Language Matters | New hope for Hong Kong's vanishing languages and cultures?
The Tanka people have been in Hong Kong for thousands of years, and the Hakka hundreds of years. Long neglected, their languages and cultures are finally being preserved
A unique feature of Hong Kong’s Mid-Autumn Festival is its fire-dragon dances, the most famous of which takes place in Tai Hang. The tradition began in the 1880s when, so the legend goes, the Hakka village suffered a plague that was dispelled only after villagers constructed a dragon from straw and covered it with lit joss sticks.
The Hakka, or “guest families”, moved from northern to southern China in a series of migrations beginning in 200BC. They settled in Hong Kong from 1700, engaging in farming and construction, and establishing walled villages in the New Territories.
Already here was another indigenous community, the Tanka, or Sui Seung Yan – “on-water people” – an ethnic minority from coastal southern China. Tanka people have been in Hong Kong since prehistoric times, traditionally managing the commerce of the seas, and living in small colonies of boats in Aberdeen, Tai O and, later, in typhoon shelters; about 200,000 Tanka boats were anchored in Hong Kong in the mid-20th century.