Hakka people mainly gather in the border areas of Guangdong, Fujian and Jiangxi provinces. Of course, they are distributed in Guangxi, Hainan, Hunan, Sichuan and Taiwan Province. This is because there are Hakka people in overseas areas, such as Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries, as far away as Madagascar, South Africa, Mauritius and other African regions.
Hakkas are so widely distributed, so how did they come? In fact, the formation and development of Hakka is the product of national migration and the crystallization of national integration. Since the Eastern Jin Dynasty, there have been frequent wars in the Central Plains, and affected by various natural disasters, people in the Central Plains have 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" in the south, and gradually formed a brand-new Hakka culture.
Because the southern mountainous areas are relatively closed and less impacted by the outside world, Hakka ancestors have better preserved the relatively complete traditional culture of the Central Plains. There are many similarities between Hakka area and Central Plains area in terms of language and dietary customs.
The formation of Hakka food culture
If we want to study the formation of Hakka food culture, we might as well start with the history of Hakka's southward migration. Historically, Hakkas have gone through five migratory journeys, starting from the Eastern Jin Dynasty and continuing to the Tongzhi period of the Qing Dynasty. During hundreds of years, Hakkas have moved to the south again and again, and the Hakkas group has also grown continuously.
Hakka people migrated from the Central Plains to the south, but also brought a lot of Central Plains food culture. For example, our most common "steamed stuffed bun" and "jiaozi" have evolved into "stuffed hairpin" and "stuffed tofu" in Hakka area. During the Song Dynasty, the custom of "tea porridge" in the Central Plains, after the Hakka people moved south, also evolved into a unique "tea-smashing" in Hakka areas today.
However, the Hakka food culture is not completely equivalent to the Central Plains food culture. After entering a foreign land for the first time, it will certainly absorb and blend with the local custom culture, and after a long period of fierce collision, it will naturally produce brand-new food customs.
For example, Hakka people like to eat aquatic products, which is different from the Central Plains. The southern region is wet and rainy, and all kinds of pond creatures have also stepped onto the Hakka table. In addition to frogs, loaches and snails, there are many snakes in the southern mountainous areas, so the Hakka people have formed the food custom of "taking snakes as treasures". Of course, Hakka people like to eat "raw fish", and even influenced by the habit of "dogs like rats" of southeast ethnic minorities, they also like to eat dog meat, which are relatively rare in the food culture of the Central Plains. Not to mention the "dried mouse" in the famous traditional food "Tingzhou Bagan" in Hakka area of Fujian, which is unheard of in Central Plains cuisine.