Hakka people

 ( Hakka Culture ) 

As the strong Punti lineages dominated most of the north western New Territories, Hakka communities began to organise local alliances of lineage communities such as the Sha Tau Kok Alliance of Ten or Shap Yeuk as Patrick Hase writes. Hakka villages from Wo Hang to the west and Yantian District to the east of Sha Tau Kok came to use it as a local market town and it became the center of Hakka dominance. Further, the Shap Yeuk's land reclamation project transforming marshland to arable farmland with the creation of dykes and levees to prevent storm flooding during the early 19th century shows an example of how local cooperation and the growing affluence of the landed lineages in the Alliance of Ten provided the strong cultural, socioeconomic Hakka influence on the area.

Farming and cultivation have been the traditional occupations of Hakka families from imperial times up until the 1970s. Farming was mostly done by Hakka women while their menfolk sought labouring jobs in the towns and cities. Many men entered indentured labour abroad as was common from the end of the 19th century to the Second World War. Post-war, men took the opportunity to seek work in Britain and other countries, later sending for their families to join them once they sent enough money back to cover travel costs.

As post-war education became available to all children in Hong Kong, a new educated class of Hakka became more mobile in their careers. Many moved to the government-planned new towns which sprung up from the 1960s. The rural Hakka population began to decline as people moved abroad, and away to work in the urban areas. By the end of the 1970s, agriculture was firmly in decline in Hakka villages.Gao, (1997) Today, there are still Hakka villages around Hong Kong, but being remote, many of their inhabitants have moved to the post-war new towns like Sheung Shui, Tai Po, Sha Tin and further afield.

Lin Ch'ao-tung (林朝棟) was the leader of the Hakka militia recruited by Liu Ming-ch'uan.Rouil, 60–61

The Hakka used their matchlock muskets to resist the Japanese invasion of Taiwan. Hakka people and Aboriginals conducted an insurgency against Japanese rule, rising up against the Japanese in the Beipu uprising.

Taiwan's Hakka population concentrates in Hsinchu and Hsinchu County, Miaoli County and around Zhongli District in Taoyuan City and Meinong District in Kaohsiung and in Pingtung County, with smaller presences in Hualien County and Taitung County. In recent decades, many Hakka have moved to the largest metropolitan areas, including Taipei and Taichung.

On 28 December 1988, 14,000 Hakka protestors took to the streets in Taipei to demand the Nationalist government to "return our mother tongue", carrying portraits of Sun Yat-sen. The movement was later termed "1228 Return Our Mother Tongue Movement".

Hakka-related affairs in Taiwan are regulated by the Hakka Affairs Council. Hakka-related tourist attractions in Taiwan are Dongshih Hakka Cultural Park, Hakka Round House, Kaohsiung Hakka Cultural Museum, Meinong Hakka Culture Museum, New Taipei City Hakka Museum, Taipei Hakka Culture Hall and Taoyuan Hakka Culture Hall.

In the district of Jelebu, Negeri Sembilan, Hakka people make up more than 90% of the Chinese subgroup, with the dialect itself acting as a lingua franca there. This has contributed greatly to the fact that the place is commonly known among Hakka Chinese as "Hakka Village". The greatest concentration of Hakkas in central peninsular Malaysia is in Ipoh, Perak and in Kuala Lumpur and its satellite cities in Selangor. Concentrations of Hakka people in Ipoh and surrounding areas are particularly high. The Hakkas in the Kinta Valley came mainly from the Meizhou or Meixian District, while those in Kuala Lumpur are mainly of Huizhou origin.

The study of the Hakka people first drew attention to Chinese and foreign scholars, adventurers, missionaries, travellers and authors of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom era. Ernest John Eitel, a prominent German missionary, was one of those who took a great interest in this area.

The Taiping army, which included women in their ranks, captured towns and cities from the defenders, the Taiping troops killed all Manchu children because the Taiping troops with fatal rocks smashed Manchu children's heads The Hakka Odyssey & their Taiwan homeland. p. 157, Clyde Kiang. 1992 Four of the six top Taiping leaders are Hakkas: Hong Xiuquan, Feng Yunshan, Yang Xiuqing and Shi Dakai. Hong Rengan, the Premier of the Kingdom, was the first person in China to advocate a federal government and reform. The kingdom lasted from 1851 to 1864.

Hakkas continued to play leading roles during the Xinhai Revolution that overthrew the Qing dynasty and the republican years of China. When Sun Yat-sen was a child, he used to listen to an old Taiping soldier telling them stories about the heroics of the Taipings. This influenced Sun and he proclaimed that he shall be the second Hong Xiuquan. Sun was to become the Father of modern China and many of his contemporaries were his fellow Hakkas.

Zheng Shiliang, a medical student and classmate of Sun, led the Huizhou Uprising (惠州起義) in 1900. Huizhou is an area in Guangdong province where most of the population are Hakkas. Deng Zhiyu led the Huizhou Qinühu Uprising (惠州七女湖起義) in 1907. All of the Four Martyrs of Honghuagang (紅花崗四烈士) are Hakkas – one of which was Wen Shengcai who assassinated the Manchu general, Fu Qi, in 1911. Brothers Hsieh Yi-qiao and Hsieh Liang-mu raised the 100,000 Chinese Yuan needed for the Huanghuagang Uprising from the overseas Chinese community in Nanyang (Southeast Asia) in 1911. At least 27 of the 85 (initially 72 because only 72 bodies could be identified) martyrs of Huanghuagang are Hakkas. Yao Yuping led the Guangdong Northern Expeditionary Force (廣東北伐軍) to successive victories against the Qing Army which were vital in the successful defence of the Provisional Government in Nanjing and Puyi's early abdication.

Liao Zhongkai and Deng Keng were Sun Yat-sen's main advisors on financial and military matters respectively. A big majority of the soldiers in the Guangdong Army (粵軍) were Hakkas. Other Hakkas for example, Eugene Chen, was an outstanding foreign minister in the 1920s. Some of the best of Nationalist China generals: Chen Mingshu, Chen Jitang, Xue Yue, Zhang Fakui, and Luo Zhuoying amongst many others are Hakka as well.

The Hakka occupied communist Bases reached a peak of more than 30,000 square kilometres and a population that numbered more than three million, covering mostly Hakka areas of two provinces: Jiangxi and Fujian. The Hakka city of Ruijin was the capital of the republic.

When it was overrun in 1934 by the Nationalist army in the Fifth of its Encirclement campaigns, the Communists began their famous Long March with 86,000 soldiers, of which more than 70% were Hakkas. The Fifth Encirclement Campaign was led by Nationalist Hakka general, Xue Yue. During the retreat, the Communists managed to strike a deal with the Hakka warlord controlling Guangdong province, Chen Jitang, to let them pass through Guangdong without a fight. When the People's Liberation Army had its rank structure from 1955 to 1964, the highest number of generals, totalling 54, came from the small Hakka county of Xingguo County in Jiangxi province. The county had also previously produced 27 Nationalist generals. Xingguo county is thus known as the Generals' County.

During the same period, there were 132 Hakkas out of 325 generals in Jiangxi, 63 Hakkas out of 83 generals in Fujian, and 8 Hakkas out of 12 generals in Guangdong respectively, not mentioning those from Guangxi, Sichuan and Hunan. The number could have been significantly higher if the majority of the personnel who started the Long March had not perished before reaching its destination. Only less than 7,000 of the original 86,000 personnel had survived it.

Prominent Hakka communist leaders include: Marshal Zhu De, the founder of the Red Army, later known as the People's Liberation Army; Ye Ting, Commander-in-chief, New Fourth Army, one of the two main Chinese communist forces fighting the Japanese during the World War II (the other main communist force, Eighth Route Army, was commanded by Zhu De); Marshal Ye Jianying, governor of Guangdong; and Hu Yaobang, where the memorial for his funeral sparked off a pro-democracy movement which led to the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. In Guangdong, China's most prosperous province, the "Hakka clique" (客家帮) has consistently dominated the provincial government. Guangdong's Hakka governors include Ye Jianying, Ding Sheng, Ye Xuanping and Huang Huahua.

Besides playing major roles in all the three major revolutions of China, Hakkas had also been prominently involved in many of the wars against foreign intrusion of China. During the First Opium War, Lai Enjue led the Qing navy against the British at the Battle of Kowloon in 1839 and Yan Botao commanded the coastal defence at the Battle of Amoy in 1841. Feng Zicai and Liu Yongfu were instrumental in the defeat of the French at the Battle of Bang Bo which led to the French Retreat from Lạng Sơn and the conclusion of the war in 1885. When the Japanese invaded Taiwan, the Hakka militia forces led by Qiu Fengjia, were able to put up a stiff resistance to the Japanese when the Qing army could not. During the Battle of Shanghai in the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, the heroism of Xie Jinyuan and his troops, known as the "Eight Hundred Warriors" (八百壯士) in Chinese history, gained international attention and lifted flagging Chinese morale in their successful Defence of Sihang Warehouse against the better equipped Japanese. However, in the ensuing Battle of Nanjing, seventeen Nationalist generals were killed in action, of which six were Hakkas.

During the war against the Japanese, both the commander-in-chiefs of the two main Chinese communist forces, Eighth Route Army and New Fourth Army, are Hakkas: Zhu De and Ye Ting. On the Nationalist side, Xue Yue and Zhang Fakui were commander-in-chiefs for the 9th and 4th War Zones respectively. Called the "Patton of Asia" by the West and the "God of War" (戰神) by the Chinese, Xue was China's most outstanding general during the war, having won several major battles that killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese troops. Luo Zhuoying was the commander-in-chief for the 1st Route Expeditionary Forces, Burma (China's first participation of a war overseas), 1942.

During the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong from 1941 to 1945, the Dong River Column guerrilla force (東江縱隊) was a constant harassment to the Japanese troops. The force, whose members were mostly Hakkas and led by its commander Zeng Sheng, was highly successful due to its strong Hakka network. Noteworthy accomplishments of the partisan guerrilla force included the aiding of British and Commonwealth (British Raj Colonial rulers) prisoners of war to escape successfully from Japanese internment camps and the rescuing of twenty American pilots who parachuted into Hong Kong when they were shot down.