Hakka - Settlements

As later arrivals in most of the Chinese areas where they settled, the Hakka were generally forced into the higher elevations to the hilly, less productive, and less desirable land. Such was the case in Guangdong, Guangxi, and the New Territories of Hong Kong, where the Yue had already settled the more fertile river valleys, and also in Taiwan where the Min speakers owned the better land. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in regions of Guangdong, Hakka residence patterns differed from those of the Yue. As opposed to the Yue, who were more likely to live in more densely populated towns or in large, single-surname villages surrounded by fields, smaller numbers of Hakka were sparsely dispersed among the hills on land that they often rented from Yue landlords. In other regions Hakka and Yue occupied separate villages in the same areas; Hakka villages were more likely to be multisurnamed. As a result of their often hostile relations with other groups, Hakka architectural style often differed from that of their Chinese and non-Chinese neighbors. In southwestern Fujian and in northern Guangdong, Hakka built circular or rectangular, multistoried, fortresslike dwellings, designed for defensive purposes. These Hakka "roundhouses" were built three or four stories high, with walls nearly a meter thick, made of adobe or tamped earth fortified with lime. The structures vary in size; the largest, resembling a walled village, measures over 50 meters in diameter. Although the Hakka maintain the reputation of living in poor, marginal, rural areas, Hakka today also reside in urban, cosmopolitan regions.