How did the Hakka people come about?

The Hakka people, also known as the Hakka people, are a Han ethnic group with significant characteristics, and it is also one of the ethnic groups with the widest distribution and the most far-reaching influence of the Han nationality in the world. The Hakka people arose from their migration from the northern Central Plains and were a branch of the Han people in southern China, and their migration gave the Hakka people a tenacious character. Despite being located in a remote mountainous area, the industrious Hakka people have created their own history on their own land.

Some people say: where there is the sun, there are Chinese, and where there are Chinese, there are Hakka people.

Some people also say: Where there is sunshine, there are Hakka people; Where there is a piece of soil, the Hakka people will gather to live there, work hard, and reproduce.

Because the Hakka people have traveled the world, immigrated to the world, and there is no shortage of successful people in the overseas business world, they are known as "Oriental Jews". The Hakka people are Han Chinese who migrated to the south.

When it comes to Hakka, people will immediately ask: What is "Hakka"? The word "Hakka" is pronounced "Hakka" in both the Hakka language and the Cantonese dialect of Chinese, which means "customer". According to legend, at the beginning of the 4th century (the end of the Western Jin Dynasty), some Han people living in the Yellow River Valley moved south to cross the river due to war, and by the end of the 9th century (the end of the Tang Dynasty) and the beginning of the 13th century (the end of the Southern Song Dynasty), a large number of Han people moved south to Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, and Sichuan...... That is, the current Guangdong, Fujian, Guangxi, Jiangxi, Hunan, Taiwan and other provinces and regions, as well as overseas. In order to distinguish themselves from the local indigenous people, these immigrants claim to be "customers", "Hakka", and "Hakka". It can be seen that the ancestors of the Hakka people originated from the Central Plains and migrated from the Central Plains to the south, which is a branch of the Han people in southern China.

The main gathering places of the Hakka people are in southern Jiangxi, western Fujian, and eastern Guangdong, where 29 counties are "pure Hakka counties". Before the end of the Song Dynasty, Ninghua was the distribution center of the Hakka people who moved south; At the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, Jiaying Prefecture (now Meizhou City) was the distribution center of the Hakka people. Taking this as the axis, the Hakka people gradually expanded to southern China and formed a unique ethnic line, the Hakka ethnic line, which became an important branch of the eight major ethnic groups of the Han nationality.

According to research, the ancestors of the Hakka people have had 6 large-scale southward migrations:

The first move south was during the time of Qin Shi Huang. After Qin Shi Huang unified China in 221 BC, he sent 600,000 troops to "conquer Baiyue in the south" for political and military needs. The Qin army that went south entered Jieling from the border of Fujian, Guangdong and Jiangxi to Jieling (that is, Jieyang Mountain, 150 miles north of today's Jieyang County), and reached the border of Xingning and Haifeng counties. In 214 B.C., Qin Shi Huang sent another 500,000 soldiers to "Nanshu Wuling" (now Liangguang area). These soldiers have been "fighting in the five mountains for a long time, and they are mixed with Yue". After the death of Qin, the two groups of Qin soldiers who went south stayed in the local area and became the first batch of Hakka people.

The second southward migration was during the "Five Hu Chaohua" period in the Eastern Jin Dynasty. At that time, in order to take refuge, some residents of the Central Plains moved into the Fujian, Guangdong and Jiangxi border areas. Later, due to the confrontation between the north and the south, about 960,000 people from the Central Plains moved south to both sides of the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. Part of the population flowed into southern Jiangnan, and part of it entered the Fujian and Guangdong regions through Ningdu and Shicheng.

The third move south was during the Huangchao Rebellion at the end of the Tang Dynasty. First of all, the Anshi Rebellion in the Tang Dynasty brought great disasters to the people and forced a large number of Han people in the Central Plains to flee south. At the end of the Tang Dynasty, the Huangchao uprising, and a large number of Han people from the Central Plains fled into Fujian, Guangdong, and Jiangxi regions. For example, Li Meng, the clan, moved from Chang'an to Bianliang, and then moved to Gubi Township, Ninghua, Fujian. In response to the Huangchao uprising, Wang Xu and Wang Chao, the founders of Gushi, led 5,000 peasant rebel armies from Guang and Shou Erzhou to Jiangxi, resulting in a surge in the population of Fujian and Jiangxi.

The fourth southward migration was the Nandu of the Song Dynasty and the late Song Dynasty. The Jin people invaded, Jianyan crossed to the south, and some officials and soldiers moved to the Taihu Lake Basin. the other part of the people or the south crossed the Dageng Ridge and entered Nanxiong, Shixing, and Shaozhou; Or follow Hong, Ji, Qianzhou, and then enter Tingzhou from Qianzhou; or stranded in the counties of southern Gansu. At the end of the Southern Song Dynasty, the Yuan army marched southward, and a large number of Song people from Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Jiangxi fled from Putian to Chaoshan on the coast of Guangdong to Hainan Island.

The fifth southward migration was in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. At that time, the Hakka people living in southern Jiangxi, eastern Guangdong, and northern Guangdong migrated to Sichuan, Hunan, Guangxi, and Taiwan, as well as central and western Guangdong, due to their multiplication and lack of land. This large-scale migration is known as the "Westward Movement" in the history of Hakka immigration. The Hakka in Sichuan basically originated from this "westward expansion movement". At that time, the population of Sichuan was greatly reduced due to wars, plagues and natural disasters, and the Qing government especially encouraged immigrants to fill Sichuan from "Huguang".

The sixth southward migration was during the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in the mid-19th century. At that time, in order to escape the war, some Hakka people migrated to South Asia, and some were lured as indentured laborers and sent to Malaysia, the United States, Panama, Brazil and other places. In addition to the above six large-scale southward migrations, the Han people in the Central Plains also moved south due to drought and floods, and there were also eunuchs, degraded people, businessmen, and study tours who settled in the Fujian, Guangdong, and Jiangxi border areas, but not all the Han people who moved south became Hakka, and only the Fujian, Guangdong, and Jiangxi people and people from this line were called Hakka.

According to statistics, the Hakka people living in Chinese mainland are mainly distributed in Guangdong, Jiangxi, Fujian, Sichuan, Hunan, Hubei, Guizhou, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao and other regions, with a total population of more than 50 million, accounting for 5% of the Han population. In foreign countries, the Hakka people are mainly distributed in more than 80 countries and regions in Southeast Asia, such as Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore in Southeast Asia, Japan and North Korea in East Asia, the United States, Canada and Brazil in the Americas, and the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany and Austria in Europe. The Hakka ancestors originally lived in the north, and later moved to the south of the Yangtze River, where they lived in Jiangxi, Guangdong, Fujian, Hunan, Taiwan, and Qiong provinces, and gradually dispersed abroad, spreading all over the world. Gannan is the first stop of the Hakka ancestors to move south, and it is also one of the areas with the largest number of Hakka people and the most concentrated residence.

The origin of the title "Hakka" is associated with the migration of Hakka ancestors. As far as their place of residence is concerned, these people are "Hakka" who have moved from other places, so to speak, they will not have the title of "Hakka" after leaving the migration.

The reasons for the migration of the Hakka people are varied. In the early days, it was mainly due to the coercion of disasters. Severe natural disasters such as brutal wars, floods, droughts, insects, and epidemics of plagues. Almost every large-scale war in Chinese history has caused a great migration of the Hakka people. According to historical records, there was a great migration of Hakka ancestors during the Northern and Southern Dynasties. Imagine, in the long years, the "Five Hu and Sixteen Kingdoms", the war is continuous, and the mourning is everywhere, can you survive if you don't escape?

It is worth mentioning that there is a special way of migration. It is said that in order to build the Afang Palace, Qin Shi Huang drove tens of thousands of "wooden guests" to Xingguo in southern Gan to cut wood, and those who did not die of exhaustion later stayed in the local area, which is probably the earliest ancestors of Hakka in southern Gan. The process of migration is certainly a difficult one. Help the old and the young, trek through mountains and rivers, and go to a strange place to settle down and live. The Hakka ancestors overcame obstacles, eliminated dangers, and "opened roads in the mountains and built bridges in the water". They finally survived, forming the thriving folk group with tens of millions of people today.

The final process of migration is to build a house and settle down. A guest elder said, "The most important thing to settle down is the location of the house. How? It depends on Feng Shui. This feng shui is not the feng shui that Mr. Geography talks about superstition. The main thing is to collect the sun, look at the wind direction, near the water source, near the hard mountain, and choose the highland. It is an ideal choice to sit in the north and face south, face the sun and leeward, be close to the firewood and water, and have a wide field of vision. ”

People often praise the Hakka people for their hard work, bravery, perseverance and resourcefulness. As a folk group, due to the repeated long-distance migration of the ancestors for several generations, the Hakka people naturally experienced the social reality and production reality more diversely and at a deeper level than other groups, and it must have been tempered and nourished more, and accumulated more experience in dealing with the relationship with the natural world and social interpersonal relations. Therefore, a large number of politicians, scientists, writers, and entrepreneurs have appeared in the Hakka community......

-- The information comes from the Internet