Re: Hakka conference and purpose

[teoh@cs.utk.edu]

>From Greg.Zeng@hlos.com.au Sat Dec 14 05:57:50 1996
Subject: Re: Hakka conference and purpose

> The Hakkalogy meeting held in Chinese University of Hong Kong some years ago
> had articles in English, so the presenter probably did it in English too.
> Presentation in English (or Mandarin) is not a discrimination against Hakka.
> In fact, that is the only way to promote Hakka culture to non-Hakka people.
> 
> SL Lee

If you did a survey, I think that you will find that most Hakka people
can no longer speak Hakka.  Many Mandarin speakers in PRC (China) have
forgotten/ never-learnt their village languages.  In Indonesia,
Singapore, Malaysia, and the English speaking world, most (?) of the
Hakka people do not speak Hakka.

I would think that from my community worker professional background,
that the Hakka community has other reasons to remember their ethnicity,
not just preservation of a "dead" language.  I would organize a
conference/ gathering for the purpose of maintaining and developing
group pride and group identity.

Western psychology supposes the existence of the isolated,
self-sufficient individual person.  Some people like myself do no
believe in this version of "white magic/ white poison" (my
terminology).  As Hillary Clinton, First Lady of the U.S.A. wrote in her
best-selling paperback book: "It takes a village" (to raise a child) -
published 1996.

Or in group psychology terms, the individual person can only exist in a
supportive social group, preferably with some supportive links to the
families of origin of that person.  The Hakka conference should, in my
opinion, have as one of its main aims, the continuing support of the
Hakka people, regardless of nationality, language, sex, age, profession,
education, disability (I am hemiplegic), etc.

This social support requires a variety of guest participants: visitors,
speakers, group leaders, etc.  In your future conferences, I hope you
also have broader aims to the conferences.  

Perhaps we could have an International Hakka conference in Sydney in the
years of 1999, 2000, or in 2001.   I'll be about fifty years old then,
and the International Olympic games are to be held in Sydney, Australia
in the year 2000.