I think that Hakka is the most powerful Chinese minority by far.

The leaders of the Taiping rebellion were Hakka. The soldiers were Hakka and Zhuang. They fought a good fight against the Manchus.

While the Taiping Hakka was fighting the Manchus, the Hakka was simultaneously fighting the Punti-Hakka war. The Hakka was fighting against the Taishanese in Taishan. There was the infamous Guanghai (town) massacre. After the Guanghai residents surrendered to the Hakka fighters, Hakka fighters massacred the local population. Then the Punti people obtained financial support from their kin in Hong Kong; they regrouped, bought better weapons, and fought back against the Hakka. The tide of the war was beginning to turn against the Hakka.

Fortunately, the Manchu government defeated the Taiping Hakka. The Manchu government then sent troops to Guangdong province to separate the Hakka and the Punti fighters.

A number of years later. Another Hakka leader emerged. His name was Sun Yat Sen. Although he had Hakka supporters (e.g. Charlie Soong and his famous children - including his 3 famous daughers), Sun reached out to non-Hakka Han leaders. Together, they overthrew the Manchu empire.

firstble,hakka is not a minority,they are han chinese by blood. in china,minority means people of non-han background,like the mongols,manchus,tibetans,huis,etc.

I invite you to look at a Hakka website e.g. www.asiawind.com - to learn about the ethnic origins of the Hakka people.

it says that hakks are basically northern han chinese that migrated to the south 2000 years aago,along the migration,some has mixed with local natives.
Nothing speacial about their origin

In 2004, there was a major Hakka conference in Toronto. Canada. In that conference, the ethnic origins of the Hakka people, as well as all aspects of Hakka life/culture were discussed. It especially discussed the lives of the overseas Hakka people (e.g. the Hakka in Jamaica).

Hakka people certainly see themseves as a distinct people.

You can access the Toronto Conference material by going to www3.sympatico.ca/toronto.hakka/

At the end of the Punti-Hakka war, Punti people sold many Hakka people into slavery. Most were sent to Southeast Asia, but some were sent to as far away as the Caribbean. One of the richest men in Jamaica, Michael Lee-Chin, is a Hakka.

I find Hakka dwellings are very unique.
What is the reason of that around planning? Is it one family dwelling or for the community?

Hi Zorigo,

Thank you for your interest in this topic.

I am not Hakka, so I can only answer the best I know. The Hakka people often lived in hostile environment. The round structure was built for defence purposes. A number of families may live in the same structure.

I wish to make a minor correction to my previous email: apparently, the politically correct term for "slavery" is "indentured labour".

After the Manchu army had separated the Punti and Hakka fighters after the Punti-Hakka war, for their own safety, the Manchu government moved many Hakka families from Guangdong province to Guangxi province. Madame Chen Xiaoling, (then) Consul General of the People's Republic of China, who presented the Hakka Achievement Awards at the Toronto Hakka Conference, is a Hakka from Guangxi province.

Perhaps a Hakka person can provide us with more accurate information on the Hakka's ethnic origin, language, and culture?

True, if contrasted with Cantonese, Chaozhounese, Fujianese. That makes it more like on the level of "regional/dialect difference".

My father is a Hakka. He claimed that (and we can assume that most Hakka also likes to claim that) they are descended from Northern Chinese migrants, and also that they were the "purest" among Han people. He considers their language most representative of Ancient Chinese.
In P.R.C, Hakka is not considered as ethnic minority because Han people form the majority.

Hi Grasy,

Thank you for your reply. While it was probably true that Hakka people came from Northern China to Southern China, but where did they come from BEFORE they reached Northern China? One theory is that they were Xiongnu.

Culturally, the Hakka is very close to the other Hua people (I don't like the term "Han"). Perhaps because they were discriminated against by other Hua people in Southern China - for a thousand years. They feel the need now: to establish their own Hakka websites, to form their own Hakka ethnic organizations, to organize their own Hakka conferences, to set up their own Hakka dating services, to vote for their own "Miss Hakka"?

Hakka is not considered to be an ethnic minority, because their language Hakka is in fact a han dialect. They are generally categorized as a subgroup within Han.

But you're right that they originated from the north, and when coming to te south, they had to defend themselves against a hostile environment.

Glad someone else knows about the punti-hakka war =) There was also a Hokkien-Hakka war as well on the island of Taiwan. It's sad that Han Chinese have to fight eachother =/ It's awkward how hakka and Taishanese are both somewhat similar to each other in terms of dialect..but there was still hatred during those times..

It was confirmed in a article by Sun Yat Sen's family - daughter - that he(Sun Yat Sen) is not Hakka but a Cantonese who's village in Zhongshan, Guangdong was surrounded by Hakka speakers. The village's dialect was said to be different from Hakka.

I think all the Cantonese, Hakka and Jiangxi Han-Chinese have origins from both the North(around Shanxi and Henan) and Southern China..which makes us a distinct people like the Japanese and Koreans =) The Northern Chinese as well are a distinct people who have origins from the Central Plains, Middle east and the area around Mongolia.

1. I have heard about the Hokkien-Hakka war.

2. Sun Yat Sen is such a well-known Hakka: to say that he is not a Hakka is difficult to believe. It is also difficult to believe that he once practised medicine in Guangzhou, the centre of the Punti people. Sun Yat Sen groomed Chiang Kai Shek, a non-Hakka, to be his successor. After Sun died, many of his Hakka followers, including Hakka leaders, defected to the Communists. (The Soong sisters split - with Sun's wife, Soong Ching Ling, defecting to the Communists.)

Well, I guess most Hakka would say that they were just the same as Northern Chinese before the Xiongnu/Hu invasion; new Northern Chinese are descendants of Xiongnu/Hu but not they Hakkas are not.
Of course, that's only claims, and I doubt it.

Migrants will have their language hardly intelligible or not intelligible at all to the local people, and that would of course lead to hostile attitudes and treatments.
If I'm not wrong, Hakkas did not come in small numbers and assimilate to local societies, they rather set up their own bases on mountains.

It's not strange to have Hakka associations/conferences in the overseas.

They could not understand each other so there's nothing strange.

I think the Middle East in Northern Han are still very limited. And Southerners may have that mixture as well from sea trade routes.

The hakka came much later than the cantonese and min (few hundred years and not 2000 years ago).

The first batch of cantonese only migrated during the zhao tuo dynasty.(around 2000 years ago)

That's why hakka are called 'guest people' in both gwangdung and fujien provinces.

Each of the major southern chinese language all claim they are the 'purest' and representative of ancient chinese. There are cantonese forummers here who make this claim too.

When compared to mandarin, I would agree with the statement.

When compared to each other, I would say min are more ancient. Eg min still retain the 'b', 'g' consonant that are lost in cantonese and hakka. Ancient chinese doesn't have the 'f' consonant which are present in cantonese and hakka.

Hakka and cantonese are both subbranches from the same branch in chinese language tree.

The new Cantonese are much like Middle Chinese compared to Min languages. So I doubt that the people led by Zhaotuo brought a "Cantonese" Chinese language there.

Maybe there were even displacement of Min speakers by the ancestors of Cantonese? There are also a few Min-speaking area that seems to be isolated with other Min-speaking area by Cantonese area.

Given the linguistic difference it can be conjectured that they came later by many generations. But then, Cantonese still seem to be very similar to Hakka so it should not be by too much time.

Well, usually it's just about the language. But Hakkas seem to like to claim the bloodlines as well.
Of course the usual way is by claiming that Fujianese and/or Cantonese are mixed with Nan-man/Bai-yue and Northern Chinese mixed with Mongolians/Manchurians, but Hakka not with any other ethnic group.

That's not called "retaining", just like in standard German the V becomes /f/, the W becomes /v/. Assuming the older form of German /v/ was written as V, I would say that standard German have not retained the original /v/, but lost it and regained it through mutation of other consonant.
The supposed ancient /b/ and /g/ changed (mostly, if not totally) to /p/ and /k/ and the modern Minnan /b/ and /g/ came from /m/ and /ŋ/.

Min has extensive tone sandhi which didn't exist in Middle Chinese. Minan has mutated finals,, I assume Minbei does as well?

Hakka generally preserves initials and medials better than Cantonese but its finals are far more corrupt. Cantonese final consonants are almost perfect, except of de-bilabialising, ie. words with initials b- m- and p- can't end in finals -p or -m, they become -t and -n instead. There have been irregular cases though such as 泵 and 乓 (pronounced 'bam'). Im suspecting that maybe the reading of 泵 as bam was influenced by the English word 'pump'? These are only based on Moiyen Hakka and Gwongfu Cantonese though, as apparantly rural dialects are better preserved. Huiyang Hakka avoids palatalisation of initials and preserves final consonants better. Shaoqing Cantonese also preserves initials and simple vowels better (no -i- to -a- shifts and no dipthongisation)�

no i meant those are Cantonese pronunciations... ping pong is 'bing bam(乓) bo' in Cantonese and pump is 'bam(泵)' as well

I have just looked up the Asiawind Hakka website.

Hakka people migrated to Southern China during the East Jin dynasty (317-420 A.D.) After living in Southern China for 1,600 years, why hasn't the Hakka assimilated with the other Hua people living in Southern China?

There are so many Hakka websites now. I think that the Hakka wants to be recognized as a distinct people.

The endless conflicts may have caused that? And they may have actually split... with some of them assimilated and some not.

Hakkas are already recognized as distinct people, at least in overseas, among themselves when compared with people who came from different region. Hunanese and Hokkien are, too, separate identities.
Other ethnic group may have some separate identities. But I guess that most Westerners would not understand.

I would not underestimate the Westerners.

You are correct: some Hakka people, like yourself, have assimilated, others have not. Some of them just throw in the towel and become Jamaicans, Americans, Indonesians etc.

Can you prove that? Why would you state such sentiment with out any substantial evidence.

There is a theory that the Hakka people mixed with an aboriginal people in Southern China (see e.g. the Toronto Hakka conference website). But this is only a theory and nobody has stated what this aboriginal people was. I am not familiar with Guangdong or Fujing, but in the Lower Yangtze Valley, aboriginal people were marginalized, and Hua people mixing with aboriginal people would also be marginalized - was this the reason why the Hakka people was marginalized in Guangdong and Fujing?

Ancient history does not matter now: what matters is for Hakka people to reunite with Hua people - a united people is so much stronger than a divided people.

I am thinking... once they have enough differences in language or culture, they would just split up, and as we can see there's so many states in Europe speaking closely related languages e.g. France, Spain, Italy. I'm not sure if their differences is much greater than the spoken Chinese.
I can't think of an example like Chinese (groups of relatively strong identities within a group of strong identity) in Westerners...

There's an analogy in Batak of Indonesia, but to explain it might be just as difficult.

Well... the descendants of assimilated overseas Chinese probably just know they are Chinese (because, still are still differentiated from the natives), in this case... they don't know which Chinese group they belonged to.

Let me clarify myself. I am just stating their claim, so I don't need to prove it as I don't actually agree the theory.

The same theory poses the Fujianese and Cantonese to be mixed with the aboriginal people, too. So the difference with the common Hakka claim is only that Hakka is "as impure".
And I don't think the discrimination is because the mixture is so obvious...most Cantonese I met seems to be able to distinguish Hakka and Cantonese. But language would be significant - there was not any national spoken language to be learnt by everyone.

In Indonesia and probably Malaysia as well, non-assimilated Hakka are quite much united with other non-assimilated Hua. (I think they see it like that as well among themselves. Though without question, the natives also tend to group us together)
And the language that links us.. is Mandarin. Not totally like standard Putonghua, though.

I wasn't aware of this until I read the transcripts from the Toronto Hakka Conference.

The traditional view was that the Hakka was discriminated against because they came from the North. But there were other immigrations/immigrants from the North; so, the theory was that the Hakka was part of an aboriginal group which was discriminated against by the Hua people in Fujing and Guangdong. I have now found the name of this aboriginal group on the Asiawind website: the name of this abo group is the "She" people. They were a backward abo group living in Fujing. Somehow the Hakka and the She became tangled - with the result that the combined group was discriminated against.

It is true that there are other groups of Overseas Chinese who have lost interest in Zhongguo. However, other Chinese/Hua people have homelands - Taishan, Guangzhou, Fujing etc, but the Hakka (some 80 milion of them) (apart from tiny Meiyuan, tucked away in the middle of nowhere) has no homeland. No bragging about the fabulous Shanghai, the prosperous Guangzhou, or even the Building/tourist boom in Taishan - may as well change their names to local names and forget about their ancesters.

can I ask something? how to divide the chinese people in ethnic? because han people itself is the biggest ethnic, but inside that have some branch such as hokkian, hakka, etc.. and they have also their own language and culture, but why they categorized as han chinese while the hui chinese(and others) categorized as other ethnic?


btw, I'm also a hakka people although I cannot speak hakka.. my grandfather came from meixian..(now called meizhou I guess??)

I don't like the term "Han". Hua people are the descendents of the original Hua culture from the Yellow River basin - either by blood or by culture. Some of the divisions with the Hua are just Regional (Cantoese, Wu, Taishan) etc. The problem with the Hakka is that they don't have a homeland (except the tiny Meixian which is not much of a homeland). In the past few years, Hakka people wish to insert their uniqueness, and have created unique Hakka institutions. (The Hui people also do not have a homeland. But they are just Hua people with a different religion).

Sorry I am writing so many posts: but I have found an excellent article: "What it means to be Hakka in Cyberspace: Diasporic ethnicity and the Internet" by Eriberto P. Lozada Jr. of Harvard University.

This article talks about the Hakka's Xiongnu origins; but more importantly, it talks about the Hakka merging with the She2 tribes, an Austro-Taic people of the historical Chinese South. Quoting an email, it states the following:

".... Hakka scholars in the last century tried their best to paint a picture of Hakka being pure-blooded Han people. In lights of today's further research into the subject, the pure-blooded Han theory starts to crumble. Hakka people have a long way to go towards admitting and starting to appreciate the non-sinitic heritage of their ancestors, both Southern (She2) and Northern (Xiongnu)."

Maybe Hakka should have their own autonomous region in the area bordering guangdong and fujian...

Sun Yat Sen is not hakka but his wife is...

I don't care whether Dr. Sun was Hakka or not. (I have read a lot about Dr. Sun - he has always been described as Hakka - but if you say so.)

That homeland was the reason for the Punti-Hakka war. If the Hakka had won that war, they would have taken at least half of Guangdong province (or more) for their homeland. The Jews had the same problem - the difference is that the Jews won their war and won their homeland.

The other thing mentioned in Lozada's article is that the Hakka is developing their own Pinyin for the Hakka language/dialect- so that a Hakka can type his pinyin in his own language/dialect.

There might be many numbers of migration to the South, and Hakka just came later.

Where is the proof that Hakka originated as part of them instead of a group of immigrants absorbing some (or much of) She?

The Hakka and the She still have different identities...
Not mentioning something special about She that I can't imagine for Hakka... such as She men marry into women's houses and we can assume that, as with other Han, Hakka women marry into men's houses.

Well, many overseas Chinese would not plan to move back and live in the "homelands". Mostly economical reasons.

The neighboring area of Meixian are also Hakka-speaking. Huizhou in Guangdong should be..

What do you mean? Well, if you lost the ability to speak your language of course you change to local names.

Meixian can mean a smaller place than "Meizhou area". Meixian is one 縣 only.
In China, there's a division level beterrn 省 (province) and 縣, and I suppose that's called 州 (I have found many "自治州", too, btw).
And then... 梅州市 can mean a smaller range, meaning only the capital of the 州.

The map of Hakka-speaking places show that it's not that small...

In Indonesia there were also Chinese associations of, for example, Chinese who once lived in Riau and moved to Jakarta.

Most of them may have came from "Han" people, as seen from their looks, but some should not be.. such as the Tsat in Hainan. They would be "unclassified Muslims" (because Uighurs were also Muslim)...
I'm not sure why you say they "don't have a homeland". Whenever they live in China, it's their homeland. There's also a province of Ningxia Huizu autonomous region.
"Homeland" would be more relevant for people of diaspora... such as Overseas Chinese. Otherwise, "homeland" can also just refer the place you lived when you were young.
But we can't go too extreme into the past, otherwise all of us would have a homeland in Africa.

Hm.. I have never seen any Hakka that looks like Europid.
And I'm not sure how "more Xiongnu" is Hakka compared to other Hua. They have to had been living much closer to North China to have a non-ignorable mixture with Xiongnu.

This minority ethnic group is called 畲族; 畲 is read She1 instead of She2. And before the official ethnicities of China was like today (56 ethnicities), they refused to register as Han. They'd rather pose as Li, Miao or even Manchu.
In contrast, Hakka would happily register as Han.

If I recall correctly, there was also something like She-Han war. I'm not sure who the combatants were.

"Autonomous region"? I think that's just for minorities (i.e. non-Han).

It's not very special to me. Peh-oe-ji, Bang-ua-ji and many other Romanizations for other non-Mandarin dialects also have been made. It's just computerizing them. I also have Jyutping IME for Cantonese.

I don't care either since i am not from Zhongshan.. But just to let you know that you cannot trust forums as they are just rumours or just people stating false facts. I read in some article that his village was non-speaking hakka, but surrounded by villages who did spoke hakka. It was even confirmed by one of his daughters. If you check this link you'll see that his family only spoke the Cantonese dialect of Zhongshan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Yat_Sen#Biography

It made no difference because when he decided to become a revolutionary leader, Dr. Sun attracted many Hakka followers - including his future father-in-law.

The Hakka did have a homeland - it was a republic in Borneo. It was founded and governed by the Hakka people. Then the Dutch came: they defeated the Hakka people of that Republic and drove the Hakka people out from that Republic. Many Hakka people living in Singapore and Malaysia now are descendents of Hakka who were driven out of that Republic.

I don't know where you can find a homeland for the Hakka. Perhaps in Guangxi (because the Punti people in Guangdong will never agree to cede a large area to the Hakka)?

Han (or hua) is a bigger grouping. Cantonese, hakka, hokkien are smaller grouping within this big group. So it should be Han cantonese, Han hokkien, Han hakka etc.

It is just like you have black cats, white cats but all of them belong to cats.

Mongolians, uighur are not considered Han chinese.

You cannot have a homeland in borneo which is not part of china. The local malays would die fighting before they grant the chinese any more malay land. They are already incensed about the chinese taking over singapore.

The closest homeland is still the region in between fujien and gwangdung provinces. maybe you guys can lobby for it.

that what I was asking about.. like the hui people also have the similarity with han people, but why they are considered as other ethnic? actually I can accept the mongol, tibet, etc as other ethnic because I can see it is different.. but for hui ethnic, I think it is similar with han people, the characteristic, and the language.. (I do research and it is say that hui people use han yu and arabic).. the different is just in religion I think, but thta is not strong enough to become the reason for differences in ethnic.. give me more explanation please.. thx..

Han cantonese, Han mandarin, Han hakka, Han hokkien are divided mainly by the different chinese languages.

I think it is ridiculous to have Han hui because we should have other groups divided by religion too. Such as

Han hui - muslim
Han buddhist
Han christian
Han taoist
Han hindu
Han atheist

etc. ....

The Prime Minister is always right!

Many years ago, Persian and Arab traders came to Zhongguo, and some of them settled in Zhongguo. They were treated as a distinct people. But these Persians and Arabs converted many native Hua people to become Muslims. The present Hui people are the descendents of those converts (although some of them claim Persian or Arab ancestry).

Religion is a difficult things. India was partitioned because of the difference in religion among its people; Iraqi people are now killing one another because of the difference in Sects among its people (within the same Muslim religion).

It is a blessing for us that most Hua people are not religious?

because the majority of hui people have persian,arab ancestors,there were a lot of migrants from midddle east during the tang and yuan dynast,which most of them married to local han chinese girl and thats where the hui people comes from.

This is a Hakka origin thread and not a Hui origin thread.

I don't think it should be called homelands. If I followed the same pattern, then the Europeans who migrated to Americas would have a homeland there?

You know that the Hakka there were also migrants in the Borneo.
You are referring Lan Fang republic... though it's still just a company in front of the Qing dynasty. I have read that they still could live rather peacefully with the local Dayak people.
The Indonesian (Southern) part of Kalimantan island should not be too dense in population.

The region labelled "Hakka" below can be called homelands of Hakka, not smaller than the homelands of Cantonese:


Didn't you forget Hakka in Indonesia?

the hakka purist talk of the last century had mainly been hakka reactionaries against other peoples who claim they are of barbaric and non-chinese origins..





which wife? soong qing ling? she was from shanghai and the family came originally from hainan.. i ve read about claims that they are hakka, till now i have not see any concrete links..for



also, dogs are considered sacred to the she (like the yao, because they were supposingly descended from pan gu) and hence eating dogs is taboo to them, but i hear that dog meat is a delicacy amongst some hakka communities..





more rather the surrounding areas of huizhou




actually the term 梅州市 comprises the meizhou region not just the main city, the reason being it is a di ji shi (correct me if i m wrong here) which is roughly equivalent to a 州 or fu (prefecture) in ancient times.. 梅 縣 used to be one of the 縣 in the old Jiaying zhou and it contains the main (or capital) city of Meizhou today.. of course the bundaries of old jiaying zhou comprised of a wider area roughly similar to meizhou shi today..(minus dabu and fengshun which were part of chaozhou).. i hope i m not confusing u here





they already have a homeland in china... which other chinese ethnic group lives in meixian, yongding, etc? talk of hakkas havin no homeland is absolute rubbish




but the hui do have a historic claim that they are descended from arabs and other muslim migrants.. they certainly have a claim of separate identity aside from religion

Hi Its interesting how people get carried away by their pride and emotions when it comes to ethnic identification. First of all there is no such thing as a pure 'race'. The Chinese people were created by an amalgam of Shang and Zhou people, who may not be ethnically related. The subsequent north continued to receive infusions of nomadic blood. The Han colonization of south China also saw intermarriage with the original non-Han inhabitants on a large scale. Who's pure here?

Hakkas are latecomers to south China, mainly as a result of the fall of Northern Song dynasty to the Nuzhen Jin empire. As latecoming refugees they found the best arable land already owned by the earlier migrants and have to live precariously on the mountains. This kind of precarious livestyle probably helped breed revolutionaries over the centuries. Hakka language (or dialect) is a mixt of their original northern tongue with large amounts of borrowing from their southern neighbours. The Hakkas (like the Jews) preserved many old ways such as not binding their feet etc. Their religious practice is also more Confucian based rather than Taoist like the rest of the southerners.

Facing scarcity of land, it is not surprising that there are numerous conflicts between the Hakkas and the original southerners. Unfortunate but true. But its survival isn't it?

There are great things about the Taipings. There are also not so great things about the Taipings. At any rate, they are doomed to fail because running a country is more than running amok with weapons. Sun Yat Sen is a Hakka with a Cantonese mother, he fraternized with both communities a great deal, and both communities contributed to his revolution in no small measure, in different ways.

To describe Hakkas as descendants of Xiongnus is baseless and probably originated from people who disliked some Hakka's claim of superiority simply because they came from the north. There is no need for either claims. Hakka, like Cantonese and Hokkien, is a Sinitic language. But the adverse environment where the Hakkas live no doubt helped to breed outstanding people. But then its the environment. Does any ethnic group want to swap homeland with the Hakkas just to breed outstanding people?

I am a Hakka. I never feel that Hakkas are "powful"~~~ Actually, we're gentle and peaceful.

Many of my fellow villagers call themselves "哈卡尔人"but not"客家人".By the way, I will tell every Han Chinese I meet about my Hakka identification.

Hakka food is not bad. Quite hearty in my opinion.

Hakka -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynl-AZN8BaY

I personally believe that linguistically Taishanese Cantonese share alot with Hakka in terms of vocabulary and Standard Cantonese for grammar and slangs. I always wondered if Taishanese(plus other Cantonese) and Hakka had a common origin

I wouldn't be surprised if there was a common origin. Hakka itself is split into many different subgroups (?). I myself am Xingning and I probably wouldn't understand what people from the other hakka groups were saying.

On the topic of Hakka origins, I think it's pretty pointless to speculate about whether Hakkas are the purest or the most barbaric or somewhere in between. No one knows for sure and we can argue until the cows come home. I don't know what is a "pure" Han or Hua, anyway. Where do you start the classification? What's the cutoff point where the early human from Africa divided itself into Hans and other groups? Can anyone give me an exact date? I have seen such a wide range of people claiming that they are Hakka (or any other Han sub-group as a matter of fact), that I cannot comprehend all the argument on the pureness of a race or group.

I think that we should instead focus our energies on preserving our cultural heritage rather than arguing over something that nobody can prove or disprove. The origins of the Hakka has probably been lost in the mist of time and no one will ever be able to say for sure.


Interesting song but there are many Malaysian words there. I doubt if Hakkas from other parts of the world would understand them.


Not sure about elsewhere but dogs are definitely a delicacy among the hakkas in parts of Malaysia. My own line has been banned from eating dogs, however. My great-grandfather was saved from a burning house by his dog and he forbade his descendants from partaking in dog meat. I still observe the "ban" out of respect for his wishes rather than some old superstition.

Which village is that? Those from mexian would almost use 客家人 but not quite. (Hakkas here who still speak the language with their elders will immediately know what I mean) This however may not hold true for hakkas from other regions, and they may in fact use 客家人 exactly.

哈卡 when sounded in Mandarin sounds like 客家 in Hakka.

Look forward to your reply since Hakka linguistics and heritage is one of my interests.

By the way, I do not recommend the asiawind website as a reliable source of information on the hakkas.