Hakka food culture heritage and development

Before we talk about Hakka cuisine, we first need to understand the Hakka people, after all, behind the food culture, there must be a group of people who inherit the culture. Speaking of the Hakka people, most people in the north may not be particularly familiar with, because according to the national classification, the Hakka people do not belong to the 56 nationalities, they are only an important branch of the Han Chinese below, but the Hakka culture in the southern region is still a pivotal position.

The Hakka people are mainly concentrated in the border area of Guangdong, Fujian and Jiangxi provinces, of course, Guangxi, Hainan, Hunan, Sichuan and Taiwan are also distributed. In addition, there are Hakka people in overseas areas, as near as Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries, and as far away as Madagascar, South Africa, Mauritius and other African regions.

The Hakka people are so widely distributed, so how did they come? In fact, the formation and development of the Hakka is the product of ethnic migration and the crystallization of ethnic integration. Since the Eastern Jin Dynasty, the Central Plains region, the frequent occurrence of war, as well as by a variety of natural disasters, the Central Plains people had no choice but to move their families to the south. After hundreds of years of migration and integration, they formed a group of "their own people" in the south, and gradually formed a new Hakka culture.

Because the mountainous regions of the south are relatively closed and subject to fewer external influences, the Hakka ancestors have retained the traditional culture of the Central Plains relatively intact. There are many similarities between the Hakka region and the Central Plains, both in terms of language and food customs.

Formation of Hakka food culture

If we want to look at the formation of Hakka food culture, we might as well start with the history of the Hakka people's migration to the south. Historically, the Hakka people have experienced five migratory journeys, starting from the Eastern Jin Dynasty and continuing until the Tongzhi period of the Qing Dynasty. Over the centuries, the Hakka people have moved south again and again, and have also continued to grow the Hakka community.

The Hakka people brought a lot of Chinese food culture with them when they migrated to the south from the central plains. For example, the most common food in the Hakka region, such as buns and dumplings, has been transformed into "stuffed rice" and "stuffed bean curd". In the Hakka region, they became "Stuffed Conversation" and "Stuffed Tofu". In the Song Dynasty, the custom of "Ming congee" in the central plains, through the Hakka people's journey to the south, has also been transformed into the unique Hakka region of today's "ring tea".

But the Hakka food culture is not exactly the same as the food culture of the Central Plains, the first time in a foreign land, will be absorbed with the local customs and culture of each other and fusion, after a long time after the violent collision, naturally, will also produce a new dietary practices.

For example, the Hakka people are good at eating aquatic products, which is different from the Central Plains. The southern region is humid and rainy, and all kinds of pond creatures have come to the table of the Hakka people. In addition to frogs, loaches, snails, the southern mountainous areas are also more snake infested, so the Hakka people formed a "snake as a treasure" food custom. Of course, the Hakka region prefers to eat "raw fish", and even by the southeast minority "Gan dog and mouse" habits of the influence, but also love to eat dog meat, which are relatively rare in the food culture of the Central Plains. Not to mention the Hakka region of Fujian's famous traditional food "Tingzhou eight dry" inside the "rat dry", in the Central Plains cuisine is unheard of.