162
!
:
ITINERANT HAKKA WEAVERS
In the course of general historical enquiries among old village persons in Kowloon and the Southern District of the New Territories, it has been established that in their youth it was a regular practice for itinerant Hakka persons, mostly men it seems, to come yearly to villages in this area some time after the second rice harvest (October-November) to weave locally-grown hemp thread into cloth. The finished product was then dyed and used by local people to make clothes, or sold to others for a like purpose.
For example, one man born in 1885 in Nga Tsin Wai, one of the old-established Cantonese villages of Kowloon, said:
Most families grew hemp when I was young. It was harvested in the 8th or 9th moons. None grew in the winter as the plants needed water. My mother manipulated it into thread and it could be woven at home or sold to weavers in the Kowloon City shops: sometimes these people came to the village to buy it. We villagers usually relied on strangers to weave our hemp. Every year about the 10th to the 12th moons some Hakka people from Mui Yuen and Hing Ning [districts in North-east Kwangtung] came round the village. They would rent an empty house and stay as long as there was work for them. Then they moved elsewhere. They only wove cloth. It was generally known as tai min po (***) and was very hard-wearing, lasting for several tens of years. The villagers made clothes, quilts, mosquito nets etc., with this cloth, and most clothes were home-made at that time. I went to sea at 18 and the Hakkas came regularly up to then. I didn't come back to settle in the village until I was 45 and by that time they no longer came, no doubt because ready-made clothes were available in the shops.
I came across this kind of information by chance, but was pleased to have it corroborated by what Rev. Rudolf Lechler, the celebrated missionary of the Basel Mission [which specialised in evangelical work among the Hakkas from about 1850 onwards], has to say about this subject in an article "The Hakka Chinese" which appeared in The Chinese Recorder in October 1878:
15
In some parts as e.g. in the prefecture of Kia-yin chow, the women spin cotton, and are also able to weave the yarn into
162
!
:
ITINERANT HAKKA WEAVERS
In the course of general historical enquiries among old village persons in Kowloon and the Southern District of the New Terri- tories, it has been established that in their youth it was a regular practice for itinerant Hakka persons, mostly men it seems, to come yearly to villages in this area some time after the second rice harvest (October-November) to weave locally-grown hemp thread into cloth. The finished product was then dyed and used by local people to make clothes, or sold to others for a like purpose.
For example, one man born in 1885 in Nga Tsin Wai, one of the old-established Cantonese villages of Kowloon, said:
Most families grew hemp when I was young. It was har vested in the 8th or 9th moons. None grew in the winter as the plants needed water. My mother manipulated it into thread and it could be woven at home or sold to weavers in the Kowloon City shops: sometimes these people came to the village to buy it. We villagers usually relied on strangers to weave our hemp. Every year about the 10th to the 12th moons some Hakka people from Mui Yuen and Hing Ning [districts in North-east Kwangtung] came round the village. They would rent an empty house and stay as long as there was work for them. Then they moved elsewhere. They only wove cloth. It was generally known as tai min po (***) and was very hard-wearing, lasting for several tens of years. The villagers made clothes, quilts, mosquito nets etc., with this cloth, and most clothes were home-made at that time. I went to sea at 18 and the Hakkas came regularly up to then. I didn't come back to settle in the village until I was 45 and by that time they no longer came, no doubt because ready-made clothes were available in the shops.
I came across this kind of information by chance, but was pleased to have it corroborated by what Rev. Rudolf Lechler, the celebrated missionary of the Basel Mission [which specialised in evangelical work among the Hakkas from about 1850 onwards], has to say about this subject in an article "The Hakka Chinese' which appeared in The Chinese Recorder in October 1878:
15
In some parts as e.g. in the prefecture of Kia-yin chow, the women spin cotton, and are also able to weave the yarn into
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