Hakka Chinese Canadian filmmaker Jennifer Chiu recalls a time when she used to refer to Chinese people as “them”.
“I didn’t know how to include myself,” Chiu reveals in her new documentary, Clan of the Painted Lady. “I struggled with the idea of being Chinese. We all come from so many places, speaking different languages, and eating very different foods at home.”
As a child, Chiu moved from Kolkata, India to Vancouver with her mom and four siblings. Her Hakka Chinese father remained in Kolkata where he operated a leather tannery, only visiting Vancouver periodically before retiring here.
The Hakka people are a subgroup of Han Chinese with their own Hakka language and customs. And the Hakka identity, Chiu notes in her film, is not linked to a specific place—it’s tied to ancestors.
The Vancouver International Film Festival will present the world premiere of Clan of the Painted Lady on October 6 and 9. It’s a multi-faceted exploration, touching upon Chiu’s Hakka family history in the Tangra neighbourhood of Kolkata and historical discrimination against Chinese people in India. The film also addresses the rise of Hakka consciousness in Canada and the fragility of Hakka culture in the modern world.
“I think what really drew me to discovering more about the Hakka is because I felt an affinity for that—more so than I felt an affinity for this broader sense of being Chinese,” Chiu tells the Toronto Spark over Zoom.
Chiu acknowledges that her film evolved significantly over the three years that it was in development. Clan of the Painted Lady begins innocently enough in Vancouver, where there is a tiny Hakka community. From there, Chiu focuses on the much larger Hakka presence in Toronto.
Hakka language and culture in peril
As a result of her research and interviews, Chiu has concluded that we are living in an age of tremendous cultural homogenization. And it’s stunting Hakka language and culture in Canada, India, and China.
Chiu refers to this broader trend as “the Great Forgetting”—it’s become a radical act to remember one’s ancestors and their traditional ways and languages.
“I think that we are in a period where there is a huge amount of cultural extinction going on—and that’s not just in the West,” Chiu says. “There are Hakka people who are living in China right now, growing up in the villages, that don’t speak Hakka anymore because everyone speaks Mandarin.”
Scientists and conservationists are rightly concerned about how human activity is destroying flora and fauna around the world. The Sixth Mass Extinction, as it’s called, is causing species to disappear at 1,000 to 10,000 times higher than natural extinction rates. Yet there is not nearly as much awareness about the obliteration of cultures.
“That’s something that I feel really passionate about,” Chiu says. “Maybe other people will see my film and become curious about their own background and maybe ask their family questions before it’s too late. Because once people are dead, you can’t ask them questions.”
Hakka means “guest”
Historians say that Hakka people migrated from northern China during the Song dynasty (960 to 1279 CE), settling in the southern provinces of Fujian, Jiangxi, and Guangdong. They often created agricultural communities on hillsides with their own distinct dwellings, separate from other clans. But during the 19th century, China fell into decline due to the flourishing British opium trade, foreign attacks, and civil unrest. The Punti-Hakka Clan Wars, for instance, led to up to one million deaths in and around Guangdong.
That led many Hakka people to migrate other parts of the world, where they maintained their language and distinct cultural traditions as labourers and later as entrepreneurs. They formed their own cultural enclaves in Southeast Asian countries as well as in India, Panama, Jamaica, Taiwan, Mauritius, Australia, and the United States. The first Chinese person born in Canada, Won Alexander Cumyow, was Hakka; the founder of the Republic of China, Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, also had Hakka ancestry.
The word Hakka means “guest”, which is how Chiu’s people have often been viewed for more than 1,000 years.
“I went through a period in my mid to late 20s of just being very curious about…how both my mother and father’s families ended up in Calcutta (now Kolkata), India,” Chiu relates. “I didn’t understand why. And whenever I would ask, people wouldn’t really have a lot of answers for me.”
Chiu travelled to China to learn more about her heritage. But in that country, people were baffled that her family didn’t speak Cantonese or Mandarin. However, when she visited the Tangra neighbourhood of Kolkata where she was born and where her father lived for so many years, she felt a greater sense of connection because of the existing Hakka community.
Watch the trailer for Clan of the Painted Lady.
Butterfly inspires Chiu’s film
The filmmaker includes Super-8 footage taken by American anthropologist Ellen Oxfeld, who studied Hakka people in Kolkata in the 1980s and 1990s. Oxfeld documented Hakka cultural practices in Kolkata in her 1993 book, Blood, Sweat, and Mahjong: Family and Enterprise in an Overseas Chinese Community.
Oxfeld noted that members of the Hakka community owned and operated many leather tanneries. They also owned other businesses that were considered taboo for the dominant Hindu majority, who see cows as sacred creatures.
“In her book, she calls the Hakka people ‘pariah capitalists’,” Chiu says.
Chiu named her film after the Painted Lady butterfly, which is found on every continent except Antarctica and South America. It’s an apt metaphor for Hakka people, who, like Painted Lady butterflies, have experienced multi-generational migrations around the world. Along the way, Hakka people re-invent themselves through a process of metamorphosis.
“I was just really interested in studying butterflies for a little while,” Chiu explains. “I have these random interests that come up, and I was very, very moved by their story…. That kind of inspired me to move forward with the film because there’s this beautiful connection that human beings have with these creatures.”
The Vancouver International Film Festival will present two screenings of Clan of the Painted Lady. The first will be at 6 p.m. on October 6 at Fifth Avenue Cinemas; the second is at 3:30 p.m. on October 9 at the VIFF Cinema. For tickets and more information, visit the VIFF website. Learn more about the communities that make up Canada on the Toronto Spark website. The Toronto Spark is on Bluesky @torontospark.bsky.social.
