Discover the China’s guest people, known as the Hakka, in The Hakka Cookbook, Chinese Soul Food from around the World. Learn about their long history of migration through their stories and food. With no home to call their own, they became migrants and eventually settled throughout the world.

Veteran food writer Linda Lau Anusasananan, sets out to find her own Hakka identity through food. Beginning in her grandmother’s kitchen in California, she travels to her father’s ancestral home in China. From there she fans out to interview Hakka home cooks and chefs across the globe. She travels to Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Canada, Peru, and beyond.

Chinese Soul Food

This book likens Hakka cooking to a nomadic type of “soul food,” or a hearty cooking tradition that responds to a shared history of homelessness, hardship, and oppression. Earthy, honest, and robust, this Chinese soul food reflects the diversity of the estimated 75 million Hakka living in China and greater Asia, and in growing communities around the world. Yet it still satisfies and comforts the soul with its dark, robust flavors and satisfying comfort.

Anusasananan’s Hakka identity, together with her extensive experience testing and developing recipes, make this book both an intimate journey of discovery and an exciting introduction to a rather unfamiliar cuisine. She records the Hakka’s long history of migration through stories and recipes. This migration greatly shaped their character and what they ate.

Art by her brother, Alan Lau, gracefully guides the reader throughout the book. University of California Press published The Hakka Cookbook in 2012.

The Gourmand World Cookbook Awards recognized The Hakka Cookbook as the “Best Chinese Cuisine Cookbook” in 2013. The book landed on many “Best of the Year” lists and received recognition and favorable reviews in many media sources. Anusasananan also presented the book at many events and demonstrated some of the recipes on various websites.