Michener does not tell much of the story of the Hakka. They are a group of Han Chinese, who originated in central China and moved south to flee from war and famine in five major migrations.

Almost all of those on Taiwan now are descendants of the Hakka in the last major migration during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) from Guangdong and part of Fujian.

The name Hakka (客家) is pronounced Kejia in Mandarin. They refer to themselves as Hakka-nin, the last word meaning “man” or “people.” Incidentally, they speak a Chinese dialect that belongs to China's largest language family of Mandarin.

The forefathers of the Hakka in Taiwan settled first in Guangdong, where they could not become fully assimilated into the native population or Punti people (本地人).

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when conditions in south China became very bad and land quite scarce, the Hakka often were involved in land feuds with the Punti people.

The Taiping Rebellion (1850-64), which is said to have resulted in the death of more than 20 million people and completely shattered south China, initially grew out of these local conflicts.

The rebellion was headed by Hong --iu-chuan (洪秀全), a Christian Hakka who claimed he was a young brother of Jesus Christ.

Many Hakka migrated to Taiwan then, and again remained unassimilated with the Hoklo majority. There is another famous Hakka, Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the father of the Chinese republic. Still another is Deng --iaoping, who put China on course to a top economic power in the world.

An extremely industrious, shrewd people, the Hakka did much for the development of Taiwan, though they were more often discriminated against by the powers that be on the island.

The governments, be they Dutch, Qing Chinese or Japanese, used to favor the Hoklo more than the Hakka.

Assimilation started towards the end of Japanese colonial rule over Taiwan, with the language of the rulers becoming a lingua franca between the Hakka and the Hoklo.

Mandarin took over its role after Taiwan was restored to the Republic of China in 1945. Though there are no language barriers, the Hakka have not been fully accepted by their majority Hoklo people. Discrimination still remains against the Hakka. (Hakka and Hoklo or Amoy are mutually unintelligible.)

A new law is going to deliver Taiwan from that bias.

The draft Hakka Basic Law, adopted at a Cabinet meeting on Thursday, will assure the Hakka of equality in Taiwan's language and multicultural policy as well as public service.

One stipulation in the government-sponsored bill, which is expected to be passed by the Legislative Yuan before its current session is over, requires Hakka-related subjects to be tested in the civil service examination.

Government efforts have to be redoubled to preserve Hakka culture, not just for the minority of six million on Taiwan, but for those in China and elsewhere across the world as well. As a matter of fact, Taiwan will be made the world's research center of Hakka culture.

Culturally, Hakka on Taiwan have made more than substantial contributions to literature and music. Lai He (賴和), the father of modern Taiwan literature, was Hakka. He started Taiwan's nativist literary movement.

His first novel, Chit-ki chinna (一枝稱仔) or “A Lever Scale,” was serialized in the Minpao (民報) in 1926. The Minpao was a newspaper with pages published in Chinese. It describes a pathetic protest by a local vegetable vender, whose lever scale, on which he relied for weighing the sales of his produce to make a living, was broken in two by a Japanese policeman.

It is protest literature, just like Ajia-no-koji (亞細亞的孤兒) or “An Orphan of Asia” by another Hakka writer Wu Chuo-liu or Go Dakuryu (吳濁流). Wu wrote it in Japanese.

Another Hakka, Teng Yu-hsien (鄧雨賢), began Taiwan's first popular song boom with his classic Woo Ya Hue (雨夜花) or “A Flower in a Raining Night” and Bang chun-hong (望春風) or “Looking Forward to Spring Wind” in 1935. Both were sung in Hoklo, however. Lyrics were simple and the theme was pathetic.

Melodies, a combination of Hoklo folksong tunes with a touch of Negro spirituals, rang out a sorrowful charm uniquely Taiwanese.

They all contributed to a change in the Hoklo's stereotyped image of Hakka bumpkins, whose womenfolk had to work in the field and do hard work like men with their feet unbound.

Unlike practically all other Han Chinese, the Hakka girls never had their feet bound in pre-modern China.

That was one main reason why there were few intermarriages between the Hakka and Hoklo on Taiwan, making assimilation all but next to impossible prior to the island being ceded to Japan in 1895.