Before talking about "Hakka cuisine", we should know about "Hakka" first. After all, there must be a group of people who inherit the culture behind the food culture. Speaking of Hakkas, most people in the north probably don't know much about them, because according to ethnic classification, Hakkas don't belong to 56 ethnic groups, but they are only an important branch under the Han nationality, but Hakka culture still plays an important role in the south.

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 provinces. This is because there are Hakkas overseas, 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 Hakkas is the product of national migration and the crystallization of national integration. Since the Eastern Jin Dynasty, wars have frequently occurred in the Central Plains. Affected by various natural disasters, people in the Central Plains have no choice but to move their families south. After hundreds of years of migration and integration, they formed a group of "own people" 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 well preserved the relatively complete traditional culture of the Central Plains. There are many similarities in language and dietary customs between Hakka area and Central Plains area.

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 until the Tongzhi period of the Qing Dynasty. For hundreds of years, the Hakkas have moved to the south again and again, and the Hakkas groups have also grown.

The migration of Hakkas from the Central Plains to the south has also brought a lot of Central Plains food culture. For example, our most common "steamed stuffed bun" and "jiaozi" have evolved into "stuffed bun" and "stuffed tofu" in Hakka area. During the Song Dynasty, the custom of "tea porridge" in the Central Plains, after the Hakkas moved south, also evolved into a unique "smashing tea" in Hakka areas today.

However, Hakka food culture is not completely equivalent to Central Plains food culture. After entering a foreign land for the first time, it will definitely absorb and blend with the local customs and culture. After a long period of fierce collision, it will naturally produce brand-new eating customs.

For example, Hakka people like draught 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 table of Hakka people. In addition to frogs, loaches and snails, there are many snakes in the southern mountainous areas, so Hakka people have formed a diet custom of "taking snakes as treasure". Of course, Hakka people like to eat "raw fish", and even influenced by the habit of "dogs like mice" of southeast ethnic minorities, they also like to eat dog meat, which is relatively rare in the food culture of the Central Plains. Not to mention the "dried mouse" in the famous traditional food "Tingzhou Bagua Palm" in Hakka area of Fujian, which is unheard of in Central Plains cuisine.