The ancestors of the Hakka people originated from the Central Plains and migrated from the Central Plains to the south. They are a branch of the Han nationality in southern my country. On the one hand, Hakka culture retains the mainstream characteristics of Central Plains culture, and on the other hand, it accommodates the cultural essence of the local ethnic groups. Hakka people often use those talented men as role models to inspire and educate their children and grandchildren, and learn from their meritorious and successful predecessors.
Some people say: Where there is the sun, there are Chinese people, and where there are Chinese people, there are Hakkas.
Some people say: Wherever there is sunshine, there are Hakkas; wherever there is a piece of land, Hakkas will live together as a family, work hard and reproduce.
Because Hakka people travel all over the world, immigrate to the world, and have many successful people in overseas business circles, they are called "Oriental Jews".
The Hakkas are Han people who migrated to the south.
Speaking of the Hakkas, people will immediately ask: What is "Hakka"?
The word "Hakka" is pronounced "Hakka" in both Hakka and Cantonese Chinese, which means "customer". "Cihai" explains it this way: According to legend, in the early 4th century (the late Western Jin Dynasty), some Han people living in the Yellow River basin moved south to cross the river due to war. A large number of Han people moved southward to Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, and Sichuan...which are now Guangdong, Fujian, Guangxi, Jiangxi, Hunan, Taiwan and other provinces and regions, as well as overseas. In order to distinguish themselves from the local indigenous residents, these immigrants call themselves "customers", "Hakka" and "Hakka".
It can be seen that the ancestors of the Hakka people originated from the Central Plains and migrated from the Central Plains to the south. They are a branch of the Han nationality in southern my country. The main gathering places of Hakkas are in southern Jiangxi, western Fujian, and eastern Guangdong, where 29 counties are "pure Hakka counties". Before the late Song Dynasty, Ninghua was the distribution center for Hakkas moving south; in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, Jiaying Prefecture (now Meizhou City) was the distribution center for Hakkas. Taking this as an axis, the Hakka people gradually expanded to the south of my country and formed a unique ethnic group - the Hakka ethnic group, which became an important branch of the eight major ethnic groups of the Han nation.
According to research, the ancestors of the Hakka people made six large-scale southward migrations:
The first southward migration was in the era of Qin Shihuang. After Qin Shihuang unified China in 221 BC, he sent 600,000 troops to "conquer Baiyue in the south" for political and military needs. The Qin army moving south entered Jieling (i.e. Jieyang Mountain, 150 miles north of today's Jieyang County) from the border of Fujian, Guangdong and Jiangxi, and reached the border of Xingning and Haifeng counties. In 214 BC, Qin Shihuang sent another 500,000 soldiers to "garrison the Five Ridges in the south" (today's Guangdong and Guangxi regions). These soldiers "garrisoned the five mountains and crossed the mountains" for a long time. After the fall of Qin, the two groups of Qin soldiers who went south stayed in the area and became the first batch of Hakkas.
The second migration to the south was during the "Five Husties" period in the Eastern Jin Dynasty. At that time, some Central Plains residents moved to the Fujian-Guangdong-Jiangxi border area in order to seek refuge. Later, due to the confrontation between the north and the south, about 960,000 people from the Central Plains moved south to both sides of the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. Some of the population flowed into southern Jiangxi, and some entered the Fujian and Guangdong regions via Ningdu and Shicheng.
The third move south was during the Huangchao Uprising in the late Tang Dynasty. First, the Anshi Rebellion in the Tang Dynasty brought huge disasters to the people and forced a large number of Han people from the Central Plains to flee south. During the Huangchao uprising at the end of the Tang Dynasty, a large number of Han people from the Central Plains fled into the Fujian, Guangdong and Jiangxi regions. For example, the clan member Li Meng moved from Chang'an to Bianliang, and then to Gubi Township, Ninghua, Fujian. Wang Xu and Wang Chao from Gushi responded to the Huangchao Uprising and led an army of 5,000 peasant rebels from Guangzhou and Shou Prefectures to Jiangxi, which caused a surge in population in the areas bordering Fujian and Jiangxi.
The fourth southward migration was the Southern Song Dynasty and the late Song Dynasty. The Jin people invaded and built the Yannan Crossing, and some officials and people migrated to the Taihu Lake Basin. Another part of the scholars either crossed the Dageng Mountains southward and entered Nanxiong, Shixing, and Shaozhou; or they traveled along Hong, Ji, and Qianzhou, and then from Qianzhou to Tingzhou; or they stayed in counties in southern Jiangxi. At the end of the Southern Song Dynasty, the Yuan army moved south in a large scale, and a large number of Song people from Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Jiangxi fled from Putian to Chaoshan along the coast of Guangdong to Hainan Island.
The fifth southward migration was in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. At that time, the Hakka people living in southern Jiangxi, eastern Guangdong, and northern Guangdong migrated to Sichuan, Hunan, Guangxi, and Taiwan, as well as central and western Guangdong, due to the population proliferation and the lack of land. This large-scale migration was called the "Westward Movement" in the history of Hakka immigration. The Hakkas in Sichuan basically originated from this "Westward Expansion Movement". At that time, Sichuan's population dropped sharply due to war, plague and natural disasters. The Qing government particularly encouraged immigrants to "fill Sichuan from Huguang".
The sixth southward migration was during the Taiping Rebellion in the mid-19th century. At that time, some Hakkas migrated to South Asia to avoid the war, and some were lured into indentured labor and taken to Malaysia, the United States, Panama, Brazil and other places.
In addition to the above six large-scale southward migrations, there were also Han Chinese in the Central Plains who fled southward due to droughts and floods, and there were also those who were officials, demoted, businessmen, and students of the past dynasties and settled in the border areas of Fujian, Guangdong, and Jiangxi. Not all Han people who migrated south became Hakkas. Among them, only those from the Fujian, Guangdong and Jiangxi ancestry and those originating from this ancestry were called Hakkas.