Last Sunday (28 April), the Nanyang Hakka Federation (ACHA) and its affiliates jointly organised a Hakka Culture and Food Festival at the SFCCA at Lorong 2 of Toa Payoh to raise funds for Tung Chai Hospital. This is also one of the celebrations of the 95th anniversary of the ACK.
(Opening Ceremony of the Food Festival)
According to reports, more than 3,500 people attended the food festival. My friends and I arrived at 11 a.m. and started queuing up before we even entered the clan association.
(There are long queues inside and outside the SFCCA)
The Hakka Federation and its affiliates have set up booths to provide unique Hakka cuisine. SFCCA's main hall, lobby and backyard are all used for the food festival, and it still feels crowded.
In addition to maintaining order, volunteers also help deliver messages and food. Some stalls are particularly sought-after, such as when I queued for more than half an hour to get plum vegetables and meat.
(SFCCA's main entrance, flower basket)
Hakka
The Hakka people are different from other regional origins, and their ancestors have scattered in many places after the great migration. At the end of the Western Jin Dynasty (4th century AD), the earliest Hakka people moved from Henan (Central Plains, the capital was in Luoyang at that time) to Hubei, Anhui, Jiangxi, and later to Guangdong, Fujian, and overseas. My hometown is close to the mountainous areas of Jiangxi, and there are also Hakka people, such as former General Secretary Hu Yaobang.
(Booths in the main hall)
After the Hakka ancestors moved south, due to the large number of people and the control of household registration, most of them chose to settle in remote mountainous areas. The sparse population in the mountainous areas has allowed the Hakka people to preserve their unique way of life and traditional culture. For example, the thousand-year-old Hakka town of Chayang, Lee Hsien Loong's ancestral hometown, is in Dapu County, a mountainous area in Guangdong.
(Stalls in Tongji Hospital, lobby and backyard)
Hakka cuisine
Hakka cuisine uses many dried vegetables, and the taste is salty. This may have something to do with the fact that food was used in the early years to make it easier to preserve, carry, and to endure satiety.
Affected by the place of residence, Hakka cuisine varies from place to place. However, several famous Hakka dishes, such as plum cabbage button pork, salt chicken, and tofu, are closely related to the Central Plains.
(I ate at the food festival)
The ingredients and practices of plum cabbage button meat and mustard meat in Kaifeng, Henan Province are very similar.
(Plum cabbage button pork)
Salt chickens are probably on the way to migration, and it is inconvenient to carry live birds, so the slaughtered chickens are put into salt packets, kept fresh and carried, resulting in a new dish.
(Salt Chicken)
Tofu is stuffed with meat stuffed into tofu, and later added with fish cake filling, and also stuffed with bitter gourd and eggplant. According to legend, the Hakka people originally wanted to make dumplings, and made tofu according to local conditions.
(Stuffed Tofu)
Probably the most famous Hakka dish in Singapore is the abacus made with taro flour.
(abacus)
There are also some Hakka dishes that are regional, such as tea. Tea is made with rice, peanuts, dried fish, green vegetables, etc., and eaten with a bowl of green tea hot soup.
(Tea Making)
Other delicacies I ate include rice wine chicken, pork belly chicken soup, etc.
(Rice Wine Chicken)
(Pork belly and chicken soup)
Although queuing in under the sun was hard, the exquisite Hakka food made for a wonderful Sunday.
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HQ丨Editor
HQ丨Editor
Singapore Eye APP丨Source
Sun Lin丨Author
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