The Crippled Tree by Han Suyin

[CHUNG Yoon-Ngan <chungyn@mozart.collective.com.au>]

    The Crippled Tree by Han Suyin   

   This is an excerpt from the book "The Crippled Tree" by Han Suyin 
   a Hakka doctor cum author.   

   The Hakkas say they are the true people of Han, and that they have
escaped degenerate habits brought by foreign rule. They are proud of their
singularity as the Guest People, especially among the Overseas Chinese,
where their clans are prosperous and strong. But they also gave many
leaders to peasant risings, and supplied many heroes in the Revolutions.
Their love songs date back to the Han dynasty, their speech is a mixture
of South and North dialects, and when they move to a new settlement they
carry their ancestor's bones with them in jars upon their backs. In past
migrations each family went to its fields or burial ground to disinter a 
forefathe, placing his bones in a clay jar called a golden urn, to be
carried by the men of the family, the women being loaded with every other
belonging.

   The records of a Hakka family named Tsung, of the district of Meihsien
in Kuangtung province, describe how the great-grandfather's bones were
exhumed, cleared without water, placed in the golden urn which was then
tied to the back of the eldest grandson. When the Tsung family reached the
land to settle, which in the Hakka dialect is called New Mountain, the urn
was placed under some trees so that the ancestor might rest at ease.
Meanwhile a suitable spot for a new grave was found, and the ancestor
reburied; after which the living proceeded to build a house for
themselves. A descendant of the Tsung family told the author this in
Peking in 1962. The date of the recorded move was 1708.

   In their marches to new land the Hakkas often fought their way through
hostile villages. It is said that they left on the road those too weak to
walk; but that happens with any migratory group. Hakkas in the past did
not tolerate crippled or defective babies and left these to die at birth,
as did the Greeks.

   At times the Hakkas could not find their ancestral graves, especially
if there had been much fighting and burial grounds had been disturbed. 
One of the ways in which village vendettas were carried out was the
digging up and scattering of buried ancestors, considered a desecration
worse than the extermination of the living. When they left in too much of
a hurry to take their progenitors along, or where no bones were available,
they would carry the clothes of the ancestor and bury them in a grave
called a clothe grave. When no clothes or other possessions were
available, a small tablet of silver or of wood, with the name and dates of
birth and death of the ancestor engraved upon it, was buried when the New
Mountain was reached, after calling for the spirit of the dead by name in
the appropriate compass direction and enticing it with food and tea laid
under some shady tree, under the guidance of a Taoist wind-and-water
geomancer. When the spirit had taken possession of the tablet, it was then
laid in the prepared grave. Often trees were planted near the new burial
site, from seeds or cuttings brought from the original home, to keep the
dread wind off the bones.

   Perhaps this custom of taking along an ancestor's bones was founded on
land acquisition, like flag-planting, in order to stake a claim to the new
settlement. It gave validily to ownership. It certainly made for a feeling
of attachment to the land.

   Many other customs of the Hakkas have equally practical explanations.
Their claim that their history was made by their women's feet is truth.
Hakka women do not bind their feet, nor their brests, do not hire wet
nurses for their children, and do not become prostitutes. The custom of 
foot-binding, so long associated with Chinese pulchritude, began probably
in the eleventh century, and by the twelfth reached even the peasantry. No
young woman considered desirable unless she had small feet. The binding of
breasts seems to have started later, and only in the cities, until the
twentieth century.

   The reason for the Hakka women's freedom from such corsetry was their
function. The women ..................................................

   The Crippled Tree by Han Suyin