Punti

The Punti, a rough transliteration of the Cantonese term for "original locality," refers to the Yue-speaking populations of Guangdong province in southern China. A group of people who speak Punti language can be regarded as Punti people. They are contrasted with another Han Chinese linguistic group, the Hakka, which settled in the area after the Punti peoples.

History

It is both documented and generally viewed to various extent that mass exodus of largely the people of Han Chinese ethnicity migrated from north to south of the Yangtze River during the war and upheavals of the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the Jurchen-Khitan Wars, the fall of the Northern Song Dynasty, the Mongol conquest of the Jurchen Jin Dynasty and finally the Southern Song Dynasty pushed generations of refugees into the area including the descendants of the Chinese patriotic leader Wen Tianxiang. The "Great Five Clans" — the Hau (侯), Tang (鄧), Pang (彭), Liu (廖), and Man (文) — were among the earliest recorded familial settlers of Hong Kong. Despite the immigration and light development of agriculture, the area was still relatively barren and had to rely on salt, pearl and fishery trades.