Category Archives: Hakka history/identity

Gift for the Chinese cook

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Best Chinese Cuisine Cookbook of the World 2012 -Gourmand World Cookbook Awards

Looking for a gift for a Hakka relative or friend eager to learn more about their Hakka history? Is there a cook on your holiday gift list who is interested in Chinese history and cuisine?  Give them The Hakka Cookbook, Chinese Soul Food from around the World. The book was recognized as the Best Chinese Cookbook in the World in 2012 by the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards.

Through recipes and stories told by Hakka from all over the world, discover the unique Hakka history, culture, and cuisine. Find 140 recipes, including Hakka classics such as stuffed tofu, lei cha, and salt-baked chicken as well as easy Chinese comfort food. The beginner cook will find sections on cooking techniques, equipment, and ingredients. Paintings created by artist Alan Lau gracefully illustrates the book.

Check this link for sources on where to buy The Hakka Cookbook. It is widely available online. Some of the major sellers are Amazon.com, Books Kinokuniya, and University of California Press. Or ask your local book store to order The Hakka Cookbook for you.

Hakka cooking lessons on Netflix

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Recently, I stumbled across a Malaysian series, The Missing Menu on Netflix. This emotional drama features a Hakka widow who tries to bring her family together with her delicious food. Through cooking certain dishes she hopes to teach her children how to live life.

In each episode, she showcases two dishes, usually Hakka or Hokkien (her husband was Hokkien). At the end of each segment, a younger version of this Hakka chef demonstrates how to cook the featured dishes. Learn how to prepare Salt-baked Chicken, Pork Patty, Vinegar Pork Trotters, Ginger Duck, Pork Belly and Taro, and many more. She shares bits of Hakka history as she cooks. Check out The Missing Menu. In Chinese with English subtitles.

Healthy foods for Chinese New Year

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Savory Pounded Tea Rice

Today is the 7th day of the Lunar New Year. According to ChineseAmericanFamily.com The seventh day commemorates Nu Wa, the ancient goddess who is believed to have created mankind from yellow clay. On this day, Chinese people eat healthy foods with auspicious meanings. For the Hakka, that dish might be lui cha (aka lei cha, thunder tea). Several variations exist from savory to sweet.

This dish claims to cure almost any health issue. This cure-all reputation originated almost 2000 years ago when in a crucial battle, a general ordered a Hakka doctor to treat his plaque-stricken troops. The doctor prescribed a tea made from pounded seeds, nuts, and tea leaves. When the sick troops drank the tea they miraculously recovered.

Vegetable Tea

In The Hakka Cookbook, you’ll find recipes for the Savory Pounded Tea Rice from Malaysia on page 119 and Pounded Tea with Sweets from Taiwan on page 99. Loh Sye Moi from Malaysia serves a simpler related soup-like dish she calls Vegetable Tea (page 113). Although it does not include tea leaves, it includes many vegetables and toasted seeds and nuts.

Many of the ingredients in these dishes have auspicious meanings. Green vegetables symbolize close family ties. Peanuts promote health, long life, prosperity, continuous growth, wealth and good fortune, stability. Seeds symbolize fertility. Walnuts promise happiness for the whole family.

On this day consider celebrating humans by eating foods that promote your good health. May the Year of the Pig bring you good health, prosperity, and abundance!

A visit to the Hakka tulou

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Chuxi Tulou Cluster

Last week, I visited some of the earthen structures built by our Hakka ancestors known as tulou (??) located in Yongding County in Fujian Province in China. The large tall structures with thick load-bearing rammed earth walls were designed to keep out bandits and house a group of families. Many are designated UNESCO World Heritage sites.

Chuxi Tulou Cluster

During the Cold War, it is said when viewed from space their unusual shapes and sizes looked like missile sites or nuclear reactors. On the ground, inspectors found that they were simply large homes for a group of Chinese families.

Many were designed with a distinctive round shape. Built in a circular shape to thwart bandits, these multi-story homes were virtually earthen fortresses. Their round shape made it easier to defend with no corners for enemies to hide behind. The tall height gave them a better vantage point to attack their enemies. Thick walls kept bullets and attackers out.

Families lived together, each usually occupied a vertical section of the round, sort of like a pie-shaped wedge. In most of the  tulou we visited, the bottom floor was the communal area with kitchen and ancestral hall. Upper floors were for sleeping and storage.

Zhenchenglou at Hongkeng Tulou Cluster

We spent the afternoon and night at Hongkeng Tulou Cluster to experience the life in a Hakka village without the crowds. Early in the morning, we visited the double-ring Zhenchenglou tulou built in 1912 built by a tobacco knife trader.

We slept at the138-year old Tulou Fuyulou Changdi Inn. At this square-shaped tulou, we ate Hakka meals in the courtyard, tasted the family’s local teas–oolong, orange, and flower–and slept upstairs in the bedrooms retrofitted with Western toilets. As we toured the village, we saw families cooking dinner, tending their vegetable gardens, children playing, and mustard greens drying in the courtyards. It’s a quiet life. These days mostly seniors and children occupy the village. Most of the young people have gone to the big cities to work and make money.

The Chuxi Tulou Cluster, inhabited in the 14th century by the Xu clan dates back to the Ming dynasty. This picturesque Hakka village contains primarily round and rectangular shaped tulou. Unfortunately the oldest and largest one, Jiquing Lou, was closed for renovation when we there.

 

 

Thai Rooster bowls with Hakka roots

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In January, photos of charming Chinese bowls with a distinctive colorful rooster pattern caught my eye in the Bangkok Post’s feature article. Little did I know, that these rooster bowls had Hakka roots.

The story was about Yupin Dhanabadeesakul, a woman who was following her Chinese immigrant father’s footsteps in their family ceramics business. Her father, Simyu Sae-chin migrated from Guangdong to Thailand during China’s civil war. He was a ceramic craftsman and when he discovered kaolin clay near Lampang, he opened a ceramic factory and crafted bowls hand painted with a colorful rooster, the same design he used in China. When I read about his Chinese roots, I couldn’t help but wonder if he was Hakka.

Yupin Dhanabadeesakul , owner with Hakka roots, still works in the family ceramics factory

Almost a year later, I found myself in Chiang Mai, not far from Lampang. I remembered the article about the rooster bowls and suggested we visit the Dhanabadee factory. There is a museum, factory outlet and workshop where you can paint ceramic objects with your own design. Our grand children painted elephants while their parents shopped. While their painted ceramic elephants were fired in the kiln, we went on a fascinating tour of the museum that highlights the family company’s history and the production of the ceramics.

I was surprised to see Yupin, the daughter of the founder featured in the article, humbly working on the production line, trimming clay bowls. After our tour we asked if we could take a photo with the owner. She gladly agreed. My husband asked her in Thai if she was Chinese Hakka ( ?????? Jeen  Kae.) She answered yes, but her father wanted to make it easier for his children to assimilate in his new country so he gave his children a Thai name. Even with her Thai name, Yupin epitomizes the spirit and tenacity of the hard-working Hakka woman.

Dhanabadee Ceramic Museum Address 543 M.1, T.GLOUYPAE, A.MUANG, LAMPANG 52000 THAILAND Tel. (+66) 05435 4011-2

Register for New York Hakka Conference

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Opening night at the first New York Hakka Conference in 2015

Want to meet other Hakka? Learn about famed Hakka author Han Suyin who wrote about her Hakka ancestors. Listen to new Hakka voices such as Tao Leigh and Henry Chang who will share how to tell your Hakka story. Interested in visiting the Hakka roundhouses in Fujian province that have been declared UNESCO world heritage site? Record your own Hakka story narrative?

These are just a few of the workshops offered at the second New York Hakka Conference held from August 4 to 6, 2017 in New York’s Chinatown. More workshops will be added in the coming weeks. Register now for “Reclaiming our Hakka Heritage.” Discount conference hotel prices ends July 6. Advance registration price for 2 day conference is discounted. On-site registration, day passes, and student tickets also available.

 

Holiday gift: The Hakka Cookbook

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large version of cover of The Hakka Cookbook

Best Chinese Cuisine Cookbook 2012 by Gourmand World Cookbook Awards

Need a holiday gift for your Hakka children or foodie friend? Consider The Hakka Cookbook. It’s a perfect and unique gift especially for Hakka who want to learn more about their history, heritage, and cuisine. The book tells the story of the migration of China’s “guest people” known as the Hakka. It follows my journey to discover my own Hakka identity as I travel and interview Hakka throughout the world. These transplanted Hakka share their stories and their food. Through the easy-to-follow recipes, cook your way to the Hakka soul.

Ask your local bookstore to order The Hakka Cookbook for you. Or buy online. Check this link for sources and details. Online retailers such as Amazon (North America, France, Germany, UK, Japan, and Canada) and Kinokuniya Online Store Bookweb (Southeast Asia) have sold the book in the past.

Hakka community

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Opening ceremony at Toronto Hakka Conference 2016

Dr. Vivienne Poy and lion dance opens Toronto Hakka Conference 2016

Growing up in a small primarily all-white town, I never felt like I belonged to a Chinese community. I didn’t know any other Chinese besides a few relatives. I understood some Hakka but never was very fluent.

Even when I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area where lots of Chinese lived, I never identified with any specific Chinese community. I rarely met any Hakka.  Most Chinese spoke Cantonese or Mandarin, which I tried studying, but never really mastered. The only language that spoke to me was the food. I grew up eating Chinese food and it was always my go-to comfort food.

It wasn’t until I went to Toronto that I felt I belonged to a Chinese community. There I met Hakka who had migrated from all over the world. They were like me. We had a shared history of migration. Many didn’t speak or write Chinese but we could communicate in English.

When I went to my first Toronto Hakka Conference in 2008, I had never seen so many Hakka gathered in one place. Finally, I found my Hakka community.  At the most recent 2016 Toronto Hakka Conference, I recognized people I had met on previous trips. I also met new people who were also searching for their cultural identity through food, through their ancestry, and through the conference. One of the greatest benefits of the Toronto Hakka Conference is connecting with Hakka from all over the world. This year some attendees came as far as India, Portugal, Australia, Hong Kong, Jamaica, and Mauritius. The majority of the attendees live locally because the greater Toronto area is home to many Hakka.

For me the conference celebrates being part of the Hakka community.

 

 

Being Hakka

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Dr. Shui Loon Kong at Toronto Hakka Conference 2016

Dr. Shui Loon Kong at Toronto Hakka Conference 2016

What does it mean to be Hakka? It’s a question that I sought the answer to most of my life.

Keynote speaker Dr. Shui Loon Kong answered my question at the Toronto Hakka Conference 2016. I could identify with his remarks.

Being Hakka means adaptation. We Hakka learn to fit into the environment and transcend it. We achieve it in five ways: Accept, Access, Activity, Achievement, and Appreciate, said Dr. Kong.

A long history of migration forced the Hakka to new environments, often harsh and inhospitable. To survive, the Hakka learned to adapt. They accepted their new phase, figured out how to best survive in these new conditions, and acted to succeed. This is the Hakka story, repeated over and over, as they migrated all over the world. For me, Dr Kong distilled the essence of being Hakka in just one word, “Adaptation.”

Hakka in Toronto

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Poster#1 THC2016 copyI’m working on my presentation for the upcoming Toronto Hakka Conference. Of course, I will be talking about food.

I will be in Toronto a few extra days and wonder where to eat. Do you have any suggestions for restaurants with Hakka chefs in the Toronto area? Would love to know where you eat and what your favorite dishes are. What’s new? I know many Hakka chefs come from India but have heard there are some with Jamaican roots. Please share your suggestions with me!

Visit Toronto Hakka Conference to register and see the program. From July 1 to 3, participants have a chance to meet Hakka from all over the world. Listen to experts speak about subjects ranging from Hakka genealogy, food, dialects, history, and much more. The Toronto area holds a concentration of Hakka from that spans the globe. At my first conference in 2008 I connected with many Hakka and interviewed them for The Hakka Cookbook, Chinese Soul Food from around the World.