Author: CHUNG Yoon-Ngan
Date: 03-30-03 19:05
The Hakka Chinese in Sabah, Malaysia (1)
In Sabah, every day at 12.45 pm in the afternoon when you turn on your radio and tune to Radio Malaysia you will hear this:"今那由某某報告客家新聞
or Now so and so is going to read the the news in Hakka".
When you are having a cup of tea in a Hainanese coffee shop you wiil
often hear this phrase "頭家收錢 or Boss receive money" in Hakka.
It is really very unusual to see a Chinese who cannot speak Hakka in Sabah. It was estimated that there were over 300,000 Chinese in the State of Sabah and more than half of them were Hakkas. Over 98% of the Chinese in Sabah speak Hakka dialect.
Why are there so many Hakka Chinese in Sabah? Even the Chief Minister of
the Sabah State Government is a Hakka Chinese.
There are three theories which attempt to explain why there are so many
Hakkas in Sabah:
(1) The remnants of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom (太平天國 1851 to 1864) escaped from China and went to live in Sabah (formerly North Borneo).
(2) The North Borneo Chartered Company wanted Hakka Chinese workers to develop North Borneo.
(3) In 1882 Sir Walter Medhurst went to the Hakka counties in China to recruit Hakka workers on behalf of the North Borneo Company.
The First theory:
金田崛起奮同仇﹐=Jintian jue qi fen tong chou,
嘆息英雄志末酬﹔=Tan xi ying xiong zhi mo chou;
又見腥羶渺無際﹐=You jian xing shan miao wu ji,
秦淮嗚咽水空流。=Qinhuai wu ye shui kong liu.
The uprising in Jintian was to fight the common enemy,
Alas, the heroic deeds of the heroes were not rewarded.
Again we saw the country being under the controlled by those
who smelt of mutton. Sadly, the river of Qinhuai sobbed for its water flowing in vain.
Note:
金田 (Jintian) is a village in the county of Guiping (桂平縣)
in Guangxi province (廣西省). On 11th January 1851AD
Hong Xiuquan (洪秀全) staged an uprising against the Qing
Government (清朝). It was the beginning of the Taiping Movement.
秦淮 (Qinhuai) is a river.that flows through the city of Nanjing (南京市
). In March 1853 the Taipings occupied Nanjing and established their
capital there. They named their new capital 天京 (Tianjing).
In January 1864AD, General Charles George Gordon, the commander-in-chief of the Ever Victorious Army (常勝軍) fighting for the Qing Government (清朝), defeated the Taiping Army of Heavely Kingdom (太平天國). In February, the Qing General, Zuo Zhongtang (左宗棠) captured Hangzhou (杭州). Hong Xiuquan (洪秀全), the Heavenly King (天王), committed suicide by taking poison. Hong Futian (洪福瑱), the 16-year-old son of Hong Xiuquan succeeded him. In July the Qing Army under the command of Zeng Guoquan (曾國荃), the younger brother of Zeng
Guofan (曾國藩), captured the Heavenly capital. Not a single resident of about 300,000 in Tianjing surrendered to the Qing Army. Hong Futian, leading the remnant of the Taipings, fled to the south from the capital.
In August, the new Tian Wang was captured by the Qing troops in Nanchang (南昌市) city in Jiangxi province (江西省). He was executed by dismemberment of the body. That was the end of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.
The remaining of the Taipings retreated to the Hakka regions in western
Fujian province (福建省). Zuo Zongtang (左宗棠), leading the Qing troops,
was ordered by the Qing Authorities to go after them. Within a short period
and after a few battles, the remnant of the Taipings retreated further south to the Hakka stronghold in Jiayingzhou (嘉應州 present day Meixian (梅縣) in Guangdong province (廣東省). They tried to establish a base in the hills in Jiayingzhou. Eventually, in December of 1865, they were being besieged by the Qing troops.
The Taipings made a stand. In the following battles more than ten thousand Taipings were killed. As they were in a hopeless situation, without food and ammunition, over 50,000 Taipings surrendered to Zuo Zongtang. What happened to those who surrendered no one knew and also no one knew how many of the Taipings escaped to present day Sabah and other places in the world.
Dr Han Suyin writes in her book "The Crippled Tree":
"After the Taiping failed in 1864, the Manzhous (Qing Authorities 清朝)
put all men, women and children named Hung (Hong 洪) to the sword, to extirpate the breed; many fled, or changed their names. Because of these massacres many Hakkas migrated to south-east Asia (Nanyang 南洋), or were inveigled by the boat-load to become indentured labourers on railways and canals in the East Indies (Indonesia), Malaya (Malaysia and Singapore), the United States, and as far as Panama, Brazil and Africa."
According to the records on early pioneers in North Borneo (present day
Sabah), the first Hakkas to arrive in Sandakan, in the east coast of North
Borneo, were those people with the surname of Hong (洪). They were the followers of Hong Xiuquan (洪秀全).
CHUNG Yoon-Ngan (鄭永元)
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