We are still in the middle of the Chinese New Year celebration period which will end on Feb 15. So perhaps this is a good time to talk a little on what it means to be a Singaporean Chinese.
Of course, Singaporean Chinese should know who they are. It sounds rather stupid to even bring up the subject. But does it? Hainanese, Hokiens, Cantonese, Teochews, Hakkas etc do have some different traits. Hainanese and Hakka Singaporeans are said to be more clannish than the Hokiens and Cantonese. It is harder for a non-Hainanese Chinese to marry a Hainanese woman or man, not to talk about a non-Chinese person marrying into a Hainanese family.
Different dialect-speaking Chinese Singaporeans have also been different because of their traditional economic activities – their jobs and businesses. Hainanese have traditionally been in the food business. This is a carryover from the ANZUK years when they were caterers to the RAF bases in Changi, Seletar and Tengah and their barracks in Gilman and the Kent Road district (which stretches to Holland Village). Many well-known restaurants offering Western dishes have Hainanese links.
Hakka/Kheks run pawnshops and tyreshops.
The larger dialect groups, however, have spread themselves out over the years and do not necessarily find themselves in any specialised trades. But, it seems that, as a rule, Hokiens are said to be more daring entrepreneurs (bo piah, bo yia – no venture, no gain), Teochews are good at finance (strong in banking) and Cantonese are pragmatic and efficient.
The bigger groups generally think bigger. That is because their significant numbers give them strength and a sense of kinship beyond the boundaries of their nationality.
World-wide, there are 60 million Cantonese-speaking Chinese. That’s a middle-power country in the making. The Hokiens are almost as powerful, totalling 46 million – 28 million in mainland China, 13.5 million in Taiwan, 2 million in Malaysia, 1.5 million in Singapore and 1 million in the Philippines. This is the size of yet another large country.
We lost the chance to tap more aggressively on these links. Just as the hyperactive and garrulous Cantonese in Hong Kong are being sadly mainlandised into a colourless entity, Singaporean Chinese are facing the same prospect of a nondescript cultural future.
I am not sure whether multi-layered and irreplaceable “dialect hinterlands” (and, for that matter “dialect bubbles” of the smaller groups) should have been tampered with by the People’s Action Party in a politically motivated attempt by an unempathetic Hakka leader to nullify the challenge of rivals who were better dialect speakers.
To this day, also, there are people who believe that the shutting down of Nanyang University in 1980 was a major mistake. They see it as an attempt to negate the influence of a group of Chinese Singaporeans who were political opponents of the establishment, including the university’s founder, Tan Lark Sye, a Hokien millionaire, who was son-in-law of Tan Kah Kee. The latter was himself a well-known philanthropist who helped the setting up of universities and schools in China and South-east Asia. The history of modern Singaporean Chinese has never been the closed shop story of a Peranakan clique.
The concept of being a Singapore Chinese could have been so much better and richer. What we have instead – as a result of the mandarinisation of the dialects for political reasons – is an artificially enforced product which is neither here nor there.
It is not too late to bring back the dialects.
Make being Singaporean Chinese more meaningful and more what we want to be and not what the PAP has forced on us.
Tan Bah Bah, consulting editor of TheIndependent.Sg, is a former senior leader with The Straits Times. He was also managing editor of a local magazine publishing company.