Hakka Museum of China

The Hakka Museum of China (客家博物馆) in Meizhou is one of the better ethnographic museums in Guangdong, covering the history of Hakka migration, culture, language, and diaspora in serious institutional depth. The permanent collection includes agricultural implements, clan genealogy documents, examples of the distinctive Hakka roundhouse architecture (tulou), and objects brought back by overseas Hakka communities. Free to enter.

The museum's treatment of the diaspora is particularly good: maps showing the spread of Hakka communities across Southeast Asia, North America, and the Caribbean give a sense of the scale of emigration from this area over the past two centuries. An estimated 1.3 million people of Meizhou origin live abroad, a figure that dwarfs the city's current population. Allow two hours.

things to do museum
A story
The Hakka people take their name from the Cantonese word for "guest families" — a reference to the waves of migration that brought them southward from the Central Plains between the third and seventeenth centuries. Each major migration was triggered by dynastic collapse or invasion further north: the Jin dynasty, the Mongol conquest, the fall of the Ming. The Hakka who settled in Guangdong, Fujian, and Taiwan were often latecomers to already-occupied land, which is why they live predominantly in the hills rather than the fertile coastal plains — the better agricultural land was already taken.