Cover of Hakka Culture Encyclopedia. Photo: CFP

By Zhang Lei

The first official compendium  on Hakka culture, the Hakka Culture Encyclopedia has finally been released after three years' compiling.

According to Liu Weitao, vice president of Lingnan Hakka Culture Research Institute, it contains extensive information on the Hakka including their history and origin, art and architecture, mentality and spirit, dialect and customs, as well as prominent figures in their history.

Probably the biggest migratory group in ancient China, the Hakkas( literally, "guest people") had significant influence on the course of Chinese people and world history.

"As a Hakka, I always wanted to do some systematic research on the thousand-year-old Hakka culture, which has been overlooked for a long time," Liu told the Global Times.

Hakka history

Luo Xianglin, founder of Hakka Studies, was born in Guangdong in 1906. Over the last 100 years, Hakka study has risen again, though not without difficulty, and debates among Hakka experts today, such as the great migrations and whether Hakkas are purely Han people, are ongoing. "Since this is the first large-scale collection of Hakka culture, experts didn't easily reach agreements," Liu said.

According to the book, the Hakka have a history of nearly 2,000 years, and are mainly Han Chinese who migrated to South China from the North during the Ming and Qing Dynasties. They speak an ancient northern dialect and share common culture customs, outlooks, and group consciousness. Now they mostly live in Fujian, Guangdong and Jiangxi provinces and overseas.

As of 2010, Hakka people live across 20 provinces and 372 cities and regions including Hong Kong and Macau, with the largest population being in Guangdong Province. It is generally believed that there are 80 million altogether, with six million living abroad.

Hakka people enjoy a festival celebration. Photo: CFP

Huang Huahua, governor of Guangdong Province and also a Hakka, wrote the book's preface in which he addressed the importance of Hakka cultural heritage and praised the spirit of Hakka people.

"Hakka people inherited the root of central Chinese and promote the national spirit in the long history of migration, forming a hardworking group with wisdom and a unity spirit," he wrote.

During the major social movements of the Song and Yuan Dynasties, Hakka Chinese showed a strong patriotic courage to fight and a willingness to sacrifice themselves for the survival and development of the nation.

"Hakkas are remarkable [people] with a creative and adventurous spirit… It was hard to move to a new place and start from scratch, just like the British people who moved to America and founded a new country," Liu added.

It is estimated that one third of the overseas Chinese living in 76 countries are Hakkas. Prominent political figures from their ranks include Lee Kuan Yew, first Prime Minister of the Republic of Singapore, Thaksin Shinawatra, Prime Minister of Thailand from 2001 to 2006, and Adrienne Louise Clarkson, a Canadian journalist and stateswoman who served as Governor General of Canada from 1999 to 2005.

Fighting spirit

It's worth noting that Hakkas have also been a source of many revolutionary military leaders.

The Taiping Rebellion, the largest uprising in the history of modern China which helped accelerate the demise of the ruling Qing Dynasty, originated at the Hakka village of Jintian in Guiping, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and during 1851-64 was led by heterodox Christian convert Hong Xiuquan.

Tulou building in Fujian Province. Photo: CFP

During the Chinese Bourgeois Democratic Revolution  of 1911, the revolt was led by Sun Yat-sen, a Hakka, and finally overthrew the ailing Qing Dynasty, putting an end to a feudal autocratic monarchy of over 2,000 years. More than 60 Hakka people were involved in the movement.

Ye Zhuru, 83, a relative of Ye Ting, an outstanding Chinese military leader, is proud to be a Hakka. Hailing from Ye County, in China's Henan Province, her family moved to Guangdong 300 years ago to escape frequent natural disasters in the Yellow River Basin.

"Hakka women are particularly hard-working, doing all kinds of housework: taking care of kids, pigs and chickens, transplanting and cutting rice. Males were more relaxed and some went out to work," she recalled.

As Ye remembered, she went to Shandong Province when 18 as a PLA soldier and was surprised that girls her age still bound their feet. "They were embarrassed when I talked them out of it," she said.

Hakkas also built tulou buildings, combined large fortress and multi-apartment building complexes designed to withstand attack from bandits and marauders. UNESCO inscribed Fujian tulou in 2008 as a World Heritage Site.

Tulou building in Fujian Province. Photo: CFP

These large, technically sophisticated and dramatic defensive buildings, built between the 13th and 20th centuries, in sensitive areas in fertile mountain valleys, are an extraordinary reflection of communal settlement which have persisted over time, according to the World Heritage Convention.

With rich traditions of ancestral worship and traditional festivities, Hakkas continue to strive to preserve their dialect, but the number of their speakers is fast dwindling each year, according to Hakka Online, a website promoting Hakka culture and heritage. The timely publication of the Hakka Culture Encyclopedia thus represents a bold effort to enshrine those customs, preserve their ways and perhaps reverse any further decline.

Zhang Xiaoying contributed to the story.

Book tag: Hakka Culture Encyclopedia, collaborative work, 824 pp, Guangdong Education Publishing House, 398 yuan ($60.49).