What My Hakka Roots are Teaching Me About Belonging

9 MINUTE READ

Born in Malaysia, Author Across Cultures Yang-May Ooi grew up straddling two worlds: the muggy, multicultural streets of Kuala Lumpur and the gentler, rain-soaked landscapes of Britain. A third also infuses her outlook, her ancestral history that links her and her family to China. Recently, she has been exploring her family history and in particular, one strand through her maternal grandfather: their Hakka lineage. In this article, Yang-May tells us who the Hakka are and why that matters not just for her own personal story but in the wider context of today’s divisive world.

Exploring My Hakka Heritage and Identity

I am Chinese by heritage, Malaysian by birth, and British by choice. 

I inhabit these different identities but also move between them. This fluidity of identity is at the heart of my writing about Belonging: How do we belong somewhere without losing the parts of ourselves that make us who we are – ie. our unique difference? 

I’ve been looking further back into my family history, toward one particular strand. My maternal grandfather came from Hakka heritage.

I am not claiming that my family are a Hakka family. There are other strands from Hokkien (Fujian), Cantonese (Guangzhu) and Teochew (Chaozhou) heritage. Each of these are a subgroup within the Chinese peoples (very broadly speaking, like Welsh, Scottish, Cornish and similar). Through migration and inter-marriage over the generations, my family is a mixture of these different strands.

The Hakka are not a people from a specific place as the Hokkien are from Fujian, Cantonese from Guangzhu, the Welsh from Wales and so on. They are made up of peoples from many different areas, dialects and heritages within China, coming together through migration and movement over the centuries. 

My connection to Hakka identity comes through my mother’s father, Grandpa Lim. His grandfather, my great-great grandfather, migrated from China in the 1860s to British Malaya. While the other strands of Chinese identity also make up who I am, what I have been learning about the Hakka story has strongly resonated with my fascination with Belonging. 

The Hakka, by their very name, are a people whose identity means Outsider.  

The Guest People  

The Chinese characters for Hakka—客家 (Kejia in Mandarin)—translate to “Guest Families” or “Guest People.”  

The history behind that name is complex and layered. There’s no single moment when a distinct group called “the Hakka” set out from an ancestral homeland. Older accounts often describe waves of migration from northern China to the south over centuries, but modern research is more cautious about treating this as a straightforward origin story.  

What we do know is that Hakka identity emerged among Chinese-speaking communities shaped by repeated migration and settlement, particularly in Guangdong, Fujian, and Jiangxi provinces. Due to floods, famine, social and economic turmoil, and sometimes conflict with neighbouring communities, individuals, families and groups left their homes and villages to seek a better life elsewhere. 

On the road, they met others in similar situations of their own “tribe” as well as peoples from other regions. The Hakka dialect evolved from these different groups finding a way to communicate with each other. 

When these disparate bands of people arrived at a town or village, they were referred to as the Guest People by the settled inhabitants. In many cases, in order to stay on in a place, they had to be registered in the local records which sat within China’s vast imperial bureaucracy. Their group of origin was written down as Hakka ie Guest.

Making Home

The word Guest immediately distinguished the Hakka from longer-established local populations. These were newcomers, arriving in places where land and resources were already claimed. They would often end up farming the worst plots on the edge of the settlement – rocky, infertile ground that was back-breaking to make a life out of. There would be tensions with local people. But the Hakkas would persist and endure for as long as they could. 

Hakkas are not nomads. They moved only when they were forced to by circumstance – their objective was always to find and make home. Sometimes they were able to lay down roots for generations in one place, marrying local men and women and slowly becoming part of the community. 

Over the centuries, what began as migration within China for the Hakka expanded to migration outside of China – along with  many other Chinese groups. In the present day, there are Hakkas among the Chinese in Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, the Americas and all over the world. 

.

Once the Guest, the new generations of Hakka in any one place came to belong there. Some would rise up to prominent roles within the community. Many would be indistinguishable from everyone else, speaking the local dialect fluently and adopting the customs of the dominant culture. But they always remembered their Hakka ancestry with pride, their stories and recipes and ways of doing things passed down by word of mouth and hands at work. 

Moving Again

And when the time came to move on again – when there rose a threat to the life they had built over generations – their pragmatic and unsentimental outlook would seek out again hope and new opportunities elsewhere. That is true still of Hakkas in our modern world.

Perhaps it is this in the Hakka that I recognise. This fierce drive to create a home that would take us across land and ocean – for however long it took. And also the resolve to endure the hardships of building and holding on to home in a strange land – for as long as it took. Plus the wisdom and strength to know when it is time to let it all go and move on again.

No Hakka Gene

There is no Hakka gene or blood lineage for resilience, adaptability or independent resolve. The Hakkas are genetically like any other Chinese group. 

There’s no ancient Hakka text setting out a philosophy or principles for living, travelling or belonging. 

And the qualities often associated with Hakka history—migration, resourcefulness, starting anew—are not uniquely Hakka. Jewish, Armenian, Indian, African, Irish, and countless other diasporas have developed their own ways of carrying home across borders and generations. Many other Chinese from different Chinese groups – like the Hokkien, Cantonese and Teochew strands of my own family – share these qualities, too, of course.

Even Hakka identity itself has never been completely fixed. Anthropological research focusing on the Hakka in South East Asia describes how people negotiate Hakka, Chinese, and Christian identities simultaneously. While adapting to new ways of life, they also continue with connections to their past. Identity, it seems, in this diasporic context, is something lived and continually interpreted, not preserved untouched in a cultural museum. 

Owning the Insult

So what is so special about identifying my Hakka roots if we are not much different from other migratory people? Well, for  me the Hakka story has connected me to something greater than myself in a very specific way. This specificity feels more special than my Chinese identity – which is in itself also something I feel proud to be.

This is because my family – and to some extent I myself – have lived the Hakka journey. My ancestors, seeking out better lives, migrated from China to British Malaya. Then in modern times, we have also moved on in search of stability and safety – myself included – from Independent Malaysia onwards to other countries. 

The Hakka story is revealing to me some of the Hakka characteristics, qualities, values and mental outlook that have shaped my family’s story – and made them who they are. Can the Hakka story help me understand more who I am? Could adopting a Hakka Outlook in a conscious way help me navigate Belonging Across Cultures?

The most powerful thing for me about connecting with the Hakka story is that these people were once derided as Outsiders and chose to own that derogatory label with pride. It is another dimension of the theme of #MaverickNotOutsider that I have been writing about elsewhere on this blog. So in one sense the question I am asking is greater than just for myself. The big question is: can adopting a Hakka Outlook help us more richly navigate Belonging wherever we may be?

More Hakka Outlook Stories to Come

I will be exploring this question in future articles, which will include more stories from my family and research from my investigation into Hakka history, identity and culture. I hope you will join me!

What About You?

What does the Hakka story spark for you – whether or not you are Hakka or Chinese? Do any aspects resonate with you or your family story? Where have your ancestors come from – and where are they rooted? What are there any qualities or values that have been passed down to you and your children from them? 

I would love to hear your family story. Please do add a comment or drop me a line. Or talk with your parents or grandparents or other family and see what emerges.

–

Photo: Hakka women working in Malaya – https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=32161929126731533&set=gm.1118244030032935&idorvanity=692186139305395 

Resources: Nicole Constable (editor) – Guest People: Hakka Identity in China and Abroad 

---