In 2017, under the Hakka Community and New Southbound Policy Collaboration Program, an exchange team from Taiwan headed to Malaysia’s Siniawan to embark on a cultural exchange trip. Both sides shared with the other the similarities and differences of the Hakka culture in the two countries, including on aspects of beliefs, celebrations, and music.

For the traditional Hakka people, temples are a locus of their religious belief. Siniawan’s Shui Yue Temple (水月宮) is one such place. In Malaysia, several places that worship the Goddess of Mercy Guan Yin are called Shui Yue Temple. Interestingly, these temples are mostly found in former gold or tin mining areas.

Key festivals in Siniawan are held at the Shui Yue Temple, and the chairman of the temple’s managing committee is commonly the Penghulu (Malay for tribal chief) or the Kapitan Cina (the local Chinese leader, in charge of coordinating all matters in the Chinese community). The local politics and religious beliefs are closely linked, and the temple is thus a key location symbolizing the concentration of the core cultural values of the community.

Siniawan’s Hakka community organized a grand festival, the ‘Birth of Ah Niang’ (阿娘生), on the nineteenth day of the sixth month of the lunar calendar, to celebrate the birth of Guan Yin. ‘Ah Niang’ is a term for Guan Yin used by the local worshippers. In 2017, the Qian Hsing Hakka Bayin Troupe (乾興客家八音團) from Hsinchu’s Hukou Village performed traditional Taiwanese Hakka music at the festival. The local Chinese had never heard such music before, and the troupe’s performance not only liven up the atmosphere, it also brought Siniawan’s residents a unique experience.

Before the southbound exchange team brought modern Taiwanese Hakka popular music to Siniawan, what kind of music exists in the local Chinese community? Li De Hong (黎德鴻), a local Hakka youth who enjoys listening to music, stated that Malaysian Chinese born in the 60s were heavily influenced by Taiwan, and listened to songs by Angus Tung (童安格), Chiang Yu-heng (姜育恆), and Wang Chieh (王傑). In areas where Hokkiens were the majority, Taiwanese Minnan songs were also well received. Those born in the 70s and 80s considered Mandarin songs from Hong Kong and Taiwan as mainstream. As for Hakka music, there was little chance to experience them – Li recalled a local Hakka singer called Qiu Qing Yun (邱清雲) whose hit track “Old Lady Selling Pickled Vegetables (阿婆賣鹹菜)” was once popular. Though Siniawan’s Hakka people spoke their mother tongue from young, they never sang in the Hakka language, and Hakka music was thus not popular locally.

The three Hakka singers who were part of the team in 2017 – Huang Zi-xuan (黃子軒), Chen Wei-roo (陳瑋儒), and A May (徐世慧) – brought Taiwanese Hakka music to Siniawan. These three singers even collaborated with local musicians, and incorporated traditional Hakka mountain songs with the Sarawak musical instrument the sape, a kind of lute, creating a unique work. Using Hakka popular music as a medium to strike a chord with the local Hakka people, is the most direct and fastest way to transmit Hakka culture and to build bonds between the communities, whilst at the same time broadening the horizons for Taiwanese Hakka musicians.

(Translator: James Loo

In collaboration with Fu Jen Catholic University, Department of English)