On a bitterly cold winter's night, in an empty factory building in the suburbs of New Zealand's biggest city, Auckland, a large group of immigrants from Taiwan is gathered.

Strangely, we don't hear the Southern Fujian ("Taiwanese") dialect so typical of Taiwan. The music blaring from the sound system is a Hakka folk song-for this is a party put on by the Hakka Society of New Zealand.

"In terms of membership, the Hakka Society is New Zealand's second largest Chinese civic group, second only to the Hwa Hsia Society, says Hakka Society secretary Rod Peng. He explains that there are now over 20,000 immigrants from Taiwan in New Zealand, and around 10% of them are Hakkas. But of these Hakka immigrants, over 90% are in the society.

While the children are all playing together, just look how the capable Hakka women roll up their sleeves, tie on their aprons and use the time to make all kinds of appetizing dishes, including Hakka specialities like savory tangyuan (stuffed glutinous rice-flour dumplings, served in soup), fried pigs' intestines, and meigan kourou (a meat and vegetable dish). Meanwhile the men stand around in small groups chatting. When we listen closely, we find they are talking about the situation in the then upcoming New Zealand parliamentary elections, or about the affairs of the Hakka Society-all weighty matters of national or ethnic importance.

We don't hear Taiwanese spoken, but not all the Hakkas here speak fluent Hakka either, so as a compromise they make do with a mixture of Hakka and Mandarin.

"What can you do? Hakka is being lost even faster overseas than back home," says Rod Peng. "We no longer define ourselves as Hakkas by language or by ancestry, but by our sense of identity."

Intriguingly, Hakkas in Taiwan do not generally emphasize their ethnic background, and even tend to deliberately conceal it. So why should they make such a big thing of it here in New Zealand?

When asked this question, the society's directors fall silent for a while. Finally someone admits that in Taiwan, where people of Southern Fujian ancestry are in the overwhelming majority, Hakkas fear rejection if they play up their ethnic background. But now that they have moved overseas, all the Taiwanese here are newcomers, and they are all in the minority. Everyone starts on an equal footing, and "we can reveal our true colors again."

As strangers in a strange land, they have a greater need to stick together and help each other. They say that because in many families the husband has stayed behind in Taiwan to work, the Hakka Society shoulders the burden of looking after the women and children, the old and the infirm. If someone has a baby, they will take her sesame-oil chicken and help her through her postnatal month of rest; if someone is moving house, they will call together a crowd of brawny chaps to lend a hand; and if someone's child wants to go to college, they will look out for useful information to pass on.

These Hakka people, whose ancestors trekked south from China's Central Plains, traveling generation after generation, have finally settled on this island in the Southern Hemisphere; but they have never forgotten their ethnic identity. Where should they call home? Taiwan? Mei County in Guangdong Province? Or the Central Plains along the Yellow River, the cradle of Chinese civilization? This question seems not to matter any more. What does matter is that here they can finally reveal their true faces again, and live with heads held high, the same as anyone else.

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The sense of closeness aroused by hearing Hakka spoken overseas is enough to sweep away all feelings of unfamiliarity and suspicion. Pictured here is a party put on by the Hakka Society of New Zealand. (photo by Hsueh Chi-kuang)