The Teochew Store Blog / Singapore

Finding the proper Teochew terms to help 3-year-olds pick up a basic vocabulary in the Teochew language is surely as easy as ABC.

This was what we told ourselves when we set out to create Wa Si Teochew Kia—My First 120 Teochew Expressions Multimedia Flashcards 精选一百二十潮语词语》- 多媒体早教图卡), a set of educational flashcards with animated videos developed specially for babies and toddlers to learn their mother tongue together with their parents. 

Then, we came to the word "mother"... Read more about some of the challenging decisions we faced in conceptalising and designing The Teochew Store’s first in-house product, which we realised through the generous funding of more than 100 backers from 14 different countries on Kickstarter last year. 

We are entering the final 50 hours of our Wa Si Teochew Kia – My First 120 Teochew Expressions Kickstarter campaign. As we make our final push, do continue to help us tell more people about our project. Thank you!

To learn about this project or contribute to our crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter,  please click here.

《我是潮州囝——精选一百二十潮语词语》的众筹活动已进入最后五十小时。我们还在努力做最后冲刺。请您继续支持我们，并帮忙转发我们的项目给您身边的亲戚朋友，谢谢！

请点击这里，了解这个项目并资助我们在Kickstarter发起的筹款活动。

Parents, do you still remember the excitement of watching your newborn open his/her fingers for the first time? Or executing the first rollovers? Sitting up, standing, and walking?

父母们，你是否还记得第一次看到您的宝宝打开小手时的喜悦？或是在看到他们第一次翻身、坐、站和走路的时候呢？

All these “firsts” are swiftly achieved one after another. These are glorious days when new parents are still in a state of wonder, but the baby seems to know exactly what to do next as if he/she is pre-programmed. How many times are we led to believe our precious baby can master just about anything, and will one day become everything he/she is destined for?

这些所有的“第一次”，伴随着宝宝的成长，一个又一个迅速地出现。我们父母还在感叹这些“里程碑”的时候，我们的宝宝好像被预设默认程序一样，似乎已经知道下一步该做什么。有多少次，我们被引导着相信，我们可爱的孩子们几乎可以做任何事情，有朝一日他们会实现他们命中注定的潜能。

Then the child learns to talk...

后来，我们的宝宝开始学说话。。。

"1, 2, 3, 4, 5, Wa Si Teochew Kia".

Do you know our Wa Si Teochew Kia jingle is sung by J.J., a 3-year-old Teochew boy from Singapore? J.J. also composed the tune as an English counting song for Mummy when she was out for dinner one night.

All children have incredible learning potential.

Wa Si Teochew Kia – My First 120 Teochew Expressions is a set of multimedia flashcards developed by The Teochew Store to help children under 3 learn to speak Teochew together with their parents.

To learn about this project or contribute to our crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter,  please click here.

“一，二，三，四，五，我是潮州囝”。

你知道吗，我们项目《我是潮州囝》的小曲是由新加坡三岁潮州男孩J.J.演唱。J.J.在某个妈妈外出的晚上创作了这首曲。

每个小孩都蕴藏着惊人的学习潜能。

《我是潮州囝——精选一百二十潮语词语》由潮舗推出，是一套帮助父母与三岁以下幼儿一起学习潮州话的多媒体早教图卡。

请点击这里，了解这个项目并资助我们在Kickstarter发起的筹款活动。

《我是潮州囝——精选一百二十潮语词语》早教图卡的筹款活动将在2022年8月15日结束，请大家继续支持我们实现目标，助力潮州话在家中的复兴！ 请点击这里，了解这个项目。

Our Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for Wa Si Teochew Kia—My First 120 Teochew Expressions multimedia flashcards runs till 15th August 2022. Continue to lend us your support today to reach our goal and fulfill our dream of Restoring Teochew to Our Families.  Please click here to learn more about our project.                         

A gold rush in the 1850s and 1860s brought thousands of Chinese from Guangdong to Australia, including a small number of Teochews. The Land Down Under has today a mix of Teochew immigrants from Vietnam, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and China and this documentary produced in 2000 documents their stories. Interestingly, the television crew from Swatow also discovered a place where the Teochew language was widely spoken in Sydney's Cabramatta suburb.

在十九世紀五、六十年代，數千名來自廣東省的華工湧入澳洲採金，其中少數是潮州人。今日的澳洲有分別源於越南、柬埔寨、香港、台灣、新加坡、馬來西亞和中國等地的潮人。這部汕頭電視台2000年攝製的記錄片《騎在羊背上的潮州人》，記錄了他們不同的故事。有趣的是，記錄片的製作團隊竟然在悉尼的卡拉瑪打市郊發現了一個通用潮州話的地方。

Meet Mr Tan Peng Boon, a 78-year-old grandfather in Singapore. He is a Teochew and nine years ago he created a website with the goal of enabling English-speakers to pick up the Teochew language. Remarkably, the retiree took upon himself to learn how to build a website in order to realise this.

The Teochew Store recently spoke with Mr Tan to find out the story behind his passion to keep alive his Teochew heritage and his “Teochew for English Speakers” website.

“Teochew for English Speakers” can be accessed from http://gateways.sg/~TeochewEnglish/index.asp.

Video of Mr. Tan's grandsons doing a lively recitation of Teochew nursery rhyme “A Pear Tree on the Hilltop”):

An Introduction to the History and Culture of the Teochews in Singapore - a rare English language book on Teochew culture. Available for purchase on Amazon.

"Penned in three sections covering a wide range of topics from history and architecture to customs and the performing arts, the 164-page book published by World Scientific is one of the few of its kind in English." - The Straits Times

A review of the book can be read here.

In this concluding part of  "The First Teochews in Singapore" series, we find out about the leader of Singapore's pioneer Chinese settlers, whom the Singapore government later appointed as the settlement's first Captain China, as well as the historical links of Wak Hai Cheng Bio (粵海清廟, a.k.a. Yueh Hai Ching Temple) - the oldest Teochew (possibly Chinese) temple here - to two temples in Riau (Bintan) and Bangkok's Chinatown. 

2019 is officially the bicentennial year of Singapore. In part two of "The First Teochews in Singapore", we look into the evidences proving a Teochew oral tradition identifying a group of Chinese settled in Singapore before British establishment, as Teochew sojourners from Siam (Thailand), and how an old map of Singapore rediscovered in Scotland pinpoints where they lived by the Singapore River.

2019 is officially the bicentennial year of Singapore, a former British colony and today one of Asia's wealthiest cities.

The island-state is also home to the second largest Teochew overseas diaspora, after Thailand, and up till the mid-20th century a critical node on a trading and migratory network that connected the principal Teochew port of Swatow with key trading centres such as Hong Kong, Saigon and Bangkok. Teochews from Singapore were responsible for the early economic development of Johor, Malaysia's southernmost state whose capital Johor Bahru was once known as "Little Swatow". 

What has long been forgotten is that more than half a century ago, the Teochews in Singapore held to an oral tradition claiming that their forerunners were settled in Singapore before Sir Stamford Raffles, the Englishman hailed as Singapore's modern founder, even arrived. If true, this assertion will demand a change in the written history of Singapore.

Starting from this week, The Teochew Store will publish in three parts an in-depth research that sheds light into what this oral tradition says and seeks to verify its authenticity and accuracy.

As an overseas Teochew, you probably have at least one, or two, or more favourite Cantonese or Mandarin pop song that grew up with you. And sometimes as the familiar tunes play themselves in your mind, you wonder, why can't we have the same in Teochew? 

The Teochew songs that we had always been exposed to, apart from Teochew opera ones that we may appreciate but cannot understand, were folk ballads that can be cringeworthy, if not downright weird.

Thankfully, things are not all that bad. You see, we Teochews are not only good humoured, our language is rhythmic, we are creative, adaptable and we can sing too.

Click "read more" for a selection of Teochew songs that you'd fall in love with.

Spoken Teochew is both ancient and at the same time evolving, just like any other "live" languages. The Teochews settled in the Malay-speaking world covering Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia have absorbed not a small number of native expressions into their daily vocabulary. Here we present a list of over 50 expressions.

Theng Hai (variant: Tenghai) (澄海, in Mandarin: Chenghai), was one of historical Teochew prefecture's eight counties. Occupying the Hang-kang  (韓江) river delta, it was formed from areas carved out of Hai Yor (now Teo Ann) and Gek Yor in 1563. Theng Hai is today administered as a district of the Swatow (汕頭, Shantou) prefectural-level city.