(courtesy of Chang Ah-hsiang)

Is it true, as they say, that most Hakkas in Taiwan live either in the northern foothills or down south in the Kaohsiung-Pingtung area? And is it true, as they say, that the Hakkas live in the hills because they didn't arrive in Taiwan until after immigrants from Zhangzhou and Quanzhou in Fujian? There are 4 million Hakkas today in Taiwan, but how many of our notions concerning Hakka history, including ideas accepted by the Hakkas themselves, actually have anything to do with historical reality?

When Taipei City organized a Hakka street festival, ethnic Hakkas turned out in huge numbers. The fact that they had moved away from their hometowns in other parts of Taiwan (or so they say!) no longer meant that they would melt away invisibly into the hubbub of city life. No, these relocated Hakkas would just have to band together and build themselves a new "hometown" in Taipei. Now, however, some revisionist historians have begun to question the long-held assumption that the Hakkas have always lived primarily in either northern Taiwan's Taoyuan, Hsinchu, and Miaoli counties or in the Kaohsiung-Pingtung area. Field studies are turning up evidence to counter the belief that locations farther north-such as Taipei, Tamsui, Hsinchuang, Sungshan, and Neihu-were settled only by immigrants from Fujian. We are finding that these places were also the earliest homes in Taiwan for many a Hakka settler.