Hakka Genetics

[96981339r@polyu.edu.hk]

Dear Dr. Lee,

I tried to send the attached message message to the Haaka forum on Monday
(14.9.98)  but it failed to appear. Then I saw your posting and Dylan's
reply. I would also like to comment that the data of Zhao et al. is
scientific and statistically based. Hakka and Cantonese share the same
genetics because we migrated together from the central plain to the South.
We started at the end of the tang dynasty and that is why both Hakka and
Cantonese has the same feeling of Tangren. However, we took different routes
and we arrived almost simultanously in Guangdong, although we found our
homes in different regions. For example, the founder of family Liu (in
Cantonese Lau), my ancestor Liu2 Koi1 qid5, was recorded to come in AD1235
as an officer in Chaozhou (then include also Jiayingzhou). On the other
hand, most Cantonese report that their ancestors came in Southern Sung via
Zhujixiang in Nanxiong. Today i am working on the comparison of hakka and
cantonese dialect and find that they are the most similar dialects among the
seven dialects of China. Using the basic words comparison method, Prof. Xu
Tongqiang, a historical linguistic, calculated the year of separation of
Hakka and Cantonese to be less than 700 years. Hakka got its name because
they came to the Cantonese speaking region at the beginning of the Qing
dynasty, as Dylan also said. Before that we were all Guangdongren, ethnic
Han. Free migration between Hakka, Cantonese and Hoklo before 1600, or end
of Ming dynasty, did not cause the people to feel that they changed their
identity before the label was gotten much later. Therefore, there was no
sense of Hakka before the 17th centuy, as Hakka did not emerged as a group
with self-identity until the middle of Qing when they were massively
rejected by Cantonese speakers.
Hakka andCantonese are genetically and linguistically brothers, but that is
the way how two ethnic group evolved. We can compare it with the history of
Arabs and Hebrew, Hindi and Urdu. 
Love your enemies, and enemies can be close relatives.

Yours sincerely,
Liu Zinfad




BASED ON GENETICS WHICH SUBGROUP OF HAN CHINESE ARE HAKKA MORE SIMILAR TOO? 
 
I've read several comments over the years regarding the origins of Hakka (Ke
Jia Ren) People and lost track on
the latest news/research.  Could we start up the discussion again.  The only
real documentation that I've
personally read was based on a book by Clyde Kiang, Hakka and Their
Taiwanese Homeland.  Other opinions
link the Hakka to the Xiongyu, Mongol, Hui, Manchu and even the Turks of
Asia Minor.  Does anyone have
access to the latest scientific theories on this subject?
 
DL Wong
email: huangdr@hotmail.com 


Dear Mr. Wong,

If you can read Chinese, I would like to refer you to a scientific paper by
Zhao Tongwu et al, "Study on the Immunoglobin isomers of Chinese: a
hypothesis of the origin of the Chinese nation." it was published in
Yichuanxue Xuebao (Acta genetica sinica), 18(2), 1991.  A brief summary is
given as followed:

74 groups of people from 24 folks of our nation are studied for their Gm, Km
distribution in the immunoglobin isomers. 9560 samples of Gm (1,2,3,5 21)
gene and 9611 samples of Km(1) gene were investigated. According to the Gm
monomer types, genetic distances were calculated. 
The result is striking, Hakka (Han from Meixian) is most similar to
Cantonese (Han from Canton)! The next related are the "she" (Ú®) people from
Jingning (´º¹ç), and then the Han people from liuzhou (Mandarin speakers).
There are also other people from Guangdong and Guangxi who are quite similar
to ours genes. Han people from Xiamen and Chaozhou (Minnan dialect speakers)
are much less related to us, and instead they are more related to people of
Jiangxi, Fujian and Zhejiang. But as a whole, the population of South China
are joined into a large cluster which distinguish them from the people north
of Yangtze.
Therefore, the authors put forward a North-South Hypothesis.

Interestringly, Hakka is genetically southern Chinese, indistinguishable
from Cantonese, no matter you like it or not.



Yours sincerely,

Liu Zinfad.