In 2017, the Miaoli County Nature Ecology Society (苗栗縣自然生態學會) sent a delegation to Veun Sai Village in Cambodia through the Hakka Affairs Council’s southbound collaboration program and used "green life" as a medium for exchanges, exploring the diverse ethnic cultures of the two places, and gaining an understanding of their shared historical origins. It is hoped that in the future, Veun Sai Village and the Miaoli Hakka community will form a natural health-preserving lifestyle that promotes "slow life, slow travel, and slow food".
Veun Sai Village is located in the northeastern border region of Cambodia, about 600 kilometers away from the capital Phnom Penh. To get to and from the village, one must cross the Se San River. For a long time in the past, it was an isolated settlement. Besides the green natural environment here, what leaves a strong impression to visitors is that most of the more than 400 residents living here are actually Hakka people. The community has completely preserved the traditional Hakka way of life and culture, from the language to the houses and food.
Most of the ancestors of Veun Sai Village’s residents came from Guangdong province, China, but because there is no official historical record, most of their ancestry cannot be traced. A local elder who was nearly 80 years old said that after the ancestors settled in Veun Sai, they worked hard to cultivate the land, but during the Khmer Rouge War from 1975 to 1979, they were forced to leave the village and waited for the situation to become peaceful before returning to the village to rebuild their lives there.
Cambodia, located in the Indo-China Peninsula, has a population of more than 15 million and more than 20 ethnic groups, with the Khmer being the main one. Khmer is a common language and is an official language, along with English and French. Although they live in Cambodia, the villagers of Veun Sai usually communicate in the Hakka. Hearing the villagers of Veun Sai speak the same Sixian-accented Hakka as their fellow Hakkas in Miaoli, the Taiwanese visitors from the Nature Ecology Society feel extremely warmhearted. Every household in Veun Sai Village enshrines their ancestor tablets, make sacrifices to the god of heaven and kitchen god, and maintains traditional Hakka customs in their daily life.
