There is an old saying in Chinese society: "When you want to take a wife, take a Hakka wife." In the eyes of others, the women of the Hakka--who are a distinct sub-ethnic group with a distinct dialect--are renowned for their astounding labor power, diligent and quiet-suffering characters, and genteel and delicate skills. This special way of life and general stereotype that people apply to these women is something molded by centuries and millennia of warfare and chaos. But today, the dismal setting of the past has much improved, and modernized and pluralized viewpoints are being spread by the mass media. With changing circumstances, will the face of Hakka women be as it was in the past?
In searching for the origins and many sides to the character of Hakka women, we interviewed women from Hakka-dominated rural areas and also from cities. We saw old women who were living proof of the traditional model, mature women caught at the crossroads of tradition and contemporary society, and women who have crossed the historical divide and are actively creating their own space for the "new generation."
Under the azure sky of a summer day, in the muddy footpaths between the pea fields, there are little groups of human figures, wearing conical farmer's hats and dressed in colorful patterned shirts, busily moving their hands up and down. Walk in for a closer look, and you see that all of them are women of at least 50 or 60 years old with weathered and wrinkled faces; there are only a few men scattered here and there among them. This is a scene from a field in Meinung Township, the major home of Hakkanese in southern Taiwan.
"Meinung women have it tough. They all have to pick peas to make a little extra money," laughs one ruddy-faced farmer in a plain and straightforward way. This 61-year-old and his wife, who is a year younger, cultivate rice at home, and are taking advantage of a rest period in the growing cycle to make some extra cash picking peas. "Sometimes we come at 1:00 in the morning to pick, and work thirteen hours in a day. Each of us can get NT$800." He points around him and says, "That's what they do, too. Some of their husbands work in factories or offices outside, and some are old and don't know what to do with their spare time at home, so they come out and work."
His wife says nothing, she just keeps a shy smile on her dark-complected face. Her own family was also a farm family, so from the time she was small she cut kindling wood, cleared away weeds, and did other work; after she was married she took care of the house, cared for the children, and also took responsibility for the farm work and raising the pigs. She worked hard to raise her children, but now they all have moved to the city.
"When my daughter comes back she'll help pick peas, but my Fukienese-descent daughter-in-law won't do that," the man chatters, half complainingly, half magnanimously.
For this old couple and the other women working there, picking peas is not just a way of making money, it is a way of thinking about life. Many Hakka women work themselves to the bones for most of their lives, so when they get old and can afford to slow down a little, they don't know how. There are countless cases like this in Hakka villages.
This is a photo from the 1940s of a farming family of Sanwan Rural Township in Miaoli County. Most of the men have gone off to the fields, leaving the housework for the women. （photo by Chang Ah-hsiang）
Life is work
Legislator Yeh Chu-lan, who comes from a typical Hakka farming family in Tungluo Rural Township in Miaoli County, recalls how her grandmother and mother could sometimes not help but release their painful feelings: "'An existence of arduous labor without a bit of enjoyment' is an accurate depiction of their lives." Even as her mother was dying of cancer at age 62 she continued to sell vegetables at the market, and her grandmother still dresses in traditional clothing in her waning years.
The idea that Hakka women are tireless workers has been deeply branded into the collective imagination by history. The ancestors of the Hakka people were pushed slowly southward from the Central Plains of China by the invasion of the five barbarian tribes in the Eastern Chin dynasty, the An Shih rebellion of the Tang dynasty, and the Mongol invasions at the end of the Sung dynasty. They ended up in the hills and mountains of what is now Jiangxi, Fujian, and Guangdong provinces, there settling down to the harsh demands of mountain agriculture. Many records from antiquity state that because of the poor quality and low availability of the soil, many men left home to seek their fortunes, leaving the women to work the land and look after the old and young, thus making them into the central pillars of the home economy and daily life.
Under these dismal conditions. Hakka women never bound their feet, and took on the roles of both mother and father, cultivating in women a "spirit of toughness"--of hardness, endurance, diligence, and patience under duress that was by no means less than that of Hakka men. The Encyclopedia Britannica describes Hakka women as "energetic laborers." Early in this century, an American missionary named Smith stated in a monograph on The Hakka of China that "70% of the glory belonging to the Hakka people can be ascribed to the Hakka women."
Two or three hundred years ago Hakka began coming to Taiwan and settled in relatively interior, mountainous areas in what is now the Pingtung-Kaohsiung region in southern Taiwan and the Taoyuan-Miaoli region in central Taiwan. Here they extended their experience in pioneering harsh and demanding terrain, and their characteristic traits were passed down from generation to generation.
Many older Hakka women haven't forgotten their days farming as young girls in their home villages, and today keep vegetable gardens on their porches.
The story of Huang Ssu-mei
Huang Ssu-mei, a 78-year-old descendant of Hakkas who immigrated to the mountain area of Miaoli County, relates in her own story the typical life of most Hakka women of her generation.
As the eldest daughter, as soon as she was old enough to understand things she became the helpmate of her parents, cleaning the house, clearing the tables, sweeping the floor, and helping to raise the many brothers and sisters who followed. Her parents had 9 children, and the oldest sister acted like a second mother. It was a matter of course that she give up her schooling, and at age 13 she began clearing away weeds, cutting kindling wood, and picking tea leaves. When her dad brought her to the tea terrace, the first thing he had her do was throw a stone, and however far she threw the stone defined the area she would be responsible for that day.
Her father was a simple man, concerned only with his own affairs. Her mother was in charge of the household, and despite the fact that she never studied she could keep countless details straight in her head. She could even remember how much each field hand brought in four times a day, and she would read out the accounts after dinner for someone else to enter in the books. And although her grandmother was blind and couldn't be involved in daily chores, she still moved around asking about everything in detail as though she were the master of the house.
At 21, Ssu-mei accepted her parents' instructions and married a man. Just as she was pregnant with her second son, the Japanese colonial authorities took her husband off to be a soldier on Hainan Island, and her parents-in-law, her own grandmother, and her infant son all depended on her. She sold sugar cane, picked tea, cleared fields, picked oranges. . . . Her husband was gone for four years, and she alone handled the family.
After her husband returned, the two opened a general store. Each and every day at dawn she would go up into the mountains and pick tea leaves which she would sell to the factory. Long years of labor made it impossible for her to relax, and she was still going out to do small jobs for people into her late 60s. She has only "settled down" in the last year or so after repeated pleas from her family and doctor. Still, you can sometimes see her figure sprinkling water or pulling up weeds in the vegetable garden near her home.
Many women come to pick peas in Meinung to earn a little extra income.
Indoors and outdoors
In a report on the participation of Hakka women in farm work carried in a 196O issue of the journal of the Taiwan Medical Association, writer Fan Kuang-yu pointed out that on average rural Hakka women worked 258 days a year. "Except for days when it rained so hard they couldn't go out to work, they worked all year round without a vacation." You could say that labor is one of the distinguishing features of Hakka women.
Chung Chun-lan, a Hakka woman who was formerly editor-in-chief of Hakka Fengyun, and one of the founders of the "Revive My Mother Tongue" movement in 1988 (a movement to support expanded use of the Hakka language), offers the following description: "Hakka women have been like machines, operating from morning to night without a rest." In her memory, when she opened her eyes first thing in the morning she saw her mother planting vegetables outside, and when she closed them at night her mother was preparing food for the next day; during the day she was occupied looking after the fields and orchards while taking care of the cooking and watching the children. "In comparison, men have been more fortunate," says Chung. At home the best food was always given to the males, the men were always the first to be served, and when the men had eaten their fill and settled in to chew the fat, the women would have to be cleaning up without a moment's rest.
"In Hakka families, not only are girls not coddled, they are often the main pillars of the household, and the men are given all the protection," is the observation of Chung Tieh-min, the son of Hakka author Chung Li-ho.
Right next to a traditional family compound home in Nanchuang Mountain, single mother Ong Mei-chen has built a home and garden of fairy-tale quality.
Money managers
Given the arduousness of farm work and the heavy responsibilities of the household, Hakka women truly understand what hard work means. Therefore they tend to be especially cautious about financial matters. "Frugal" and careful with material objects are two things that come to mind for most people when they talk about Hakkanese.
Su Hsiu-ting, a third-year law student at National Taiwan University, recalls that when she was a freshman, her class representative--whom she didn't even know--wanted her to serve as the head of general affairs for the class just because she is Hakka and the rep assumed "she must be able to control expenses well."
A certain Mr.Chang recalls that his mother was frugal all her life. After she died suddenly, her family unexpectedly found money that she had squirreled away in the woodpile where she had often worked. In fact, even a year later, they were finding stashes, including one in a bamboo shoot container of a bag of gold and cash worth over NT$10,000. "That was to be for her daughter-in-law," says Mr. Chang.
Generation after generation, frugality is passed through word and deed. Even if the standard of living has improved dramatically compared to the past, many girls from Hakka villages still have the experience of working part time while studying. Chang Tien-wan, a writer from Toufen Township in Miaoli, relates that despite the fact that her family is one of the most influential in her town, she had to work every summer and winter vacation to put herself through college.
"There are still a lot of young Hakkanese who budget their money," says Wu Shu-lan, a second-year student in anthropology at National Taiwan University who hails from Liutui in Pingtung County.
After much difficulty, Chu Pang-hsiung succeeded in getting the Meinung Kiln on its feet; it never could have been done without the support of his Hakka wife Chiu Ling-chu.
Accept fate, never accept defeat
As Chung Tieh-min sees it, traditional Hakka women have one particularly outstanding feature--they may accept their fate, but they never accept defeat. Accepting their fate means that they play the cards they have been dealt, but never accepting defeat means that they fight tooth and nail to do the best that they can in terms of their standard of living.
His mother went against a taboo and married a man of the same family surname; for this she was willing to give up her home in Meinung and flee together with Chung Li-ho to Manchuria. They returned home years later, only to face a chilly reception and isolation from the local residents. They had to accept the challenge of getting by on one income.
Today, mature and younger Hakka women are active in all fields; many of them underwent traditional education in Hakka farming villages and still have special ethnic traits to show for it. The strength displayed by Yeh Chu-lan following the self immolation of her husband Cheng Nan-jung allowed her to cross over from her career in advertising to win a smashing victory in the elections, and she has for many years now been a voice in the Legislative Yuan working on behalf of disadvantaged groups. She admits that personal tragedies and the pressures of politics have pushed her endurance to the limit, but "I just grind my teeth and stick it out." She feels that she learned this philosophy of life through working in the rice fields as a child.
As life improves, Hakka women think more about recreation, and more are joining sports teams and women's associations.
Chiu Ling-chu and Ong Mei-lin
A steadfast character, endurance and determination often enable Hakka women to have the patience necessary to outdo others in business as well.
Chu Pang-hsiung and Chiu Ling-chu, the husband-and-wife team who run the "Meinung Kiln" and who have become well-known in recent years for their pottery, have passed together through a difficult period of indebtedness. Fourteen years ago they opened a design company in Taipei, and at the same time, in pursuit of Chu Pang-hsiung's pottery dream, plunked down money for 2000 ping of land in their home town of Meinung. Little did they expect their Taipei company to be cheated out of its money, leaving them hundreds of thousands of NT dollars in debt. From this point on their family plunged into a nightmare of ten years of continual debt, owing NT$40 million at their nadir.
During that period of constantly chasing money and running to banks and credit associations, all the while trying to take care of their teaching careers and family, Chin Ling-chu describes herself as having been like an octopus, wearing herself out every day over money problems. But she never thought to give up. What kept her going was, on the one hand, her love for her husband and family, and on the other, her determination and unwillingness to admit defeat. "How could our luck be so bad? There had to be a way to turn it around." Relying on this indomitability, ten years later they have truly turned things around and have made for themselves a pottery empire.
Ong Mei-ling, who runs a nature park in the mountains of Miaoli, is an example of a person who created an enterprise with her own two hands. After graduating from a vocational high school and working as a bookkeeper for a few years, she discovered that her true love is horticulture. Through self-study and inherent talent, by the time she was 29 she had opened her own horticulture business in Fengyuan. Because she was especially skilled at using withered branches, old farmers' hats, and other "castoffs" in combination with plants to create elegant space, business took off. After building up her reputation, she cooperated with scenery designer Chang Tsangming to design and sell recreational farms, creating a unique niche.
She grew up in Nanchuang Mountain, and never forgot the comfortable feeling of the open fields. As a single mother, four years ago she decided to sell her shop, and she took her two children back to her hometown. In the family's traditional courtyard home she worked with her father to build a beautiful wood house. She also took over her father's orchards and developed a richly artistic recreational farm. Today it has become a stop on the Fengyun Bus Company's "Educational Tour," and has become one of the wonders of Nanchuang Rural Township.
"I have a way to overcome any difficulty," believes Ong Mei-chen. If there is any way in which she is superior to others, it is probably in the determination that comes in the bloodline of the Hakka woman.
Women who gave up their schooling to help on the family farm and then got married and had families only now, after putting down their burdens, have time to pick up the books.
At the edge between tradition and modernity
The middle generation of Hakka women were born in the 1950s. They were educated on the traditional model, but at the same time came face to face with the contemporary expectation of "self-realization." The result has been many conflicts and contradictions, hints of which we can get by looking at marriage.
"The last generation faced problems getting by day to day, therefore they only ask that life be stable and they are satisfied. In this generation, we are into social competition and improving the quality of life, so our expectations of life are very different," says Yeh Chu-lan. Her father wanted her to go back to their hometown after she graduated from college to teach and live a quiet life. But for her a challenging, stimulating, diverse life was much more attractive. "If my father hadn't given me an education that would have been the end of it. But once I studied and made contact with the outside world, it was impossible for him to lock me behind that door again." Her first step to "completing herself" was to get secretly married to Cheng Nanjung, and, after her father threatened to break off all father-daughter relations, she simply picked up her suitcase and walked out the door despite her father's last-minute pleading.
Chiu Ling-chu and Chu Pang-hsiung also were married secretly because of opposition from their families. When their old grandfather found out, he didn't speak to them for three years.
In terms of their attitudes towards life, middle generation Hakka women, who "can accept responsibility and can also enjoy life," have more than a few differences of opinion from their mothers' generation.
Ong Mei-chen lives right next door to her mother, but they are far apart in terms of lifestyles. Her mother couldn't get used to living in the western style house Mei-chen built, so Mom insisted on living in the traditional family compound house, and periodically brings back bamboo sheaves that had fallen from the mountain trail for cleaning. In her daily life she observes the maxim, "save where you can save, use what you can use." Meanwhile, in her beautiful home, Ong has the best of everything from her sofa to her bathroom fixtures, with a beautiful personal style.
Sometimes, to "enjoy a carefree feeling," she'll get in her Saab and go cruising on the mountain road, with her stereo playing classical music, driving all the way to neighboring "Spirit Mountain" to eat pan-tiao noodles. But her mother doesn't care much for this idea: "You want to eat pan-tiao? Then make them yourself at home, that's good enough."
Sometimes Chang Tien-wan has to take a taxi in the morning instead of walking if she's running late, which her mother thinks is a waste. "She just thinks about saving the taxi fare, but doesn't understand that in contemporary society time is money!"
In conservative Hakka society, wearing tight clothes to dance has been seen as "daring liberal" behavior. Despite this, in recent years more and more women have joined the trend.
A Hakka mother-in-law is a harsh taskmaster?
Several years ago, Hung Li-fu, the producer of the popular television variety show "I Love the Bride," did a study of the background of the participants on the show against the backdrop of the overall proportion of Taiwan people of Fukien descent, of Hakka descent, and of ancestry from other provinces of China. He discovered that the highest rate of participation was among mainlanders, with Fukienese next, and Hakka far, far behind.What's even more interesting is that, of the small number of Hakka women who participated, most wrote on their forms asking about their ideal mate: "Absolutely no Hakka men, please!" The background factors to such a phenomenon are interesting.
Chung Chun-lan argues that, on the one hand, the survey confirms the impression that "Hakka people are relatively reserved." Further, it reveals how far many modern Hakka women have gone in rejecting traditional features of Hakka society, including the centrality of males, abundant female labor power, and old-fashioned family practices. Some people argue that Hakka mothers-in-laws are at the core of the controversy.
Su Hsiu-ting, a third-year law student at National Taiwan University and a member of the Hakka society there, describes many Hakka mothers-in-law as being "harsh taskmasters." They passed through a difficult time, and now that they have reached middle age and achieved a certain amount of power in the family, they use traditional standards to judge their daughters-in-law who have modern viewpoints. This means that even young Hakka women are less inclined to marry into Hakka families.
"The daughter-in-law in a Hakka family has no self," complains one hard-working, ambitious woman. She was a reporter before her marriage, but she gave up her beloved career under pressure from her mother-in-law. Anyway they just ended up disagreeing on everything about running a household: Her mother-in-law wouldn't let her use a washing machine for fear of wasting water, and her father-in-law would come over and turn down the flow of water while she was washing clothes. . . . Differences like these cropped up in all aspects of daily life. Later she divorced from her husband, and the gap with the older generation was one of the main reasons. "I like the traditional idea of the Hakka woman as being virtuous and taking care of the family, but the pressures on the woman get to be too much," she says with a bitter simile.
The changing face of Hakka women
In recent years there has been a massive outflow of population from Hakka villages. Most young people have left to pursue their studies or careers. Even for those left behind, traditional Hakka values are fading in young people because of increased education, the impact of the mass media, and multifarious interactions with other ethnic groups.
In Peipu Rural Township, Chang Liang Liumei's daughter Chang Yu-ling is only 20. She works in the Hsinchu Science-Based Industrial Park. Her mother and her brother have taken care of everything for her since she was small, and she hasn't had to worry about a thing. "This is not ancient times. What girls today are so diligent as they were then?" she wonders. Her elder brother Chang Sheng-kuo does artistic design work in Taipei, and in his impression the older generation of Hakka women are "hard-working, accepting of their fate, and really good at pickling food." Compare this to his younger sister:"If you think you can get her to wash the dishes or wash clothes, then you're dreaming."
But Li Feng-chiao, a 25-year-old who lives on the next block, is like the picture of tradition. Genteel, a skilled homemaker, out early in the morning and back late at night following her husband to work putting tiles on the side of tall buildings, and with no interest in shopping on her days off, she just laughs and says, "if you marry a chicken, then be a chicken; if you marry a dog, then be a dog."
But there are fewer and fewer women like Li Feng-chiao. Chung Tieh-min jokes of his daughter: "The new generation of Hakka women are completely useless!" His eldest daughter Chung Yu-ching retorts that there is less and less field work to be done, and at home appliances have taken over many tasks formerly done by hand, so it's impossible to insist that modern women live like those in the past.
In Taiwan, young people share a common backdrop to their upbringings, a common language, and a great deal of information. The impact of traditional family education is waning, and cannot overcome social values, schooling, and peer interactions. Given these trends, "What do you mean by 'Hakka women,' 'Fukienese women,' 'Mainlander women'? You can't tell the difference in the younger generation," concludes Chung Tai-mei with mixed emotions.
[Picture Caption]
p.34
Through Chung Li-ho's novel Hometowner and its movie adaptation, the story of Meinung daughter Chung Tai-mei's pursuit of love and steadfast support for her family have become widely known. The Chung family may now be the most famous Hakka household in Taiwan. Sitting at center is "Pingmei" from the story; now she is past 80. At back are eldest son Chung Tieh-min, his wife, and three daughters.
p.35
This is a photo from the 1940s of a farming family of Sanwan Rural Township in Miaoli County. Most of the men have gone off to the fields, leaving the housework for the women. (photo by Chang Ah-hsiang)
p.36
Many older Hakka women haven't forgotten their days farming as young girls in their home villages, and today keep vegetable gardens on their porches.
p.37
Many women come to pick peas in Meinung to earn a little extra income.
p.38
Right next to a traditional family compound home in Nanchuang Mountain, single mother Ong Mei-chen has built a home and garden of fairy-tale quality.
p.39
After much difficulty, Chu Pang-hsiung succeeded in getting the Meinung Kiln on its feet; it never could have been done without the support of his Hakka wife Chiu Ling-chu.
p.40
As life improves, Hakka women think more about recreation, and more are joining sports teams and women's associations.
p.41
Women who gave up their schooling to help on the family farm and then got married and had families only now, after putting down their burdens, have time to pick up the books.
p.42
In conservative Hakka society, wearing tight clothes to dance has been seen as "daring liberal" behavior. Despite this, in recent years more and more women have joined the trend.
@List.jpg?w=522&h=410&mode=crop&format=webp&quality=80)
