Etymology

waishengren

W4A1I1S1H4E1N1G2R1E1N1

Today it means: a category of people and their descendants who fled mainland China for Taiwan after 1945 in response to the Nationalists losing the Chinese Civil War; sometimes regarded as an ethnic group. Full definition →

Mandarin 外省人
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The story

  1. Mandarin · borrowed from外省人
  2. English todaywaishengren

From Mandarin 外省人 (wàishěngrén), literally "outside province people" (from the point of view that Taiwan was a province of the Republic of China and they were migrants from other provinces).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.