Author: CHUNG Yoon Ngan
Date: 02-05-07 05:10
Dear Norma, Nelly and all my Hakka friends
Han Suyin on Hakka Chinese (1)
This is an excerpt from Han Suyin's book "The Crippled Tree". Dr Han is
a Hakka doctor cum author who was born in China. I think many Hakka friends
have not read any of her books.
Long, voluminous and weighty are the books and records about the Hakkas,
written both by Chinese and non-Chinese. Their origin is Honan province
(Henan 河南省), in the Yellow River loess plains of North China. Five centuries
before Christ, in the time of the great philosophers, this was the center
of Han culture. But the Han people of the northern plains were for ever
subject to pressures from invaders, galloping in from the Siberian steppes
on their horses, Tartars and Mongols of various names and tribes. Great
migrations of the Han people took place, until the almost empty luxuriant
middle and south of China were also peopled by northern migrants.The trek
of the Guest People, the Hakkas, was one of many such peasant migrations
which must have taken place again and again in the course of the centuries,
always greatly intensified in times of wars and during famines due to drought
or floods. The fact that the silt-loaded Yellow River overflowed its rising
bed and changed its course nine times during the last two thousand years,
each time ravaging areas as large as England, must also have led to large
peasant displacement.
Every change of dynasty was heralded by peasant risings, a shifting into
gigantic Long Marches of millions of the dispossessed and the hungry, and
these are now recorded in the Museum of History in Peking, for they belong
to history, they were the upheavals of a people looking for a way out of
the long feudalism which ended only yesterday.
The word Hakka does not denote a racial group, for the Hakkas are Han People,
Chinese people. It was a word applied to all displaced peasants, and only
after the tenth century came to designate a special group. Moving en masse
these refuges from misery were "people who sought a roof", hence called
"Guest People" which was more courteous than calling them displaced persons
or refugees. A code of regulations was formulated for dealing with such
immigrants into new districts, to provide for their welfare and their resettling
in lands where tillers were needed, and to avoid conflicts with older settlers.
The Hakkas themselves claim that they moved five times within recorded history.
In their first migration (1st MIGRATION), dating about A.D. 311, they crossed
the Yangtse River (Son of the Ocean) and settled in the provinces of Kiangsi
(Jiangxi 江西省) and Anhwei (Anhui 安徽省). Some of their historians claim
that they already had their own folklore, traditions, customs and dialect,
but this is doubtful. A second migration (2nd MIGRATION) took place from
A.D. 874, during the decades of turbulence which saw the end of the Tang
dynasty (唐朝 618AD to 907AD). A third migration (3rd MIGRATION) started
after A.D. 1276, was due to the Mongols, when Genghis Khan's hordes came
riding from the steppes of Siberia. In this migration the Hakkas were at
a disadvantage, for by that time the provinces of Middle and South China
were in great part settled, the jungles curbed, the best fields tilled. The
Hakkas were driven farther south, or mountainous, poor areas. They entered
Fukien (Fujian 福建省), Kuangtung (Guangdong 廣東省), Formosa (Taiwan 台
灣省) and what is now North Vietname (北越南), settled on the poorer lands,
survived and multiplied.
Because of their mobility, hardihood and fierceness, the dynasties began
to regard the Hakkas as potential pioneers, good for settling in sub-populated
areas.
The Hakkas spread in the middle and south provinces, building villages which
they often fortified. They multiplied exceedingly, which made them more
land-hungry; and since the barren districts were their portion, they engaged
in feuds with older settlers on more fertile land, raided their villages
and were in turn raided; they erected gates and watch towers and locked
themselves in their villages at night, as they still do in the British colony
of Hongkong where there are many Hakka villages.
Circumstances thus defined their group character: clannish, thrifty, loyal
to each other, bad neighbours and ready fighters, the name Hakka stuck to
them and they became proud of it.
The fourth migration (4th MIGRATION) of the Guest People took place after
the Manchu came to power. Between 1680 and 1720 the Manchu Emperor Kanghsi,
in his peregrinations through the land, sought to rally the hearts of the
people of the south, and to resettle the Hakkas in Szechuan (Sichuan 四川
省) and other regions. The Imperial Office paid eight ounces of silver per
man, four ounces per woman or child, to the migrants. In this way many Hakkas
came to Szechuan.
The fifth and last migration (5th MIGRATION) of Hakka occurred at the end
of the Taiping rising (太平天國 1851AD to 1864AD), one of the many enormous
peasant revolts which have characterized the history of China, important
because the peasant Revolution looks upon Taiping as its precursor.
.........to be continued...................
CHUNG Yoon-Ngan (鄭永元)
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