Miaoli Hakka Poetry Festival revives 'burying poetry' tradition

The Miaoli County Hakka Literature Development Association organized its inaugural "Hakka Rhyme Ink Miaoli - 2026 Miaoli Hakka Poetry Festival" on June 7, marking a significant cultural event. The festival centered around a "burying poetry in the river" ceremony, a ritual reenacted at the historic Yuqing Pond, where ancestral poems were once submerged.

The ceremony paid homage to the descendants of the founding members of the Lìshè poetry society. Participants performed ancient rituals, including symbolically casting rice dumplings into the river, a plea to the aquatic life not to damage the "Lìshì" poems. Local cultural figures expressed hope that this event would inspire future generations to continue Miaoli's literary legacy.

The association highlighted a lesser-known historical event in Taiwanese literature: the "burying poetry in the river" incident, which occurred before Taiwan's retrocession. During the Japanese colonial period's "Kominka" movement (1936-1945), which aimed to assimilate Taiwanese people by promoting Japanese language and suppressing traditional culture, even Chinese characters were banned.

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We hope that through this event, Miaoli's literary atmosphere will have successors and be passed down through generations.

The Lìshè society, established in 1927, published its "Lìshè Poetry Collection" over a decade. Facing pressure from the Japanese authorities, who targeted the society as "war criminals' family" and "political dissidents," its members' works were at risk. Wu Songxian, then a temple worker, and his son Wu Wenhu, secretly waterproofed and sank the collection in Yuqing Pond to protect it. It was only recovered after Taiwan's retrocession and later compiled into a published collection.

Last year, the Miaoli County Hakka Literature Development Association was formed to honor this act of historical resistance and to reawaken an appreciation for the roots of Hakka and local literature. The recent "burying poetry in the river" ceremony at Yuqing Pond, attended by descendants of Lìshè members, served as a solemn tribute to the past and a hopeful gesture for the future of Hakka literary traditions.

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We implore the fish in the river not to damage the Lìshì poems.