TAIPEI: A five-week Hakka arts festival will open in Liukuei township, Pingtung County, November 21 to showcase traditional and innovative aspects of the ethnic group's culture, the top official in charge of Hakka affairs announced yesterday.

Huang Yu-cheng, head of the Council for Hakka Affairs (CHA), said at a brief ceremony in Taipei that the festival, called A-Ha 2009, will feature 10 days of activities on five weekends consecutive starting November 21.

It will be held mainly at the Liukuei Hakka Cultural Park and concert hall, which is known as one of the top venues for the performance arts in southern Taiwan.

A total of 40 groups, comprising artists and performers of all ages, will display their talents and performance skills over the five weekends, Huang said.

The participants will include prominent figures such as Lai Pi-hsia, known as a living "national treasure" for her unique and natural mountain ballads; the 200-year-old Hsinwawu Folk Dance Troupe; prize-winning Hakka rocker Liu Shao-xi; and the Evergreen Symphony Orchestra, according to Huang.

The Hakka people are a unique ethnic subgroup of Han Chinese, who originally lived in central China but gradually migrated south during different dynasties as they fled war and famine. They settled in Jiangxi, Fujian and Guangdong provinces where the locals named them Hakka, which literally means "guests."

The Hakka have retained many of their cultural traditions, despite their dispersal all over the world over the last 100 years.

Hakkas account for 25.6 percent of Taiwan's population, or roughly 5.79 million, which means broadly that one in four people in Taiwan are from the Hakka ethnic group, according to a poll conducted in 2008 by the Council for Hakka Affairs.

China Daily/CNA

(HK Edition 11/18/2009 page2)