“Return our mother tongue”
Meanwhile, in an unprecedented move, 30-some Hakka social organizations banded together to form the Hakka Rights Promotion Union, which announced Hakka movement objectives. Wanting long-suffering Hakkas to raise their voices, the group decided to organize the “Return Our Mother Tongue” march.
They designed the march around ROC founding father Sun Yat-sen as its honorary leader. A bust of Sun was carried at the very front of the march, suggesting that he was leading his Hakka children to the government in protest. Before the march started, they took oaths at Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall. Fu Wen-zheng, then a member of the Taiwan Provincial Assembly, was director of the march, and in Hakka he read a speech titled “In Honor of Sun Yat-Sen’s Memory”: “We, those generations of Hakkas following Sun Yat-sen, bow and pray to his spirit in heaven that he may bless the Hakkas with solidarity and good fellowship. May the Hakka language be passed down forever! May the Hakka people’s backbones remain strong as we strive to achieve great things!”
On the first float of the parade flew the black flag of the yimin (“righteous martyrs”—the Hakka volunteer militia that fought against an insurrection in the late 18th century), who were adopted as a symbol of the protest. Nearly 10,000 people joined the march. From Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, they marched to the Legislative Yuan, shouting their demands in Hakka, Hokkien and Mandarin: “Return our mother tongue! Hakkas have a right to exist and a right to our own language and media.”
In Chiu Rong-jeo’s view, the 1988 march arose from a sense of crisis that Hakka culture needed saving and that the dignity and position of Hakkas was worth fighting for. It was the first demonstration that spotlighted the Hakkas.
One passionate youth who tied a strip of white fabric around his forehead with the words “Return our mother tongue” written on it was Lin Kuang-hwa, who would go on to become chairman of the Taiwan Provincial Government. Now white-haired, Lin points out that ethnicity is typically based around language. We ask that all languages used in Taiwan be regarded as “Taiwanese” and that all of them get respect.
In 1999 the Taipei City Government held its fourth Taipei Hakka Cultural Festival. That year’s march, called “Go! Go! Hakka,” brought attention to Hakka ethnic identity. (Taiwan Panorama file photo)