The Teochew
My father once told me that the Teochew people are highly refined. Instead of using crass terms, a Teochew answering the call of nature will describe the activity as a poetic reference to nature itself:
Huang lai, whole lai,
Keng chio ka lup
Sa si kai
The three key terms are: huang (wind), whole (rain), and keng chio (bananas). Lai means to come, ka lup means to drop, and sa si means three or four. Putting them altogether, the description reads:
When the wind and rain come,
The bananas drop
In threes and fours
Doesn’t this poem express beautifully not only the call of nature but also the sequence in which it is answered?
Now, who makes a better bride, a Teochew or a non-Teochew Chinese?
A full-blooded Teochew lady will be totally convinced that a Teochew girl makes the best bride. Her belief may be encapsulated in a catchphrase: Yu pi, yu chi.
Translated into English, this can be interpreted as “Not only cheap, but also fresh”. This phrase is normally what a fishmonger would say to entice customers to buy his fish.
However, used in the context of the desirability of marrying a Teochew girl, it means she is “good value for money”, or, more literally, “not only cheap but good”—a less complimentary remark.
A Teochew bride is beautiful, loving, faithful, and cooks well. And, most important of all, her parents will not demand many wedding dinner tables from the in-laws! So, it is wise to marry a Teochew lass!
Finally, Teochews often refer to each other as ka kee nang (our own people). This refrain is repeated, by Teochew to Teochew, and sometimes in full:
Teochew nang, ka kee nang
I began a book on Aukang by telling you about the Teochews because my father is a ka kee nang, and he is proud of it.
The Singapore Chinese
The Singapore Chinese resident population has three major dialect groups—Hokkien, Teochew, and Cantonese. The Hokkien form the largest group, followed by the Teochew.
Historically, the Teochew were one of the earliest groups of Chinese to arrive in Singapore.1 They came from eight districts in China, Ngee Ann being the ancient name for Chaozhou prefecture in Guangdong province where Teochews originated. According to the Teochew Poit Ip Huay Kuan, these districts were Teo Ann (Chaoan), Theng Hai (Chenghai), Teo Yeonh (Chaoyang), Kit Yeonh (Jieyang), Jeow Pheng (Raoping), Po’ Leng (Puning), Hui Lye (Huilai), and Nam Oh (Nanao).
While some Teochews came to Singapore from Dapo (also Dabu, or Hakka district), language differences led to Dapo being separated from the Teochew region, leaving only eight districts, although after the 19th century, the Chinese government further divided the 8 districts into 11.
Nevertheless, in Singapore, Teochew organisations, such as the Ngee Ann Kongsi led by Teochew community leader Seah Eu Chin and the Teochew Poit Ip Huay Kuan, established later, were set up based on eight districts.
To express gratitude for a safe journey from Guangdong province to Southeast Asia, Teochew seafarers and merchants in Singapore set up a shrine dedicated to the deity Mazu, the Goddess of the Sea, in the 1820s.
Subsequently, another temple was established, called the Lao Ye Temple, or Lau Ya Keng, dedicated to Xuan Tian Shang Di (commonly known as Lao Ye), the ancestral deity of the Teochews.
These two temples were merged in 1826 and the resulting temple was named the Yue Hai Ching Temple. Although the temple was founded by Teochews, its patrons also included many Cantonese. The temple has been managed by the Ngee Ann Kongsi since 1845 and has undergone several rounds of expansion, renovation, and reconstruction. In 1899, the temple was bestowed with “peaceful clouds over the ocean at dawn” by Emperor Guangxu of the Qing dynasty.2 Singapore’s oldest Teochew temple was gazetted as a national monument in 1996.
Historically, many Teochews were involved in the planting of gambier and pepper in the Riau Archipelago even before the arrival of the British, and contributed greatly 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