The whole town was like an old-time temple carnival, aburst with merrymakers. And the center of activity was the Nan Tien Temple. Perched against the off-bank of the river, the temple is accessible from the main road via a foot-bridge over the now-dry river bed. It seemed an ancient city surrounded by a dry moat, its Hakka festival a distinct homespun enclave of Chinese lore.
The temple grounds bustled with artisans displaying living handicrafts. The air was charged with sound-cymbals and fireworks, traditional falsetto songs and cheering throngs, two outdoor stages flaunting Hakka drama and singing contests.
An elementary school standing behind the temple was given over to exhibits of Hakka history-costumes, vehicles, poetry-and like any proper country fair, vast amounts of food. Neighboring alleys and lanes were awash with human traffic. Dragon parades, entertainments by schoolchildren, and the re-creation of a traditional wedding procession dazzled countless thousands of roadside onlookers.
Amid the throngs, and specially discernible, were the beaming, weather beaten faces of many elderly people, young again and on fire, experiencing the revivals of plays and folk melodies they had enjoyed in childhood. Off in a hall, children on tiptoe tried to stretch further to glimpse a rare exhibit of artifacts their grandparents once used. Visitors from Taipei and the more distant corners of the island were warmed by the tea and succulent cooking, the famed hospitality of their Hakka hosts.
In March of this year, Yu Jui-cheng, mayor of Lung Tan, first suggested tapping the rich Hakka resources of his community to produce this tribute to their culture. With the support of more than forty different social groups and the municipal government organizations, helping hands and private treasures (from attic coffers, barns, and kitchens all over the county), he put together an original festival just six months later.
Boats line up by the temple landing; most visitors took the bridge
Lung Tan is well endowed to handle such an event. Home to 66,000 Hakka people, who for years have harvested tea and rice crops in the area, Lung Tan's scenic vistas have beckoned travelers and traders since the completion of the Cross-Island Highway in 1966. Now the town is a ready stopover for vacationers headed for the Shih Men Reservoir and the Liufuchun Safari Park. However, it is not yet a tourism community; the area is still dominated by darkly clad, suntanned farming people, and it harkens to their traditional mores.
One of the oldest and most recognizably distinct of the central-Chinese ethnic groups, the Hakka are renowned for their determination to preserve traditional modes of living. Theirs is a farming community bearing the earliest hall marks of Chinese civilization, and throughout history they have made manifest their rejection of outside life-styles and foreign rule. Indeed, instead of adapting to conquerors, the Hakka moved on, a practice which often marked them as outsiders-newcomers.
The word Hakka means "guest families" -a term first applied by a Chin emperor in the 5th Century. The Hakkas had been pushed southward from the northern plains of China by barbarian invasions, natural calamities, and frictions with indigenous populations. Their resulting group isolation has had the effect of preserving much of their traditional lifestyle in an intact form. The Hakka dialect as it is spoken today is little different from that spoken during the Tang Dynasty (618-907 A.D.) Now-faded Chinese customs such as family-arranged weddings, elaborate funeral ceremonies, and intense emphasis on filial piety and male succession are still a central part of 20th Century Hakka community life. Thus, many hold that today's Hakka are the most distinctively "Chinese" of all the nation's major ethnic groups.
About one sixth of the island's population is Hakka, as is about 4 percent of all the world's Chinese people. While physically indiscriminate from "mainstream" Chinese, the Hakka are recognized as having a distinctive character and ethic. In keeping with their agricultural roots, they are, by and large, a plain-spoken, persevering, frugal people. Warm cordiality, sincerity, and bravery are attributes of their ethnic character. The fair in Lung Tan was marked by their down-home hospitality-by merry and friendly faces illuminating the remarkable historic continuity of a uniquely clannish and dedicated people.
The fiesta's exhibit hall bristled with Hakka artifacts from kitchen, school, and battlefield. A prolific food exhibit, replete with mouth-watering attractions, offered shelves stocked with bulging mason jars, displaying and explaining processes for fruit, meat, and tofu preserves, spice drying, and at least fifty different preparations of soy beans. A veritable wall of colorful cakes and molds exhibited the multi-faceted versatility of soft rice. Every day, a long table displayed typical, fresh-cooked Hakka cuisine. For those with appetitites big as their eyes, pork and rice dishes could be enjoyed free of charge. A cooking contest accommodated those talented enough to make their own culinary statements.
Twirling across the fiesta ground -A display of color and motion
Moving on to less temporal artifacts, we inspected apparel and vehicle displays—19th Century antiques. Rickshaws and shoulder-supported lifts for transporting produce illustrated yesteryear occupations.
The apparel exhibit revealed a traditional equality of the sexes in Hakka communities. Hakka women often worked the fields and took complete charge of the household while the men followed crop harvests and other distant job opportunities. As a result, Hakka women came to enjoy more authority than other Chinese women of times past. The Hakka women never had their feet bound, for example. Indeed, their men often helped care for the children, and the clothing exhibit punctuated this aspect, displaying a baby-carrying strap specially designed for males.
Moving away from the hearthside and into the world of personal assertion, an exhibit of famous Hakka statesmen and artists charted individual Hakka contributions to Chinese society. Many spectators were surprised to discover that Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the nation's founding father, was a Hakka. Other prominent Hakkas included Chu Hsi, the foremost philosopher of the Sung Dynasty, and Hung Hsiu-chuan, the mystic who led the Taiping Rebellion in 1850.
In a separate room, an audio-visual display introduced visitors to the tea harvesting and drying processes-an important industry in Lung Tan. Here, young women in traditional Hakka garb served up steaming Wulong tea in ceremonial earthen cups for all who were thirsty.
While the inside exhibits were very informative, many of the outside shows held a special appeal for the children. In the courtyard, ten vendors' booths accommodated renowned artisans, hard at work on handicrafts for sale and show. For the very young, spun-sugar animals and a ring game native to northern China provided hours of fascination. The demand from clamoring children kept one female artisan frantically busy turning out melted sugar horses, rabbits, and gold fish. The ring game, which is said to have been invented by a military officer hundreds of years ago in a bid to keep his troops occupied while they waited for battle, certainly works on the present-day legions of the youngest generation.
Bonsai and Chinese macrame, favorite exhibits at any Chinese arts and crafts fair, drew approving comment from the crowd. Both are traditional arts which have witnessed great revivals in recent years. Bonsai are offered at every florist and garden shop. Knotted necklaces, belts, and clothing trim have surged in popularity as fashion accessories everywhere in Taiwan.
The festival featured displays of Hakka artifacts, and of the Hakka delight in singing.
Another traditional artifact experiencing a boom in modern interest is the oiled-paper umbrella. Beautiful and useful, the umbrellas are made from bam boo strips and a stretched, translucent paper, which is decorated with delicate images or calligraphy. Not only are they pretty accessories, but sensible purchases for Taiwan living.
Coir rainwear and broad-brimmed straw hats are certainly not high fashion today, but they are flavorful collectibles. The traditional cape-and-skirt rain gear is in a coarse heavy weave of coconut palm fiber. A monsoon necessity before the invention of plastic rainwear, the coir rain outfits drew many a reminiscent chuckle from senior citizens.
Of a similar genre were woven hemp shoes, produced with remarkable speed by an elderly woman. Seated on a wooden frame, she deftly shuttled hemp fibers back and forth on her two-string loom, quickly producing thick-soled sandals ready for strapping to any foot. This economical footwear was once worn for road trips, a protection from sharp stones. However, sandal usage was limited to travel. They were not worn at home or in the fields.
Other handicrafts exhibited by the artisans included rattan furniture and bamboo household items. One artisan demonstrated virtuosity at a craft for which Taiwan is justly famed in the furniture industry-rattan caning. Smoothly weaving crisp, white rattan strips into sturdy, lacelike chair seats, he evoked a feeling of timeless beauty with an ancient, utilitarian skill.
Today's kitchen containers are made from durable plastics and metals. Undisputedly practical, they are, nonetheless, unattractive. At the Lung Tan fair, an elderly craftsman made bamboo containers, bending his bamboo strips into graceful rice baskets, tea drying pans, wedding baskets, and even ladles, lavishing much time on each piece with results quite pleasing to artistic eyes. He insisted that the weaving itself was not difficult, that the cutting of the bamboo pieces into uniform strips is the painstaking art.
Another rarely witnessed creative art form was demonstrated by two artisans. Crafting a temple statue, one hacked at a man-sized block of wood with sledge and hammer, while the other chiseled and shaved a piece of wood into a headdress—the result, an image from the Buddhist pantheon. Though mostly commissioned by temples, these figures are also purchased privately for use on family altars.
Some commonplace, some truly rare, the arts demonstrated at Lung Tan were a sampling of the home industries once vital to traditional farming communities. As the milling festival crowds focused intently on each exhibit, it became clear that interest in the old arts has never been stilled.
Each of the fiesta's seven days also offered a schedule of performing arts—drama, opera, singing, and acrobatic stunts-at the outside theater. Folk music events brought the most vivid response from the Hakka segment of the audience. During the first weekend of the festival, old Hakka operas were performed to the delight of an audience heavily sprinkled with museum-piece faces; smiles surrounded the opera stage. Gnarled and wrinkled old cronies pulled their stools together before the stage to enjoy a smoke and a song. Humorous operatic tales of family troubles, accented by the music of the Chinese string instruments, drew roars of laughter from those familiar with the Hakka dialogue.
The Hakka dialect, reportedly heavily influenced by Cantonese, has a rolling fluidity all its own, a rhythmic quality that lends itself particularly well to what the Hakka call "Mountain Songs." Chanted, partially-melodic ballads, these "Mountain Songs" are believed to have originated in the harvest fields for tea and rice many centuries ago. Solo performances by both men and women entertained the crowds for two afternoons.
As if to demonstrate the ambience of nostalgic feeling at the fair, when the stage was opened to audience participation, nearly 600 eager folk-song contestants rushed to register. Although the winners were difficult to judge from such a crowd, an incredibly broad range of voices, ages, and talents was heard from.
On a gorgeous autumn day mid-week, the festival reached a recreational pitch with a program of athletic stunts and contests by and for school children. The young amateurs displayed their prowess on stilts, and with skipping ropes, rolling steel hoops, and bouncing feathered shuttlecocks. Such pastimes are hundreds, some even thousands of years old, and the Lung Tan Temple grounds took on the look of a playground of ages past.
For some, life's journey with the top has passed many decades
Two traditional Chinese festival routines were performed by more seasoned acrobats. The Chinese lion dance and the giant-top spinning contest, both common Chinese festival fare, were executed splendidly at Lung Tan.
The very first day of the performance program, for sentimental hearts, was the most spectacular. In the streets of Lung Tan, a traditional wedding procession was re-enacted. According to tradition, the groom rides to the bride's home, then escorts her to their new home. The numerous customs surrounding this ceremony were all recreated in marvelous detail.
The "bride and groom" were Taipei popular music-stars who had volunteered for this special performance. Outfitted in round cap and long coat, the groom rode his steed up to the Nan Tien Temple, the "house" of his bride, trailed by twelve men carrying a wooden chest of food and clothing prepared by his family. Gold paper money, red-stained eggs, sliced roast pork, chickens, rice cakes, and fireworks provisioned a merry wedding banquet. At the bride's home, the groom waited while his relatives drank Yuon soup—which symbolizes unity and good fortune.
The bride, meanwhile, bade her parents farewell, then paid her ritual respects to all her ancestors and relatives in an extensive bai-bai. She mounted a flower-covered sedan chair carried by bearers. Her dowry followed-chests and leather cases, wooden cabinets, straw hats and teapots-all the necessities for 18th Century marital life.
Together, bride and groom proceeded to their new home. And in a burst of fireworks, the wedding banquet began. So great was the audience interest in this event, that the procession was often halted by pedestrians. Thus it took the newlyweds three hours to reach their "home," only half a mile away.
From start to finish, the Hakka Country Festival was radiant with enthusiasm, homespun treasures, and country color. A celebration of an ethnic group which has enriched Chinese society over the centuries, this event also illustrated customs common to the greater Chinese tradition.
Now, following the success of this October's festival, the Lung Tan municipal council is planning to organize permanent tributes to Hakka folk culture. A book is in the making documenting each aspect of Hakka life portrayed at the fairground. And a permanent collection of artifacts is to be established in the town.