The Teochew Store Blog / video

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》。

Here’s the third and final group of our flashcard videos for English speakers. Teochew audio taken from 汕頭話音檔》 ("Archive of the Swatow vernacular").

We wish to hear from you if you find such a learning method (video flashcard with picture + English/Chinese text + English/Teochew audio) useful. Do give us your feedback in the YouTube video comments. 

Here’s the second group of our flashcard videos for English speakers. Teochew audio taken from 汕頭話音檔》 ("Archive of the Swatow vernacular").

We wish to hear from you if you find such a learning method (video flashcard with picture + English/Chinese text + English/Teochew audio) useful. Do give us your feedback in the YouTube video comments. 

The Teochew Store has produced a series of flashcard videos for English speakers to pick up some basic Teochew vocabulary. The Teochew audio is taken from a late 1990s source 《汕頭話音檔》 ("Archive of the Swatow vernacular").

There is a total of 15 videos, 5 of which have been uploaded on our YouTube channel (shown below). The other videos will be uploaded progressively over the next two weeks.

We wish to hear from you if you find such a learning method (video flashcard with picture + English/Chinese text + English/Teochew audio) useful. Do give us your feedback in the YouTube video comments. 🙂

Teochew is a language full of rich expressions. How many of the Teochew vernacular terms (土話) in this video do you know?

A fellow Teochew in the UK is running a blog, Learn Diosua Ue with Juyee 和如意學潮汕話, since 2013 to help English speakers learn and appreciate our mother tongue. Her name, you guessed it, is Juyee 如意.

Juyee's blog is at learnteochewwithjuyee.blogspot.com

Juyee grew up speaking English and picked up Teochew, both speaking, reading, writing only as an adult. The Teochew Store recently spoke with her to find out more about her blog and her personal experiences in becoming fluent in our language, a formidable task for many of us!

How did you fare in the previous rounds? This is the 6th and final challenge!

Are you getting better at this?

An animation film telling the history of the Teochew people, directed by a Teochew and dubbed entirely in Teochew language by 3 generations of Teochews living in France. How can you not be EXCITED?!

“The Forest of Miss Tang" (陳小姐的森林) is in an advanced stage of production and it needs funding support to be complete. The project has so far raised over €20,000 through crowd funding, but more support is still needed for it to be better.

The Teochew Store is lending our voice to this fund raising campaign as we believe this is a much worthy cause.

Watch the introduction video of the film by director Denis Do below (in French with English subtitles). To back the production of "The Forest of Miss Tang", click here for the project fundraising page. 

Have you ever watched a Teochew musical movie? Check out this rare classic that showcases a variety of Teochew art forms, including cross talk (相聲), bamboo clapper singing (竹板歌), Teochew classical music (潮州音樂), Teochew opera (潮劇),  Teochew narrative songbooks (潮州歌冊), ballads (歌謠), etc.

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”):

How about kicking off the first week of the New Year with 5 Teochew songs to start your day? 

As the result of torrential rains on 29 and 30 August, extensive areas in the Teochew region were afflicted by floods. In some worst hit parts in Teoyor (潮陽 ) and Pholeng (普寧) districts, water-levels reached up to 2 metres and entire towns and villages were covered under water. Watch the Gaginang spirit in action as communities across Teochew mobilised themselves wasted no time to step forward selflessly evacuate and provide relief to tens of thousands of families trapped by the deluge. Teochew nang, Gaginang!

This video, produced by a popular radio show of Shantou Radio & Television (STRTV, 汕頭電視台), strings together nearly 40 Teochew nursery rhymes.

Many of the nursery rhymes were written back in the times of an agricultural society and may be unfamiliar even to daddy or mummy. However, they could well be happy childhood memories of Ah Gong and Ah Ma, so more good reasons for big family-get-togethers.

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.

The first made-in-Teochew movie to be screened soon nationwide in China in recent times. Video uploaded for entertainment purpose.

潮州電影《爸，我一定行的》將要在中國全國上映。史無前例​​！