Hakka Identity and the Basel Mission

The Basel Evangelical Missionary Society was founded in Basel, Switzerland, in 1815 with the support of members in Switzerland, Germany, Yugoslavia, and Austria. It is an international and interdenominational organization with its major constituents today among Reformed and Lutheran churches. It has "partnerships" with independent churches that trace their origins to the Basel mission in Hong Kong, Singapore, Sabah, Indonesia, Taiwan, India, and regions of Africa, South America, and the South Pacific.^[4] Among these partner churches is the Tsung Tsin mission, better known in Hong Kong as the "Hakka church." Tsung Tsin mission is a Hong Kong organization that includes fifteen preaching stations and churches, of which Shung Him Tong is one; over twenty schools, nurseries, and kindergartens; and a hostel for the elderly.

The first Basel missionaries arrived in Hong Kong in 1847. As I was told by one Shung Him Tong villager, they were latecomers in China and other Protestant missions had already "claimed" the more accessible Cantonese-speaking regions of Guangdong. So after some initial work among the Chaozhou, they decided to focus their evangelizing efforts almost exclusively on the Hakka. Between the time of their arrival in Hong Kong in 1847 and 1850, they recorded fifty converts, and by 1855 the number rose to over two hundred (Yu 1987:65). In the period following the Taiping Rebellion (1851-64), and the Hakka-Punti wars (1850-67), the number of converts increased more dramatically. By 1909 the Basel mission recorded over ten thousand converts in Guangdong (Voskamp 1914; Yu 1987:65), and by 1948 the number reached close to twenty thousand (Yu 1987:64). Of these converts, the vast majority were Hakka.

After the defeat of the Taiping Rebellion, Taiping rebels and their friends and relatives were "under the threat of massacre" by Qing authorities (Tsang 1983:5). Many fled to Hong Kong or sought refuge with the Basel missionaries (see app. 1). Rudolf Lechler, who with Theodore Hamberg was one of the first Basel missionaries sent to China, was responsible for arranging the resettlement of hundreds of Hakka refugees overseas (Tsang 1983:5; Yu 1987; see also Smith 1976, 1985). Between 1860 and the turn of the century, entire

Hakka congregations emigrated from China to Hong Kong, British Guyana, Sabah, and elsewhere overseas. Among the early Basel mission converts were some of the parents and relatives of those who founded Shung Him Tong village in 1903 (see apps. 1, 2).

It is difficult to estimate the number of Hakka or the number of Hakka Christians in Hong Kong today. Government census figures do not differentiate the population by "ethnicity," and figures that indicate Guangdong as "place of origin" cannot accurately distinguish Cantonese from Hakka. However, Hakka are believed to be about 12 percent of the total Hong Kong population (Guldin 1977:127), the third largest Chinese group in Hong Kong after the Cantonese and the Hoklo (Min speakers), and they represent the largest proportion of the rural population. This suggests a Hakka population of around 600,000 in 1980.

The number of Chinese Christians in Hong Kong (Protestant and Catholic) was estimated at 10 percent of the population in 1980, with Protestants numbering slightly less than half (Law 1982:51). In 1985 the Tsung Tsin mission had approximately eight thousand members, and of these a conservative estimate of four thousand speak Hakka fluently (Yu Wai Hong, pers. comm., 1986). A much larger number speak some Hakka and consider themselves Hakka. Shung Him Tong itself has about two hundred regularly attending members, and over thirteen hundred if we include overseas members and those who only occasionally attend church. Of these, over 90 percent are Hakka.

Despite the fact that they represent a relatively small proportion of the total Hakka population, Hakka Christians, along with missionaries and scholars, commonly assert that Hakka "were more receptive to Christianity than any other group in China" (Bohr 1980:133). Hakka Christians often remain active in the wider Hakka community and, I argue, have been influential in formulating and defining Hakka identity. Several of the early members of Shung Him Tong helped to establish the international Hakka association in Hong Kong, and today a number of Shung Him Tong people still belong. Among the large numbers of Hakka Christian immigrants from Hong Kong in recent years, most have gone on to join related Hakka churches in Canada (mainly Vancouver and Toronto) and the United States.

There have undoubtedly been material advantages to be gained by becoming Christian in China and Hong Kong during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and in the British colony of Hong Kong (see Smith 1985). But this explanation does not adequately explain the disproportionate attraction of Hakka to Christianity, or the question of why some Hakka converted and others did not. Nor does it address the relative "success" of one mission or denomination as opposed to another, since they offered many of the same material incentives. Furthermore, the material rewards available to Chinese Chris-

tians ought not overshadow the additional implications or advantages that conversion might present with regard to Hakka identity. As I will illustrate in the chapters that follow, although the Basel mission became the "Hakka church" largely fortuitously, this label took on special meaning for its members.

Religion adds an important dimension to the study of ethnicity. In the case of such groups as Sikhs, Jews, and Mennonites, religious identity reinforces, is virtually interchangeable with, and may be seen as the basis of ethnic identity. In such cases, religious symbols or practices signal one's ethnic identity. A similar argument has been made in the case of Chinese identity: one view is that certain principles concerning rituals, for example death rituals (J. Watson 1988), are what unify all Chinese.

Alternatively, religious affiliation can conflict with ethnic identity to the extent that religious conversion becomes a means of abandoning or escaping stigmatized ethnic identity, as in the case of Hindu "untouchables" converting to Christianity or Islam (cf. Berreman 1979; Juergensmeyer 1982). Although Hakka might have been considered a stigmatized identity during the nineteenth century, becoming Christian was equally dishonorable, if not more so. Christianity was abhorred by many Chinese as a foreign religion (P. Cohen 1963) that was considered antithetical to being Chinese (cf. Gernet 1985). Especially during nineteenth century, when Hakka were regarded as inferior and Christians were denounced for having abandoned and forsaken their Chinese identity, Hakka Christians were in a sense doubly stigmatized.

While some anthropological studies have demonstrated how religious conversion can serve as a means to escape an identity, others, such as the dramatic examples of revitalization movements, show how the adoption of a new religion can support or increase group cohesion and thereby help maintain group identity (Lanternari 1963, 1974; Worsley 1968). For the Hakka of Shung Him Tong, religion has done both. It has provided a new context in which Hakka identity continues to have relevance, and it has created avenues through which Hakka Christians can attempt to escape the stigma of their ethnic identity by effectively rendering and reinterpreting it in a more positive light.

The especially pious and orthodox beliefs of the early Basel missionaries help account for the specific shape that ethnic and religious identity takes today in Shung Him Tong. As opposed to Chinese adherents to some Christian denominations such as the Roman Catholic church, in which there is at least a superficial incorporation of Chinese forms and symbols into Catholic religious rites, Shung Him Tong Christians, like the early European Basel missionaries, have no tolerance for syncretism in their rituals (see chap. 5). While Catholic rituals create an impression that one can be both Chinese and Catholic, this avenue of expression is not available to the people of Shung Him Tong. The beliefs they have inherited from the Basel mission present them

with obstacles and limitations in the expression of their dual Chinese and Christian identity.

To the Hakka Christians of Shung Him Tong, nonetheless, conversion to Christianity has not meant that they must choose between being good Hakka Chinese and good Christians. Their words and actions affirm their belief that they can be both. This has required that they reconstruct their own meaning of Hakka identity within the narrow confines of Christianity in an attempt to reconcile being Hakka, Chinese, and Christian. As I illustrate in the chapters that follow, this has not been a simple, unambiguous, or entirely successful endeavor. It has required that they define Hakka Chinese ethnic identity as located primarily in a common origin and a concept of descent (cf. Keyes 1976, 1981), that is, in Hakka history and genealogy rather than in "traditional" Chinese cultural practices and religious rituals (cf. J. Watson 1988). Yet while some Chinese practices are rejected entirely, others—particularly those related to death and ancestors—are transformed or rationalized in an attempt to reconcile them with what is considered pious Christian belief and practice (see chap. 5).

Hakka ethnic identity, as illustrated by the case of Shung Him Tong Christians, is best looked at not from an exclusively primordialist or instrumentalist perspective but from a perspective that takes into account the way Hakka identity has been historically constructed and influenced by such factors as imperialism and nineteenth-century Christian evangelism. Hakka identity has been molded and influenced by political and economic factors, and by Hakka historians, Hakka Christians, and European missionaries.

My purpose here is not to decide who is "really" Hakka, or to define a static, essential, primordial set of criteria for being true Hakka. Hakka continues to mean different things at different times, in various contexts, and to different people. My objective is to identify what Hakka means to a number of people in Shung Him Tong, and how these views are related to the cultural and historical construction of Hakka identity.^[5]