The team found this 1,000-plus page document in the archives of the University of Santo Tomas in the Philippines. This 17th-century dictionary included nearly 30,000 Hokkien entries.
The existence of this dictionary is just one example of how Minnanese people from Fujian established themselves across Southeast Asia. They also migrated in large numbers to Taiwan.
According to Lee, a priest marked this major document as having “little value”. And this elicited the historian’s curiosity. This cleric likely didn’t know Chinese characters.
Colonists interacted with Minnanese
The dictionary included the Chinese characters for the area that is now the northern Taiwanese city of Keelung. There on Heping Island, Spanish colonists established Fort San Salvador in 1626. Sixteen years later, Dutch forces expelled them from Taiwan.
The existence of the term for the Keelung area suggested to Lee that the Spanish learned some Hokkien when they were occupying this part of Taiwan.
In 2023, his team won first prize from the prestigious Duke of Soria International Hispanic Studies Seminars. The Spanish royal family grants this award.
Over several years, team members came across other important documents, including Grammar of the Zhangzhou (or Hokkien) Dialect.
“I’ve always believed that when the whole world knows you are conducting this research, historical materials will somehow come to you,” Lee said in a 2023 National Tsinghua University news release.
Update
In the video below, watch Fabio Yu-Ching Lee’s presentation at the Vancouver Public Library.
Vancouver TAIWANfest presents How Minnanese Survived the Age of Exploration on Saturday (August 31). Fabio Yu-chung Lee’s free presentation takes place in the Montalbano Family Room (Level 8) at the Vancouver Public Library Central branch. Follow Pancouver on Instagram @PancouverMedia.
