Things remained relatively unchanged until the Three Kingdom period (三國時代). In 222 AD, one of the Kingdoms, Wu (吳), established Wuyee County (武夷縣) which approximately where present Xinhui is situated. The name was changed to Xinyee (新夷) in 280 AD. Sine the word yee (夷) means barbarians then it is not difficult to conclude this part of China was not exactly civilized. In actual fact the northerner, the inhabitants north of the Yangtze, commonly referred the inhabitants across the river and beyond as Southern Barbarians (南蠻子).

The name Xinhui (新會) first appeared in 420 when Xinhui Quon (新會郡) which initially contained three and later increased to twelve counties was established. It covered a large area including the entire present Xinhui, Taishan (台山), Heshan (鶴山), Kaiping (開平), Shunde (順德), southeast portion of both Xinxing (新興) and Gaoming (高明), eastern portion of Enping (恩平), northeastern and eastern portions of Zhongshan (中山).

The next major change came in 590 AD when it and six other counties were placed under the jurisdiction of Feng Zhou (封州). The next year it was renamed E Zhou ((允州)) which two years later was changed to Gong Zhou (岡州). Gong Zhou was also the name of town where the Xinhui administration was located. Many historians believe it is located at the southwest corner of present day Xinxing. During the ensuring 130 years, there were many flip-flops on Gong Zhou. Finally, Gong Zhou was abolished and the land was divided into two counties, Xinhui and Yeening (義寧), under the jurisdiction of Guangzhou (廣州). Xinhui’s boundaries were finally established and remained unchanged until 1152.

From 1152-1732 the following counties were established by partitioned land from Xinhui. The first, in 1152, to be established was Huengshan (香山) which was renamed in the 20th century to Zhongshan (中山). It is the birthday place of the father of modern China, Dr. Sun Yat-sen. Following the Chinese tradition of not using the country’s chief executive’s (prime minister) personal name but the county of origin. Thus to the Chinese he is generally known as Sun Zhongshan (孫中山). Three other counties were established in fairly rapid fashion: Shunde (1452), Enping (1478) and Xinning (新寧)(1499). The final two partitions took place during the Qing Dynasty (清朝), Kaiping (1649) and Heshan (1732).

Xinhui will always be remembered as where, Yamen (崖門), the army of the Southern Sung Dynasty (南宋), in 1279, made its last stand against the invading all-conquering Mongolian army. The prime minister, Luk Shiufu (陸秀夫), determining that both himself and the emperor should never be captured, strapped the eight year-old child onto his back and jumped off the cliff into the water below.

The story doesn’t end here. Legend has it that days later a monk found the body of a young boy in a yellow robe (traditionally yellow is the colour reserved for the royal family) floating in the open sea. The body was sheltered by birds. After collecting the body and upon close examination the monk discovered the royal seal (玉璽) which confirmed the body was that of the boy emperor. Quietly the monk buried the body and it wasn’t till years later before words of this grave got out. Now each Qing Ming (清明) the Chiu (Zhao) Association in Hong Kong visits grave and pays its respect. The legend and photo of the grave are provided by Henry Chiu.

Another legend is that this child emperor hung his robe on a lychee tree before the fatal event. From then onward, lychees from the area all have a green strip and the sweetest (掛綠荔枝).

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The name was changed to Taishan in 1914 to avoid confusions with counties having the same name in other provinces. However, this switch creates another problem. The name in pinyin is exactly the same as China’s most famous mountain in Shandong (山東泰山). As a test go to any search engine, do a search on Taishan and see what happens.

Taishan is generally accepted as the county with the most overseas-Chinese. Up to and until the early 1970′s it’s dialect, Taishanese, was the de facto Chinese language of North America’s Chinatowns. At the time for a person who didn’t speak Taishanese it was next to impossible to find work in a Chinese establishment.

This created an unique problem for the boomer generation. The language of their parents are Taishanese yet at Chinese school (99.9% of us attended Chinese school at one time or another) the teachers taught in Cantonese. So what’s the problem you ask? There’s no problem until the student started to do the assignments, if my experience is any indication, generally it’s the night before and always encountered at least one new and forgotten word. What to do? Ask your parents. What’s more logical?

The next day in class, the student may be asked to recite the previous week’s lesson in Cantonese or the teacher may randomly tested students on the new words from the previous lesson. The Taishanese speaking students would find their lesson with their parents on the previous evening resulted in incorrect answers. However, because of similarities between the two dialects the parents’ pronunciations were not always wrong according to the teacher. This lack of consistency just added to the confusion of whether to consult with one’s parents or not.

One would think this only happened to those students who asked their parents for help. Those who didn’t wouldn’t have this problem. But this is not really true because most parents liked to monitor their children’s progress and reviewed the school works at home. Their good intention would started to confused the non-confused and compounded for those who were.

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