Shuangkeng

About the village

Shuangkeng (双坑村) is a He clan village in Huliao Town, Dabu County, Meizhou, in north-eastern Guangdong, a few kilometres south-west of the county town. The name describes the ground. Two gullies carry water out of the valley, which is what 双坑 means. The village gazetteer records twenty hamlets, about 1,200 households and some 3,200 people across 13.5 square kilometres of hillside, farmed for rice, vegetables and pomelo. The village's own clan history traces the He family (何, written Ho by many overseas Hakka families) to a founding ancestor who came from Wuping in Fujian in 1217. That ancestor settled land the record calls Songli, later Shuangkeng, making this a settlement of some eight hundred years. Dabu is the Hakka heartland of north-eastern Guangdong, and its county seat has been at Huliao since 1961. The same ground is older still: the Yizhao and Wanchuan county administrations were seated at Huliao from 413. Generations have left. Nearly half a million people of Dabu descent live outside China, and in Singapore the Char Yong (Dabu) Association has served Dabu Hakka families since 1858. The village's best-known son is He Ruzhang (何如璋, 1838 to 1891), the Qing dynasty's first minister to Japan. His family residence, a group of five Qing buildings begun in 1805, still stands roughly 250 metres from the village centre and is a listed heritage building group. The neighbouring village of Shuangjishan (双髻山) sits at the edge of a provincial forest park known for its rock formations and bamboo. The wider district is Dabu's ceramics country, where pottery has been made for the best part of a millennium.