to the opening up of the interior of our island, beyond the Singapore River area.3
They were also deeply involved in the import and export business of goods and services. For example, my ancestor, Teochew merchant Seah Eu Chin (1805–1883), bought and sold goods such as local produce and necessities to supply the junk trade between Singapore and the Riau islands, Sumatra, and other ports in the Malay Peninsula, and later went into the gambier and pepper business, just like other Teochews before him. Eventually, he came to be known widely as the King of Gambier and Pepper.
Yueh Hai Ching Temple (or Wak Hai Cheng Bio) is the oldest Teochew temple in Singapore and a national monument.
In 1848, in the article “The Chinese in Singapore” in the Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia, Seah Eu Chin estimated that the Chinese population was around 40,000, of which 19,000, or about half, were Teochews.
However, as growth in the number of Hokkien and Cantonese immigrants in the mid-19th century outpaced that of the Teochew, by the time the first systematic population census was undertaken in 1871, where the Chinese were accounted for by dialect groups, the Hokkiens had already overtaken the Teochews as the largest dialect group in Singapore.4
In 1990, there were around 896,000 Hokkiens and 466,000 Teochews.5 A decade later, there were more than one million Hokkiens and 526,000 Teochews. Collectively, Hokkiens, Teochews, and Cantonese formed three-quarters of the Singapore Chinese population, and the remaining quarter consisted of at least 19 other dialect groups in Singapore.
In 2010, there were 562,000 Teochews out of 2.8 million local Chinese, making the Teochew community slightly above 20 percent of the Chinese in Singapore.6 In comparison, the Hokkien community was around 1.1 million (40 percent) strong, the Cantonese were around 410,000 (15 percent), and all other Chinese dialect groups made up about 700,000 (25 percent).
With that many Teochews in Singapore, one would think that the Teochew dialect would be widely spoken.
However, that is not the case.
Decline of Dialects
Over the years, there has been an overall decline in the use of dialects in Singapore, not just Teochew. I am a good example of someone who cannot speak the dialect. I only know a smattering of Hokkien, which I picked up from compulsory military service.
Despite my father’s best attempts to teach me how to speak Teochew, I can only utter: “thank you”, “have you eaten”, and “the monkey climbs the tree”.
Starting with a series of measures in the late 1970s, Singapore’s leaders discouraged the use of Chinese dialects, the original mother tongues of about three-quarters of its citizens, in favour of English and Mandarin. 7
However, neither language had much to do with the majority of the people who lived in Singapore at the time. Ethnic Chinese, who then as now made up 75 percent of the population, had emigrated over the centuries from several mostly southern Chinese provinces, especially Fujian (where Hokkien is spoken) and Guangdong (home to Cantonese, Teochew, and Hakka). Only two percent spoke Mandarin.
In 1979, the government launched a “Speak Mandarin” campaign. And by 1981, television and radio were banned from broadcasting dialect shows, including popular music. That left many dialect speakers cut off from society, like a few of my father’s aunts who could only speak Teochew.
However, the use of the Teochew dialect is still considered an important aspect of the Teochew identity, especially among the older generation in Singapore. Once, I was invited, by my friend Gary Yeo of the Singapore Teochew Group, to a dinner at the Chui Huay Lim Club. Established in 1845, it was an exclusive place for Teochew businessmen to network and relax.8 Also known as the “Teochew Gentlemen’s Club”, Chui Huay Lim Club played a unique role in early Chinese society as an important social venue during the British colonial period.
There I met a Teochew author (let’s call her TGL), and we talked about Teochew identity. She commented that, despite the government’s repeated efforts to discourage Singaporeans from speaking dialects, “true Teochews” have still remembered how to speak Teochew.
I immediately felt a bit sheepish because I did not know how to speak Teochew, beyond a few simple phrases. While I had heard my father occasionally speak in dialect, I spoke English to my family practically all the time. Even my grandmother Joanna could speak English and we never conversed in Teochew; she reserved her Teochew mostly for her own children.
TGL also said that Teochews in southern China shared a similar identity to Teochews in Singapore, and—in the event of a dispute—would take the side of Singapore Teochews rather than the side of northern Chinese, who were considered different.
I believe her. In fact, as I have said before, “We Teochews in Singapore have a unique identity, and should be united”.9
But for other Teochews in Singapore today, the Teochew identity is not always a big part of their personal identity. And I’m not just talking about millennials like myself, or the even younger Generation Z (well, those younger than millennials). This even affects those older than my generation.
Reporter Teo Cheng Wee, writing for The Straits Times in 2014, said that whenever he introduced himself to strangers, he would seldom mention that he is Teochew—not because he was ashamed to be Teochew, but his dialect group had never been a large part of his identity.10 And he suspected that many Singaporeans felt the same way because of the government’s effective discouragement of dialect use over the years. However, because his parents, and their parents before them, were all Teochew, he was able to understand Teochew and speak it well enough to hold a decent conversation, and he was in fact as Teochew as it got.
At the start, I mentioned some Teochew proverbs my father told me about. To some of the older generation in Singapore, these proverbs carry deep meaning or, at least, are poetic.
Speaking over coffee on a Sunday afternoon with my father’s friend, Mr Lee Tong Juan (born 1937), I learnt a few more of these choice dialect proverbs and phrases. What makes this dialect lesson interesting is that Mr Lee is not a Teochew, but a Hainanese. He said, with what could only be described as glee in his eyes:
Let me give you some examples of rich and subtle Teochew sayings…
Pah kow, ai chai chu nang
means
Before you beat a dog, you must know who the owner is.
This implies that you have to know a person’s background before you do something you might regret.
Juat neo kng kng, kway Siam lo
Ah ti oo boh, ah hia bor
means
The moon is passing through Siam
Younger brother has a wife, but the older brother doesn’t
This saying is used to tease an elder brother for not being married yet, while his younger brother is already married.
