Foshan

See also: Fóshān and Fo-shan

English

Alternative forms

• Fo-shan
• (from French, obsolete) Fo-chan

Etymology

From Mandarin 佛山 (Fóshān).

Proper noun

Foshan

1. A large prefecture-level city in Guangdong, in southeast China.
   • 1836, John Francis Davis, The Chinese : A General Description of the Empire of China and its Inhabitants‎^[1], volume 1, New-York: Harper & Brothers, page 38:

     At Foshan, about four leagues above Canton, Père Bouvet speaks of a Milanese Jesuit as presiding over a church, with a flock of 10,000 persons : at this day there is probably not one single individual at that same place.

   • 1857 July-December, Thomas De Quincey, “Hints Towards an Appreciation of the Coming War in China.”, in Titan A Monthly Magazine‎^[2], volume XXV, →OCLC, page 69, column 1:

     Foshan is a town in the neighbourhood of Canton, and happened to be the scene of Colonel Chesney's ill usage.

   • 1939 May 20 [1939 May 19], “Chinese Attacks Cost Japanese 24 Planes and 3 Warships”, in Daily Worker‎^[3], volume XVI, number 120, New York, sourced from CHUNGKING, China, page 2, column 5:

     At Foshan, south of Canton, 147 Japanese soldiers have died of cholera.

   • 2020 August 7, Sophie Stuber, “Video of Uighur handcuffed to bed in quarantine centre refocuses attention on Chinese persecution”, in France 24‎^[4], archived from the original on 24 August 2020:

     Ghappar is Uighur, a Muslim minority group that has been the target of discrimination and oppression by Chinese officials in recent years. In January 2020, officials took Ghappar from his home in the southern city of Foshan to a police station in Kucha, Xinjiang. He was held for 18 days in a police detention centre, then transferred to a temporary “epidemic prevention centre” where he filmed the video.

   • 2022 June 6, “‘Fake’ Aluminum Stocks Put Perils of China’s Commodities Funding in Spotlight”, in The Washington Post‎^[5], →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 18 March 2023, Energy‎^[6]:

     This time, metals markets are fixated on an incident in the southern province of Guangdong, in which several traders claim they were duped into providing credit against fictitious quantities of aluminum. More than 500 million yuan ($75 million) may have been loaned, backed by stockpiles of the metal stored in a warehouse in the city of Foshan that turned out to be worth significantly less than that.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:Foshan.

Synonyms

• (from Cantonese) Fatshan, Fat Shan

Translations

a city of China

• Arabic: فُوشَان m (fušān)
• Chinese:

  Cantonese: 佛山 (fat⁶ saan¹)

  Mandarin: 佛山 (zh) (Fóshān)

• Georgian: ფოშანი (pošani)
• Japanese: 仏山 (ぶつざん, Butsuzan)
• Korean: 불산 (Bulsan)
• Macedonian: Фошан m (Fošan)
• Marathi: फोशान n (phośān)
• Russian: Фоша́нь m (Fošánʹ)
• Vietnamese: Phật Sơn

Further reading

• Saul B. Cohen, editor (2008), “Foshan”, in The Columbia Gazetteer of the World‎^[7], 2nd edition, volume 1, New York: Columbia University Press, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 1262, column 1
• “Foshan”, in Collins English Dictionary.
• “Foshan”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• “Foshan”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• “Foshan” in TheFreeDictionary.com, Huntingdon Valley, Pa.: Farlex, Inc., 2003–2024.