Xiamen (Amoy, Southern Fujian or Min Nan) Dialect and English

Xiamen (Amoy)

Xiamen, also known to the West as Amoy, looks out to the Taiwan Strait; many of its old colonial buildings have been carefully restored and its clean, well–kept streets and lively waterfront make it rank as one of the most attractive cities in China.

Xiamen was China’s main port for exporting tea. The Portuguese arrived in the 16^th century and followed by the British in the 17^th century, and later by the French and the Dutch. Xiamen Port remained closed from the 1750s until August 1841 when a British naval force of 38 ships carrying canons and soldiers forced the port to open. Western powers and Japanese followed soon after to establish consulates and made the island of Gulangyu a foreign enclave. Nowadays，Xiamen port is one of the trunk line ports in the Asia-Pacific region, it ranks the 30^th among the world’s top 100.

Amoy in the 1890s

Amoy dialect is the local vernacular and highly similar to Taiwanese or Teochew. As a port used by Europeans for many centuries, Amoy dialect had a major influence on some Chinese translated into English or other European languages. For instance, the words “Amoy” , “tea”, “Ketchup”, ”kowtow”, “cumshaw” and “Japan” all come from the Amoy dialect. If you’re a fan of Kung Fu, the iconic Kung Fu star Bruce Lee’s favourite weapon is “nunchaku”, which also originated from Amoy.

A project named Greetings to the Universe in 55 Different Languages was launched almost two decades ago: one of the purposes was to send a message to extraterrestrials who might find spacecrafts travelling through interstellar space. In addition to pictures and music and sounds from earth, greetings in 55 languages were included. Amoy dialect was one of these. Click Here to hear the greeting in Amoy.

Red Brick House, founded in the 1900s. (Vernacular Dwelling of Min Nan or Southern Fujian)

Family Temple (Founded in the 15^th century and restored in 1990s)

Altar in the Family Temple

Protestant Church, Founded in the 1840s and one of the Old Villas (Founded in 1920s).

Interview with Greg Sinclair on GoKunming

Chris Horton from GoKunming interviewed me a couple of days ago about chinaONEcall, running a call centre in Kunming and the challenges facing the telephone interpreting industry. The story appeared today.

Earthquake in China: assistance from chinaONEcall

Following the recent earthquake in Wenchuan County, Sichuan Province, chinaONEcall is offering free help for victims of the Chinese earthquake, and for anxious family or others needing to contact them or the victims doctors / nurses in the affected area.

Just telephone the service direct within China to 4006 88 66 99 or from overseas to +86 871 805 8503 , quoting “earthquake crisis” and the chinaONEcall team will do their best to help. They operate a 24/7 interpreter service for travellers ( business or leisure ) and are making available their 15 strong team to give interpreter support to those on this present crisis.

Please note we will do our best to help, but cannot locate victims, doctors etc as this will be done by the relevant governmental and aid agencies.

chinaONEcall on Fox Business Network

Michael Sinclair recently appeared on the Fox Business Channel talking about chinaONEcall.

Speech to Business Referral Exchange

Michael Sinclair (Marketing Director of China One Call Ltd) was recently asked at short notice to give a speech on ‘Doing Business in China’ to the Business Referral Exchange (BRX) at a breakfast meeting at HSBC, Fleet Street, London.

To see the full text of the speech please click here.

Financial Times article about Language Services

After the lengthy description of an alternative service there is a interesting anecdote given by Michael Sinclair in this Financial Times article about Language Services.

I think the key distinction may be that chinaONEcall’s local knowledge and affordability makes it something to use regularly throughout a trip to China and not only for emergencies. Infact Michael describes how the service can be used spontaneously to create new and exciting opportunities.

Michael Sinclair, marketing director of chinaONEcall says: “A customer of ours was on holiday in a Chinese village full of jewellery shops and thought some of the products would be of interest to a friend who ran a jewellery business. He called us and arranged to have samples sent over. Now the friend is importing from the business.”

http://tinyurl.com/4tj5pe

Corporate Travel & Technology World

chinaONEcall will be at the Corporate Travel & Technology World at Shanghai’s Regent Hotel on 8th-9th April. Come and visit us at Booth #12 for a free trial.

Lord Digby Jones endorses chinaONEcall

Digby, Lord Jones of Birmingham, British Minister of State for Trade and Investment and former Director General of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) wrote to Michael Sinclair (Marketing Director of China One Call Ltd.) on 27th February, following the UK-China Business Summit in Beijing. He writes “Your product looks useful and innovative for business people in the market, and I wish you every success going forward.”

chinaONEcall mentioned in ModernAgent Travel Pulse

http://www.modernagent.com/Resources/Editorial.aspx?n=34103

chinaONEcall UK Launch Party

Well, chinaONEcall – the interpreter in your pocket - launched on 16^th October at the very swish and snazzy No 5 in Cavendish Square and what a turn out! There must have been nearly 100 Guests including leading names from large corporates. Guests we talked to were from HSBC, Lloyds TSB, and many more. The room was absolutely buzzing!

Dr Eugene Chang from the China Britain Business Council and Yu Jing, press representative from the Chinese Embassy welcomed the guests and gave chinaONEcall their seal of approval.

Yu Jing expressed sincere congratulations to chinaONEcall on such a useful idea, and felt it provided a bridge between the 2 countries promoting better understanding and friendship between the people of China and the UK.

Dr Chang who opened the proceedings reflected on the fact that there may shortly be almost as many English language speakers in China as there are in the entire English-speaking world – but that doesn’t mean anyone can get by in doing business or travelling by just speaking English. CBBC members would surely be one of the first subscribers to chinaONEcall as China has one of the largest mobile phone networks in the world, with over 200,000 new mobile accounts opened every day - which is pretty awesome!

Michael Sinclair, Managing Director of chinaONEcall spoke of his personal experiences that inspired him to come up with the idea for the innovative service and said that he felt the full house at the launch was a reflection already of the value chinaONEcall can add to travel in China.

After watching a short film of the call centre in China in action, we dined lavishly from copious trays of beautifully crafted morsels based on a far east or oriental theme – miniature spring rolls, sushi, vast amounts of tempura prawns, thai green curry cornets – the food just kept coming. There was also Tsing Tao to wash it down as the guests merrily networked in to the night.

At the end of the evening the chinaONEcall team were found hunched in a corner with several bottles of self congratulatory Tsing Tao and more food! They deserved it – it had been a triumphant evening!