China News Service Nanchang, December 21 (Xinhua) -- In the context of jointly building the "Belt and Road", how to do a good job in the overseas dissemination of Hakka culture?
Interview with Wen Chunxiang, Dean of the Hakka Research Institute of Gannan Normal University and Director of the Hakka Research Center.
China News Service reporter Wu Pengquan.
At present, there are about 80 million Hakka people in the world, and in addition to being widely distributed in China, they are also spread in more than 80 countries and regions such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, the United States, Peru, and Mauritius. With the footprints of the Hakka people, Hakka culture has spread all over the world.
How did the Hakka people go global?What is the current situation of the overseas spread of Hakka culture?In the context of jointly building the "Belt and Road", how to do a good job in the overseas dissemination of Hakka culture?Professor Wen Chunxiang, dean of the Hakka Research Institute of Gannan Normal University and director of the Hakka Research Center, recently accepted an exclusive interview with China News Service's "East and West Question" to interpret it.
The transcript of the interview is summarized below
China News Service: Where did the Hakka people come from and how did they go global?
The route map of the fourth migration in the history of the Hakka people is displayed at the Gannan Hakka Culture Museum. Photo by Liu Lixin.
Wen Chunxiang: What is "Hakka"?Where did the Hakka people come from?It has always been an important issue in Hakka research and discussion, and several different views have been formed so far. One view is that the Hakka people are descendants of the Han people who migrated south from the Central Plains, and the basis for this view is Luo Xianglin's "Hakka Origin Examination", in which he cites a large number of Hakka genealogies to argue that the ancestors of the Hakka people were Han people from the Central Plains, and after five major migrations, they moved south to various parts of South China.
The second view is that the Hakka people are mainly descendants of the Baiyue people in the south, and they are formed by merging with the Han people who migrated south from the Central Plains, and their representative work is Fang Xuejia's "Hakka Origins and Explorations".
The third point of view is that the Hakka people are mainly Han people in the Central Plains, and the indigenous people in South China, especially the She people, are fused from the source of Luo Xianglin's earlier masterpiece "Introduction to Hakka Studies", the Hakka people have been quite mixed with the indigenous She people in the border areas of Fujian, Guangdong and Jiangxi provinces, this view is recognized by most scholars in the academic circles, so Luo Xianglin's "Hakka view" has changed before and after.
The Hakka people migrated overseas, mainly after the Ming and Qing dynasties. Due to the fact that the Hakka people inhabit the area with many mountains and few fields, known as "eight mountains, one water and one field", with the growth of the population, the Hakka people living in poverty entered Africa and Southeast Asia through indentured Chinese laborers.
Today, the Hakka people are spread across five continents of the world, with Southeast Asia being the most numerous. There are more than one million Hakka people in Indonesia and Malaysia, hundreds of thousands of Hakka people in Thailand and Singapore, and a large number of Hakka people in Vietnam, Myanmar, India, Japan, the Philippines, the United States, Peru, Jamaica, Mauritius, South Africa and other places. With the wave of immigration, there is a saying that "where there is the sun, there are Chinese, and where there are Chinese, there are Hakka".
The Hakka people who migrated to Southeast Asia in the early days were mainly mining, and the minerals mined were mainly gold and tin, and at the same time engaged in agricultural production, planting cash crops, engaging in ports, developing transportation and shipping industries, etc., and made great achievements in various fields.
China News Service: What is the origin of Hakka culture?
Wen Chunxiang: Hakka culture is an important part of China's excellent traditional culture, and its cultural origin is not only the root of the Central Plains culture, but also the vein of the culture of Fujian, Guangdong, and Jiangxi mountain areas.
As an immigrant culture, the core of Hakka culture has been inheriting the traditional Confucian culture, in the long-term migration and immigration, the Hakka people have formed the noble spirit and excellent qualities of virtue, worship, cultivation and heirloom, patriotism and love for the homeland, these spiritual qualities are rooted in the excellent traditional Chinese culture, and are the cultural foundation that Hakka immigrants have inherited from generation to generation.
Xinwei, Kansai, is the most representative Hakka house, known as the "ancient Roman castle of the East", and was selected into the preliminary list of China's world cultural heritage in 2012. Photo by Liu Lixin.
In the early Middle Ages, the border area of Fujian, Guangdong and Jiangxi was distributed with Baiyue people, and in the Tang and Song dynasties, it was the settlement area of the people of Dong and She. In the process of immigration, the Hakka ancestors and the local aborigines of Fujian, Guangdong and Jiangxi were integrated, and the mountainous and marginal nature created the hard-working, honest and simple, pioneering and enterprising character of the Hakka people, which is an important spiritual pillar for the Hakka people to develop mountainous areas and expand overseas.
China News Service: What is the current situation of Hakka culture spreading overseas?
Wen Chunxiang: Hakka culture contains a rich and colorful material culture and spiritual culture, and the tulou in western Fujian, the dragon house in eastern Guangdong, and the enclosed house in southern Jiangxi are all typical representatives of its architecture, and they are also architectural inventions that appear due to time and place. The Hakka enclosed house is a kind of closed Hakka house that integrates the functions of ancestral hall, home and fort and has distinctive defense characteristics. Hakka folk culture is even more colorful, festivals, folk temple fairs, religious ceremonies, songs and dramas, along with the daily life of the Hakka people, have also become the nostalgia that the Hakka people can't solve.
Tourists visit the Hakka tulou in Hongkeng Village, Hukeng Town, Yongding District, Longyan City, Fujian Province. Photo by Liu Guixiong.
With the migration of Hakka people overseas, Hakka culture has also been brought to all corners of the world. The early Hakka immigrants established clan halls and organized various social and cultural activities to form friendships with their fellow villagersThe Hakka community was established, and the Hakka culture was spread overseas with the Hakka immigrants.
The society is constantly developing, and the information technology represented by the Internet is changing with each passing day, and through the Internet and social platforms, Hakka culture is spreading more quickly and intuitively to all parts of the world. In this way, more people are able to understand and accept Hakka culture through various channels, further strengthening its influence in the diverse world cultures.
China News Service: In the context of the Belt and Road Initiative, how to do a good job in the overseas dissemination of Hakka culture?
Wen Chunxiang: With the continuous advancement of the "Belt and Road" initiative, more and more people have begun to understand and understand Chinese culture, especially the proposal to jointly build the "21st Century Maritime Silk Road", which provides new opportunities for the overseas dissemination of Hakka culture.
In the new era, overseas Hakka people have undergone generational change, and the overseas dissemination and inheritance of Hakka culture are also undergoing unprecedented changes. In the context of the joint construction of the "Belt and Road", to do a good job in the overseas dissemination of Hakka culture, we must first use the nostalgia and hometown sound as a link to contact the hometown. There is a widespread saying among the Hakka people that "it is better to sell the ancestral land than to forget the words of the ancestors", and many Hakka community organizations still insist on speaking Hakka.
The 32nd World Hakka Conference Hakka Ancestral Hall Ancestor Worship Ceremony was held in Hakka Cultural City. Photo by Liu Lixin.
Secondly, it is necessary to take traditional folk festivals as the main carrier to strengthen the homeland complex of overseas Hakka compatriots. For hundreds of years, the Hakka people who have crossed the ocean have worked hard in foreign countries, and the rich and colorful Hakka folk culture has also spread overseas like seeds, taking root all over the world, and becoming a spiritual bond that unites Hakka compatriots at home and abroad.
Thirdly, with ethnic culture as the core, we should strengthen cultural network connections. In particular, the World Hakka Conference is used as a platform to strengthen cross-border and cross-regional cultural ties. The World Hakka Conference is one of the most influential Chinese events in the world, and it is also an important carrier for Hakka villagers at home and abroad to contact hometown friendship and carry out transnational and cross-regional exchanges, and it is also an important stage for Hakka people in various countries and regions to carry out economic cooperation and cultural exchanges.
The scene of the 32nd World Hakka Conference and the first Hakka Folk Culture and Art Festival. Photo by Liu Lixin.
The World Hakka Congress was held in Hong Kong in September 1971 for the first time, and has held 32 sessions in 24 countries and regions in Asia, the United States and Africa, with a history of more than 50 years. The scale of the conference has expanded from a few hundred to several thousand, and the content also integrates friendship, economic and trade cooperation, and cultural exchanges. The holding of the World Hakka Conference has attracted the attention and attention of Hakka people around the world, local people and society, and Hakka culture has also been widely disseminated.
China News Service: What role does Hakka culture play in promoting exchanges and mutual learning between Chinese and foreign civilizations?
Wen Chunxiang: Hakka culture is an immigrant culture, whether it is in the process of migrating from the Central Plains to the south and integrating with the local aborigines, or in the process of moving from China to overseas, it has borrowed, integrated and promoted each other with the local culture, forming a unique ethnic culture.
Overseas Hakka people have not only made a lot of contributions to the social undertakings of the countries and regions where they reside, but also made a lot of contributions to the economic and cultural construction of their ancestral (home) countries. For example, the Hakka people who moved to Southeast Asia united with the local people to resist colonial oppressionEconomically, it is actively developing industry, devoting itself to education, and setting up transportation, and at the same time, it also invests in enterprises, subsidizes education, develops medical care, and disseminates science and technology in the ancestral (home) country.
Hakka culture is also ethnic culture. Regardless of moving to **, the Hakka people have a tradition of seeking their roots, and have a high sense of ethnic identity and cohesion, and the overseas spread of Hakka culture is of great significance to enhance national cohesion and centripetal force, forge a strong sense of community of the Chinese nation, and carry forward the excellent traditional Chinese culture. The experience of Hakka culture spreading overseas is of great significance for building ethnic, religious and cultural diversity around the world, achieving international cooperation, and building world peace. (ENDS).
Interviewee Profile:
Wen Chunxiang, graduated from the Department of Anthropology and Ethnology of Xiamen University with a doctorate degree in history, is currently a professor at Gannan Normal University, dean of the Hakka Research Institute, director of the Hakka Research Center, and concurrently serves as the vice president of the Jiangxi Regional Culture Research Association, the executive director of the Ganzhou Hakka Friendship Association, the expert of the Ganzhou Expert Association, and the director of the China Heluo Culture Research Association. He has published more than 30 articles in journals such as "World Ethnicity" and "Folklore Research", published a monograph "Cultural Expression and Ethnic Identity-Research on Ethnic Groups in the Adjacent Areas of Jiangxi, Fujian and Guangdong from the Perspective of New Cultural History", edited a series of 10 volumes of "Folk Documents in Southern Gansu", and edited 4 booksHe has presided over 1 national social science research project, and presided over the completion of more than 10 projects such as the national social science project and the Ministry of Education's humanities and social science research youth.