Interpreting Media Constructions of Samsui Women in Singapore

By Kelvin E. Y. Low

Introduction

Migrating from southern China to Singapore in the early decades of the 20th century, samsui women have been routinely portrayed throughout Singapore’s history as among its pioneers who played a part in the building of the nation. Such rhetoric, one may argue, feeds upon the virtues of thrift, hard work and resilience gleaned from the lives of these women working in the construction industry. This is seen from a distinct categorisation of their experiences, as seen in the four tropes I will identify in this article. This rhetoric, however, enacts a fragmentation of their experiences, since they are recognised only through their worker-function and regarded as pioneers of Singapore’s (urban) development. Paradoxically, this pioneer narrative highlights this group of womenfolk, yet obscures their everyday life experiences as single, married or widowed individuals, foster mothers, as well as their involvement in other occupations and their transnational ties with their kin back in southern China. This paper provides a systematic analysis of media constructions of samsui women and shows how different underlying rhetoric surface through remembrances of these women.

I begin by providing a brief background to introduce samsui women and their migratory trajectories to Nanyang in the early decades of the 20th century. This is followed by a presentation of media constructions pertaining to these women through four identity categorisations: Cantonese/samsui women; “pioneers” and “feminists”; “elderly women”; and overlapping identities.

It can be argued that these categorisations engender a compartmentalisation of samsui women’s biographies, which thereby neglect other aspects of their everyday life experiences. I suggest that the gaps may thus be filled with more substantive examinations of their life trajectories accomplished through a detailed analysis of narrative interviews and other forms of data procured on samsui women. Further issues are raised with regard to the need to reflect upon other avenues of memory making through which we learn about these women, as well as how they are being remembered in both past and present contexts.

Samsui Women – A Background

Female workers are almost non-existent at construction sites in Singapore today, but the early history of Singapore presents a different picture. Samsui women, or hong tou jin in Mandarin, translated literally as “red headscarf” (Lim, 2002), came from peasant families in the Samsui county of the coastal province of Canton (Guangdong today) in China (Tang, 1960). The Cantonese term samsui can be translated to mean “three rivers” – comprising the Tsui Kiang, the Pai Kiang and the Sui Kiang – that meet at the Samsui district, hence the name (Boey, 1975; Lim, 2002; Tang, 1960). Women in Canton did not have to go through feet-binding, and thus were able to involve themselves in agricultural work alongside men in the fields (Lim, 2002). These women often helped out and toiled in the fields at a very young age, and hence, were toughened enough for work at construction sites in Singapore when they left their homeland. That they came to Singapore was primarily a result of the Aliens Ordinance imposed on Singapore (then part of British Malaya) by the British, which saw many samsui women migrating to Singapore in the 1930s (Lim, 2002). The ordinance placed a quota on the numbers of male migrants entering Malaya, but there were no restrictions imposed on female migrants. This legislation thus alleviated the uneven gender ratio in Malaya at that period.

Samsui women went through a sui haak (middleman) before securing a job in the building and construction industry overseas. These middlemen were familiar with the regions to which the women wanted to emigrate, and they were people with whom the samsui women were acquainted, introduced either by neighbours or siblings and relatives. One samsui woman for instance, paid 30 dollars to a sui haak to help her make the necessary arrangements to work overseas, including the fare for her sea voyage, food and other migration procedures (Lim, 2002, p. 231). Tang (1960) estimates that between 1934 and 1938, about 190,000 women from China migrated to Malaya, and samsui women formed part of this wave of female migrants from China.

A samsui labourer was easily recognised and distinguished by her distinctive red cloth headgear, black tunics and black pants (samfoo), which she wore to work every day (Lim, 2002, p. 230). Tang (1960) mentions that before they came to work in Singapore, they used to wear straw hats to protect their heads against the scorching sun as they toiled in the fields and farms. The headgear began to surface only when samsui women started working at construction sites here. Measuring 14 by 18 inches, the red headgear is oblong in shape, slightly protruding and covers a portion of the forehead, the entire head, as well as a substantial part of the back of the neck and both ears (Tang, 1960, p. 45).

Although the exact reason for donning the headgear is hitherto unavailable, it is surmised that the first woman to wear it was Su Tong Po’s mistress in the Hakka district of China, by the name of Chao Yun (Lim, 2002). Through the passing of time, the headgear was then adopted as the traditional headgear of Hakka women, who took this tradition with them as they migrated south from China. Working alongside these Hakka women, samsui women also began to put on the red headgear to work. However, Lim points out that this account remains contested, and that the real reason and motivation for wearing the headgear is still unknown.

Having left their homeland in search of better job prospects, samsui women were willing to take up jobs at construction sites, toiling relentlessly and enduring the various hardships of life on foreign soil. Despite their resilience, determination and fierce independence, samsui women have yet to etch a place in Singapore’s history, though they are often referred to only in passing in Singapore’s history as among its early pioneers. The ensuing section elucidates upon the multifarious ways through which samsui women are remembered through media memory-making channels. Examples are taken from such media as English and Chinese local newspapers, popular magazines, internet resources, artworks and popular history booklets. While
I discuss these examples vis-à-vis the four identity categories, it is not my intention to regard these categories as independent or mutually exclusive or at odds with one another. Instead, I am distinguishing them for present purposes, in order to make clear categories that generate different prescriptions towards shaping our perceptions of samsui women.

I. Cantonese/Samsui Women

Hailing from the Samsui county in southern China, the women who typically worked in the construction industries are usually called samsui women, although some writers have pointed out that not all women who worked on construction sites came from Samsui. For instance, Chin and Singam note:

Indeed, it has become common for English speakers to refer to all still-surviving, old,
single, immigrant Cantonese women, as Samsui women. This lumps together, quite
incorrectly, women from many districts – each distinct in sub-dialect and self-image.
(2004, p. 106)

A similar observation is also made by Yip:

Not all Samsui women came from the Samsui village in the Guangdong Province
in China. But because of the preponderance of these women from Samsui, the
term Samsui women has been used to describe all the Chinese women in similar
occupations. Other Samsui women came from Sun Yap, Fah Yuen, Dongguan,
Seiyap and Hock San. (2006, p. 40)

A more interesting point to note with regard to samsui women is based on their membership in the Cantonese dialect group. Framed as a “different and markedly independent category of Chinese women from the south” (Chin & Singam, 2004, p. 105), Cantonese women were known to be highly independent and feisty, and refused to, or rarely, marry (Chiang, 1994; Gaw, 1988; Samuel, 1991; Stockard, 1989; Tan, 1990; Topley 1959).

Along the lines of highlighting their Cantonese affiliation (see also Kong et al., 1996), samsui women are also typically presented as emerging triumphant from hardships back in China, toiling in the fields, dealing with useless, opium-addicted husbands who were match-made to them in their teens, and being singled out as “strong-willed” (Lim, 2005, p. 141), resilient (Chin & Singam, 2004) or skilful for their work in the construction industry (Lim, 2005; Lowe-Ismail, 1998; Tan, 1990). In fact, their “Chineseness” is superseded by their Cantonese affiliation, hence the assumption that they were able to rise above patriarchal control (see Stockard, 1989). Yip also waxes lyrical about these women:

Few would dispute the fact that these Samsui women were actually the heroines of
a bygone era … they became heroines out of dire necessity. It was the era and the
circumstances that made them strong, challenging them to face the harsh realities
with grit and determination. (2006, p. 38)

Categorising these women as a somewhat “extraordinary” group of Cantonese females who were able to rise above patriarchy illuminates two attendant points of interest. First, there appears to be a continuous reference to their country of origin on the part of memory makers in popular history, emphasising upon their migrant beginnings as an introduction to their life trajectories. In this way, such emphasis opens up avenues for further investigation into the positioning of these women vis-à-vis the histories of both China and Singapore in the 19th and 20th centuries, where the “entangled histories” approach or histoire croisée (see Conrad, 2003; Kocka, 2003; Randeria, 2006; Werner & Zimmermann, 2006) would be useful in furthering understanding of their migratory patterns, legislation and flows. More importantly, engaging with the history of both countries would also be integral towards our comprehension of their status as women,¹ which leads me to the second point. Having framed samsui women as a group of independent Cantonese womenfolk who are markedly different from other Chinese women of their times, this idea becomes a useful resource for another level of appropriation, that of foregrounding them as “pioneers” and “feminists”, which I address next.

II. “Pioneers” and “Feminists”

Given the atypical work position of samsui women who toiled alongside men in the construction industry (and other occupations), these women are often lauded and highlighted for their contributions to the physical infrastructure of Singapore’s built-up environment. As Chan opines: “It is important that they are not forgotten as the early builders of our nation” (2005, p. 59). Their roles in construction work span involvement in constructing buildings such as, among others, Alexandra Hospital (Partridge, 1998), Mandarin Hotel and Singapore Conference Hall, the last of which being a site they helped erect in the 1960s (Tan, 2003). Besides their pioneer status, they are also proclaimed to be “Singapore’s first Asian feminists” (Tan, 2003), or “alpha women of yesteryear” (Yip, 2006, p. 41). Tan notes:

But every samsui woman knows there is something within her that sets her apart
from other senior citizens. It is not just the obvious role she has played in the
building of Singapore’s physical history, as testified by school textbooks and local
soap operas. It is what she has come to stand for, as Singapore’s first Asian feminist.
She invoked, among various powers, the privilege to curse and swear just like burly
men. (2003)

The discourse of feminism, however sketchily imposed upon samsui women, has also garnered a nod from former Nominated Member of Parliament, Dr Kanwaljit Soin, who praised samsui women at a Lunar New Year lunch:

Singaporean women like to think we’ve achieved much in the past 30 years. But the
samsui women set our direction when they came here 100 years ago [sic]. I salute
them as the original Asian feminists. (The Straits Times, February 5, 2002)

Similarly, samsui women have also been mentioned by another former Nominated Member of Parliament, Braema Mathiaparanam, who urged that some commemoration of these women should be carried out on National Day, in order to remember their contributions.² In combination, framing samsui women as feminists adds towards celebrating the strength and resilience of women; in addition, these attributes would bode well in terms of how they represent values and virtues that the nation desires for its citizens in nation-building and the maintenance of a national identity. On the other hand, that samsui women are equated with feminism also concomitantly plays down the contributions of other female migrants of their time, including the black-and-white amahs (Cantonese for “domestic help”). Conceptually, this would also imply dynamics of inclusion and thereby exclusion in terms of the boundaries of memory making

During the 40th National Day Parade in 2005, it was reported in the local newspapers that two samsui women were invited to “occupy the seats of honour in the 10-float procession charting the milestones in Singapore’s 40 years of nation-building” (Boo, 2005). Consonant with the pioneer script that was employed towards reports based on the women, we are told in this newspaper article that the two samsui women were ”chosen … for being ‘pioneers’ who helped build some of Singapore’s most important buildings and roads” (Boo, 2005). A filmlet based on a samsui woman was also produced in the 2007 National Day celebrations marking Singapore’s 42nd anniversary of independence. In that clip, samsui woman Loke Tai Hoe was featured as having come from China in 1936, and after working for 42 years, her “efforts have finally paid off”; viewers see her sitting in the centre of a family portrait with her children and grandchildren. The following are Loke’s lines that she delivered in the filmlet:

It was 1936/ I came to Singapore with my mother-in-law/ I was only 18/ They said
there was money in Singapore/ that life was good/ But I only learnt that life was
harder when I got here/ Samsui women worked from dawn to dusk/ earning 50
cents a day/ We scrimped and saved/ all in the hope for a better life/ After 42 years
as a samsui woman/ my efforts have finally paid off/ and my kids have all grown up/
After toiling for my entire life/ I certainly have no regrets coming to Singapore.³

Apparently, the term “samsui women” hangs easily with those who appropriate them as “pioneers” or “feminists”. The quotes above also indicate how the media, through films such as this one, highlight the hardships that they have gone through, and finally emerge with “no regrets” in seeking a livelihood in Singapore. How do samsui women themselves react to these ways through which their lives have been appropriated? Do these terms rest well with the samsui women themselves? Or are these merely empty signifiers that we employ as an imposition on them? I take this up below, where I point out that the utilisation of these terms upon the women is not without ideological intent, employed by both the state and other institutions accordingly.

III. Elderly Women

Based on two samsui women, Koo depicts in her article their later years as frail, vulnerable and helpless. The first samsui woman is Gui Jie, who was 92 at the time of the interview with Koo, who describes Gui Jie thus:

Dressed in a grey blouse with flowers printed and black pants, her grey hair was
short and tidy; her small frame somehow made the wheelchair appear to have
plenty of room. (2006, p. 56)

The other samsui woman is Di Jie, who was three years younger:

Di Jie was temporarily staying at the Old People’s Home. As her application to
the subsidy from the government and the daughter of her sister could no longer
support her lodging fee of S$300 per month, Di Jie was trapped in a situation where
no one could take care of her anymore. She was worried and helpless … Her legs
were injured and she no longer had the ability to live alone. She had no relative or
family here. After a life of hardship and sorrow, all she wanted was to have a place to
stay and to live peacefully for the rest of her life. Is it too much to ask for? (2006, p. 57)

It is clear from Koo’s description of these two samsui ladies that she frames their current situation in a helpless and hapless manner, iterating their transition from being sturdy female construction workers to physically challenged elderly with little or no support.⁴

Similarly, in a local newspaper article, another samsui woman was mentioned as a recipient of home-care help from a local organisation:

She was once a robust samsui woman who could carry heavy loads effortlessly.
But at the age of 89, just moving from her bed to her wheelchair is a challenge for
Madam Heun Lin Yow. But she is lucky that her only son, Mr Lee Kwong Wah, 68, a
retired mechanic, is there for her. When her health started to deteriorate, Mr Lee had
to learn to carry, feed and bathe her … She has grown so dependent on him that if
he is out of her sight, she calls for him and tries to climb out of bed to look for him.
(Chan, 2003)

Additionally, samsui women have often been highlighted in the media as recipients of aid in various forms from charitable associations, receiving free medical checkups, being treated to Lunar New Year dinners and other special luncheons, among others (see Kee, 1996; Luo, 2005; Ramesh, 2006).⁵ For instance, Ramesh writes of the participation of samsui women in a community walkathon:

Nearly 6,000 elderly citizens took part in a mass walkathon in a community bid to
get out of loneliness … Participants included recent stroke patients and the famous
samsui women of the past. The event was aimed at showing that elderly loneliness
can be overcome through concerted effort…The organisers say post-retirement
life can be daunting if retired Singaporeans do not know how to maintain a healthy
mindset and remain connected with society. (2006)

In spite of their frailty, which is clearly a marked contrast to their earlier years, these women have often been presented as always assimilated, remembered and honoured for their contributions through such events. Samsui women have also been designated as a group for whom students carry out community service,⁶ and had similarly been included as participants in a Labour Day event organised by the National Trades Union Congress meant for “the needy, elderly and children”.

Aside from highlighting them as helpless or frail, other media reports of samsui women focus on their independence and alertness, as seen in a Chinese newspaper article. One 83-year-old samsui woman was reported as having saved her neighbour’s life, and was subsequently given an outstanding volunteer award. In the article, we learn that Madam He Yue Jin would usually gather with other neighbours near the lift landing of their apartments after breakfast for their usual daily chat. One day, Madam He realised that one of her neighbours had not turned up. She then went to this neighbour’s flat to see if she was fine. Upon her first knock on the door, Madam He heard a reply from her neighbour. Subsequent knocks, however, were not greeted with further replies. She then borrowed a hammer and forced open the door, and saw that her neighbour was lying on the floor. She quickly went back to her own flat and called the ambulance. Madam He was told later that had she not reacted as fast as she did, her neighbour might not have pulled through. As a token of appreciation, the neighbour offered Madam He a red packet, which she declined.⁷ Ostensibly, we are, through this example, apprised of samsui women not as elderly in need of help, but as elderly who are also able to lend a helping hand when the need arises.

IV. Overlapping Identities

In the preceding three sections, I have demonstrated how samsui women are presented through the categories of migrant women, pioneers and feminists, as well as elderly in need of help, both financially and physically. The confluence of some, if not all, of these categories are indicated as follows to illustrate how their identity undergoes a process of typification, developed and fused from the previous three categories of identity production.

In the chapter “Older Women: Planning for the Golden Years” in A Woman’s Place: The Story of Singapore Women (Wong & Leong, 1993), samsui women are described thus:

There were also other women who defied the convention of time and chose to stay
single and independent. There were the samsui women, petite and fragile-looking,
but strong enough to be labourers in building construction … These women
worked hard and were regarded to be almost as good as the men, not just in the
way they worked, but also in their ability to save and send money home. Working
women in those days might have worked in humble jobs that younger workers
today shun, but they remained fiercely independent and took great pride in the fact
that, not only did they support themselves, they even supported their families back
in their homeland. (1993, p. 61–62)

Similar descriptions can be found in another piece of writing produced by the Singapore Contractors Association Ltd (SCAL), titled “Tribute to our History”:

The lives and struggles of a construction worker is [sic] best reflected by the red-hooded Samsui women who played an important role in Singapore’s construction
industry. As restrictions were once imposed on male immigrants from povertystricken
China, the women came instead to take on the heavy work. The women,
clothed in black samfoo and a headgear, worked at construction sites from dawn to
dusk seven days a week, moving from project to project, chipping stones, mixing
cement mortar, carrying heavy loads, sweeping and cleaning. (1997, p. 17)

After having been lauded for the work that they did, these women are further described as elderly in need and recipients of social assistance in contemporary times:

The samsui women worked hard to rise above bad debts, opium-addicted husbands
or widowhood. Like many, Madam Fong lived a disciplined and thrifty life. Home
to her was a cubicle in Chinatown which she shared with two other elderly samsui
women. The three ‘samsui por’, are now too old to work and receive $90 each per
month from the Social Welfare Department. But Madam Fong and her two friends
are happy with what little they have and have saved enough to buy a place in an
old folks’ home. Many of these samsui women have since been resettled in Housing
Board flats. (1997, p. 17)

Finally, in the conclusion of the article, the women are then recognised for their contribution and position in the history of Singapore’s construction:

SCAL members who remember the yesteryears of construction in Singapore will
acknowledge that the labour provided by these samsui women was instrumental
in their success, allowing them to compete with British contractors for projects.
(1997, p. 17)

These quotes point to a conflation of varying identities of samsui women in media memory-making. Similar issues concerning their reasons for migrating, struggling against a multitude of hardships, eking out a living in Singapore as construction workers and finally retiring on social welfare, become typifications of how the history and memory of samsui women as a collective are generated. While readers receive a linear knowledge of these women from the day they arrived in Singapore, to their current retirement phase, many other experiences of samsui women are left obscured and unheard. My own research, which includes volunteer work with samsui women and other elderly, archival research, as well as speaking with (adopted) kin of these women (see Low, 2007b), indicate that they were more than just Chinese female migrants who toiled at construction sites and either went back to China to retire, or remained in Singapore.

Some samsui women also worked in other occupations – for example, as rubber factory workers – while others also adopted children or got married. Other experiences of the women, including the difficult times endured during the Japanese Occupation of Singapore in the 1940s and travelling back to Samsui county for a visit after a few decades (Lim, 1996), remain untapped and relegated to the background of popular memorialisation processes, or received little, if any, attention. Arising from such occlusion, then, what we know and learn of samsui women are hence fragmented bits of their multiple identities presented through selective remembrances. Such remembrances, therefore, bring about repeated productions of reductionist narratives that are conveniently reproduced time after time.

Moving beyond selective identities and fragmented experiences, it is also pertinent to probe into various ideological rhetorics that govern or motivate selective identity-framing of samsui women. For example, state appropriation of samsui women as pioneers and feminists reveals “claims” over these women in a bid to produce a heritage that Singaporeans can relate to. I discuss elsewhere, how samsui women have been appropriated in various ways through what I term “pioneer narratives”:

Dissemination of knowledge concerning these Chinese female migrants framed
within the discourse of samsui women as pioneers, can be better understood within
what I refer to as ‘pioneer narratives’ – a form of ‘historical recall script’ employed
by the state in order to manage and perpetuate a sense of heritage and therefore
collective identity. More importantly, virtues of hardwork, thrift, resilience and
perseverance are often highlighted in accounts of the samsui women, adding on
to the list of ‘desirable values’ which the state often emphasises upon for its citizens.
These pioneer narratives therefore, form as media of heritage for purposes of
instilling collective identities and therefore a sense of belonging to a ‘common past’.
(Low, 2007a, p. 6)

Such selection and framing of samsui women bring about skewed representations of their experiences, as Chang and Huang contend:

Nostalgia for images of … samsui women are certainly romanticised and shorn of
the painful realities that usually attend real events … Most of the lives of the samsui
women were also very painful, marked by backbreaking labour, meagre salaries and
exploitative employers. Public art and commemorative plaques are generally silent
on these matters. (2005, p. 278).

As a corollary, framing samsui women as “feminists” is also an interesting perspective. If one were to look more closely at who employs the term, then such appropriation may be further explicated contextually. Both Soin and Mathiaparanam were former directors of gender equality advocacy group Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE), with Soin serving between 1991 and 1993, and Mathiaparanam, between 2004 and 2006.⁸ Similarly, Singam, who was head of AWARE for the years 1987 to 1989 and 1994 to 1996, posed this observation alongside Chin in their book on Singapore Women Re-Presented:

Were these Cantonese women early feminists? They asserted their freedom to earn
and support themselves: they used the circumstances of the Pearl River silk industry
as a springboard for very radical change in what it had always meant to be a Chinese woman. From what they witnessed, marriage was a form of servitude, and to be avoided: they established a greatly respected breadwinner status in relation to their parents and often to the families of their married brothers as well – roles hitherto unheard of for a woman. (Chin & Singam, 2004, p. 106)

Presenting samsui women as pioneers is one issue. But framing them as feminists becomes an appropriation embroiled in another agenda. They are celebrated not only for their contributions in the construction industry, but also as icons of female independence, hence adding favourably towards championing women’s rights and causes. Over and above the moulding of samsui women into a feminist position, I would also suggest that such framing does not necessarily reflect upon all experiences of the women. As I have mentioned earlier, some of these women, for instance, were married and had children and grandchildren in Singapore.

What we receive from popular history, fundamentally, are partial perspectives (see Rock, 1976). In this sense, then, we should be concerned with moving beyond the four identity- categories, as it were, and towards a more robust and nuanced engagement with the life experiences of samsui women.

Concluding Remarks

It may be right to suggest that the direction of media constructions of samsui women utilises the four identity categories that appear to be presented in a state of permanence. In other words, the production of knowledge on samsui women seems to acquire a state of timeless autonomy that paradoxically stands outside their experiences through the various media of realisation, as discussed above. In order to piece together a more inclusionary and nuanced portrayal of samsui women, it is therefore pertinent to look beyond popular media memory and history, both of which produce knowledge about these women infragmented and dismembered ways. More crucially, life stories – of samsui women themselves as well as their kin – provide richer, more complex and fluid memories of varied experiences in the early days of Singapore.

My presentation of the four identity- categories fashioned in a linear manner is not a neutral one. Perhaps such linearity is a good way to remind ourselves that we are here talking about individual life experiences –- these women came to Singapore in their teens, and the surviving ones are currently octogenarians and nonagenarians. However, I am not suggesting that historiographical knowledge and production of their varied experiences are to be understood only through linearity. Instead, it is through laying out these four categories that avail further considerations of what happens in between, what are/were intercepting factors as they “progress” from one phase of their life to the next, and how they are consequently reshaping their own identities vis-à-vis China and living in Singapore. Were there tangential points (spaces in between) in their lives which hence brought about relocation or permanent settlement in Singapore? For example, the opportunity to return to Samsui at various points in their lives may have been a good or less desirable awakening, either in the form of a desire to return to their country of origin, or to realise, in China, that they no longer fit in with their familial members. In the words of Pamphilon, we ought to “foreground the individual dimensions of a life history”, and place “sociocultural dimensions … in the background for consideration and possible refocus” (1999, p. 396). Keeping in mind these varying inquisitions, it is thus crucial to manoeuvre ourselves beyond the four identity categories and not to regard them as ideal typifications of samsui women. Rock reasons:

Because no system of typifications is exhaustive, there must always be areas of life which lie outside a society’s stock of categories and are consequently free and “unregulated”. Such areas permanently escape documentation and publicly available reflection, but they nevertheless fuse the core of the interpretations which have to be made. (1976, p. 357)

While some works have emerged in recent years which provide further nuanced and more in-depth engagement with the everyday life experiences of samsui women in fulfilling Rock’s recommendation (for example, Low, 2005; Koo, 2006), more work of this nature needs to be produced in order to de-fragment the experiences, or rather, our knowledge concerning the life trajectories and experiences of samsui women. Among those samsui women whom I worked with in this study, some have replied – when I asked what they thought of being appropriated and constantly interviewed by the media – that “whatever I know, I will tell”. In my archival encounters with oral histories of samsui women at the National Archives of Singapore, some samsui women respondents have also indicated that they were fine with others accessing their oral histories, for they have “nothing to hide”. Another samsui woman remarked: “Never mind, up to you [if you want to allow others to hear this interview]. This is a proper job that I did, never steal or grab”.⁹

Indeed, the various ways through which the media have appropriated and presented samsui women should also be evaluated in terms of how the women themselves react to these representations. Brief mention of their reactions, as I have annotated here, points towards the idea that perhaps, memory makers such as media institutions and others are the ones singling out the experiences of samsui women as singular and nothing short of extraordinary. Samsui women were here merely to seek a livelihood and escape the dire situations of destitution and poverty in China. As one samsui woman states: “I had nothing to eat in China, so I came to Singapore.” Another says: “We knew it was manual labour, but didn’t mind. We thought about [earning] money every day. Every day we worked for money. They give one cent more means we get one cent more”.10 Herein lies the problem of how memory making and remembrances of the past becomes a process of selectivity in presenting the past in the landscape of Singapore’s history.

This paper forms a part of my ongoing PhD research on social memory and historiography of samsui women in Singapore, and is a preliminary article written for general readership. I would like to thank Kevin Blackburn for his constructive comments on an earlier draft of the paper.