One Hundred Years' History of the Chinese in Singapore

The following sections are included:

• DEDICATION
• CONTENTS
• LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
• ANNOTATOR’S PREFACE
• NOTE TO READERS
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• FOREWORD
• COMPILER’S NOTE
• TABLE OF CHINESE NAMES

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…

WHEN the British flag was hoisted on the plain (somewhere in the vicinity of the Esplanade) in Singapore, the population of the island, according to Captain Newbold, amounted to about 150 fishermen and pirates living in a few miserable huts: about thirty of these were Chinese, the remainder Malays. The Malays were most probably the Orang Laut (the descendants of the aborigines of Johore before the Malays crossed from Sumatra) who had accompanied the Dato Temenggong Sree Maharajah, Ruler of Singapore, from Johore in 1811. Dr R Little conjectured that when the island was made an English settlement it contained about 200 to 300 Malays. He was silent as to whether there were any Chinese settlers on the island at the time. Had there been any, it seems curious that neither Raffles nor Abdullah Munshi should have made mention of the fact. We know, however, that Major Farquhar, who was appointed the First Resident by Sir Stamford Raffles, sent the news of the settlement to Malacca by a sampan, and asked the Malays to come to Singapore, urging them to bring fowls, ducks, fruits and provisions of all kinds for which they would obtain a ready sale. Letters to the same effect were also sent by some of the Malays who had accompanied Major Farquhar in the expedition to Singapore…

EARLY in February 1830 there was a serious outbreak of fire in Chinatown. It began in a blacksmith’s shop in Circular Road, burned down Philip Street and one side of Market Street and nearly got to Commercial Square. Abdullah’s account of the great fire in his Hikayat evidently referred to this event, and not, as his translator Mr Thomson suggests, to the fire in 1847 at Kampong Glam. To quote from his graphic description: After I had heard of the death of Mr Collie [which took place in 1828] I was living in a house in the merchants’ quarter, very ill with fever, and impatiently waiting to return to my college work in Malacca, when, about 7.30 pm on the 13th of the 1st Chinese moon, as the children were busily engaged in playing with kuda api (candle-lit paper horses), and half of the Chinese were amusing themselves, and half making great noises with their musical instruments – I heard the cry of ‘Fire! Fire!‘…

IN his Diary for July 1839 Sir James Brooke (afterwards Rajah of Sarawak) gives his impressions of the Chinese in Singapore: Emigrants from the Celestial Empire greatly exceed the natives of all other countries put together, and form the chief mass of labourers and shopkeepers. I know not whether most to admire the Chinese for their many virtues or to despise them for their glaring defects and vices. Their industry exceeds that of any other people on the face of the earth, they are laborious, patient and cheerful; but on the other hand they are corrupt, supple and exacting, yielding to their superiors and tyrannical to those who fall into their power. The most interesting class of Chinese are the squatters in the jungle around the high hill of Bukit Timah. Their habitations may be distinguished like clear specks amidst the woods, and from each a wreath of smoke arises, the inmates being constantly engaged in the boiling of gambier. We may estimate at nearly 2,000 these people who, straying from the fold of civilisation, become wild and lawless on its very confines …

TOWARDS the close of 1849, there returned to Singapore Song Hoot Kiam and Lee Kim Lin, two out of the three Straits Chinese youths who had been taken to England by Dr Legge to finish their education. Song Hoot Kiam was born in Malacca in 1830. He was the second of three sons of Song Eng Chong, who was also born in Malacca, in 1799, and who died at the age of 76 years (in 1875) in Singapore. At the age of 11, Hoot Kiam was placed as a boarder in the Anglo-Chinese College in Malacca, which had then the Rev James Legge (afterwards Professor of Chinese, Oxford University) as Principal, and remained there two years until Mr Legge left for Hongkong. The family then came to this Settlement where Hoot Kiam was brought in contact with the Rev A Stronach, who had known Mr Legge intimately, and who, after having ascertained that both Kim Lin and Hoot Kiam were anxious to continue their studies under Mr Legge, arranged for the lads to proceed to Hongkong at Mr Legge’s expense. For the next few months after their arrival there, they were placed in the Anglo-Chinese college situated in the Chung-wan district to learn the Cantonese dialect…

MENTION has been made of the firm of ‘Chong-san Seng-chai’, the partners of which were Wee Chong Seng, Lim Seng Chai and See Eng Wat. This firm, which did a large business as Commission Agents and was well known in its time, continued its membership till 1860 in the Chamber of Commerce, long after other Chinese firms had ceased to be members thereof. Apparently after that date the Chamber closed its doors to Chinese. Lim Seng Chai was a wealthy and influential man and was for a short time a member of the Tan Tock Seng Hospital Committee. His son Lim Soon Yang married a daughter of Mr Tan Beng Gum, and held the post of ‘Kang-chu’ of all the Pasir Panjang property of Kim Seng & Co until this part of Kim Seng’s estate was turned into a limited liability Company known as ‘Kim Seng Land Co Ltd’…

ON the night of the 16th February 1869 a disastrous fire broke out on the premises of Locke, Hong Ghee & Co, Storekeepers, in Raffles Place, which resulted in the total destruction of their godowns and the office of the Straits Times and Singapore Journal of Commerce located above these godowns. On the 23rd March on information laid by Wee Ah Teng, a coolie lately employed by Locke, Hong Ghee & Co, the two partners Low Thuan Locke and Yeo Hong Ghee were arrested and charged with arson, bail being allowed in the sum of $10,000 each. The case came on for hearing on the 29th March before Mr FH Gottlieb, the sitting magistrate, when the evidence of the informant Wee Ah Teng, the only witness for the prosecution, completely broke down, and in acquitting the accused the Magistrate said: It is a matter of most serious moment to reflect that a coolie might at any moment come forward and endanger the liberty, and perhaps the lives, of any of us. With reference to the defendants, I regret extremely that such a charge has been brought by means of such an instrument, and in discharging you I have only to say that you leave the Court without the smallest imputation or stain on your characters whatever…

ON the 23rd May 1879, at a meeting of the Municipal Commissioners, the Secretary was directed to forward to Government a copy of a petition from Tan Tung Hup and others on behalf of the Khek tribe in Singapore, applying for permission to form a public burial ground, and requesting the Governor’s sanction. Nine years afterwards, a Lease of Government land in the district of Upper Tanglin (Holland Road, off Bukit Timah Road), containing an area of 150 acres, was demised by HE the Governor, Sir Cecil C Smith, unto Chong Yew Chee, Foo Sze Tat, Tan Tung Hup and Yong Kit Siong, Trustees of the Fung-yuntai Society of Khek Chinese and Managers of the Yok-san-tin burial ground, ‘upon trust for the said Society for the purposes of the said premises being used for the term of 999 years as the Yok-san-tin burial ground and for no other purpose’…

ON the 26th February 1889 took place the unveiling in the Ballroom, Government House, of the statue of Her Majesty Queen Victoria by the Governor, Sir Cecil Smith, in the presence of the Chinese subscribers to the Statue Fund during the Jubilee year. The inscription appears on the pedestal of the statue (which represents Her Majesty in an erect and dignified position, with the orb and sceptre in her hands, her figure draped with Imperial robes), and reads as follows: The statue of the Queen Victoria was presented by the Chinese community of Singapore in the year of Her Majesty’s Jubilee to be placed in the Government House as a memento of the loyal affections of Her Majesty’s Chinese subjects and of their gratitude for the benefit of her rule…

IN April 1899 a provisional committee consisting of five young Straits Chinese formulated a scheme for instituting a school for the education in Romanised Malay, Chinese and English, Arithmetic, Geography, Music and Sewing, of Chinese girls, ‘the future mothers of a future generation’. The circular inviting financial aid stated that ‘the object of the school is to demonstrate the feasibility of reforming Chinese conducting the education of their children on improved and modern systems, distinctively in consonance with Chinese principles as laid down in the classical works of Confucius: but entirely at variance with existing methods.’ The promoters were impatient to commence operations, and with $6,000 (half of which was a generous contribution from Mr Khoo Seok Wan, the proprietor of the Thien Nan Shin Pao, and a son of the late Mr Khoo Cheng Tiong) as initial capital, a large and representative body of Chinese gentlemen met on the 22^nd April at the Chinese Consulate, passed rules and elected the first Committee. Mr Lew Yuk Lin, the Chinese Consul, was elected President; Messrs Khoo Seok Wan and Tan Hup Seng, Vice-Presidents; Mr Ong Soon Tee, Hon Secretary; Mr Tan Boo Liat, Hon Treasurer; and Messrs Seah Pek Seah, Lim Keng Kuee, Song Ong Siang and Dr Lim Boon Keng, committee. The school was opened in June with seven girls on the register, and two months later it was reported that there were thirty girls attend- [306] ing as pupils, and that Mrs Lim Boon Keng was giving lessons in Chinese to the elder girls. The sum of $200 had been promised as monthly subscriptions for current expenses by a number of supporters, but their enthusiasm was short-lived, and in a short time this method of carrying on the work of the school had to be abandoned. Despite the fact that the older and leading men of the Straits Chinese community looked askance at this institution and declined to give it any financial aid, the promoters ‘having put their hands to the plough ‘never once looked back, while encouragement came in the form of a slow but steady increase in the enrolment of girls from just the right class of homes. The finances were from time to time, in these early days, at a low ebb, but, whenever money was needed to wipe off liabilities, it was found by the importunate ‘beggars’ for a good and winning cause…

ON the 21st June 1904 HE Sir John Anderson laid the foundation stone of the Hokien Chinese Church and Reading Room in Tanjong Pagar Road. A number of Europeans was present, while hundreds of Chinese witnessed the ceremony from every coign of vantage near the site. After the Governor had declared the stone – a marble slab – ‘well and truly laid’, he congratulated the members of the Hokien Church on the very practical proof they had given of the sincerity of their Christianity in coming forward to provide funds for the building, and commended the prominent Chinese who, not being themselves Christians, had contributed to the funds…

THE evils of chap-ji-ki gambling, so attractive to the Nyonyas (Straits-Chinese women), came before public notice in 1909, more particularly through proceedings taken in two police-court cases. In the first case, eleven nyonyas (including the banker) and the occupier were arrested on the top floor of a house which was then under seizure and in charge of the bailiff’s watchmen. The Deputy Public Prosecutor mentioned that a complaint had been made to him by a very well-known gentleman that his wife, who had had jewellery valued at $50,000, had lost it all in chap-ji-ki and had had it replaced by paste and cheap imitation. The stakers pleaded guilty and were fined $25 each, or, in default, two weeks’ imprisonment, which the magistrate said would be made ‘simple’ on the application of their husbands. At the same time he advised the husbands and relatives not to pay the fines, but to let the women undergo imprisonment. The press reports were silent as to whether any of the husbands took the magistrate’s advice. The occupier was sent to prison for eight months, while the banker was fined $1,500…

IN February 1914 the Straits Times published a special contribution on ‘The Straits Chinese, their Character and Tendencies’, from which we can only quote portions, but the whole article is worth careful perusal. The Straits-born Chinaman (sic) is usually regarded as being of mixed breed – half Chinese and half Malay. Except, however, as regards the original progenitors, this is not in accordance with fact, the first ancestress only being a full-blooded Malay: the subsequent generations usually intermarrying among themselves or introducing new Chinese blood, and thus maintaining the dominant racial characteristics in the breed. In the older settlements there are descendants of the 5th, 6th and even more generations but in Singapore the majority are those of the 3rd and 4th in descent from a purely Chinese male progenitor. … Recently, descendants from purely Chinese parentage on both sides are much in evidence, but these are still too insignificant in number, and too recent, to influence to any appreciable extent the distinguishing features and marked characteristics of the Straits-born Babas…

The following section is included:

• Index