HONG KONG BEFORE THE BRITISH
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settled in the hills and along the coasts of our region. They themselves acknowledge that they are the latest comers into the region, and that they have migrated from exclusively Hakka-speaking country between Kwangtung, Fukien and Kiangsi provinces. The Hakka of those parts declare that they migrated from North China and this tradition is confirmed in every way by scholars, often Hakka themselves, who have collated separate family histories. From these studies it is possible to know that the Hakka did not migrate south of Kiangsi before the 10th century A.D. and we can infer from this that their appearance in this region was several centuries later.
7
From the evidence of their names we can begin to distinguish two kinds of inhabitants--one pure Chinese and one of non-Chinese origin. But on the other hand there is much negative evidence that could be brought forward. In the first place in customs and religion the Tanka and Hoklo seem to follow Chinese tradition; they have the same reverence for ancestors, the same surnames, they marry and bury the dead with the same ceremonies. They have an identical calendar of feast days, and their dialects, Cantonese and Fukienese, have nothing either in place-names, or vocational expressions or any other vocabulary which might contain archaisms to suggest that they ever used another language.
In the second place there is absolutely no apparent evidence that the Tanka and Hoklo are of the same extraction. They do not look alike physically and they do not intermarry nor mix freely in spite of being in close contact with one another. Indeed, the Tanka are much more akin to the Cantonese in outward appearance, and but for a difference of pronunciation it would be almost impossible to distinguish between them.
In the third place, the Hakka and Punti differ in their religious customs on one important point. The Dragon Boat Festival is celebrated by the Punti, Tanka and Hoklo on the 5th day of the 5th moon every year. The Hakka do not keep this feast. The importance of the Dragon Boat Festival as a clue to origins of culture will be described in a later section of this article.
However there is one broad distinction which can be made. In their differences in occupation and dwellings the population divides
7 For instance, Lo Hsiang Ling (#); K'o Chia Yen Chiu (3 RMX).