One Hundred Years' History Of The Chinese In Singapore: The Annotated Edition. Ong Siang Song

       CHAPTER I

       INTRODUCTION

      THE task of preparing an account of the Chinese in Singapore for the hundred years from the 6th day of February 1819, mainly from a historical and chronological point of view, has been a difficult and laborious one in consequence of the paucity of data, records and references bearing on the Chinese inhabitants of this island, especially during the early decades.

      To think of the Chinese in Singapore, we must let our minds go back far beyond the founding of this Settlement by Sir Stamford Raffles. Long before the advent of Europeans into the Malayan regions, the Chinese had migrated westwards and southwards from their homes in search of knowledge and in quest of the exotic products of the tropics. ‘That an early intercourse existed between China and the islands of the Asiatic Archipelago’, says Crawfurd,¹ … is certain, but there is, at the same time, no ground for ascribing a very remote antiquity to it. In the ancient language, literature and monuments of Java, the only country of the Archipelago boasting of an ancient civilisation, there is certainly no allusion whatever to China or the Chinese. There is, however, other evidence which attests an intercourse of many centuries. Ancient Chinese coins have been discovered in various parts of the Archipelago: and as these, with the exception of those of Java, are known to have been [2] the only coined money of the Archipelago before the arrival of

      Europeans, they are sufficient to prove the existence of the intercourse. Thus, several coins were dug up in 1827 from the ruins of the ancient Malay settlement of Singapore, said to have been founded in 1160 and destroyed by the Javanese in 1252. These coins have been deposited in the Museum of the Royal Asiatic Society and bear the names of Emperors whose deaths correspond with the years of our time, 967, 1067 and 1085.²

      It is, however, on record that in AD 414 Fa Hsien,³ the celebrated Buddhist pilgrim, returned to China via Ceylon, the Straits of Malacca and Java. From about this time onwards, the Chinese continued to visit the Malayan regions in increasing numbers. They were highly respected by the natives and succeeded in inducing the rulers of these regions to send tributes to the Emperors of China. The annals of the Middle Kingdom are full of records of missions from the princes of these little-known States.

      In 1408 and in 1412 a tour of the Chinese settlements in Malaya was conducted by the illustrious eunuch and statesman of the Chinese Court, popularly known to every Chinese throughout Malaya as Sam-po-kung.⁴ Tradition says that he remained in Malacca for some time, learning Malay and performing miracles, to the astonishment of the natives, whose ruler agreed to send tribute to the Dragon Throne. There are now in Malacca, quite close to the town – the old well, alleged to have been used by him, and the little memorial temple with appropriate inscriptions cut on stone, telling of his sojourn in Malacca. Sam-po-kung is evidently a name to conjure with among the illiterate classes. The miracles which he performed to save his countrymen from the perils of their travels in unknown lands are among the marvels of romance, illustrating in a striking way one of the factors in the genesis of a myth. … [3]

      The Chinese in Malaya did not at first attempt to form permanent colonies, but always at the end of each trip returned home in their junks when the monsoon changed. In course of time these itinerant traders found it convenient to marry the women of the country in which they had established business houses. The native wives were useful as housekeepers and saleswomen, keeping the shops going while their husbands returned to China for further shipments of goods. While the boys born of Malayan mothers in those far-off days were repatriated for education in China, the girls were left behind, but were never allowed to marry the natives of the country. Thus, in the course of a few generations, the new-comers from China found a growing population of native-born Chinese females in all the flourishing trading centres which the energy and the enterprise of the early pioneers had called into existence.

      By the time of the Dutch inroads into the Malayan regions the Chinese had firmly established themselves in Java, in Bali, in the Moluccas, in Acheen and in the Malay Peninsula. Trengganu, for instance, has had for a considerable period an indigenous Chinese population interbreeding among the local Chinese and the new immigrants from China. In Rhio and Penang, the same process of marrying Malay wives to found families had produced the same results. The children spoke