Why are there Hakka people all over the world, and how are Hakka people formed? The formation of hakka is far from overnight, but after more than a thousand years of accumulation and precipitation. At present, there are many theories about the origin of the Hakka, but there are only two main theories, one is the Zhongyuan theory and the other is the indigenous theory.
The Hakka Zhongyuan theory believes that the main body of the Hakka people is mainly immigrants from the Central Plains, while the Hakka indigenous theory believes that the formation of the Hakka is a mixture of the Han people who migrated south and the indigenous people in the border areas of Fujian, Guangdong and Gansu, of which the main body is still the ethnic minorities who originally lived here. The Southward Migration Han Chinese accounted for only a small proportion. Both of these current claims have a certain historical basis in them. But the Zhongyuan theory is obviously more in line with objective facts.
Because the ethnic minority population in the border areas of Fujian, Guangdong and Gansu in history was very small, it was absolutely impossible for the Hakka group to develop such a large scale with ethnic minorities as the main body. And neither of these claims is denied. According to the objective fact that a large number of Central Plains people moved south, according to historical research, the Hakka people were able to form such a scale as today and present today's distribution, mainly due to six large-scale population migrations. The first three migrations mainly laid the foundation of the Hakka, while the last two migrations contributed to the worldwide distribution of the Hakka.
The first large-scale migration occurred during the Qin Dynasty, and soon after Qin Shi Huang unified the Central Plains, he sent a large army to conquer Baiyue in the south. The army going south not only conquered Zhejiang and Fujian, but also crossed the Five Ridges and conquered the hinterland of Lingnan. During and after the war, 500,000 residents migrated southwards to live with the Baiyue ethnic group and carry out reclamation of the border. After the fall of the Qing Dynasty, the residents of the Central Plains who went south stayed in the local area, because they were already accustomed to local life, and they had a deeper intersection with the Baiyue people. This part of the Central Plains should be regarded as the earliest Hakka ancestors, but at that time, they did not consider themselves Hakka.
The second mass migration took place at the end of the Jin Dynasty. More precisely, it took place during the transition period between the Western Jin Dynasty and the Five Hu and Sixteen Kingdoms. At the end of the Western Jin Dynasty, the Hu people from the north, such as Xiongnu, Xianbei, Qiang, and Qiang, took advantage of the void and not only divided the land in the Central Plains as kings and fought endlessly against each other, but also abolished the Han farmland and changed it to cattle and sheep. The Han Chinese, who could not bear to be enslaved, could only move south on a large scale. Some of the Central Plains people set out from jiujiang and followed poyang lake and ganjiang river into the mountains of gannan and further dispersed to western Fujian and northern Guangdong. The migration lasted for more than 170 years, with a total of more than 1 million people. A large part of today's Minyue ancestors originated from this migration.
The third large-scale migration took place at the end of the Tang Dynasty. More precisely, it occurred during the transition period between the late Tang Dynasty and the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms. In the last years of the Tang Dynasty, the peasant revolts such as Wang Xianzhi and Huang Chao first broke out, resulting in the weakening of the Tang Dynasty's national strength and its demise. Subsequently, various princes in the north strife broke out, and different dynastic regimes were established in the Central Plains, and ten local small states were born around the Central Plains. We call this period the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms.
At that time, the war in the north was cruel, and the people did not have a good life. In desperation, the zhongyuan people once again traveled along the Ganjiang River to gannan, western Fujian, northern Guangdong and other areas. The southward migration lasted for more than ninety years. In the process, the Hakka language family was initially born. The pronunciation is based on the Central Plains Old Chinese as the main tone. This also confirms the fact that the Hakka ancestors came from the Central Plains.
The fourth large-scale migration occurred in the last year of the Northern Song Dynasty, after the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, the north was unified by the Song Dynasty, but this only brought more than a hundred years of peaceful development to the north. With the shame of Jing Kang, after Hui Qin Erzong was captured by the Jin people, the northern Central Plains were once again in a deep and fiery situation. In addition, in the later period, the Mongols went south to the Central Plains and reduced the Han people to an effort, so the Han people in the Central Plains once again migrated south. In the process, Emperor Gaozong of Song proclaimed himself emperor in Hangzhou and established the Southern Song Dynasty, and more than one million subjects followed Emperor Gaozong of Song to the south alone. At that time, most of the rich merchants and eunuch families migrated to the Taihu Lake Basin, while ordinary peasant groups once again entered the junction of Fujian, Guangdong and Gansu. Because the household registration at this time already had the distinction between the main and the guest, the Central Plains immigrants were uniformly compiled as guests. Over time, Hakka people have identified themselves as Hakka, and gradually formed a fixed dialect and living customs.
The fifth migration occurred in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, when the Hakka people living at the junction of Fujian, Guangdong and Gansu at that time, after more than two hundred years of development, the population increased greatly, and the development of the border between Fujian, Guangdong and Gansu with many mountains and few lands became more and more restricted. Therefore, in addition to migrating to plain areas such as central Guangdong and western Guangdong, the Hakka people also gradually migrated to Sichuan, Hunan, Guangxi, Taiwan and other regions. Like the Hakka people currently distributed in Sichuan, most of them migrated during this period.
The sixth migration took place in the last years of the Qing Dynasty. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, under the impact of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement, the Heaven and Earth Society Movement broke out in Guangdong. In the course of various uprisings, the Hakka were also involved, and under the influence of the yin and yang, they also broke out with the Wangfu people in a thirteen-year-long Tuke weapon fight. The ongoing unrest prompted the Hakka to migrate again. During this period, in addition to some Hakka people migrating to Hong Kong, Macao, Haikou and other places, a large number of Hakka people were recruited by Western colonists at that time as indentured laborers and transferred to the Americas and Southeast Asian countries.