It is estimated that there are over ten million overseas Chinese who originated from Fujian province, nearly one-third of its present population of 34.71 millions (March 2001). In addition to those in South East Asia, about 1 million are in Hong Kong and over 80% of Taiwanese are descendants from Fujian, just across the Straits.
The province of origin is Fujian, known as [Min] in short, or Hokkien in the dialect. The Province is located in China’s southeast coastal region, bordering Zhejiang Province to the north, Jiangxi Province to the west and Guangdong Province to the south; it is separated from Taiwan by the Taiwan Straits.
The [Minnan] dialect is also common in other Southern districts of Fujian, parts of Guangdong, Hainan and pockets in other provinces. In addition the language is used widely in Taiwan. In South East Asia the Hokkiens are the most numerous Chinese ethnic groups. They predominate in countries, such as the Indonesia, Philippines Singapore, and Malaysia (in areas such as Penang and Johore).
According to “ethnologue”(www.ethnologue.com) the [Minnan] dialect is spoken by about 45 millions people worldwide. They include 25,725,000 in mainland China (1984), 2.5% of the population, inclusive of 1,000,000 [Xiamen] dialect (1988 census), 6,000,000 [Quanzhou] dialect. Outside China, the [Minnan] dialect is spoken by:
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