United States or Curaçao ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
With the aid of a convert, he unbarred the ponderous gate, and ventured out on the highest slab of the landing-steps. Across the river, to be sure, there lay between a local junk and a stray papico from the north the high-nosed Hakka boat, her deck roofed with tawny basket-work, and at her masthead a wooden rice-measure dangling below a green rag.
"Who comes?" said a harsh but guarded voice, with a strong Hakka brogue. "A brother," answered the outcast, "to pluck the White Lotus. Aid, brothers. Go in, I can help no further. If you are caught, slide down, and run westward to the gate which is called the Meeting of the Dragons." Heywood nodded, and slipped in.
The captain opened the great gate, and looked out eagerly, craning to see through the smoke that poured into his face. "The wasters!" he cried bitterly. "She's gone." The Hakka boat had, indeed, vanished from her moorings.
What's worse, his Generalissimo Fang expects big reinforcement, any day, from up country. He told me that a moment ago." "Perhaps he's lying," said Captain Kneebone, drowsily. "Wish he were," snapped Heywood. "No such luck. Too stupid." "That case," grumbled the captain, "we'd better signal your Hakka boat, and clear out." Again their hollow eyes questioned each other in discouragement.
A husband and wife usually go about hand in hand. A Hakka charcoal-burner once found three of the children playing in his tobacco-box. He kept them there, and afterward, when he was showing them to a friend, he laughed so that drops of saliva flew from his mouth and shot two of them dead. He then begged his friend to take the third and put it in a place of safety before he should laugh again.
He was wrong. Whoever handled the Hakka boat was no fool, but by working upstream on the opposite shore, crossing above, and dropping down with the ebb, had craftily brought her along the shallow, so close beneath the river-wall, that not till now did even the little captain spy her.
The river melted with the shore into a common blackness, faintly hovered over by the hot, brown, sullen evening. Unchallenged, the Hakka boat flitted past the lights of a war-junk, so close that the curved lantern-ribs flickered thin and sharp against a smoky gleam, and tawny faces wavered, thick of lip and stolid of eye, round the supper fire. A greasy, bitter smell of cooking floated after.
"Hakka kado me no tonga, lakka prada estig ferente," rejoined Hal Overton, with a grin. "Dikka mone peditti u nono mate ben," said Noll cheerfully. "What language is that, lads?" demanded Captain Freeman. "New Jersey hog-Latin, I imagine, sir," replied Sergeant Hal soberly. "I do not believe, gentlemen, that we can send better scouts than Sergeants Overton and Terry," said Captain Freeman.
The individual on whom that exalted title was subsequently bestowed had a very common origin, and sprang from an inferior race. Hung-tsiuen, such was his own name, was the son of a small farmer near Canton, and he was a hakka, a despised race of tramps who bear some resemblance to our gypsies.
Immigration increased in the eighteenth and especially the nineteenth centuries. These Chinese immigrants and their descendants are the "Taiwanese," Taiwan's main population of about eight million people as of 1948. Taiwan was at first a part of the province of Fukien, whence most of its Chinese settlers came; there was also a minority of Hakka, Chinese from Kuangtung province.
Word Of The Day