Taiwan Today

It was cold and drizzly in Gongguan Township, Miaoli County one weekend morning in mid-January this year, but a farm to the south of the village still drew a large crowd for the opening ceremony of the five-day 2013 Pug Coi Festival. Pug coi is made from mustard greens; the name means “lucky pickle” in the Hakka language. At the festival, students performed dragon dances, locals put on talent shows and vendors touted locally grown produce. Still, the highlight of the event involved 1,000 people trying to pack pug coi into small ceramic jars, an activity meant to remind participants of the traditional Hakka method of preserving the vegetable. The atmosphere of the otherwise quiet Hakka town grew unusually lively and celebratory as participants rediscovered the delights of an activity practiced by generations of Hakka people.

“Many housewives from the 19 villages of Gongguan come to the festival to help out by preparing fried rice noodles and pug coi soup, dishes that are handed out to visitors for free. They’re so devoted to the festival,” says Yu Yi-chin (余依瑾), an employee of the Gongguan Township Office, the local government agency organizing the event.

The Hakka, an immigrant group that began arriving in Taiwan from mainland China’s Guangdong province in the second half of the 17th century, comprise about 18 percent of Taiwan’s population of 23 million. The Hakka have a distinct language, architecture and cuisine, as well as a reputation for working hard and revering education. Smaller Hakka communities can be found in central, southern and eastern Taiwan, but the largest are concentrated in the north. Hsinchu and Miaoli counties in northern Taiwan have the highest percentages of Hakka people in the country, reaching 71.6 and 64.6 percent respectively, according to the Cabinet-level Hakka Affairs Council (HAC). Taoyuan County, which lies north of Hsinchu and Miaoli, comes in third with 39 percent, but has the highest number of Hakka residents of any county, provincial municipality or special municipality in Taiwan with 785,000.

Despite such numbers, Hakka culture faces the threat of being assimilated by mainstream Taiwanese society. Fortunately, the government has lent its weight to efforts to preserve the ethnicity by backing events like the Pug Coi Festival, which is funded under an HAC program launched in 2009 to promote Hakka culture and boost local economies. That program funds at least one event in one of the nation’s Hakka communities every month. This year a total of 19 events organized by local governments and backed by the HAC are scheduled to take place around Taiwan.

Meanwhile, the HAC directly organizes two larger events—the Tung Blossom Festival celebrated around Taiwan beginning in April each year, and visits of traditional Hakka theater troupes to Hakka towns in December to give performances traditionally staged to thank deities. Tung trees are seen in many Hakka communities in hilly areas and their blossoms have come to be seen as one of the symbols of the ethnic group. The festival began in 2002 with an event held by a small Hakka community in Miaoli and has grown in scale each year since. In 2012, the festival took place in 62 urban and rural townships where visitors could walk along 102 “tung blossom paths” and admire the white flowers.

In another festival-related development, 2011 saw the first celebration of National Hakka Day, which is observed on the same day as the Ripped Sky Festival, a Hakka event that falls on the 20th day of the first month of the lunar calendar. This year, National Hakka Day and the Ripped Sky Festival took place on March 1. The festival originates in a Chinese legend about a fierce fight between two deities that resulted in a large rent in the sky, which was then repaired by the female deity Nu Wa. “My hope is that the day won’t just be National Hakka Day in Taiwan, but grow to become a global celebration for Hakka people worldwide,” says Huang Yu-cheng (黃玉振), who has served as minister of the HAC since May 2008.

The HAC was founded in June 2001 to bring the resources of the central government to bear on efforts to reverse the marginalization of Hakka culture. In recent years, the government has directed more financial resources to preserving that culture. As a result, the HAC’s budget has grown from NT$1.6 billion (US$50.7 million) in 2008 to more than NT$3.1 billion (US$106.9 million) this year. Of course, increased funding is accompanied by additional responsibilities, as Huang is well aware. “It means we have to perform more duties and take up greater challenges,” he says.

Of all the tasks the HAC has carried out in the past few years, Huang believes that the promulgation of the Hakka Basic Act was the most fundamental and urgent. The law took effect in January 2010 and requires the central and local governments to promote Hakka culture. To that end, the law stipulates that townships in which Hakka residents account for one-third or more of the population should be designated as priority locations for preserving the ethnic group’s culture through measures such as improving the Hakka language proficiency of government employees. Taiwan currently has 69 towns that meet or exceed the one-third Hakka resident requirement.

To meet another mandate of the Hakka Basic Act, since 2010 the government has included the category of Hakka Affairs Administration in the nation’s civil service examinations. “Its inclusion in the national civil service examination is significant, although the government sector recruits at most 10-plus civil servants every year through the exam,” Huang says. Beginning in 2014, the Hakka exam, which currently only includes written tests on subjects such as Hakka culture, economics, history and politics, is expected to contain Hakka speaking and listening comprehension tests.

Distinctive and Important

Food is one of the most distinctive and important aspects of Hakka culture. In recognition of that central role, in 2012 the HAC’s Department of Industrial Economy created the Hakka Food certification, which attests that a Hakka restaurant is well managed and has creative and delicious food, high hygiene standards and a pleasant ambience.

To spread awareness of the certification, at the end of January this year 106 managers and chefs from 53 Hakka restaurants around Taiwan were selected for two-day training sessions on restaurant operations. At the completion of the training, 20 restaurants received authorization to use the Hakka Food mark, which is designed, issued and marketed by the HAC. The top four restaurants during the training were each entitled to receive grants of up to NT$1 million (US$34,500) aimed at improving facilities, food and service quality.

Jerry Chiu (邱寶郎), 42, a prominent figure in Taiwan’s Hakka cuisine circle and a lead instructor in the HAC training program, sees definite room for improvement in local eateries. “Most Hakka restaurants just focus on typical, easy-to-prepare Hakka dishes,” says the chef, who has been devoted to Hakka cuisine for 25 years. “They should try harder to diversify their menu and include Hakka dishes that aren’t as well known.” Chiu also believes that Hakka restaurants are not serious enough about their ambience, especially as compared with aboriginal restaurants, which are known for having décor and service items that reflect ethnic identity. “Spend a little more on the tableware with a Hakka flavor, for example, and the food can fetch a higher price,” he says.

Preserving the Hakka language is likely the biggest challenge the ethnic group faces. “National language education was just too successful in Taiwan,” says Lai Chao-hui (賴朝暉), chairman of the Council for Hakka Affairs of the Taichung City Government in central Taiwan, referring to the central government’s policy of promoting Mandarin in Taiwan for much of the second half of the 20th century. A large part of the gains in Mandarin at the time came at the expense of proficiency in aboriginal languages, Hakka and Holo, or Taiwanese.

The Holo, or Southern Min people, comprise Taiwan’s largest ethnic group and began immigrating from mainland China’s Fujian province on a significant scale before the arrival of the Hakka. The Holo also played a role in limiting the spread of the Hakka and their language. “The fierce conflicts between these two groups of settlers in Taiwan in earlier times made the Hakka, who were significantly outnumbered by the Southern Min people, quite conscious of their identity. So older Hakka people tended to tell their children to refrain from speaking their mother tongue in public to avoid being treated unfairly,” Lai notes. Since then, use of the language has continued to decline to the point that less than 20 percent of all Hakka children under the age of 13 are able to speak the language fluently, Huang says. “An ethnic group, along with its culture, disappears when its language disappears,” he says. “Even though descendants of an ethnic group exist, they lose their own culture if they cannot speak their mother tongue.”

It is no surprise that Hakka language proficiency remains highest in areas that have a concentrated population of the ethnic group. The population of Dongshih District in Taichung City, for example, is nearly 80 percent Hakka, and the district’s students are noted for their comparative fluency in the language.

To preserve Taiwan’s ethnic languages, in 2001 the Ministry of Education began requiring all primary schools to provide a weekly 40-minute course in either Hakka, Holo or one or more aboriginal languages. All elementary school students are required to take the courses.

July 2003 saw the birth of Hakka TV, a cable and terrestrial station broadcasting in Hakka with Chinese subtitles, thereby serving the dual functions of offering entertainment and news for the Hakka community while enabling other groups to learn about the ethnic group’s language and culture. The HAC initially commissioned commercial television stations to operate Hakka TV, but management was handed over to Taiwan Broadcasting System in 2007, a public broadcasting group founded the previous year. Today, the HAC is the sole source of funding for Hakka TV and its programming.

In 2005, the HAC took a major step to encourage Hakka language learning among members of the public by offering Hakka proficiency certification tests. All told, the tests have seen 71,000 people gain certification for their Hakka ability since that year. In the first three years, participants could only take the basic test, while since 2008, they have also been able to choose to take the basic or intermediate-to-high-level test. Those that pass receive a certification for either basic, intermediate or high-level ability in the language.

Incentives for Learning

To encourage students to take the tests, in 2010 the HAC began offering financial incentives of as much as NT$10,000 (US$345) to students in elementary and junior high school. Since late 2012, the incentives have been extended to students in senior high schools, universities and post-graduate programs. That same year saw the agency begin offering a test for children ranging from 4 to 6 years old in order to encourage Hakka language acquisition at an age at which language learning is thought to be most natural.

Another move to increase the popularity of the language came in 2009, when the HAC began selecting “seed teachers” to lead classes in the community as well as schools. To earn certification as a seed teacher, candidates must meet several requirements, including receiving high-level certification in the Hakka language proficiency test. Certified teachers qualify to apply for HAC subsidies to open Hakka language classes, with part of the funding used to pay the teacher’s salary. By 2012, the HAC had certified a total of 1,788 seed teachers. More than 12,300 students attended 746 Hakka classes, which are offered free of charge, around Taiwan that year. Each of the classes must have at least 15 students, half of whom must be under the age of 19.

Despite such measures, Lai still worries that many members of society view Hakka language instruction as having limited practical value, a sentiment that is especially prevalent among those living outside Hakka communities, who do not have many opportunities to use the language. “All in all, I’m worried about the language’s future, despite all the efforts being made to revive it,” Huang says. “For now, I can say that the bleeding has been stanched, but the language’s revival has been too slow.”

Still, there is reason for optimism, particularly in light of the increasing visibility of Hakka culture and awareness of the need to preserve the language, says Huang Mei-chen (黃美貞), a 39-year-old Miaoli native of Hakka descent. Huang, an elementary school teacher in Taipei City who was certified as a Hakka seed teacher in 2009, teaches the language both at her school and in community classes. “I felt the Hakka language was already declining quickly even when I was in senior high school in [Miaoli]. That was the first time I thought something should be done to preserve it,” she says. “It’s also why I’ve been teaching my two sons Hakka since they were preschoolers and encourage them to participate in Hakka language competitions.”

The government’s broad effort to preserve Hakka culture includes the formation of a dedicated ministry, promulgation of legislation and promotion of festivals, food and language classes. In the end, however, it will be the efforts of parents like Huang Mei-chen that determine whether one of Taiwan’s most distinctive ethnic groups is able to hang on to its identity.

A Solid Commitment to Hakka Culture

Taiwan’s commitment to preserving and promoting Hakka culture has taken concrete form in the past few years with the construction of two large, national-level museums. October 2011 brought the official opening of Liudui Hakka Cultural Park in Neipu Township, Pingtung County, southern Taiwan, while its counterpart in the north, Miaoli Hakka Cultural Park, opened its doors in Tongluo Township, Miaoli County in May 2012.

The Liudui facility is nearly eight times larger in terms of area currently open to the public than its sister park in Miaoli. The spacious grounds of the 30-hectare Pingtung center are home to numerous structures that demonstrate aspects of traditional Hakka culture. “The park in the south is more like an open-air museum about Hakka life,” says Fu Chao-shu (傅兆書), director of the Taiwan Hakka Culture Development Center, which manages the two parks. “In Pingtung you can see tobacco fields, for example, which give you an idea of the tobacco farming the Hakka people used to rely upon to make a living.”

In contrast, the various exhibition halls of the Miaoli facility are all located under a single large roof. The main exhibition room contains displays on general Hakka culture and history, while the Taiwan Gallery houses rotating displays devoted to the distinctive Hakka subcultures found around the country.

With an international conference hall and a library holding 12,000 books and archives of 22 periodicals, the Miaoli facility also serves as a global Hakka research and information center. Its research projects are mainly commissioned by academics at nearby universities that have colleges and departments devoted to Hakka studies. The park’s researchers investigate Hakka culture wherever it is found, whether in Taiwan, mainland China or other places, notably Southeast Asia. Findings on overseas Hakka culture are often incorporated into displays in the International Gallery, which showcases Hakka culture worldwide. The hall’s opening show, for example, highlighted Hakka culture in Malaysia and Singapore, which have seen extensive immigration of the Hakka and other ethnic groups from mainland China.

A trip to one of the museums allows visitors to learn facts about the Hakka that are unknown even to many in Taiwan. Visitors are frequently surprised, for example, to find out that the Hakka, known for their endurance of tough living conditions in the mountains, played a key role in the laborious construction of Taiwan’s railways, an effort that began in 1887. Similarly, visitors are usually amazed when guides inform them that Hakka women did not follow the foot binding tradition that the Holo and other ethnic Chinese groups practiced until the 1910s, as Hakka communities were usually found in hilly areas and Hakka women needed full mobility to perform outdoor jobs such as picking tea leaves.

Plans are already being made to enlarge the cultural parks in the future, as both have previously attracted an average of more than 10,000 visitors a day during holidays. Reflecting a trend that is seeing the government contract with enterprises to operate public facilities, management of much of the Pingtung park was handed to the private sector in February this year. The Miaoli facility is likely to follow suit soon, as it is currently soliciting bids from potential concessionaires. The shift to private management would result in the imposition of admission fees at both parks for the first time, but those fees will also help boost the facilities’ status as two of the world’s leading institutions devoted to preserving Hakka culture.

—Oscar Chung

Write to Oscar Chung at mhchung@mofa.gov.tw