NO ONE knows exactly where they came from, nor why they fled the lands of their ancestors. They have always been seen as strangers, clans which traditionally kept to themselves. Their name - Hakka, means ''guest people'', a term they use to distinguish themselves from the native populations of the regions in which they settled.
With only four per cent of China's population estimated to speak the Hakka dialect, their influence in the Chinese world has far outweighed their numbers.
Sun Yat-sen, the founder of modern China, was a Hakka. One of the few things that China's paramount leader Mr Deng Xiaoping has in common with Mr Lee Teng-hui, the president of Taiwan, is that they are both reputed to be Hakka, as is Singapore's patriarch, Mr Lee Kwan Yew.
The list goes on, and includes Hong Xiu-quan, the flamboyant leader of the 1850 Taiping Rebellion.
In a delirium provoked by his fourth unsuccessful attempt to pass his scholars exams, Hong succumbed to a vision. He saw himself as the younger brother of Jesus Christ and set off on a 14-year rebellion against Manchu rule, which resulted in the death ofmore than 20 million people and the devastation of southern China.
The Hakkas are thought to have come from northern China. Whole clans fled south to the margins of the empire, pursued by the hordes of central Asian tribesmen who occupied northern China in the 13th century.