President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said yesterday that Taiwan, with 25 percent of its population being of Hakka descent, has been striving to become the world’s center of Hakka culture.
Speaking in the Hakka language to address the opening of a world conference of city leaders of Hakka descent, Ma told the conference that he himself has Hakka blood and that he was pleased to see that policies mapped out in his Hakka cultural development -platform have been implemented over the past two years.
The policies that have been realized include the passage of the Hakka Basic Act (客家基本法), which allows the government to use national resources in an -ambitious plan to turn Taiwan into a global Hakka cultural research and interaction center, Ma said.
There has been a 20 percent increase in the annual budget for Hakka affairs and progress has also been made in efforts to conserve Hakka culture, including -zoning certain cities and townships as Hakka cultural development districts, creating a “Hakka affairs and administration” category in the national tests for prospective civil servants and developing a system that certifies the qualification of Hakka language teachers, he added.
According to a 2008 Council for Hakka Affairs survey, there are nearly 5.79 million Hakkas in Taiwan if a broad definition of the term is used — about 25 percent of the country’s population.
Hakka, a Cantonese word which translates literally as “guest families,” comprise a unique ethnic group of Han Chinese who fled famine and wars in central China in centuries past and eventually settled in southern and eastern China, predominantly in the provinces of Guangdong, Jiangxi and Fujian.
There are an estimated 80 -million Hakkas spread out around Southeast Asia, East Africa, Europe and the Americas, although the number of Hakka speakers is considerably lower. Former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra is one of the most notable, while late Mauritius prime minister Sir Moilin Jean Ah-Chuen, another eminent Hakka, has his picture printed on his nation’s currency.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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