From other victims of the Mongol Yuan(元朝蒙古人所害的客家人)

Submitted by Kepha Hor (United States), Nov 2, 2012 at 22:20

I have an idea. I have family connections to the Hakka of Southern China and Taiwan. These "Guest People", after more than a millennium in the lush, green, monsoon-watered hills of southern China still call themselves ZhongNguen Ngin (中原人)--"people of the Central Plain" [the lands through which the Huang He flows]. Why? The tribal tradition says that they fled south to escape various invasions of the northern [Altaic] barbarians.

Yet while in Taiwan not too long ago, I saw Hakka people with advanced degrees giving high tech training to Mongols, Uzbeks, and other such post-1991 seekers after modernity, and nobody was whining over ancient wrongs. Could it be that, with enough having seen both North and South China, they're aware that their beat-up refugee ancestors ended up with the better deal--a warm, moist land free from Gobi dust storms (and modern desertification) yielding two and sometimes three rice crops each year and incomparable fruits, port cities and connections to a wider world?

C'mon, guys! Without the Turks, the Greeks would never have their wonderful coffee, baklava, and dolmades and probably wouldn't have developed the acumen that being out of political power nurtures; without a lesson or two in civilized living from the conquered Greeks, the Turks would just be nomad shepherds.

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