An abstract of the five Migrations of the Hakkas (2)

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

   An abstract of the five Migrations of the Hakkas (2) 

    The second Migration of the Hakkas around 874AD 
   -------------------------------------

   In Northern China, Tuo-Ba (surname) Gui, the leader of the Xian Bei 
tribe, destroyed the military power of the other tribes of Turkic Xiong
Nu, the Jie, the Di and the Qiang. Thus the whole of Northern China came 
under his control.
 
   In 386AD Tuo-Ba Gui established his Dynasty called Later Wei (386AD to
534AD). He titled himself as Emperor Dao Wu (386AD to 409AD) and employed
many Han-Chinese to administer his government. About half of the
population in his domain were Han-Chinese. Gradually, many of the citizens
of Xian Bei origin were being sinicized by the Han Chinese subjects.  

   In 471AD Yuan Hong was installed as Emperor Xiao Wen (471AD to 499AD). 
He proclaimed that all the people of Xian Bei descent should be sinicized.
He decreed four steps that Xian Bei people should do:

   (1) to adopt Han Chinese surnames.
       He and his children adopted Yuan as their surname as his
       name was Yuan Hong.

   (2)  to encourage Xian Bei people to speak only Han language
       and to adopt Han model of administration in government offices.

   (3) to inspire Xian Bei and Han Chinese to intermarriage.

   (4) forbid Xian Bei people to wearing their tribal costume.

The sinicization was a great success and people of Xian Bei origin 
considered themselves as Han Chinese. People of other tribes followed 
suit and sinicizing themselves as Han Chinese too. Thus North China 
became a melting pot and the population living there considered 
themselves as Han Chinese.  

   In 420 Liu Yu dethroned Si-Ma De Zong the last Emperor of Eastern Jin
and established the Song Dynasty. This period was called the Dynasties of 
South and North which lasted until 581AD when Yang Jian unified the whole
of China under his Dynasty of Sui (581AD to 618AD). In 618AD Li Yuan, a
general in the Sui armed forces, seized the throne from Emperor Gong, the
last Emperor of Sui and founded the Tang Dynasty (618AD to 907AD). 

  Tang Dynasty was the most resplendent in all Chinese history. It was 
the golden age of Chinese culture. Tang Dynasty was super in political  
and economic organization and in religious too. The influence of Tang 
civilization in Asia was at its apex. Chang An, the capital of 
Tang, was the central for studying classical poetry and Buddhism.   

  After the revolt of An Lu Shan in 757AD the Tang government began to 
deteriorate. Population growth and the declining administrative
efficiency were the main causes that improverished the people and
followed by famine.  

   In 874AD a peasant uprising occured in Hua Zhou (present day Hua 
county in Henan province) and its leader was Wang Xian Zhi. The following 
year another peasant rebellion, with its leader named Huang Chao, broke 
out in Cao Zhou (present day Cao county in Shandong province) and Ju 
Zhou (present day He Ze county in Shandong province). Huang Chao led the 
hungry peasants and pushed southward. They  crossed the Yellow River and
Yangtze River and overran the cities of Fuzhou and Guangzhou in the
coastal region. He killed all the foreign residents in Guangzhou city,
about 120,000 of them and razed the city to the ground.
 
   In 880AD his peasant army swiped westward and captured the Tang 
capital of Chang An. Huang Chao installed himself as the first Emperor 
of Qi Dynasty. The Tang Court fled to Chengdu in the west in present day 
Sichuan province. Eventually with the help of the Tibetants the Tang 
Court destroyed the fledging Qi dynasty. Huang Chao escaped back to his 
home base in Shandong province and committed suicide there. 

  In order to escape famine, drought and peasant upheavals people from the
Central Plain of China were emigrating to the regions south of the Yangtze
River. History repeated itself as they were in the similar situation  
as the earlier emigrants in the 4th century. They armed and banded 
themselves in groups to move southward and settled down in the fringes
of the five ridges in the provinces of Jiangxi, Hunan and Guangdong. These 
displaced people or Guest People had no intention of staying here 
permanently. They hoped to return to their homeland in the north when the
turbulence was over. However, the situation in the North had deteriorated
into total chaos with the collapse of the Tang Dynasty in 907AD.

   After the extinction of the Tang Dynasty China was disintegrated into 
many Kingdoms. The next fifty three years was called by the historians 
as Wu Dai (Five Dynasties) and Shi Guo (Ten Kingdoms). Under these chaotic  
circumstances there was no way that these Guest People wanted to go back 
north to their homelands. They always told themselves that they would 
return to the north, but they lived there right until the 20th century 
preserving their ancient tongue (Hakka) and custom. Even up to the
present day they still saying that they were originally from the north.

NOTE:
 
  On September 8, 1927 Mao Zedong led a group of peasants and staged a
uprising which was called Autumn Harvest Uprising in Hunan province. 
After the collapse of the uprising Mao Zedong congregated about 800 men 
and 80 rifles, the remnants of the uprising. They climbed the Jing Gang 
Shan and established the first Red revolutionary base in these mountains. 

  Jing Gang Shan is a massive mountain ranges, lying between the two
provinces of Jiangxi and Hunan. There were only five villages, at that
time, in this region of 900 square kilometers. All the families were
Hakkas whose forefathers came from the north several hundred years ago. 
(Selected Works of Mao Zedong Vol.1)

CHUNG Yoon-Ngan.