Who are the Teochew?
You heard the language in the film Dear You. Your grandmother speaks it. You've eaten the food without knowing it had a name. This is a home for the Teochew people, written in plain English by our own people.
11,000 Teochew words, searchable in English, characters or romanization. Open the dictionary
What language was that, and what were the letters?
Dear You, explained: the language, the qiaopi letters, and why Thailand.
Read →Grandma speaks it. I don't. Where do I start?
The history, the diaspora, and a phrasebook you can use at dinner tonight.
Start →Start with the food. Everyone does.
Kway teow, braised goose, the kueh family, and the tea ritual after every meal.
Eat →A people from one small corner of China, now everywhere
The Teochew (also spelled Teochiu or Chiu Chow; Chaozhou 潮州 in Mandarin) come from Chaoshan, a coastal plain in the far east of Guangdong province around the cities of Chaozhou, Shantou and Jieyang. About 14 million people live there today. Squeezed between mountains and the South China Sea, it was never big or rich. What it had was a port, and people willing to get on boats.
Well over five million Teochew live outside mainland China, most of them in families that have been Thai, Cambodian, Singaporean, Malaysian or Vietnamese for generations, and many of whom fled a second time in the late 1970s to France, the United States, Canada and Australia. In Thailand the Teochew are the largest Chinese group by a wide margin. In Cambodia they make up the majority of Chinese Cambodians.
The Teochew are not Cantonese, and the language is not a dialect of Mandarin. It is a Southern Min language, a cousin of Hokkien, and a Mandarin speaker cannot understand it. That's a big part of why the community stays tight-knit wherever it lands, and why the phrase you'll hear over and over is 家己人 gaginang, "our own people."
Teochew, Chiu Chow, Chaozhou, Diojiu. Same word.
潮州 was romanized by whoever was writing it down, in whatever language they spoke. You'll see all of these, and they all mean us. On this site we say Teochew, because that's how we say it.
Go deeper
Red-head junks, a treaty port, and a century of letters
From Han Yu's exile in 819 to the qiaopi couriers to the exodus of 1975.
Where the Teochew went
Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, France, the US. Country by country.
Not Mandarin. Not Cantonese.
Eight tones, a phrasebook, and why the kids can understand it but not speak it.
Teochew vs Hokkien vs Cantonese
Who understands whom, phrases side by side, and the surname test.
Look up 11,000 Teochew words
Search by English, characters or Peng'im. Built on open data.
Mue, lo gho, kway teow and the whole kueh family
Restraint, seafood, cold dishes, and the noodle soup that conquered Southeast Asia.
Notable Teochew, from Li Ka-shing to Michael Chang
30+ people of documented Teochew descent with sources, plus articles and videos.
Opera, gongfu tea, and the lords of the village
What still holds us together, from the coming-of-age at 15 to the Yingge dancers.
Where our own people are
Three layers. The communities we know of today, the Teochew associations and temples you can actually walk into (including the ones named "Cambodian Chinese" or "Indochinese Chinese," which are ours too), and the letters: the remittance network that connected all of it for 145 years. Click a dot. Missing your city or your association? Tell us.
Zoomed out, one red dot per metro; zoom in and it splits into the actual neighborhoods. Association pins are drawn from published addresses; darker gold pins are Chinese Cambodian, Vietnamese, Laotian and Indochinese associations, which in practice are mostly Teochew. Zoom in on Chaoshan to see the eight historic counties (潮州八邑) with their Teochew names, the ones you hear in association names abroad. Migration routes show the two great waves: out of Swatow from the 1800s, and out of Indochina after 1975. Every popup cites its source. Copy the link to share exactly what you are looking at.
This is the beginning of something
Gaginang started because the knowledge is not getting passed down. Grandparents are going, the language is fading, and the story of the Teochew people, especially the Southeast Asian chapter, is barely written in English. The plan is to build a place where our own people can come together: family stories, a growing language guide, an oral history archive, and eventually a community. If you're Teochew, part Teochew, married into it, or just curious, leave your email and we'll let you know when it opens.
No spam. One email when there's something worth seeing.