On November 6th, I went to the Hong Kong Museum of History with my group members. Honestly speaking, what impressed me most is the story of the four ethnic groups in Hong Kong. From the information board, video and exhibitions of that period, I get a better picture of the rise and fall of those original residents, as well as their traditional customs and various identities as time goes by.
However, among these four ethnic groups, the Hakka People, or Boat Dwellers, have suffered huge controversy. Historically, the Hakka in Hong Kong were considered “outcasts”. In recent years, the population of Hakka has appeared a rapid decline and their traditional culture and language are under threat.
The book named “The Last Generation of The Hakka”, which describes the hardship and struggle of abandoning their traditional life style, has attracted attention. The Hakka once famous for floating villages and boat dwellers, but now flashy yachts have edged out the old boat families, and a ban on trawler fishing in the past years only accelerate the drift to dry land. In this book, Mr. Leung Siu-yung, a fisherman, and his son tell of their hardship, struggles, and hopes for the future.
Besides, the Hakka supplied their women as prostitutes to British sailors and assisted the British in their military actions around Hong Kong. The stereotype that Hakka women were prostitutes was quite common. Thereby, Tanka women were ostracized from the Cantonese community, and were nicknamed “salt water girls”.
However, facing the shift or even death of the Hakka Language, the attitude of the Hakka people towards this has been unexpectedly neutral. As mentioned earlier, the Hakka community was discriminated, and their language, might in fact be a symbol of discrimination too, thus, losing such language, in the sense of the Hakka, can be seen as losing the identity of being discriminated, thus they did not really feel pity towards it. Once I watched a video about the interview of the last generation of Hakka on Youtube. Like Uncle Wing, during the interview, he always emphasized that there was no difference between the Hakka and those people living onshore, and that the language they used was just the same as Cantonese. It is obvious that he is still afraid of being discriminated by others because of his identity and thus does not want to speak Hakka anymore.
Seemingly strange though, as an outsider, we still hope to treasure such unique culture and language of Hakka.
The Story of Hong Kong 