One Hundred Years' History Of The Chinese In Singapore: The Annotated Edition. Ong Siang Song
Long), he was apparently a man that you could not impose upon or take liberties with. To this day, the following pantun is still remembered:
Tinggi tinggi rumah Chek Chong Long
Di-bawahnya buat kedai kain:
A lang-nya bisa ular tedong
Bulih-kah tangkap buat main?15
He went to China in 1838, and was murdered in a house in Macao by some burglars in the middle of December. He appointed Mr William Spottiswoode16 executor of his will, which contained a devise for ever of certain properties for ‘sinchew’ purposes, and this was probably the first Chinese will which the Courts here had to construe on that point, when it was held that such a devise was void as being in perpetuity, and not a charity.
Mr GW Earl17 has this paragraph on the Malacca-born Chinese of whom Chong Long was a fine example:
The Malacca-born Chinese hold more direct intercourse with the European merchants than the others. Many of these are born of Malay mothers, but, as they [31] always adopt the manners and mode of dress of their fathers, they are scarcely to be distinguished from the actual natives of China, and although they are probably less active and energetic than the latter, they are more enlightened and make better merchants. Many of this class who have been educated at the Malacca College speak English tolerably well, and from their constant communication with Europeans they have acquired in some measure their general habits and mode of transacting business, which renders them more agreeable to the latter than those who have not enjoyed similar advantages. They are all employed in commerce, many as independent merchants, and some are engaged as cashiers and under-clerks in European go-downs. They are always remarkably clean and well dressed, and few are obliged to resort to manual labour.18
A serious blot upon the Government up to this time, and for many years after, was the piracy in the waters of the Archipelago. The usual prey of the pirates was the native junks which traded between China and the Straits ports. Criticism in the press and representations by the local merchants only resulted in spasmodic efforts on the part of the Government, which did not stamp out the evil, but only scotched it from time to time. So intolerable had the situation become that in June 1832 the Chinese merchants in Singapore, with the sanction of the Government, equipped at their own expense four large trading boats, each manned by thirty Chinese, well armed and carrying several guns, to go out and attack the pirates who were lurking outside the harbour. This little fleet went out and soon fell in with two pirate prahus, one large and one small, and sank one but the other escaped. One or two Chinese were killed. The Chinese merchants had agreed to pay $200 for every pirate boat attacked, and also $200 to the relatives of any man who was killed in the expedition. The Government having been shamed, apparently, by the action of the Chinese, two boats were built at Malacca for protective purposes. These were armed with 24-pounder guns, and manned by Malays [32] who were trustworthy characters. It was, however, a totally inadequate provision for dealing with the widespread piracy then existing. Petitions to the King and to the Governor-General of India for more effective measures to check this evil received at last a favourable response, and in March 1836 HM Sloop Wolf arrived in the harbour and commenced a vigorous crusade against the pirates. As a mark of ‘their grateful sense of his unwearied and successful exertions’, the European and Chinese merchants presented to Captain Stanley,19 the commander of the Wolf, a sword of honour, and a dinner was given to him and his officers on the 14th June 1837, at which complimentary speeches were made.20
Mr Buckley says that in 1832 there were some six or seven hundred Chinese Christians (Roman Catholics) and the small chapel built in 1823 or 1824 on the site of the present St Joseph’s Boys’ School had become too cramped. But Mr Earl writes:
Of the 300 native Christians mentioned in the census (of 1833) ‘at least nine-tenths are Roman Catholics, who are either descendants of the Portuguese or converts to the French missionaries’.
With the arrival of the Rev Etienna Albrand21 in 1833 the work of the Mission among the Chinese received an impetus and met with much success. In the course of a few months, with the assistance of the funds subscribed by the inhabitants, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, and with the gratuitous labour of his Chinese converts, he completed his new chapel. About six years later, in June 1839, the Rev John Tschu, a Chinese Catholic priest, was sent from Siam to be head of the mission in Singapore. John Tschu was born in the province of Canton of a respectable family, his father being a literate mandarin. He had been sent, when young, by a French missionary to the college in Penang, and after doing mission work there, he was transferred to Siam, where his work flourished. He laboured for nine years in Singapore, during which time he built up a large congregation and [33] died on the 13th July 1848. His early death was much felt by the Roman Catholic community.22 He was buried in the church at the altar of St Joseph, where a granite stone was placed over his tomb. When the new church was built the coffin was opened and the bones were placed in the St Joseph chapel in the new church, and a marble slab with an inscription was put on the side wall.
In 1845 the Chinese congregation raised the sum of $700 for the erection of a house in the school compound where religious instruction might be given to the Chinese. In the following year a plank and attap chapel was built at Bukit Timah for the Chinese congregation there, chiefly engaged in planting, and the Rev A Manduit23 went to live permanently among his flock until his death in 1858. In the ‘sixties Pedro Tan No Keah was an influential man among the Roman Catholic Chinese, and we find him subscribing liberally toward the cost of erecting the Chinese Church of St Peter and St Paul in Queen Street, completed in 1871. The Chinese Roman Catholic community in town having outgrown the accommodation in the aforesaid church, the Cantonese congregation has since 1910 worshipped in the Church of the Sacred Heart, situated in Tank Road.
One of the earliest ‘sons of the soil’ was Teo Lee, who was born in Singapore about 1833. His father came from China in a junk shortly after the foundation of the Settlement, and was for many years a gambier and pepper planter somewhere in the vicinity of Bukit Tunggal. Teo Lee started life as a cloth pedlar. Later, he opened a shop in Beach Road under the chop Tiang Bee, dealing in mercer and piece goods and as general commission agent, and gradually built up an extensive trading connection with Trengganu, Kelantan, Bali and Ampenan. Like many of the early settlers, Teo Lee invested his savings in landed property, and at the time of his death he was a considerable landowner. He was a great friend of the late Sultan Abubakar of [34] Johore. His two sons, Messrs Teo Eng Hock24 and Teo Bah Tan,25 are well-known merchants and rubber planters and dealers in Singapore. His widow, Tan Poh Neo, who is now eighty-one years of age, is the granddaughter of Tan Hong Khuay, who was mayor of Muntok. The eldest daughter of Mr Teo Lee was married to Lim Peng Nguan,26 and became the mother of Mr Lim Nee Soon,27 who will be referred to in a later part of this history.
Teo Lee
Mrs Teo Lee
Mr Earl, writing of the Chinese in Singapore during the three years 1832 to 1834, mentioned that –
The ground at the back of the town is laid out in gardens by the Chinese, who grow large quantities of fruit and vegetables for the supply of the inhabitants, while on the bank of the creek are many plantations of pepper and gambier, also cultivated by the Chinese.28
There are several sago factories on the banks of the Singapore River, a little beyond the town, owned and conducted by Chinese, in which the pith of the sago-palm imported from the neighbouring islands in Malay prahus underwent numberless washings on large wooden troughs and other processes until it became the pearl sago of commerce.
The interior of the island is almost unknown to Europeans, but there is a small independent Chinese settlement a few miles distant from the town, which is said to be very populous, and as considerable quantities of produce are brought thence to the town for sale, their plantations must be extensive. No European has yet visited them.29
The