Mei Nong Hakka Village

Each Semester the Chinese Language Center has a one day field trip to some cultural area in Southern Taiwan. This semester the trip was to the Hakka village of Mei Nong. The Hakka is the second largest ethnic group in Taiwan, acounting for 15% percent of the population, they are less populous that that native Taiwanese who immigrated from Fujian province from the mainland(85%) but more than the recent immigrants from the mainland in 1949(10%). The original aborigines account for less than 1% of today's population.

The Hakka,(or Ke Jia Ren) have an obscure history being refugees from Northern China and always being "foreigners" in the south where they immigrated to. Unlike most Chinese they did not insist that their women do foot binding that became the standard in China by about 1000AD and then was outlawed in 1911. Furthermore, Hakka insisted women work in the field unlike Chinese women. This prevented other Chinese ethnic groups to married into Hakka families. Also as Hakka women were considered a resource of the Hakka community, there was not much marriage to non Hakka. So as an isolated community with it's own language, the Hakka have not integrated with other Chinese.

The Hakka are known for their hard work, business sense and their reverence for education. Education being one of the few ways to advance outside of family relationships. In Hakka land, the written word is disposed in special burners then the ashes are spread of the river in the hopes that the meaning of the characters go back to Heaven.

There are many famous Chinese who were Hakka:

Sun Yat Sen - the founder of the Republic of China
Lee Tun Wei - first elected president of Taiwan
Lee Kuan Yu - long time ruler of Singapore

They have special handicrafts, one of which is the construction of unbrellas, I think we would call them parasols today.

Pottery and glazing is also Hakka speciality:

It was a good trip with all of us seeing our fellow students outside of the classroom setting.