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  • Meet the Albert T. Quons
    • The Marriage
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  • The Summer of 1954
    • A Story Told in Letters
    • Introduction >
      • AQ: "Have I been busy"
      • JQ: "Orchid leis"
      • LQ: "Go crazy, kid"
      • Wally: "Don't change"
      • RQ: "Damn nice of you"
      • Mom: "A grand success"
      • Mom: "My 'fashion plate'"
      • LQ: "Who'd 've understood?"
      • JQ: "The sexy bastard"
      • Mom: "That 'gleam and glow'"
      • Mom: "So proud of you"
      • AQ: "Poor guy/Fast Casanova"
      • LQ: "Free coaching"
      • Mom: "Simply heartbroken"
      • AQ: "Most scandalous"
      • LQ: "Men!!"
      • JQ: "Gush it up"
      • Mom: "Keep it to yourselves"
      • LQ: "Bitter today"
      • LQ: "Your future brother-in-law"
      • LQ: "To the convent"
      • Dad: "A definite idea"
    • Afterword
  • More about Albert
    • His Biography
    • Born in "Sei Yap"
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    • "Historymaker" Award
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      • Youngest Son's Son
      • Unwelcome Nephew
      • Promising Student
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      • Eligible Young Man
      • Reliable Business Partner
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    • Her Biography
    • Ginling College
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BORN in "Sei yap"

Albert came from the village of Kaiping/"Hoi Ping" in southern Guangdong province. In his generation, to say you were from "Sei Yap" was to claim allegiance to the four counties area to the west of the Pearl River Delta and Macau.  The four counties were Kaiping ("Hoi Ping"), Enping, Xinhui and Taishan ("Toi Shan"). 

ITS OWN WORLD

In characters, the name for the area was 四邑 - literally "Four Villages" - pronounced in Mandarin as "Si Yi" and in the local dialect as "SAY-YUP", and variously spelled Sze Yup, Sze Yap, See Yup, Seiyap, etc. 

With the addition of a fifth county, Heshan, the area is now referred to as "Ng Yap" (五邑 Wu Yi). 

The area has its own distinctive dialect quite different from Cantonese. 


It took three days to reach Hong Kong by boat.

It's estimated that there are some 30 million overseas Chinese - mainly in Southeast Asia - and that the overwhelming majority are from southern Guangdong.