Hakka: the "guest families" of the tin towns and Sabah

A bowl of noodles arrives at a table in Sabah. The cook is Hakka, and the dish is a family favourite. It has crossed an ocean and many generations to land here.

The story

The word Hakka (客家, Kejia in Mandarin) is how Cantonese speakers say a word that means "guests", "stranger families" or "newcomers". It was used long ago in China to tell recent settlers apart from earlier residents. Hakka people themselves later took it as a proud name for a people who have moved, and moved again.

In Malaysia, Hakka are about one in five Chinese. They are found in all the states, and they follow their own paths.

The tin years. When tin was discovered at Larut in Perak in the 1840s, many Hakka went to work there. By 1862 there were about 20,000 of them, and ten years later 30,000 to 40,000. Many were from Zengcheng and belonged to a society led by Chung Keng Kwee. In Selangor, Huizhou Hakka went to the tin fields around Kuala Lumpur from the 1840s. In 1857 two Hakka traders opened a shop there for the mining camps. The town grew to become the largest in the Malay States.

Livelihoods. Hakka families often ran Chinese medicine halls, textile shops and pawnshops, because the mining workforce needed them.

Sabah. From the 1860s the Basel Missionary Society helped groups of Hakka refugees move overseas. When the British North Borneo Chartered Company took over rule of the territory in 1881, it recruited Chinese settlers to work the land. Together these two efforts brought organised Hakka families to Sabah. By 1960 more than half of Sabah's Chinese were Hakka.

Where else. In 1960 about 30 per cent of Sarawak's Chinese were Hakka as well. They live widely scattered, in towns and in the countryside, unlike the Foochow of Sibu, who cluster together. Hakka are not one single group: those from Zengcheng and those from Huizhou came from different places in Guangdong and often settled in different towns.

Kelantan. In the hills of Kelantan the Hakka village of Pulai was studied by scholars from the 1930s on.

Where you can still see it today

Hakka halls and clan associations across Kuala Lumpur, Selangor and Sabah.
Konlaumee (干撈麵, "dry-tossed noodles"), a Hakka noodle dish that is common in Sabah.
Chinese medicine halls, a trade many Hakka families built.
Greeting: "Ngai" is how Hakka say "I"; ask a Hakka elder to teach you more.

What DNA can tell, and what it cannot

A mother line or father line may connect to East Asia, and a region estimate may point to southern China. Hakka families have moved many times, so their DNA often blends with other groups. For that reason DNA cannot say that you are Hakka. Your language, village and family record do that.

DNA does not decide race, religion or bumiputera status.