Fujian
From Wikitravel
Fujian (福建) is a province in South East China.
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Understand
Historically, Fujian has been one of the more prosperous and outward-looking provinces of China. In the 1900s, two of China's five treaty ports -- Xiamen and Fuzhou -- were in Fujian.
After the Second World war, however, Fujian's traditional trade with Japan was reduced and her other main customer, Taiwan, was the enemy.
Recently, however, Fujian is recovering. Like other coastal provinces, it is now one of the more modern and prosperous areas of China.
Talk
Today, all educated people in Fujian speak Mandarin. It has been the language of education throughout China since the 1950s and is now the lingua france in Fujian as everywhere else.
However, Fujian also has dozens of its own dialects. The terrain is mountainous; at one time nearly every valley had its own language. These dialects are usually described as Min-whatever, where Min is another name for Fujian.
Among the most important is Min nan hua, Southern Min, spoken in Xiamen, Quanzhou and surrounding areas. Many people in Taiwan speak the same language, though they may call it Taiwanese. In Singapore, the same language is caled Hokkien (the minnan word for Fujian).
Fuzhou hua also has a large number of speakers.
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Stay safe
Fujian, like other Southern coastal provinces, gets typhoons from time to time, mainly from July to September.