Thinking a lot about this take and why it’s problematic.

I‘m Yue 粵. Our ancestors fled North China in the Tang dynasty. The migrants intermarried with the Baiyue (Hundred Tribes), creating the Han-Yue culture, a distinct language. The word for “Viet” (Vietnam) shares this root

The Indigenous Baiyue culture lives thru their two largest descendent groups, the Vietnamese and the Cantonese. We can also say the Tanka boat people retained more of the Indigenous culture. The Hakka came a bit later from the north, also assimilating, then the Min from the East.

Who were the Indigenous Bai Yue?

“The Yue people have their hair cut short and tattooed bodies, their right shoulder is left bare and their clothes are fastened on the left. In the kingdom of Wu they blacken their teeth and scarify their faces, they wear hats made of fish-skin“

They lived in stilt houses and were excellent fishers, gatherers, rice farmers, swordmakers. Their descendents have lived in the Pearl River Delta for thousands of years. Yes, Hong Kong was sparsely populated- but we are no more settlers than the Vietnamese are to their lands

And yes; the Hakka villages have been displaced by the Cantonese. Does this make either of us not Indigenous to the area? Our clans have warred for generations; in fact, we had wars between the “newcomer” Hakka and
the existing Cantonese-speaking natives (called 本地, Punti)

It is these conflicts and British Imperialism in Hong Kong that forced the first Chinese migrants to flee Toishan and the Pearl River Delta for economic opportunities in Hong Kong and the Chinatowns of the West, as both Punti (Cantonese) and Hakka local economies were destroyed

The point of this is not to say we have an inherent claim to Hong Kong, because Hong Kong is a multi-ethnic and diverse city home to many people. We love that diversity.

My point is that to frame us as colonizing “settlers” is completely ignorant. HK is 131km from Guangzhou.