Every autumn, Lunbei
Township of Yunlin County holds the "Zhao’an Hakka Culture Festival"
for nearly one month. On the first night of the festival, people gather and
hold torches in their hands to parade for blessings. Then a series of
activities are held for four consecutive weekends, including martial arts
performances, Hakka ancient ceremonies, exhibitions, etc.
Among Taiwan’s Hakka communities,
there’s one group whose ancestors came from Zhao’an in Fujian province, China.
This group of "Zhao’an Hakkas” crossed the sea to settle in Taiwan at a
very early time, approximately in the middle of the Qing Dynasty. They settled
in Yunlin County. Their settlement has a history of at least three hundred
years. At present, Taiwan's Zhao’an Hakkas are most densely concentrated in Lunbei
Township in Yunlin County.
Yunlin’s Zhao’an Hakkas
still have distinctive language accents, traditional folk customs, martial arts
skills, and traditional cuisine that are different from
those of Hakkas in Taiwan’s Taoyuan, Hsinchu, Miaoli and
Kaohsiung-Pingtung area’s Liudui settlement. They are a group of people with quite
a unique culture. In the early days when Zhao’an Hakkas went to Yunlin to set
up communities and develop the land, they protected their homes against
intrusion from thieves by holding torches at night and taking turns keeping watch
over the village. With the changes in society, the torches have lost their
defensive role, but holding torches has become a custom of the Zhao’an Hakkas during
the Mid-Autumn Festival to “greet the night." This has become a common
memory of the community’s residents.
During the development of
Taiwan, Zhao’an Hakkas had relatively few conflicts with other ethnic groups,
which is related to their friendly relations with the majority ethnic group, the
Minnan people. In their original homeland
and the new land they had migrated to, the Zhao’an Hakkas had good
interactions with the Minnan people of southern Fujian. Many Zhao’an Hakkas
spoke both the Hakka and Minnan dialects.
Since the Zhao’an Hakka language
is non-mainstream for most Hakka communities, and in the past, the Qikan area (an area generally referring to the
settlement of Zhao’an Hakka in Yunlin County) was mainly an agricultural area
in which for their daily life, they needed to go to Xiluo to purchase goods,
and Xiluo had mostly Minnan people, Zhao’an Hakkas had few chances to use their
own language. On top of that, the proverbs and songs of the Zhao’an Hakka had
not been spread elsewhere, and the use of their vocabulary had been replaced by
other dialects, so this led to a decline in the usage rate of the Zhao’an Hakka
tongue.
The Zhao’an Hakkas in Qikan and the surrounding areas had long-term
interaction with the Minnan settlements. As a result, through social changes
and intermarrying, the family structure of the Zhao’an Hakkas was transformed.
In terms of language and lifestyle habits, the Zhao’an Hakka culture became
heavily influenced by Minnan people. This led to an identity crisis for later descendants
of Zhao’an Hakkas. Many people in the community thought they were Minnan people
and didn’t know that they were Hakkas.
At present, the loss of Zhao’an
Hakka culture is quite serious. In the case of Qikan area, the eastern part of
Qikan is adjacent to Xiluo, and there are few people there who use the Zhao’an
Hakka language. There are only a few communities – Gangwei Community in Lunbei
Township and Luocuo Community and Erlun Township – where the Zhao’an Hakka language
is still used in the daily conversations of residents. In recent years, it has
been left up to the schools to promote the Zhao’an Hakka mother-tongue to
students so that the younger generation can learn the language.
