The Teochew Store Blog / Southeast Asia

Have you ever noticed that our Teochew numbers 1 to 10 sound different, but yet somewhat similar, to the numbers in Cantonese? 

What's the story behind? Let's find out!

A Teochew language short film about a Teochew who left for Siam, returning home after many years.

本作品围绕过番习俗，以艺术拍摄手法和原创动画制作形式表达潮州人在盛行出国谋生的“过番”年代，“番客”与家人之间的离别相思之情。

Lim Ngian Tiong, Nigel, is a veteran Teochew language radio newscaster and teacher in Singapore. He has been actively spreading Teochew language and culture through the radio, opera stage and classroom for half a century.

Coincidently 2023 marks Lim Ngian Tiong’s 50th anniversary as a Teochew language radio newscaster and his 20th year as a language teacher. Lim Ngian Tiong has also served as language instructor and event host for the annual "Lai Bia Teochew Ue" (來拼潮州話) quiz competition for Teochew language enthusiasts in Singapore since 2020.

The Teochew Store had the pleasure of speaking with Lim Ngian Tiong recently to learn about his journey in promoting Teochew language and culture, and to pick up some tips for young people interested in learning to speak Teochew.

Three words that strike fear in every Teochew child: pah ka-ceng 拍尻倉!

Did you know that this was once also a punishment meted out to adults in China? A Jesuit Father, Adriano de las Cortes, learned this shuddering fact, and more, when a shipwreck made him an accidental visitor to the Teochew region 400 years ago.

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. 

Watch 《百年善纪——纪念潮汕八二风灾100周年》， a four-part documentary produced by Shantou Television to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the 1922 Swatow Typhoon. 

Commentary in Mandarin, with interviews in Teochew and Chinese subtitles.

“When the tidal wave came, the most vulnerable died tragically: some parents who carried several children were forced to let go the daughters to save themselves from drowning. Some mothers carried the babies with them and floated in the water, but the husbands took away the babies in order to save their wives. Some elderly parents could not swim and their sons did not abandon them, and they were all drowned. Some parents could not hold too many children together and they griped the children’s hair and little arms, but when they reached the high grounds, the younger ones had already died. Some elderly parents did not want to burden their adult children and they drowned themselves in order to save the family line. There were couples tied themselves together with strings but they were drowned. After the disaster, some people could not bear the deaths of their loved ones and they committed suicide.”

~ Chen Yuan (陳沅), magistrate of Jaopeng county

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。

Escaping Cambodia with five children in the 1970s, a Teochew couple were cruelly separated on the Thailand border. Yet they were miraculously reunited in Canada five years later and after much hard work, eventually came to own a supermarket. Notwithstanding its great distance from Asia, Canada is a gathering point for Teochews who resettled from Vietnam, Cambodia, Hong Kong and China. Let’s watch this video where several of them share their stories and aspirations.

一對潮州夫妻在上世紀七十年代離開柬埔寨逃往泰國，在邊境走散，不知生死。五年後，他們奇蹟地在加拿大團聚。為了生活，他們刻苦耐勞，最終成功經營自己的超市。在離亞洲數千里的加拿大是許多來自越南、柬埔寨、香港和中國潮人移民的集中地。在這片土地上，他們與我們一起分享自己的故事和夢想。

Thailand has the largest Teochew diaspora in the world, with the size of the community estimated at 5 million in the mid-1990s. This documentary from 1997 by Shantou Television gives a glimpse of the lives of the Teochews in Thailand. (Audio in Mandarin, with some interviews in Teochew).

海外潮州人在泰国居多。根据上世纪90年代的统计，泰国的潮州社群约有五百万人。想了解潮州人在泰国过去的生活情况，请观看汕头电视台1997年制作的纪录片《佛國潮踪》。

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.