In frontier environments, rough-and-ready analogues of huiguan were the self-governing corporations (kongsi), organized around deity cults and defended by armed militias. As we shall see in chapter 2, these were among the traits that made Hakka redoubtable emigrants during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Little wonder they were well suited as miner-pioneers in the trackless, lawless jungles of Malaya and Borneo.
