Hakka Ilha Hainan

Many believe the Hakka arrived in Hainan after the Hakka-Cantonese wars of the mid-nineteenth century, when the government encouraged the settlement of unpopulated areas of the island. Before that, their ancestors had traveled a long road from regions such as Fujian and southern Jiangxi toward Guangdong, in migrations that stretched across centuries.

For a long time they lived scattered across the island. In the 1970s, after the Songtao Reservoir was built, the families gathered on its northern shore and raised new communities. There is also a legend of a mixed origin, from Chinese soldiers and native women of the island, but this is a popular tradition, not an established fact.

Life for the Hakka of Hainan revolves around family and village. They live in a few communities along the shores of the Songtao Reservoir, where they regrouped after the 1970s, and the water, the fields, and the paths between the houses make up the setting of daily life. As in other Hakka communities, work on the land and solidarity among relatives hold a central place.

At home, they speak the Hakka of their own community, a speech their Hainanese neighbors do not understand and that differs even from the mainland varieties. This language is one of the strongest bonds of the group: it sustains the memory of who they are and how they came to be there, and it carries the stories of origin that pass from generation to generation among the families.

The faith of the Hakka of Hainan is shaped by Chinese religious traditions, above all Daoism, with elements of Buddhism. Honoring ancestors, respecting the spirits, and seeking protection for the home and the harvest are part of common spiritual life, lived far more in family gestures than in studied doctrines.

Among the younger generation, it is common to find people who declare themselves without religion, influenced by the education and social environment in which they grew up. Thus, the practice inherited from the elders lives side by side in the same community with a generation that asks little about the sacred. For most, the Christian faith is unknown: there is no known church among them, nor any witness to Jesus in their own language and their own neighborhood.

The Bible exists in Hakka, and there is also the New Testament, the film about Jesus, audio recordings, and recorded Bible stories. However, these materials were prepared for other varieties of the language, and the Hakka of Hainan, whose speech is different, can hardly understand them. In practice, the Word of God has not yet reached them in the language of the heart, and the way forward lies in materials designed for their own way of speaking.

The greatest obstacle is the lack of an accessible Christian witness. Because they are few and live in villages of their own, the Hakka of Hainan rarely meet anyone who speaks to them of Jesus in a way they can understand. Their distinct language separates them even from the churches growing among their Hainanese neighbors: what is said in one language does not cross over into the other. Added to this are the weight of family traditions, the link between religion and belonging to the community, and the spiritual indifference of many young people, which makes faith in Christ seem strange and distant.

The Hakka of Hainan need, above all, someone who will listen to them and get to know them: friends who live among them, learn their speech, and share life with patience. They also need Scriptures and audio resources prepared in their own variety of the language, so that the gospel may be heard clearly.

There is also the need for a Christian community that is born from within the people themselves, simple and welcoming, able to show that following Jesus does not mean abandoning family or Hakka identity. May the hope that is blossoming in Hainan among other peoples of the island reach these villages too.