Less than 10 km east of Chengdu, capital city of
Sichuan
Province in southwestern China, there is a small town called
Luodai. The town is famed as a Hakka culture town; not only the
houses are in ancient style, but the residents all speak the Hakka
dialect and retain their traditional lifestyle.
Among Luodai's 23,000 inhabitants, 20,000 are Hakka people. Chen
Shisong, director of the Sichuan Hakka Culture Research Center and
a researcher of the Sichuan Academe of Social Sciences, said it's a
rare case to have ancient customs well preserved in a place
situated so close to a big city. And it's the only one in China.
The residential areas in Fujian, Guangxi, Guangdong, Jiangxi and
Taiwan, where Hakka culture has been retained, are mostly far away
from metropolises.
The houses, courtyards and streets in Luodai are all in the
architectural style of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) or the Republic
period (1912-1949). Its landmark, the Guangdong Guildhall, occupies
an area of 3,000 square meters. Constructed in 1747 by the Hakka
people from Guangdong Province with pooled money, the house was
where the Hakka people gathered, met relatives and friends, settled
disputes and made sacrifices to ancestors and gods. It is one of
the best preserved existing guildhalls in China.
The couplets hung in the main hall read: "Smoke the tobacco leaves
and smell the earth of west Sichuan; Speak the Hakka dialect to
review the ancient language of Central Plains." The words show how
those earlier immigrants miss their hometowns and how determined
they were to build new homes in a faraway land. Several other
guildhalls, such as those of Huguang, Jiangxi and Chuanbei, also
remain in good shape.
Dwelling houses built along the 1,000-meter-long main street are of
Hakka style too. Inside these siheyuan, or four-side
enclosed courtyards, there is always an open area in the middle and
a main building decorated with carvings of turtle and flower. The
roofs of the houses are all covered with cogon and small black
tiles.
As
to why the ancient Hakka culture could have been well preserved,
Chen said that it's because the locals adhered to the tradition
that "One should rather sell the land of his ancestor than forget
the ancestor's language." Most of the residents here speak Hakka,
Sichuan dialect and mandarin. But when one meets his or her clan
people, one has to speak Hakka. When a woman who has married away
to a non-Hakka community returns to her parents' house, she must
speak Hakka, otherwise it will be considered as a betray of her
ancestors. And a non-Hakka girl married to a clan man here must
learn the language in one or two years.
Hakka still keeps some of the tones of ancient Chinese. Luodai
people call their own language "local Cantonese." It is true that
their Hakka remains the same as that spoken by the Hakka people in
Meixian of Guangdong Province. The more than a dozen villages and
towns in the Luodai area form a special "dialect island" in the
Sichuan dialect "sea."
Among the residents in this area, 500,000, or 80 percent, are
Hakka. The identity of a Hakka family is based on the way they
write their ancestors' memorial tablets, the family's origin and
whether they speak Hakka.
The Hakka people in Sichuan celebrate the Fire Dragon Festival.
It's said the custom was brought here by the Liu family who
migrated from Jiangxi Province. Till now, the Baosheng Village
where the Liu family live is famous for making dragons and
performing dragon dance, a skill passed down from generation to
generation. And there is a systematic ceremony going with the
dragon dance, including greeting the dragon, worshipping the
ancestors, taking the dragon home and painting the dragon's
eyes.
According to Chen, Sichuan has China's fifth largest Hakka
population, 2.5 million. The Hakka are famous for their pioneering
spirit. Some people of this clan migrated from Fujian, Guangdong
and Jiangxi provinces to northwest Sichuan area 300 years ago. The
history of Hakkas could be traced back to the early fourth century,
when some Han people migrated from the Yellow River valley to the
south; in the late ninth century and the 13th century, more people
moved from the north to Jiangxi, Fujian, and the north and east
areas of Guangdong. Xie Taowen, a researcher with the Sichuan
Academy of Social Sciences, said, "It's something amazing that the
Hakka culture, which has mingled with other cultures, could have
avoided assimilation and kept its brilliant characteristic."
The Hakka culture in Sichuan also reflects the western region's
vigor, which can play its role in the current campaign of
western-region development. But experts worry that modernization
and urbanization will sooner or later have impacts on the
traditional Hakka culture and inevitably put the characteristic
customs of Luodai in danger.
(China.org.cn by Chen Lin, January 28, 2003)