Hakka Americans

Hakka Americans(客家美國人 or 客裔美國人), also calledAmerican Hakka,areHan peoplein theUnited StatesofHakkaorigin, mostly from present-dayGuangdong,Fujian, andTaiwan. Many Hakka Americans have connections to Hakka diaspora inJamaica, theCaribbean,South East Asia,Latin America, andSouth America. TheHan charactersfor Hakka (客家) literally mean "guest families". Unlike other Han ethnic groups, the Hakkas are not named after a geographical region, e.g. a province, county or city. The Hakkas usually identify with people who speak the Hakka language or share at least some Hakka ancestry.The earliest Hakka immigrants to what is now the United States mostly went toHawaii, starting when theKingdom of Hawaiiwas an independent sovereign state. After the lifting of theChinese Exclusion Actby the passage of theMagnuson Actin 1943, the Hakka began to come to the US fromTaiwanand to a lesser extentHong Kong,Southeast Asia,Jamaicaand theCaribbean.
The first wave ofTaiwanesemigration to the United States involved mostly post-World War IIimmigrants from the area now ruled byChina(Waishengren), most of whom were not Hakka. Later, the other Taiwanese people, whose ancestors arrived in Taiwan before 1945, including many Hakkas, started immigrating in larger numbers after the 1960s.
It is estimated that there are currently over 20,000 Taiwanese Hakka in the United States.
Some Hakka Americans came fromMeizhou(also calledKayingorJiaying),Guangdong,China, or otherwise have ancestral roots in that area.
A small number of Hakka came to the continental US before the 1882Chinese Exclusion Act. Some Hakka also went to Hawaii, where they consisted a significant minority of the population.
During the 1960s and 1970s, substantial migration of Jamaican Hakkas to the US and Canada occurred.MostChinese Jamaicansare Hakka; they have a long history inJamaica. Between 1854 and 1884, nearly 5000 Hakkas arrived in Jamaica in three major voyages, with some of them subsequently going to the United States. Many of these people also haveAfricanancestry.
A significant minority of early Chinese immigrants toHawaii, and even fewer to theContinental US, were Hakka, and much of the animosity between the Hakka andPuntiCantonese people carried over.In the first half of the 1800s, around 30 percent of Chinese in Hawaii were of Hakka, while only about 3 percent in the West Coast were Hakka.There was a communal ban on intermarriages between the two groups for the first generation of migrants.In the middle of the 19th century, Hakka immigrants in America were excluded from membership in the Chinese organizations.The largest surge of immigration in that century occurred after an 1876 treaty between the US andKingdom of Hawaiiled to an increased need for labor.
Chinese revolutionary leaderSun Yat-senlived in Hawaii for several years during his youth.
Many organizations have been formed to promote Hakka culture in the US. One group is the New England Hakka Association, which reminds its members not to forget their roots. One example is a blog by Ying Han Brach called "Searching for My Hakka Roots".Another group is the Hakka Association of New York, which aims to promote Hakka culture across the five boroughs ofNew York City.In the mid 1970s, the Hakka Benevolent Association inSan Francisco(San Francisco Jiaying Association) was founded by Tu Chung. The association has strong ties with the San Francisco community and offers scholarships to their young members. The most prominent association in Hawaii is the Tsung Tsin Association (崇正會), which was founded inHonoluluin 1918 under the nameNin Fo Fui Kon(人和會館).It provides scholarships to US citizens in Hawaii that are preferably of Hakka background and/or interested in the Hakka culture.
TheAmerican Community Surveyreported that 1,350 people in the United States speak Hakka at home.The actual number may be much higher because some respondents just filled out their response as "Chinese". Some Hakka Americans speakMandarin ChineseorCantoneseinstead.
There are some restaurants in the U.S. servingHakka cuisine.American food writer Linda Lau Anusasananan wrote a popular Hakka cookbook simply titled,The Hakka Cookbook(University of California Press, 2014).