Taiwan Today

The protestors waved banners and distributed flyers, many of which were emblazoned with a particularly bold and arresting image—that of Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙, 1866–1925), the founding father of the Republic of China, who is believed to have Hakka roots, his mouth covered with a mask and the words “return the Hakka dialect to us.” The rally on December 28, 1988 saw more than 6,000 demonstrators take to the streets in Taipei, the capital city of Taiwan, to call for the restoration of the Hakka dialect in public life.

“The protest demanded the government launch Hakka programs on television, teach Hakka in schools and set up Hakka-related research programs and institutes,” says Lo Seo-gim (羅肇錦), dean of the College of Hakka Studies at National Central University (NCU) in Taoyuan, northern Taiwan. “The event played a critical role in giving rise to Hakka colleges within universities, which was a response to Hakka people’s call to reclaim their culture.”

With government support, NCU founded Taiwan’s first college dedicated to Hakka studies in 2003, followed by similar moves at two other universities in northern Taiwan: National Chiao Tung University (NCTU) in Hsinchu County in 2004 and National United University (NUU) in Miaoli City in 2006. The three regions are known for having large Hakka populations. As of the beginning of this year, there were about a dozen Hakka-related departments and graduate institutes at five universities.

Lo says Hakka studies looks into the essence of the culture, focusing on elements unique to Hakka communities. These include the behavior, habits and customs that developed from life in remote mountainous areas, where most major Hakka communities are located. For example, the isolation of village life gave rise to the practice of ensuring some foods were preserved for long-term use, with drying or fermentation among the popular methods of doing so. The religious practice of worshipping Bo Gong, or the Earth God, is also closely connected with the hardship of living in rugged terrain.

According to Liu Feng-jiin (劉鳳錦), the dean of NUU’s College of Hakka Studies, the three Hakka colleges were all set up in close proximity to major Hakka communities so that faculty and students could have plentiful opportunities to observe and interact with the local Hakka population. Liu says each of the three colleges has its own academic focus, however. NCU emphasizes training professionals in the area of public administration, NCTU pays more attention to ethnic studies and development, and NUU stresses the integration of Hakka culture with new communication technologies.

Lien Jui-chih (連瑞枝), an associate professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at NCTU’s College of Hakka Studies, says Hakka colleges teach a lot more than Hakka culture. “We draw together teachers from different disciplines and offer opportunities for them to converse and learn from one another,” she says.

Studying in a Hakka college gives students the advantage of being exposed to a wide range of social sciences, such as history, literature and sociology, Lien says, and offers them the opportunity to apply the knowledge they have acquired to practical and current subject matter. “Hakka studies defines a specific realm, where [students] can observe and do research on phenomena actually happening in society,” she points out. Such an approach is able to address Hakka people’s demand for placing more emphasis on their culture, Lien says, while students learn professional skills. So far most graduates from tertiary-level Hakka programs work for academic institutes, schools and government agencies in charge of Hakka-related affairs.

Chang Wei-an (張維安), the dean of NCTU’s College of Hakka Studies, explains that nowadays college education is more about offering general education than training students in a single area of expertise. The interdisciplinary curriculum provided in many Hakka programs in Taiwan corresponds well to that trend, he says.

Moreover, Hakka-related courses can help non-Hakka students become familiar with another culture, therefore helping them broaden their horizons and gain the ability to consider other people’s perspectives, he says. Chang says his goal is to help his students obtain as much knowledge as those who major in any other branch of the social sciences so that they can continue pursuing their interests after they graduate.

Expanded Field

According to Lo, sporadic research on Hakka issues was conducted in Taiwan long before colleges of Hakka studies were formally established. Researchers in the past focused more on studying the Hakka dialect, however, and the emergence of dedicated colleges expanded Hakka studies to cover a great variety of topics, including literature, religion, traditional industries, history and the marketing of Hakka culture, just to name a few.

Liu says Taiwan’s expertise in Hakka studies boosts interest in related research in the international community. “We spurred interest in this field of study in mainland China and Southeast Asian countries,” he says. “We got an early start in this area. And, with the government’s support and attention, Hakka studies has become a notable discipline in Taiwan.”

These days the scope of Hakka studies has gone beyond local issues. Hakka researchers in Taiwan are also active in venturing into overseas Hakka communities to do field studies and conduct research. For example, besides frequent academic exchanges via meetings and conferences with other countries, Liu says he takes groups of students to mainland China almost every year to study Hakka communities there.

Chang notes that particular overseas communities can offer better research conditions for certain topics. A number of communities in Sabah, Malaysia, for instance, are good for investigating the Hakka dialect as the residents there have spoken only English and Hakka since their forebears emigrated from mainland China during the Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864). Unlike in Taiwan, the Hakka dialect in those communities has never been mixed with other, similar languages like Holo, also known as Taiwanese, and Mandarin, making the area’s dialect a great reference for investigating the original Hakka language.

Increasing academic interest in Hakka culture has also helped Taiwan’s Hakka population reclaim their place in history, Chang says, explaining that for a long time there has been a lack of Hakka perspectives in the country’s historical accounts. For instance, Lien says Hakka communities in Hsinchu and Miaoli fought bravely against the Japanese during the Yiwei War, a conflict that took place during the first year of Japan’s colonial rule of Taiwan (1895–1945), but these reports have been overlooked by society for many years.

The general lack of attention placed on Hakka culture has been attributed to the group’s minority status compared with the Holo population, which accounts for about 70 percent of Taiwan’s people, and the wave of mainland Chinese immigrants who came to Taiwan with the Kuomintang government in the late 1940s. Continuing his example, Chang explains that most people learn a version of Taiwan’s history that is based on Lien Heng’s (連橫, 1878–1936) seminal work The General History of Taiwan. But the book was pretty much written from a Holo person’s point of view, Chang says, with the Hakka population considered an insignificant group. “Therefore, making a historical event, such as the Yiwei War, better known to the public is recognition of Hakka people’s contribution to Taiwan in protecting the country’s sovereignty,” Chang notes. “It also offers fairer treatment and a more impartial historical account for Hakka people.”

After years of government support for academic research to restore missing knowledge of Taiwan’s Hakka culture, however, Chang emphasizes that it is time for the Hakka community to move beyond lamenting the past to establishing positive goals. Hakka studies should do more to showcase the best elements of Hakka culture such as its role in the cultural and creative industry, he says. “We should try hard to make Hakka culture a greater part of Taiwanese culture as a whole,” he says.

Indeed, Lo says he has noticed that in recent years Hakka research in Taiwan has begun leaning toward public administration and the cultural and creative industry, but he is concerned the shortage of research on basic topics will pose a challenge for the development of Hakka studies in the future. “We have seen less and less research on [traditional] art, songs and history of the Hakka, which are the truly unique aspects of Hakka culture we should preserve,” he says.

Dialect and Culture

Lo says one problem is finding faculty members who are sufficiently well versed in both the Hakka dialect and Hakka culture. For example, more than half of the faculty members in NCU’s Hakka programs do not speak Hakka, he says. “Language is the foundation of a culture; to make Hakka a strong culture, we have to begin with reviving the Hakka dialect,” Lo says. He points out that although much more academic attention has been given to Hakka issues since the inauguration of the first Hakka college, the country’s population of Hakka speakers is still shrinking.

Liu shares that sentiment, citing a survey by the Cabinet-level Hakka Affairs Council (HAC) in 2006 that estimated the number of people who speak Hakka would fall by 1.1 percent on average every year. One hopeful sign, however, Liu says, is that since then the HAC has found that the rate of decline has eased. Liu credits the government’s continued efforts to revitalize Hakka culture for this, although he cautions that more must be done to prevent the Hakka dialect from becoming extinct.

Starting in 2001, all elementary school students in Taiwan have been required to study either Holo, Hakka or an indigenous language throughout their six years of instruction. Liu, however, believes one hour of study per week is not nearly enough to learn a dialect like Hakka since the language’s pronunciation can be very complicated.

Language for Undergrads

As part of efforts to strengthen Hakka language education, Liu says NUU’s College of Hakka Studies will begin its first undergraduate program this fall, offering more in-depth training in Hakka language alongside courses in other branches of social sciences. A similar undergraduate program will also be set up at NCU’s College of Hakka Studies later this year. NCTU’s Hakka college, on the other hand, has established two undergraduate programs, with one centered on the humanities and social sciences and the other on communication and technology. The two NCTU undergraduate programs both require students to complete 26 credits in Hakka-related courses in addition to classes on the particular subject they are majoring in.

In recent years, Hakka colleges in Taiwan have begun to encourage students to further their abilities in the Hakka dialect by offering scholarships and imposing Hakka-language proficiency as part of graduation requirements. Students in NCU’s graduate-level Hakka programs have to pass at least the basic-level national Hakka proficiency test before they can get their degree, for example.

Despite some challenges, many agree that the emergence of Hakka educational institutes and other government measures to promote Hakka culture have begun to change the general feeling toward Hakka people and Hakka culture in Taiwan. According to Chang, Hakka people used to be reluctant to identify themselves as such because they are a minority ethnic group and many felt their culture and heritage were marginalized by mainstream society. Wang Wen-chun (王雯君) received her master’s degree from NCU’s Graduate Institute of Hakka Cultural and Social Studies in 2005 and is now a teacher at Taipei Municipal Yongchun Senior High School. She says she has seen more and more young people acknowledge their Hakka roots and express their Hakka identity. Although at one time she had concerns about revealing her ethnicity, Wang says she is now comfortable citing herself as an example if she mentions the Hakka in class. “Some students come to tell me that they are Hakka, too, and some even speak Hakka to me,” she says.

She says learning at NCU gave her a solid foundation in certain topics, such as sociological concepts of ethnicity and public memory, and she also gained a deeper understanding of Hakka culture. According to Wang, stereotypes surrounding Hakka people include those of being stingy and willing to bear unnecessarily harsh conditions, but she is now aware of more positive typical qualities such as being resilient and good at working together.

Chang says Hakka and non-Hakka people alike are acknowledging the ethnicity’s heritage. “To non-Hakka people, it’s become acceptable to discuss Hakka life as an independent cultural system,” he says. The dean of NCTU’s College of Hakka Affairs says the achievements of Hakka colleges during the past decade are just the beginning of a field that has much room for development in the future. Hakka identity is becoming stronger once again, as Hakka people no longer have to identify themselves as just Taiwanese or Mandarin-speaking Chinese, he says. “Ten years is certainly too short a time for an ethnic group to completely rebuild its self-esteem and identity, but we’re glad to see that the acceptance between [Taiwan’s ethnic groups] has begun to develop.”

Write to Audrey Wang at ycwang06@mofa.gov.tw