About HakkaYin
A community site for Hakka people, built around the one thing that connects us all: the village our family came from.
Why it exists
The story starts in the village
Whatever happened after that, whether migration, war, work, or a new life on the other side of the world, the village is where the story starts. HakkaYin gives every village a home on the internet, so the people who belong to it can find each other again.
Hakka is spoken more than it is written, and fewer people speak it every generation. Families are scattered across continents. The people who remember the village, the language and the stories are the oldest among us, and when they go, that knowledge goes with them unless we capture it now.
Most social media doesn't help: it's noisy, impersonal and hard for an older person to use. HakkaYin was made the other way round: simple, trusted, and organised around real places and real families.
Many Hakka people rarely see their home village at all. Some left decades ago and can't easily go back; some were born far away and have never been. Distance, work and family keep them away. HakkaYin gives them a way to see the village as it is now: who's still there, what's changed, how things are going, and to feel close to it, wherever life has taken them.
Many Hakka villages are remote, and some are restricted or abandoned, so most have never been recorded online. The knowledge of those places, the buildings, the well, the school, who lived where, sits in the memories of the oldest generation and in photo albums that will fade. HakkaYin is a way to capture that while it's still there, and to show it to the world.
The mission
What we're trying to do
- Reconnect people to their home village, wherever in the world they are now, and let them see it, even if they can't visit.
- Give the older generation a place that's easy to use: big type, few steps, one clear action on every screen, and family to help where it's needed.
- Record the villages before they're forgotten: a growing public record of Hakka villages, their places and their people, for anyone to see and learn from.
- Keep the language alive. Not many people speak Hakka these days, so you can record yourself and tell your village how the family is doing, in Hakka and in your own voice.
- Show where the Hakka are now, and where they came from: a growing picture for the whole diaspora, the HakkaYin Tracker.
How joining works
Trusted, the old-fashioned way
You can browse villages as a visitor. To join, you send a request. Right now HakkaYin is young, so the person running the site reviews and approves every request personally. As villages grow, we want each village to accept its own members, because the people who belong there know each other best.
Each village has a contact: a volunteer from that village who helps look after it. We'd love to hand that role to a true village elder wherever one comes forward. If that's you, or someone you know, use the contact form.
Contact details stay within your village by default. Anything reported is reviewed by a real person, and there are clear rules: respect, no spam, no targeting.
Who it's for
Anyone Hakka
HakkaYin is for anyone Hakka, and for anyone whose family comes from a Hakka village, even if you didn't grow up speaking the language. If you're the one who helps your parents or grandparents with technology, this site was built with them (and you) in mind: you can set up their account, record their voice notes and pin their photos for them. The village stays connected because of people like you.
And if you're not Hakka at all but curious about the history, you're welcome too. You can browse the villages, see the photos and learn something most people never get to see.
Who's behind it
A personal project, not a company
HakkaYin is a personal project, started by William Yip, a Hakka trying to do something nice for his people. It's not run by a company and it's not trying to sell you anything.