La Oy King Sar Chan, qui regroupe des familles répondant au patronyme Chan à Maurice, a récompensé trois membres de sa société pour leurs contributions significatives respectives au progrès du pays. C’était samedi au restaurant Imperial, à Trianon. Denise Chan Youn Sen, Benoît Chan Sui Ko et Yves Chan Kam Lon ont chacun reçu un trophée.

Denise Chan Youn Sen a reçu le titre de PMSM (President Meritorious Service Medal). Elle a été Chief Financial Officer au ministère de la Sécurité sociale. Lauréat de la cuvée 2008 aux examens du HSC, Benoît Chan Sui Ko, pour sa part, s’envolera bientôt pour Londres en vue d’entreprendre des études d’économie au University College. Yves Chan Kam Lon, le directeur de la Bibliothèque Nationale, s’est vu récemment conférer, par l’American Biographical Institute, le titre de Man of the Year 2008 representing Mauritius pour ses ” outstanding contributions to country “.

Le président de la Oy King Sar Chan, M. Chan Sui Ko, a fait à cette occasion l’historique de la société, qui a été fondée le 22 mai 1945, ” année durant laquelle un groupe de quatorze personnes du clan Chan décida de fonder cette société. Le premier président était M. Chan Youn Move. Le siège social se trouvait à la rue La Reine, à Port-Louis, et se déplaça ensuite à la rue Léoville l’Homme “.

L’un des objectifs de la société, dit-il, est d’assurer la gestion d’un fonds ” afin de venir en aide à ceux qui sont dans le besoin et de promouvoir le mieux-être des membres de la communauté sur les plans social, éducatif, économique et personnel “. La société se donne aussi pour but de développer des liens de coopération avec les personnes du patronyme Chan d’outremer et de raffermir les liens ancestraux avec la Chine.

Le secrétaire de la société, Yves Chan Kam Lon, a précisé que les membres de la société sont tous des hakkas, qui occupaient jadis les provinces chinoises de Shanxi et de Henon. ” Ils connurent plusieurs migrations, la première en l’an 317 sous la dynastie Jin. C’était néanmoins durant la cinquième migration que les hakkas s’établirent définitivement dans le sud de la Chine, plus précisément à Moh Yuen, devenue la principale ville de la civilisation hakka “. Aujourd’hui, selon le secrétaire de la société, il y a plus de cinquante millions de hakkas dans le monde.

Parmi les personnalités ayant façonné l’histoire de la Chine, il y a, dit-il, le Dr Sun Yat Sen (1866-1923), Deng Xiao Ping (1904-1997) et Li Peng (1928-) et à Singapour, Lee Kuan Yew (1923-).

Agni is a Hindu and Vedic deity. The word agni is Sanskrit for “fire” (noun), cognate with Latin ignis (the root of English ignite), Russian огонь (ogon), Polish “ogień,” Lithuanian – ugnis – all with the meaning ‘fire’ -, with the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European root being h₁égni-. Agni has three forms: fire, lightning and the sun. [1]

Agni is one of the most important of the Vedic gods. He is the god of fire[2] and the acceptor of sacrifices. The sacrifices made to Agni go to the deities because Agni is a messenger from and to the other gods. He is ever-young, because the fire is re-lit every day, yet he is also immortal.

Agni, the Vedic god of fire who presides over the earth, has made the transition into the Hindu pantheon of gods, without losing his importance. With Vayu and Surya, who presided over the air and sky, he is one of the supreme gods in the Rig Veda. The link between heaven and earth, he is associated with Vedic sacrifice, taking offerings to the other world in the fire. His vehicle is the ram. [3]

His cult survived the change of the ancient fire worship into modern Hinduism. The sacred fire-drill (agnimathana) for procuring the temple-fire by friction – symbolic of Agni’s daily miraculous birth – is still used.[citation needed]
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* 1 Depictions
* 2 In other faiths and religions
* 3 See also
* 4 References

[edit] Depictions

In Hindu art, Agni is depicted with two or seven hands, two heads and three legs. He has seven fiery tongues with which he licks sacrificial butter. He rides a ram or in a chariot harnessed by fiery horses. His attributes are an axe, torch, prayer beads and a flaming spear.[4]

Agni is represented as red and two-faced, suggesting both his destructive and beneficent qualities, and with black eyes and hair, three legs and seven arms. He rides a ram, or a chariot pulled by goats or, more rarely, parrots. Seven rays of light emanate from his body. One of his names is Saptajihva, “having seven tongues”.[4]

I think you meant Han Suyin who had Hakka heritage.

These powerful Hakka women have a mind of their own and will not tolerate a bigoted Hakka fart as Agni has mentioned. That may be why they all married foreigners.

Biography
Han Suyin was born in Xinyang, Henan, China. Her father was a Belgian-educated Chinese engineer surnamed Chow (Chinese: 周; pinyin: Zhōu), of Hakka heritage, while her mother was a Flemish Belgian. In 1938 Han Suyin married Pao H. Tang (Tang Paohuang), a Chinese Nationalist military officer, who was to become a general. They adopted one daughter (Yungmei).

She began work as a typist at Beijing Hospital in 1931, not yet fifteen years old. In 1933 she was admitted to Yenching University. In 1935 she went to Brussels to study science. In 1938 she returned to China, working in an American Christian mission hospital in Chengdu, Sichuan, then went again to London in 1944 to study medicine at the Royal Free Hospital and graduated MBBS (Bachelor of Medicine & Surgery) with Honours in 1948 and went to Hong Kong to practice medicine in 1949 at the Queen Mary Hospital. Her husband, Tang, meanwhile, had died in action during the Chinese Civil War in 1947.

In 1952, she married Leon F. Comber, a British officer in the Malayan Special Branch, and went with him to Johore, Malaya (present-day Malaysia), where she worked in the Johore Bahru General Hospital and opened a clinic in Johore Bharu and Upper Pickering Street, Singapore. (Comber resigned from the British Colonial Police Service as an acting Assistant Commissioner of Police [Special Branch] mainly because of the perceived anti-British bias of her novel And the Rain My Drink. In 2006, Dr. Comber was a Research Fellow at Monash Asia Institute, Monash University, Melbourne.) In 1955, Han Suyin contributed efforts to the establishment of Nanyang University in Singapore. Specifically, she offered her services and served as physician to the institution, after having refused an offer to teach literature. Chinese writer Lin Yutang, first president of the university, had recruited her for the latter field, but she declined, indicating her desire “to make a new Asian literature, not teach Dickens”, according to the Warring States Project at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst[2]. Also in 1955, her best-known work, A Many-Splendoured Thing, was made into a Hollywood film. Much later, the movie itself was made into a daytime soap opera.

After Comber and Han Suyin’s divorce, she later married Vincent Ratnaswamy, an Indian colonel (died January 2003 in Bangalore, India), and lived for a time in Bangalore, India. Later, Han Suyin and Vincent Ratnaswamy resided in Hong Kong and Switzerland. Since 1956, Han Suyin visited China almost annually becoming one of the first foreign nationals to visit post-1949 revolution China, including through the years of the Cultural Revolution.

In Europe they got the whole marriage thing right; marriage was the ticket to freedom for both genders.
Nowadays there is no need to even get married.

It is very true that the term Hakka is not well seen by other Hans in old time China and the reputation remained ever since. I recalled my personal experience traveling in the Fareast in the 60′s and 70′s. Hakka’s were the poorest of the lot in HongKong..the farmers and land tillers of the New Territories, the coolies of Singapore and Malaysia, the manual workers of Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia.

Also true that the Hakka s in Mauritius had to be creative and crafty to earn a living and many did not have the highest sense of morality. The morality demands of the day were not the same as in the past. You do not talk of morality to some one who is on a survival mode, would you?
It is sometimes unfair to judge some past events out of their context: can you judge the deeds of Valery Giscard then made on the deals he might have made to the African leaders with the yard stick of today, post Enron Corporate Governance rules?

Lastly, I would like to highlight the gender equality aspect. Hakka men were not stars of gender equality as we would see it today, however in comparison to other Hans in their time they allowed more freedom to their wife than others of their lots.

To have several concubines in old and not so old China was a sign of wealth. On the contrary a woman with several lovers were considered as a tramp.

I have a nice true story for you.
My grand father was being motivated in the early 40′s to take a second wife by his good friend who had 3 already.
After much sollicitations,Grand father retorted to him: ‘when you had 2 wifes I understood that every day there was some arguments between the 2 wifes to decide who should boil and carry hot water for your wash basin. Now that you have a 3rd one, it has become your duty to boil water and carry for her and for your use.’
I am happy with my single and only one. Without any argument I still enjoy wonderful service from the maids for my wife and myself.

Singapore is still suffering from its Hakka heritage and leadership.
As to Mauritius, all Hakka are “businessmen” of some sort. It’s never really clear what kind of business though!
Sometimes it’s so shameful when foreign investors and other Chinese ask questions.

As to the women… historically, in every society women had to fight for what they wanted. Men would never relent any hold they have on them. It’s comparable to the issue of slavery.
In the West, European women won rights only when no one could contest their contribution to the economy and society after so many men had died in the wars in Europe.

If Hakka men are so much for gender equality, i wonder if they would allow their wifes to have as many lovers as they do themselves?
I guess they draw the line at Education for purely selfish economic reasons!

It is also quite true that Hakka people (men or women) are not as handsome or beautiful as other Han Chinese. Just look at Deng Xiao Peng or Pearl Buck.