Hakka People - Social and Cultural Influences

Social and Cultural Influences

Due to their agrarian lifestyle, Hakka have a unique architecture based on defense and communal living (see Hakka architecture), and a hearty savory cuisine based on an equal balance between texturised meat and vegetables, and fresh vegetables (see Hakka cuisine).

When Hakka expanded into areas with pre-existing populations, there was often little agricultural land left for them to farm. As a result, many Hakka men turned towards careers in the military or in public service. Consequently, the Hakka culturally emphasized education.

Hakka people built several types of Tulou and fortified villages in the southwestern Fujian and adjacent areas of Jiangxi and Guangdong. A representative sample of Fujian Tulou (consisting of 10 buildings or building groups) in Fujian were inscribed in 2008 as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Historically, Hakka women did not bind their feet when the practice was commonplace in China.

Read more about this topic:  Hakka People

Famous quotes containing the words social, cultural and/or influences:

    Utopias are presented for our inspection as a critique of the human state. If they are to be treated as anything but trivial exercises of the imagination. I suggest there is a simple test we can apply.... We must forget the whole paraphernalia of social description, demonstration, expostulation, approbation, condemnation. We have to say to ourselves, “How would I myself live in this proposed society? How long would it be before I went stark staring mad?”
    William Golding (b. 1911)

    To recover the fatherhood idea, we must fashion a new cultural story of fatherhood. The moral of today’s story is that fatherhood is superfluous. The moral of the new story must be that fatherhood is essential.
    David Blankenhorn (20th century)

    Nothing changes more constantly than the past; for the past that influences our lives does not consist of what actually happened, but of what men believe happened.
    Gerald W. Johnson (1890–1980)