Teacher Gao Hui's book "Lens on Paper" invited me to do illustrations. There is a chapter about "Walking into Changting to Meet Hakka".
Painting Hakka, naturally the first thought of the enclosure.
Between the turquoise mountains, the terraces are shining and the moso bamboo is dense, overlooking the Hakka enclosure, like a castle with thick piers, round, oval, semi-circular, rectangular, coiled and discredited, arching against each other.
However, painting only the enclosure, although majestic and breathtaking, but the enclosure is too big, there are no small people under the giant house, and in the end, the spirit of the Hakka family has not been obtained.
The Hakka were originally a branch of the Han chinese. More than 1,700 years ago, the Western Jin Dynasty fell and crossed south, which was the beginning of the migration of the Hakka. At that time, the official documents used "guest" to refer to the residents who migrated from the Jianghuai generation. The general trend of the world, the division and integration of each other, the end of the Tang Dynasty, the Song and Yuan Dynasties, the Ming and Qing Dynasties... Whenever political turmoil and war broke out, the Hakka did not hesitate to leave the "other country" where they had lived for many years and continue to go south.
In 1930, Professor Gu Zhi's "Hakka Pair" described it this way: "Now with the journey of broadcasting, forced to be in the Five Ridges, it is still unyielding to obey people, and the Weiji style is like me." Qu Qiangjieli, self-painted the chasm, forever and forever, long are guest names. ”
The Hakka people in the hilly mountains of Fujian, Gansu, and Guangdong built castle-like collective residences to ward off wild beasts and enemies, which is the symbol of "Qu Qiangjieli, drawing his own chasm". Corresponding to sticking to the defense is a strong sense of clan. In the chapter "Into Changting", the tofu feast written is the realistic bond of family affection.
Tofu is packed in a cage drawer the size of a small millstone, one by one, and the adult lifts the lid, and the two children are about to reach out.
Tofu feasts, in fact, are available everywhere. Eating a table of tofu today, if it is not accompanied by chicken, duck and fish meat, it feels tasteless, but I think that eating tofu was a major event for the entire clan. So you see, even the old man with the crutch came out. On the table, there are tofu balls, fried tofu rolls, and dipping sauce...
The Hakka people continued to migrate, and the ancestors became an important symbol of spiritual maintenance. The enclosure is a layer of concentric circles from the outside to the inside, and in the middle is a small empty field, and the middle of the empty field is often the ancestral hall. Behind them, the tribesmen were busy. There was a woman serving two large bowls of tofu soup, and the children behind her smelled the aroma and made trouble all the way.
There were also people, carrying several layers of large cage drawers, and others, carrying long benches, and in a moment the open space in the middle of the enclosure would be filled with men, women and children.
The Hakka people attach importance to their relatives, their ancestors, and also to reading. I think these three points are interdependent and integrated—the reverence for the ancestors closely unites the relatives; the dependence and mutual assistance of the relatives ensures that the children in the clan can be educated; and the endless seeds of reading feed the relatives and strengthen the values of prudence and pursuit. In this way, the Hakka enclosure is solid and self-guarding from the outside, and it is intimate and warm from the inside. From the inside, from the perspective of these Hakka people, the eaves of the heavenly enclosure are complete and peaceful.
Ethnic migration was originally very common, but most of them changed their hometowns over time, and not many people always regarded themselves as "guests".
During the Ming and Qing dynasties, many Fujian people crossed the strait and settled in Taiwan, and when the Hakka came later, the forces of Zhangzhou and Quanzhou on the island were already very strong, and the two sides competed, and the Hakka were often in the inferior position. Therefore, after the unification of the Qing Dynasty, the Hakka people, who were in a weak position, were closer to the Qing court. Today, the place where Hakka people gather on the island of Taiwan is still called "Hakka Zhuang", which shows that for hundreds of years, the Hakka people have been self-guarding. The Hakka population in Taiwan is small, but they often become a "key minority" in elections, and the inversion of "Hakka Zhuang" can sometimes determine the outcome of the vote.
For more than a thousand years, the Footsteps of the Hakka people have traveled from Jianghuai, to the southeast hills, to Taiwan, and then overseas, they call themselves "Guests" and have never forgotten their homeland in Heluo, Central Plains.
Nowadays, with the great changes in the sea and the impact of civilization, in the future, will the Hakka "guest" word pass away with the waves, or will it become clearer?