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FEATURE: Hakkas celebrate culture

The Rom-Shing Hakka Opera Troupe, led by the president of the National Taiwan College of Performing Arts, Zheng Rom-shing, rehearses in Hsinchu yesterday. The troupe will perform ''The Beipu Incident'' at Hsiuluan Park in Beipu Township on Wednesday next week at 7pm. PHOTO COURTESY OF HSINCHU COUNTY COUNCIL

The octogenarian Kuan Yin-chai (關英才) was the only non-Hakka delegate to travel from Brunei to Taiwan recently to attend this year's World Hakka City Leader-ship Conference, but he is proud to be participating in "world Hakka affairs" as he has three Hakka wives.

Kuan, 85, a renowned business tycoon in Brunei who started his business kingdom from an electrical appliance store and went on to expand to the construction, hotel, cabaret, education, shipbuilding and maritime transportation industries, doubles as the chairman of the World Liu, Kuan, Chang, Chao Clans Federation.

The energetic and strong-voiced Kuan said about half of his children have Hakka blood and he is proud to have fathered Hakka children, which is why he traveled to Taiwan for this conference.

Kuan, nevertheless, seems to be even prouder to be a descendant of "Kuan Kong (關公)" (Kuan Yu (關羽) who lived from 160 to 219 and is one of the best known Chinese historical figures and a military general under the warlord Liu Bei (劉備) during the late Eastern Han Dynasty and Three Kingdoms period in ancient China.

The Brunei-based business tycoon said he is a 72nd-generation offspring of General Kuan Yu.

The name "Hakka" is a word of Cantonese origin, literally meaning "guest" or "stranger." In many parts of South China, these "guests" are still treated as outsiders or intruders even though everyone now concedes that they are Han Chinese.

The Hakka identify themselves as northern Chinese, and this contention has some basis in fact. Some genealogies and other historical records indicated that many of the ancestors of the Hakka were originally from the northern plains and that they moved south in a series of migration waves, including to Taiwan.

Historically, the Hakka began to emigrate out of China as early as the Tang Dynasty (618 to 906) , but most Hakka emigrated overseas in the 19th and 20th centuries, with many becoming political or business leaders in their countries of residence.

According to Chen Yu-yan (陳玉燕), a Hakka affairs leader in Japan, Tsai Wen (蔡溫), who was prime minister in the Okinawan Kingdom during the 17th to 18th century, was Hakka. Tsai reportedly stipulated a 30 point policy to promote Confucian thinking in the Okinawa area, which today's Japanese in Okinawa believe laid a solid foundation for Okinawa's culture and education.

Thailand's former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was forced from office in last year's coup d'etat, is Hakka, Chen said, adding that Thaksin met with members of a Japan-based Hakka association in Tokyo in January this year and spoke in a Hakka dialect.

According to Lu Chun-yuan (盧鈞元), a Hakka leader from Thailand who graduated from National Taiwan University, among the people of Chinese origin currently living in Bangkok, Hakka descendants form the second largest group.

The Hakka people in Thailand made extraordinary contributions in the early 20th century to help the then overseas Chinese leader Sun Yat-sen (孫中山) in his efforts to overthrow the Ching Dynasty imperial rulers and build Asia's first democracy, the Republic of China, Lu said.

Nevertheless, Lu said, a great majority of the Hakka descendants in Thailand today don't know the Hakka dialect nor can they read Chinese characters.

Lu offered his appreciation to Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄), a Hakka who visited Thailand five years ago in his capacity as chairman of the World Confederation of Hakka Associations to promote Hakka culture, for having helped rekindle efforts to revive the Hakka language and culture in Thailand, where the first Hakkas arrived during the Tang Dynasty.

Hou Ya-ling (侯雅玲) is a Hakka delegate to the conference from Mauritius, an island nation to the east of Africa.

Hou said she traveled to Taiwan to attend the conference in memory of her late uncle, Sir Moilin Jean Ah-Chuen, who was the second Hakka, after Sun Yat-sen, to have his portrait printed on the bills of a country's currency.

Moilin Jean Ah-Chuen, who descended from a Hakka family that emigrated from Guangdong, China in 1654, was conferred a knighthood by the Queen Elizabeth II for his contributions to helping Mauritius develop into an independent nation in 1968.

A successful businessman and parliamentarian, Moilin Jean Ah-Chuen died at the age of 82 in Mauritius in 1991. The Mauritian government printed his picture on Mauritian bills issued between 1998 and 1999 to commemorate his outstanding contributions to the nation.

Huang Kuan-ming (黃冠明), president of the Tsung Tsin Association in Great Britain said a number of Hakka have been listed among the 50 richest people of foreign origin in the UK.
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