Home Is Where the Heart Is--The Hakka "Guests" of Tunghua Street

The first Sunday of the second month of the lunar calendar is the day on which Huang Ping-feng and his family head back to their hometown to sweep the tombs. Early that morning, his family's three sedans are squeezed so tightly into narrow Tunghua Street that hardly a drop of water could get by. Huang keeps reassuring his neighbors, "We'll be getting the cars out of here in just a second." With diffculty, he and his wife, their daughter and her husband, their son and his wife, and their grandchildren get everything packed away and set out.

The cars exit the highway at Yangmei, where Huang and his wife run into the market to get the honggui ban, a sweet rice cake topped with a red turtle, which they need for the tomb sweeping ceremony. Mrs. Huang says she was afraid that they wouldn't be able to get any, so she called the shop the day before to order some. In addition to buying all the things they need for the ceremony, they also pick up some things for lunch before hurrying back to the car and heading up into the mountains.

Huang's hometown-Hsinchu's Hsinpu--is a typical Hakka village. As the car passes the school where he studied as a child, he can't help but burst out, "This part of the road used to be very small. We all used to walk and it took 30 or 40 minutes to get to school every morning. Sometimes I helped my mother carry baskets of vegetables, and then it took an hour."

Tomb sweeping is one of urban Hakka's last connections to their hometowns. Every year between the Lantern Festival and Tomb Sweeping Day, Hakka living in all parts ot Taiwan return to their hometowns to "hang paper" on the tombs of their ancestors.

Only the wind

The name of the Huang's old home is inscribed outside the front door--Chianghsia Hall. The door is flanked by a still clearly legible couplet which concerns waves on the river and a dusty summer wind, suggestive of the name of their house. But the house stands deserted and dust is everywhere. Mrs. Huang begins to clean up the long-dormant kitchen, lights the fire in the stove and begins cooking. The others take the things for the ceremony and walk towards the graveyard.

When they arrive at the tombs, Huang's brothers have already arrived, as arranged. The ashes of the Huang family's ancestors have already been moved into the little tower built for them last year, so the memorial for these ancestors can be held together. The tomb of Huang's father is the only one which needs to be swept this year because his relics have not yet been moved into the tower.

The Huang family men set out the ceremonial offerings of chicken, fish, pork, honggui ban and fruit, press yellow strips of paper onto the tomb and conduct the ceremony with great sincerity.

After the ghost money is burnt and the firecrackers have been set off, everyone returns to the old house. The house is usually unoccupied, with only an old dog to keep watch over it, but now it is bubbling over with noise and excitement. The grandchildren are digging for worms in the garden while the young people compare their cellular phones. The Huang brothers sit reminiscing while the women busy themselves in the kitchen and talk about family matters.

In a little while, the scent of cooking foods drifts out of the kitchen and the table begins to fill with a hearty Hakka meal: savory Hakka tangyuan, "drunken chicken," fried squid with celery, fried sliced beef with garlic stalks, xiancai soup.... Young and old alike eat with relish, and even the old dog, which sometimes has food and sometimes doesn't, gets a full meal today.

After relaxing for a bit following the meal, everyone gets into their own cars and heads back to their current homes. The old house returns to its original state of quiet and the old dog again takes up its lonely vigil.

Due to his father Huang Ping-feng's insistence that he speak Hakka if he wanted anything to eat, Huang Kuo-cheng, born in 1971 and raised in Taipei, speaks fluent Hakka. It is a skill of which he is extremely proud.

Thirteen Hakka neighborhood chiefs

Huang Ping-feng's family is not exceptional. Between the Lantern Festival and Tomb Sweeping Day, many Hakka on Tunghua Street will return to their hometowns to clean up their ancestral tombs.

"On Tunghua Street, you can get around speaking Hakka," says Tseng Yu-yang, who operates a picture framing business on the street. He says that many of those who have businesses in the market are Hakka.

So how many Hakka live on Tunghua Street? Some say a third of the neighborhood is Hakka, while others say two-sevenths. Though everyone's estimate is a little different, all agree that the proportion of Hakka here is higher than the 15% for most areas of Taipei. Huang Ping-feng, who has lived on Tunghua Street for 26 years and is currently serving as the area's neighborhood chief, says that of the 20 neighborhood chiefs in the Tung-an Borough, 13 are Hakka.

Tunghua Street's Hakka population comes from all over Taiwan. Most are "Northern Hakka," that is, from Taoyuan, Hsinchu and Miaoli. Though not blood relations, they are linked by their language. Here, their differing hometowns do not keep them apart because, after all, they are all Hakka; they share a closeness like that between family members. People say that if you speak Hakka, you can buy vegetables more cheaply in the market. When asked if he sells things more cheaply to Hakka, even bike store owner Chang You-lang says, "A bit!" without a second thought.

In contrast to the traditional Hakka villages of Taoyuan, Hsinchu and Miaoli, Taipei's Hakka population is more spread out. But Taipei's Hakka have nonetheless ended up grouping themselves around certain streets for a variety of reasons involving the time at which they came to the city, their place of origin and ancestry, and economic considerations.

"The city gates were the dividing line for Taipei's Hakka [and the rest of its population]," says Lin Yi-hsiung, general secretary of the Taiwan Hakka Public Service Association. He says that most of Taipei's Hakka first migrated from mainland China to Taoyuan, Hsinchu or Miaoli. These people's descendants then moved to Taipei to "take on the world." By the time they came to Taipei, the city center was already occupied by people of Fujianese descent, so the Hakka established homes in the suburbs outside the city gates. Neighborhoods such as the Songshan District's Hulin Street, the Kuting District's Konan Street and Nanchang Street, the Ta-an District's Tunghua Street, and the Chungshan District's Hochiang Street and Wuchang Street became ones in which there were high concentrations of Hakka.

Tunghua Street, for example, was not a good area in which to live, and flooding used to be common there. When Roosevelt Road was widened in the 1950s, many of those who were evicted to make room for the road moved to Tunghua Street where they threw together illegal homes made of bamboo.

Kuo Chun-lin, who is the nominal chairman of the Kuanhsi Hometown Association and is always respectfully referred to as "Mr. Kuo," says that those Hakka who came to Taipei to make a living in the old days were poor. In buying a house, about all they could ask for was a roof over their heads. Tunghua Street was cheap because it wasn't so developed, and so many Hakka settled there.

The house is usually deserted, only coming to life like this when everyone comes home for tomb sweeping or family reunions. The courtyard in which rice was once dried in the sun now serves as a parking lot for children and grandchildren.

Starting from scratch

All these Hakka share a common reason for leaving their villages and coming north to Taipei to work：in their hometowns they couldn't earn enough money to eat.

Fan Chen-chien, assistant director of Hakka Magazine, says that during the Ming-Zheng Period (the very early years of the Qing dynasty when Zheng Chenggong and his son were trying to reestablish the Ming dynasty), both Zheng Chenggong's minister for civil affairs and his minister for military affairs were Hakka. When the Zheng forces battled with those of Shi Lang, the Qing official sent to attack Taiwan, the Hakka were of great assistance. In 1684, after the Zhengs' power was destroyed, Shi Lang requested the Qing court to restrict travel across the Taiwan Strait. The policy strictly forbade Hakka from coming to Taiwan. It was only about 100 years ago that the Qing lifted their restriction, which by then had already had a major effect on Hakka emigration to Taiwan. Because the Hakka arrived here after the Fujianese, most of the island's good land had already been occupied by the Fujianese, who benefited from the Qing's favor. The Hakka could only move into mountainous regions where the soil was poor to settle down and begin cultivating the land.

Added to the problem of the inherently poor land was the splitting of family holdings among several sons. As the generations passed, these limited land resources became even less sufficient. Things were worst for the youngest sons, who had little choice but make their own way in the world.

"The old folks say, 'Five brothers and only three fields. If you divide it up, no one's got enough.'" After the Lunar New Year when Chang You-lang turned 17, he went to a Taipei job center with his older brother to find work. He remembers that in his cloth bundle, he had only a couple of changes of clothes.

A few neighbors from their hometown were living in Tunghua Street, so Chang also moved into the area. Over the years, he went from being an apprentice in a bicycle shop to owning his own bike shop, from renting a place to stay to buying his own apartment, from being single to being married to raising four children. Chang has lived on Tunghua Street for 30 years now, longer even than he lived in his home town of Peiho in Miaoli.

"Most of those who leave their hometowns are people without fields, without any land, those for whom life is difficult," says Chen Chen-lung, whose clinic, the Szu-an Clinic of Chinese Medicine, is located on Tunghua Street. He says that when he left Hukou to come to Taipei, he had already decided to become a doctor of Chinese medicine, a profession which his family thought of as having high social status. The only problem was that he wasn't familiar with Taipei or its people, and so didn't know what would be the best location for his clinic. He tried several different spots, including Tungyuan Street, Hsichih and Tingchou Street, before finally settling on Tunghua Street.

Huang Ping-feng and his wife, who established the Te-an Clinic of Traditional Chinese Physical Therapy, remember the date on which they moved into Tunghua Street very well--December 21, 1972.

They left their two young children with Mrs. Huang's family, and carrying a bag of rice Huang's mother had given them and NT$2000 his father had given them, came north to conquer the world.

Mrs. Huang worked in a factory while Huang Ping-feng ran the clinic. When he had no patients, he would sit in the clinic assembling artificial flowers for a company. The couple made no distinction between day and night, spending their every waking moment trying to earn money.

After four years of this, they had built their first nest egg, NT$3000 which they had on deposit at a credit cooperative. Looking at their passbook, the two of them were too excited to sleep. "The Lord helps those who help themselves," says Mrs. Huang. By their sixth year in Taipei, they were finally able to buy their own house on Tunghua Street.

Three generations of Tseng Yu-yang's family work as picture framers, and here he looks satisfied with the job he has done mounting this large painting. Tseng says: "If Hakka doing picture framing aren't my close relatives, then they are my distant relatives.".

Family businesses

Tunghua Street is more a business district than anything else. Here, most of the businesses operated by Hakka are concentrated in the areas of herbal medicine, carpentry, cement contracting, furniture dealing, and fruit and vegetable vending.

"Hakka are generally poor and most want to learn a craft. They feel that if they have a skill, they can survive," says Li Te-chun, who has had a Chinese herbal medicine shop on Tunghua Street for 26 years. He was apprenticed at the age of 15, first to a carpenter, then to a barber, but he didn't like either field and didn't stay in them for very long. Finally, he was apprenticed to a dispensary for Chinese medicines where he began his present career. He says that the majority of the herbal medicine shops on Tunghua Street are run by Hakka.

"No matter what trade Hakka pursue, they always pull in their relatives," says Tseng Yu-yang. He goes on: "If Hakka doing picture framing aren't my close relatives, then they are my distant relatives." The Tseng family's involvement with picture framing began with Tseng Yu-yang's father. Tseng and his two brothers as well as their great aunt's three sons have all gone into the same business. Now a third generation is going into the business as Tseng's eldest son is following in his father's footsteps. Now 27, he can already handle everything himself.

A cement contractor named Chang on Tunghua Street might be named as another example of bringing relatives into your line of work. His three sons and 10-odd other relatives also live on Tunghua Street and are also in the cement contracting business.

Among Huang Ping-feng and his five brothers, four followed in their father's footsteps, operating their own traditional Chinese physical therapy clinics in Hsinchu, Chungli, and Lungchao. And each of these four brothers has a child who is preparing to continue on in the family's line of work. Even Huang Kuo-cheng, who studied electronics and currently works for the Taiwan Railway Administration, has passed the licensing exam for traditional Chinese physical therapists and can enter the field whenever he chooses.

"Hakka don't have a lot of capital and tend to bring their relatives into their trade," says Kuo Chun-lin. He says that faced with these limitations, most Hakka run family businesses and they rarely expand these businesses into fields that require them to employ "outsiders."

Landless Hakka who left their homes to find work all have a trade. Chen Chen-lung, who has a Chinese herbal medicine shop on Tunghua Street, first worked as an apprentice in a similar shop. He studied hard and passed the licensing exam for practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine.

Hiding their ethnicity

Owing to early conflicts over land and economic interests, some distance and a certain amount of prejudice have always existed between the Fujianese and the Hakka.

Relations between the Hakka and the Fujianese of Tunghua Street are superficially harmonious, and many of the Fujianese shopkeepers can even speak a few phrases of Hakka to bring in Hakka customers. However, in the early days when many of the Hakka moving into the area were poor and faced a language barrier, these new arrivals experienced discrimination. In that kind of environment, many Hakka felt it necessary to hide their ethnicity in order to survive.

"When I was little I hated my mother because she was Hakka," says Hsia Hsiao-chuan, an assistant professor in the graduate institute of sociology at Shih Hsin University. She says that when she was a child a classmate even said to her, "Student X is a Hakka. Let's not play with him." This kind of experience caused her to make a point of hiding her Hakka blood.

"At the time we moved into Tunghua Street, a lot of Hakka didn't dare speak the Hakka language and didn't dare admit they were Hakka," say the Huangs. They were even given a little bit of friendly advice: "Don't be a fool! You'll be taken advantage of if you speak Hakka."

The Huangs were stubborn, feeling that "Hakka are Hakka." However, in those early days when they were poor and living in a place that was strange to them, they got a bellyful of being looked down upon and discriminated against. The rice which they had brought from their hometown was kicked all over the floor by the other tenants in their building. The image of the two of them squatting down on the floor to pick up their rice is burned deep in their memories.

"Our Fujianese landlord used to curse me up and down as a 'Hakka witch,'" says Mrs. Huang, who still bristles when she talks about it. "My natural reaction was to think that no matter how much I had to suffer, one day I would rub their noses in my success."

Hakka, who place great importance on their ancestry, fear that in the future, their descendants will forget to keep records of the family lineage. For this reason, many have traveled to mainland China to find their "roots.".

Don't marry a Hakka man

Hakka are particularly discriminated against when they try to marry.

People say, "When you want a wife, marry a Hakka girl; when you want a husband, anyone but a Hakka man." Most people have a strong impression of Hakka women as being thrifty and hardworking whether the work be indoors or out, rough or fine. They also think that for a girl, marrying into a Hakka family means lots of hard work and hard times.

In one case, a woman only found out the man that she was getting engaged to was a Hakka on the day of their engagement. The whole time the girl's mother was chopping up chicken for the feast, she was cursing the man.

Huang Kuo-cheng, who himself got married the year before last, is not bashful about admitting that his Fujianese wife's grandmother had something to say about his being Hakka.

In fact, even some Hakka feel apprehensive at the idea of a Hakka man taking a non-Hakka bride. One 60-year-old Hakka matriarch says that her father-in-law has always disliked his third son's Fujianese wife. He feels that this daughter-in-law "eats a lot, but is lazy," and that she is vain.

Whether it be based on the warnings of others or their own experience, Taipei's Hakka have gradually hidden their ethnicity.

"Where can I say that I am a Hakka? Where can I shine? What good does it do me to emphasize that I am a Hakka?" Chen Chen-lung says that given that urban Hakka are powerless, they have had no choice but to hide their ethnicity.

Hsu Cheng-kuang, director of the Institute of Ethnology at the Academia Sinica, thinks, "Faced with the limitations of the historical paradigm, for Hakka, the disguising of their ethnic background was something of a collective decision and a necessity for individual survival."

The stereotypical views that a girl should not marry a Hakka man and that Hakka women are hard-working are often obstacles to marriage outside their ethnic group. However, the younger generation is gradually discarding such ideas.

Catching the "Hakka bug"

In his introduction to Pacing Between the Group and Pragmatism, Hsu Cheng-kuang writes: "The two strategies, obscuring one's [ethnic] identity and strong identification with the group, are employed at different times. In Taiwan, as the government and society have changed, the obscuring of our identity has become a Hakka trademark. Strong feelings of group identity have been withdrawn into our innermost selves where they have become a kind of anxiety and frustration."

On the other hand, every time an election rolls around, this invisible group becomes the object of a tug-of-war between the various political parties. The saying that "Hakka only matter at election time" has been restated by Chen Pan, who does historical and cultural research, to indicate that at election time, politicians catch the "Hakka bug." The candidates make promises, meet and commiserate with Hakka, learn a few faltering phrases of the Hakka language. . . all to express their "sincere" interest in the Hakka in order to garner the critical Hakka swing vote.

"Because we're few, we are many," says Lin Cheng-hsiu, who is involved in the promotion of Hakka issues. He says that although there are only 300 or 400 thousand Hakka in Taipei, the Hakka Association has connected them into a network with a great deal of potential to mobilize people. In Taipei's last mayoral elections, the current mayor, Chen Shui-bian made up a short key to the Hakka language. And though land prices are exorbitant in Taipei, he promised to allocate funds to establish a Hakka community center to win the support of the city's Hakka.

However, though these urban Hakka have the power to motivate people to action, in Taipei this doesn't translate into political clout. There are currently no Hakka sitting on either the Taipei City Council or the Taipei County Council. Moreover, though there is no lack of academics doing research into Hakka issues or who have long been involved in efforts to revive Hakka culture, because there is no political figure who has really thrown himself behind Hakka issues, there has yet to be any really effective government policy which would pull urban Hakka culture back from the brink. And it is the language of the Hakka-- their most readily identifiable trademark--for which the situation is most critical.

Since Hakka gave up their traditional dress, their mother tongue has gradually lost its pride of place among them. Urban Hakka who have become "citified" and "gone native" are now encountering problems preserving their ethnic identity and culture.

Selling out

Hakka are generally thought of as being linguistically talented. Many speak fluent Southern Fujianese ("Taiwanese") and Mandarin in addition to their own mother tongue. Lin Yi-hsiung believes that saying that Hakka have linguistic talent is not as accurate as saying that they have been forced to learn languages by their environment. He says their language abilities are the result of leaving their hometowns to make a living in unfamiliar places.

In fact, this bilingualism or multilingualism should actually be a warning that the Hakka language is in trouble. Hsu Cheng-kuang thinks that multi-lingualism just makes a weak language still weaker, bringing that language closer to the dominant language.

A traditional exhortation within Hakka families states that selling the family's ancestral lands is preferable to giving up the language of the family's ancestors.

The 27-year-old Huang Kuo-cheng grew up on Tunghua Street and speaks Hakka fluently. "My father is pretty traditional. He wouldn't let us forget who we are and where we came from." Huang Kuo-cheng says that ever since they were small, the kids in their family had to speak Hakka to get something to eat. "One time my little sister asked my father for some water. She asked him three times in Mandarin, but my father pretended not to hear until she asked him in Hakka."

But the key issue for most Hakka who come to the city to make a living is simply getting by. Because the language that the younger generation speaks is not that important to their elders, most of the younger generation can't speak Hakka well. Even those who live in the Hakka neighborhood of Tunghua Street are no different.

In 1993, the Institute of Ethnology of the Academia Sinica conducted a survey of Taipei's Hakka. The results of this survey clearly revealed that the younger the Hakka, the worse his Hakka language skills. Almost 90% of those over 56 years of age spoke Hakka fluently. Of those between the ages of 40 and 56, about 80% were fluent. However, of those under 40 years of age, only about 60% spoke Hakka well.

Some people understand Hakka but can't speak it, while many others can't even understand what they hear. One Hakka youth in his twenties who grew up in Taipei used to go home with his father to sweep the family tomb every year. But because his relatives in his hometown always griped about how he had forgotten where he came from and was betraying his ancestors, going back to sweep the tomb became a real ordeal for him. He therefore ended up avoiding going back if he could, with the result that he now has little connection to Hakka culture.

There's no place like home

Faced with the dual obstacles of the loss of their mother tongue and residing in a very different sort of environment, the relationship of urban Hakka to their "country cousins" is becoming more distant.

Those Hakka who have lived on Tunghua Street for a long time have become "citified" and "gone native."

Li Chun-te brought his 81-year-old mother to Taipei to live with him many years ago and gave their old family home to an uncle. He also moved their family tomb to Paoshan Village. In his own eyes, Li is a full-fledged Taipei-an.

Similarly, because no one was living in their old home, Huang Ping-feng and his five brothers cast lots to see who would take care of the family's ancestral plaque. In the end it was Huang Ping-feng who brought the plaque from Hsinpu to his Taipei home. Since then, his brothers have come to Tunghua Street every year at the Lunar New Year to pay their respects to their ancestors.

To Chang You-lang, Miaoli's Peiho will always be his hometown, but for him, it is only an image rather than a true feeling.

"I'm used to living in Taipei. I don't want to go back," says Chang. He says that he now only goes back to "hang paper" --when Hakka sweep their ancestral tombs, they hang strips of paper on the headstone and other gold strips in an area near the tomb where they pray to earth spirits--or for major events like weddings and funerals.

Fortunately, those Hakka who have put down roots on Tunghua Street hold onto the traditional idea of never forgetting one's ancestors and make the trip back to their hometowns every year to sweep their ancestral tombs. Because of this, they haven't completely lost their ties to their hometowns.

Most people arrange the time at which they will go home to sweep the family's ancestral tomb when they come together to worship their ancestors at the Lunar New Year. Most set a date between the 16th of the first month of the lunar year and Tomb Sweeping Day. There are people out tidying the tombs on the 16th, the first Sunday after the 16th, the last Sunday of the month, the first Sunday of the second lunar month, the Vernal Equinox and Tomb Sweeping Day.

Hakka have been in Taiwan for some 300 years. In general, seven or eight generations have lived here and for the more recent generations, it is becoming harder and harder to keep track of so many ancestors' tombs. Because of this situation, large cemeteries have become popular in recent years, allowing people to keep together the relics of generations born in Taiwan.

"By building a reliquary tower, you keep future generations from dispersing. So anyone who can find a good location wants to build a tower," says Tseng Yu-yang. Tseng says that six years ago his own family built a reliquary tower in which places have already been prepared for descendants as far down the line as his great-grandchildren.

Home is where the heart is

In what is perhaps an expression of their deeply felt ethnic identity, urban Hakka, who have typically hidden that identity, tend to have passionate feelings for their hometowns. Many join Hakka "yodeling" classes or hometown associations to help them keep their towns alive in their memories.

Tseng is not only a member of the Heartland Hakka Association and the Hsinchu Hometown Association, he is also a founding member of the Self-Reliance Society, and the Kuanhsi Hometown Association. "The hometown associations are simply a way for Hakka to get together, that's all," he says.

On the afternoon of March 8, the Kuanhsi Hometown Association held its annual meeting. The auditorium of the Armed Forces Hall of Heroes reverberated with the sounds of people. But what made the event unique was that everyone there was speaking Hakka.

The stage was alive with people playing Hakka songs such as "Love in the Tea Fields" and "Mountain Song." In front of the stage there were delicious Hakka snacks. And hung on a wall in a nondescript corner of the room, were the lyrics to a traditional Hakka song entitled "Hakka Character." The lyrics runs: "From Tangshan to Taiwan without half a cent/To till mountain and field, and stake our own claim/Ten years of hardship without a complaint/Generations have passed, all just the same/Diligence and thrift, legacy unchanged/The Hakka spirit will never be lost/ Forever and ever. . . ."

The Hakka attitude towards life and the Hakka character have changed as their environment has changed. This kind of get-together is a lively event, but unfortunately, none of the younger generation attend. It is difficult for those who grew up during Taiwan's current era of prosperity to appreciate the hardships of "gnawing on ginger roots and sipping vinegar." Given that, what is now distinctive and special about the modern Hakka character?

Bringing back Hakka culture

Having left their villages and lost their mother tongue, urban Hakka have become still less readily distinguishable from the masses. So what is distinct about urban Hakka? Is the connection of the next generation of urban Hakka to their ethnicity to become still more tenuous?

Chen Pan, who came up with the idea of the "Culture of the Hakka Streets of Taipei" event, says: "Urban Hakka haven't had any purely Hakka communities." But the recent survey of Tunghua Street's Hakka and the organization of a Hakka event on the street have brought out the neighborhood's Hakka. Chen thinks that it is only this kind of "coming out" which can relieve the internal psychological pressures they feel.

Fan Chen-chien, one of the organizers of the "Hakka Streets" event and a self-declared victim of the "Hakka bug," holds a different view: "Taiwan's Hakka are not simply Hakka, but also Taiwanese." Revitalizing Hakka culture is not only important for the Hakka themselves. Over the years, all of Taiwan's ethnic groups have been repressed by various political masters. All have been in the same boat in terms of not being respected and having difficulty in holding on to their special ethnic character. Building a viable Taiwanese society with room for all is of great importance to everyone.

In addition to the "Hakka Streets" event, the Hakka arts center promised by Taipei mayor Chen Shui-bian opened its doors in February, while the Hakka community center will open in September.

Although it can be said that the opening of such centers does not equate to having culture, at least for the long "closeted" Hakka, they are an opportunity to come out and begin rebuilding their group identity.

How will the urban Hakka reclaim their identity? This isn't just a question of import to Hakka, but also marks the beginning of the appreciation and integration of other ethnic groups into Taiwanese society.

p.51

Tunghua street is a lively commercial thoroughfare. Its vegetable market, night market and street market are always bubbling over with the sounds of people. The area also has one of the highest concentrations of Hakka residents in Taipei City.

p.52

Tomb sweeping is one of urban Hakka's last connections to their hometowns. Every year between the Lantern Festival and Tomb Sweeping Day, Hakka living in all parts ot Taiwan return to their hometowns to "hang paper" on the tombs of their ancestors.

p.54

Due to his father Huang Ping-feng's insistence that he speak Hakka if he wanted anything to eat, Huang Kuo-cheng, born in 1971 and raised in Taipei, speaks fluent Hakka. It is a skill of which he is extremely proud.

p.55

The house is usually deserted, only coming to life like this when everyone comes home for tomb sweeping or family reunions. The courtyard in which rice was once dried in the sun now serves as a parking lot for children and grandchildren.

p.56

Three generations of Tseng Yu-yang's family work as picture framers, and here he looks satisfied with the job he has done mounting this large painting. Tseng says: "If Hakka doing picture framing aren't my close relatives, then they are my distant relatives."

p.57

Landless Hakka who left their homes to find work all have a trade. Chen Chen-lung, who has a Chinese herbal medicine shop on Tunghua Street, first worked as an apprentice in a similar shop. He studied hard and passed the licensing exam for practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine.

p.58

Hakka, who place great importance on their ancestry, fear that in the future, their descendants will forget to keep records of the family lineage. For this reason, many have traveled to mainland China to find their "roots."

p.59

The stereotypical views that a girl should not marry a Hakka man and that Hakka women are hard-working are often obstacles to marriage outside their ethnic group. However, the younger generation is gradually discarding such ideas.

p.60

Since Hakka gave up their traditional dress, their mother tongue has gradually lost its pride of place among them. Urban Hakka who have become "citified" and "gone native" are now encountering problems preserving their ethnic identity and culture.