Luo Xianglin

Luo Xianglin (October 19, 1906 - April 20, 1978), surnamed Yuan Yi, No. Yitang, was a native of Ningxin Town, Xingning County, Zhili Prefecture, Jiaying Province, Guangdong Province (now Ningxin Street, Xingning City, Meizhou), a modern Chinese historian and a Protestant. The founder of Hakka genealogy and a member of the Chinese Kuomintang. He graduated from the History Department of National Tsinghua University in 1930. He taught at the University of Hong Kong from 1951. In 1964, he served as the chairman of the Chinese Department of the University of Hong Kong. He retired as a permanent honorary professor of the University of Hong Kong. Luo Xianglin's most important work is "Introduction to Hakka Studies" (1933), which constructed the "Hakka ethnic lineage" for the first time. Luo Xianglin "in order to counter the theory that the Hakkas are not Han people" or that the "Hakkas are a mixed race of Han and other ethnic minorities" created a unique Hakka history by reinterpreting local chronicles and genealogies, that is, the Hakkas were originally Han people living in the Central Plains. After five migrations to the south since the Jin Dynasty, the Hakka ethnic group was formed. Luo Xianglin's theory has far-reaching influence because he explains the advanced nature of the Hakka ethnic group from a cultural perspective. Most people who use the concepts of "orthodoxy" and "Central Plains" to shape the Hakka group adopt this theory." This mainstream view was overturned by the genetics community in the 2000s, and was subsequently questioned by the dialect academic community. Li Hui, a professor at the School of Life Sciences at Fudan University, said, "In the process of evolution, it is very common for the Han people in various places to mix with foreign races, and the Hakka people are hardly an exception. Among the Y chromosomes of the Hakka people, 80% are Han and 13% are Miao Yao. She people of the language family." Professor Liu Zhenfa, who is also a Hakka, pointed out that Luo Xianglin's argument was not scientifically verified in the 1930s and led the Hakka dialect academic community to the 1980s, away from the achievements of the anthropological field on the Hakka people.