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Origin of Hakka in Taiwan
In Taiwan, there are over 4,660,000 Hakka people, constituting around 19.8% of the whole population. The Hakka people immigrated into Taiwan in the three reigns of the Kangsi, Yongjheng and Cianlong emperors. Taiwan’s Hakka people at present are mainly the descendents of Hakka people coming to Taiwan at that time. So far, Taiwan’s Hakka ethnic group has around three or four million people. They are an ethnic minority.
In the twenty-second year of the Kangsi emperor (1863), Cing soldiers conquered Taiwan. In the next year, a Taiwan administrative district was set up. Under its jurisdiction, there were three counties – Taiwan, Fongshan and Jhuluo.In olden times, most of Cheng-gong Jheng’s soldiers and followers fled to the islands of the area covering Southeast Asia and Indonesia,
＊ Photographers / Siou-yun Li reproduce / Jhuo-ci Chen
meaning that Taiwan lacked people. Also, having had a hard time, people living near the sea in provinces – Fujian and Guangdong – risked their lives and continuously stole into Taiwan by hiding themselves aboard boats for a better life.
At the early stage after Hakka people came to Taiwan, around two or three years after Cing Court conquered Taiwan (that is, the twenty-fifth or twenty-sixth year of the Kangsi emperor), there were no the restrictions at ports of entry and exit – the policy was just open. Having been forced out by their terrible life, a vast number of Fujian and Guangdong inhabitants immigrated to Taiwan. Because people living in southern Fujian had a geographical advantage (it was easy to cross the sea to Taiwan because of short distance between Fujian and Taiwan) and harmony with the people (Taiwan was full of people from Fujian when Jheng Cheng-gong of Ming dynasty and his followers were in Taiwan.), they naturally had an advantage. Hakka people in eastern Guangdong came to Taiwan rather late; there were various administrative restrictions (Lang Shih asked Cing Court to forbid Chaojhou and Hueizhou (both located in Guangdong province) inhabitants to come to Taiwan). So Hakka people seemed inferior since then.
At that time, Hakka people crossed the sea and arrived at Taiwan. Originally, they wanted to open up new land for settlement near Fujhih (today’s Tainan City). But the area near Fujhih had been occupied by people from southern Fujian. There was no extra land that Hakka people could open up and so they set up some vegetable plantations outside the Eastern Gate to make a living. Later, around the twenty-seventh year of the Kangsi emperor, one of the regiments of troops despatched by the Cing Court was composed of over one hundred Hakka soldiers enlisted from Jiaying State. After having served in Anping, Tainan and Agongdian for four years, they left the troops and then were settled in Lanlan Village (near today’s Wandan Township, Pingtung County) to engage in farming.
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