The Hoklo people are Han Chinese people whose traditional ancestral homes are in southern Fujian of South China. They are also known by various endonyms (Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Hok-ló-lâng / Hō-ló-lâng / Ho̍h-ló-lâng / Hô-ló-lâng), or other related terms such as Banlam (Minnan) people (閩南儂; Bân-lâm-lâng) or Hokkien people (福建儂; Hok-kiàn-lâng). Hokkien people refer to themselves as "Tang people," (唐人; Tn̂g-lâng) which is synonymous to "Chinese people".
Throughout the course of Chinese and Asian history, there have been numerous Hokkien people who have made significant contributions to humanity in various fields, such as Yuan T. Lee, Su Song, Lu Jiaxi, Tan Kah Kee, Corazon Aquino and Cai Qirui.
In a narrow scope, "Hoklo people" refers mainly to people who speak and use the Hokkien dialect of Min Nan Chinese spoken in southern Fujian, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and by many overseas Chinese throughout Southeast Asia. In a wider scope, "Hoklo people" can include speakers of other Min Nan dialects, such as Zhongshan Min and Zhenan Min.
Hoklos are a subgroup of the Min people, including the linguistically and racially related Fuzhounese and Putian people.
In Taiwan, there are three common ways to write Hoklo in Chinese characters (Hokkien pronunciations are given in Pe̍h-ōe-jī), although none have been established as etymologically correct:
福佬; Hok-ló; "Fujian folk" – emphasizes their connection to Fujian province. It is not an accurate transliteration in terms from Hokkien itself although it may correspond to an actual usage in Hakka.
河洛; Hô-lo̍k; "Yellow River and Luo River" – emphasizes their purported long history originating from the area south of the Yellow River. This term does not exist in Hokkien. The transliteration is a phonologically inaccurate folk etymology, though the Mandarin pronunciation Héluò has gained currency through the propagation of the inaccurate transliteration.
鶴佬; Ho̍h-ló; "crane folk" – emphasizes the modern pronunciation of the characters (without regard to the meaning of the Chinese characters); phonologically accurate.
Meanwhile, Hoklo people self-identify as 河老; Hô-ló; "river aged".
In Hakka, Teochew, and Cantonese, Hoklo may be written as Hoglo (學老; "learned aged") and 學佬 ("learned folk").
Despite the many ways to write Hoklo in Chinese, the term Holo (Hō-ló / Hô-ló) is used in Taiwan to refer to the ethnicity and language (Taiwanese Hokkien).
Hoklo architecture is for the most part the same as any other traditional Chinese architecture, Hoklo shrines and temples have tilted sharp eaves just like the architecture of Han Chinese in all parts of China due to superstitious beliefs, however Hoklo shrines and temples do have a few special differences from the styles in other regions of China: the top roofs are high and slanted with exaggerated but finely-detailed decorative inlays of wood and porcelain.
The main halls of Hoklo temple are also a little different, they are usually decorated with two dragons on the rooftop at the furthest left and right corners, and a miniature figure of a pagoda at the centre rooftop. One such example of this is the Kaiyuan Temple in Fujian, China. Other than all these minor differences, Hoklo architecture is the basically same as any other traditional Chinese architecture of any other regions by Han Chinese.
The Hoklo people speak the Hokkien group of dialects which is not mutually intelligible with other Chinese languages other than Teochew (though only a limited degree). Hokkien can be traced back to Old Chinese spoken in during Jin Dynasty and also had recieeved a little influence from the ancient Min and Yue languages as well.
Hokkien has one of the most diverse phoneme inventories among Chinese varieties, with more consonants than Standard Mandarin or Cantonese. Vowels are more-or-less similar to that of Standard Mandarin. Hokkien varieties retain many pronunciations from Old Chinese that changed in other Chinese varieties. These include the retention of the /t/ initial, which is now /tʂ/ (Pinyin 'zh') in Mandarin (e.g. 'bamboo' 竹 is tik, but zhú in Mandarin), having disappeared before the 6th century in other Chinese dialects. Hokkien has 5 to 7 tones or 7 to 9 tones according to traditional sense, dependng on the variety spoken. The Amoy dialect, for example has 7-8 tones.
Southern Fujian cuisine uses a lot of local seafood ingredients.
About 70% of the Taiwanese people descend from Hoklo immigrants who arrived to the island prior to the start of Japanese rule in 1895. They could be categorized as originating from Xiamen, Quanzhou, Zhangzhou, and Zhangpu based on their dialects and districts of origin. People from the former two areas (Quanzhou-speaking) were dominant in the north of the island and along the west coast, whereas people from the latter two areas (Zhangzhou-speaking) were dominant in the south and perhaps the central plains as well.
During the two centuries of Qing rule, a large number of Hoklo men took aboriginal brides of non-Han descent. As some of the plains aboriginals also adopted Chinese customs and language, many of those who today categorize themselves as Hoklo have some degree of indigenous ancestry. Thus, Hoklo culture in Taiwan has deviated from that in mainland China due to Austronesian and Japanese influences.
Within the Taiwanese Han Hoklo community itself, differences in culture indicate the degree to which mixture with aboriginals took place, with most pure Hoklo Han in Northern Taiwan having almost no Aboriginal admixture, which is limited to Hoklo Han in Southern Taiwan. Plains aboriginals who were mixed and assimilated into the Hoklo Han population at different stages were differentiated by the historian Melissa J. Brown between "short-route" and "long-route". The ethnic identity of assimilated Plains Aboriginals in the immediate vicinity of Tainan was still known since a pure Hoklo Taiwanese girl was warned by her mother to stay away from them. The insulting name "fan" was used against Plains Aborigines by the Taiwanese, and the Hoklo Taiwanese speech was forced upon Aborigines like the Pazeh. Hoklo Taiwanese has repalced Pazeh and driven it to near extinction. Aboriginal status has been requested by Plains Aboriginals.
The deep-rooted hostility between Taiwanese aborigines and (Taiwanese) Hoklo, and the Aboriginal communities' effective KMT networks contribute to Aboriginal skepticism against the DPP and the Aboriginals tendency to vote for the KMT.
When the Taiwanese Han "blood nationalists" tried to claim Plains Aboriginal ancestry as a tool to promote Taiwanese independence and to claim an identity separate from that of mainland Chinese, in spite of the fact that their own ancestry was overwhelmingly that of recent migrants from China with genetic tests showing differences between them and plains aborigines, their claims were decidedly rejected by the modern descendants of Taiwanese Plains Aborigines. The Plains Aborigines seek to preserve their own traditional culture since the abuse of claiming their ancestry by Taiwanese "blood nationalists" to create a uniquely "non-Chinese" Taiwanese identity based on blood negates the actual significance of having Plains Aborigine ancestors.
Hoklo people in Malaysia, Indonesia and Philippines
The Hoklo people form the major Chinese subgroup in Malaysia, Indonesia and Philippines. They are known for their entrepreneurial businesses and have also developed their own distinct local cultures and dialects in those nations respectively, sometimes intermingling with the natives.
Haifeng, Lufeng and Leizhou in Guangdong, China
The people of Leizhou Peninsula and the non-Hakka people in Haifeng and Lufeng are Hoklo people, in a narrow scope, but are often being mistaken as Chaoshan peoples in Hong Kong, Macau and Southeast Asia.
Between 1885 and 1949, there were only nine migrants out of nearly 100,000 to Canada who traced their origins to Fujian.
After the 1960s, more Taiwanese Hoklo people began immigrating to the United States and Canada.
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