My Father's Kampung. Shawn Seah
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.
Ho kow boh teng loh
means
Good dogs do not obstruct the way
This saying is that if one is well-trained, one would be useful, just like a well-trained dog would not get in the way of someone.
Chwee tiam tiam, uk buay chark kee kau niam
means
A sweet talker carries a sickle at the back.
This saying is used to refer to someone deceptive, so one has to watch out for this sort of person.
Gu kia um pat ho
means
Young cows do not know the tiger.
The implication is that they should fear the tiger.
Older folks often spoke these phrases, which may sound cryptic to some today, but are very meaningful.
My father was chuckling to himself the whole time Mr Lee was explaining these local Teochew proverbs to me.
Teochew Food
Beyond speaking the dialect, being Teochew could also be about the food. My online friends from Teochew Facebook groups frequently post pictures of the mouth-watering Teochew food they are eating. As I am not a foodie, it is hard for me to describe food. But Teo Cheng Wee can, and he vividly described his childhood experiences:
I had countless meals of Teochew porridge with pickled cucumber, fermented beancurd, and salted egg—a meal combo which still frightens me today.
But the upside was the festive Teochew food my grandmother used to make.
I was only a few years old, but I remember she would toil for hours to make her delicious png kueh (rice cakes), filled with dried shrimp, mushroom, pork and peanuts, from scratch…
I also had to help dor bee , or sift rice grains, whenever the Dragon Boat Festival came around.11
When I read those lines he wrote, I felt really hungry. And my father and many people I interviewed had a love of Teochew cuisine. They seemed really happy when they talked about Teochew food. But most importantly, reminiscing like this helps them feel in touch with their identity most keenly.
Endnotes
1 This section is adapted from Shawn Seah, Seah Eu Chin: His Life and Times (Singapore: Pagesetters, 2019).
2 According to a plaque by the Urban Redevelopment Authority at the Yueh Hai Ching Temple, “Yueh Hai Ching Temple”.
3 Tan Gia Lim, An Introduction to the Culture and History of the Teochews in Singapore, (Singapore: World Scientific, 2018), p.44. She cited several examples, such as William Farquhar’s report to Raffles in 1822 and colonial government records detailing a sale of a plantation land by some planters with names likely of Teochew origin. George Yeo, then-Minister for Trade and Industry, also made a speech which referred to this fact at The Teochew Experience: An Exhibition on the Teochew Community in Singapore, 3 October 2002.
4 Ibid., p.45.
5 These statistics are based on Edmond Lee Eu Fah’s paper, “Profile of the Singapore Chinese Dialect Groups”, which drew from data from the Population Censuses 2000 and 1990. Incidentally, the Cantonese were number three in 2000, numbering 386,000 (in 1990, there were about 324,000).
6 Department of Statistics Singapore, Singapore Census