The Chinese Vegetarian Foodscape of the 1950s–60s

[Music playing] 

Jimmy
Before Impossible meatballs and oatmeal lattes were here, vegetarianism in Singapore was promoted by Buddhist nuns through their restaurants, temples and cookbooks. Through their efforts, they made vegetarian food more accessible in Singapore. 

I’m Jimmy Yap, and with me to talk about how these religious Chinese women promoted vegetarianism is Kelvin Tan. Kelvin wrote about these nuns in BiblioAsia and was a guest in an episode of the National Library’s cooking show From Book to Cook. In that episode he made vegetarian soon kueh using a recipe from the temple Hai Inn See. Welcome to BiblioAsia+, Kelvin. How are you? 

Kelvin
I’m good. Hi, Jimmy. Thanks for having me today. 

Jimmy
My pleasure. Nowadays, you know, vegetarianism is very popular. We have dairy-free milk, we have tempeh burgers, we have lots of meat substitutes. But it wasn’t always like this, right? Vegetarianism didn’t used to be mainstream. And, you know, the first few Chinese vegetarian restaurants were set up in the 1940s and 50s. But tell me about, you know, these restaurants and the people who set them up. 

Kelvin
So, in the 1940s and 50s, you’re right, you have a sort of – pioneers of Chinese vegetarian restaurants that came up, but of course, we know from records the earliest one was actually opened by South Asians, or Indians. 

Jimmy
These are vegetarian restaurants? 

Kelvin
Yes, vegetarian restaurants. 

Jimmy
But the earliest Chinese vegetarian restaurants were in the 1940s. 

Kelvin
Yeah. The earliest we can trace is 1946, at 25 Tanjong Pagar Road. 

Jimmy
What was the name of the restaurant? 

Kelvin
Loke Woh Yuen Vegetarian Restaurant or known as Liu He Yuan. Yeah. So of course, the women behind these restaurants were actually prominent figures, abbesses of vegetarian temples and nunneries. So, in religious studies, in history, in historical studies, actually, it’s quite hard to define the women of this generation. So broadly speaking, we could group them as Chinese Buddhist women. They were a closeknit sisterhood of Chinese women who practiced the tradition of Mahayana Buddhism, some of them practicing a syncretic mix of Taoism and Confucianism. But there’s a long answer to it; hence it’s actually a very complex but a very fascinating story. 

Jimmy
But they were Chinese, and they were Buddhists, and they were women. 

Kelvin
Yeah. So, actually, they sort of traversed between, like you said, the three categories. 

Jimmy
What do we know about that restaurant? 

Kelvin
Loke Woh Yuen was actually set up by five Buddhist women in 1946, or in the postwar period in the immediate years. They found it very hard to, sort of, find breakfast items because they [were] vegetarians, unlike other non-vegetarians who could easily sort of buy breakfast items, let’s say, kopi [and] toast, from the nearby Tanjong Pagar area. 

Hence, they came up with this idea of setting up a restaurant. But they had a find a place, so they actually saw this coffee shop, called Yi Tsi. Yi [refers to] Yi Pao, the Yi, that means Ipoh. And then Tsi is just a shop. So, Yi Tsi cafe. So, they got this premises from a fellow Buddhist – I think that they had connections with and then sort of bought over the rights from this fellow Buddhist – and then they opened this restaurant in 1946 at 25 Tangong Pagar Road. 

So, what made this restaurant distinct from the others that came on board later? It was coined as the master of Chinese vegetarian restaurants. It was managed and owned by Chinese Buddhist women, in particular, not the vegetarian nuns that we know. It’s mostly householders or Chi Tze Buddhists. As well as Bhikkhunis, or what we call ordained nuns. So, these are usually nuns of an institutional order or monastic order as well as some non-institutional affiliation. They set up this restaurant and then even down to the cashiers, the cooks, they were all just women. 

Jimmy
It’s very interesting. I guess not many women went into business. Yeah, during that period. And then suddenly these women set up a business and only employ women. 

Kelvin
Yeah, they only employed women. So, the most famous one was a chief cook, Madam Wong Sin Fong. She was quite well known in the local Buddhist circles and the local Chinese community for her eclectic cooking skills. 

Jimmy
Tell me about this restaurant. What was it known for? I mean, obviously vegetarian food, but what kind of vegetarian food? Like is it Cantonese style or… 

Kelvin
The pioneers of Chinese vegetarian restaurants actually specialised in Cantonese cuisines. 

Jimmy
They were hungry, and there was no place to eat vegetarian food. So, they decided to set up a restaurant. And how did they do? Did the restaurant do well? 

Kelvin
It was a success, at least from the earliest newspaper article that I saw in Nanyang Siang Pau in 1948, so two years after its inception. There are a few signature items that they sort of describe in the article, but I think one was vegetarian shark fin, made of, interestingly, maize as well as asparagus. So, I think it was popular. It was said that the restaurant was occasionally quite packed, for example, during of course traditional Chinese gatherings, weddings, banquets, to the extent that they had to set up tents outside of the five-foot-way onto the main road along Tanjong Pagar Road. 

It was quite popular among tourists, among the local Buddhist circles, that they coined it the master of Chinese vegetarian cuisine. 

Jimmy
Subsequently other restaurants came up as well. Fut Sai Kai, right? 

Kelvin
Fo Shi Jie is the translation in Mandarin. 

Jimmy
Okay. So how was this restaurant different from Loke Woh Yuen? 

Kelvin
So interestingly, Loke Woh Yuen was known for the restaurant standard. The traditional bearer of Chinese vegetarian cuisine. So Fut Sai Kai came in in 1953, aiming at a more price-conscious clientele. 

Jimmy
Just like me. 

Kelvin
In one of the articles that I read in Nanyang Siang Pau, in 1953 the menu offered dim sum, noodles and some other dishes. They were actually priced quite cheaply, like a few cents to a dollar plus. So, it’s actually aimed at street food prices compared to the more… In the words of Violet Oon, a food reviewer for Straits Times and [writer of] some of the newspaper articles, Loke Woh Yuen was quite expensive in terms of the menu, in terms of the banquet. But Fut Sai Kai came in with a more price-conscious mindset. It was actually set up by a group of vegetarian nuns led by Kao Tian-gu, or Gao Tian Gu. 

Jimmy
Who was she? 

Kelvin
She was quite an interesting figure. So, the restaurant opened, let’s say at 11 a.m., she would wake up early in the morning, go to the markets to buy the freshest ingredients and then when she came to work, she’d work an entire day. 

From what I read, she only started having her meals at 3 pm. So, imagine how hectic and how passionate she was about her career. She started her vegetarian diet at the age of 16. So, she came from Guangdong province [China] She later founded Fu Shan Tang, this temple, in Guangdong. 

Jimmy
Oh, so before she came to Singapore? 

Kelvin
Yeah, it was said she came to Singapore at the age of 20, so I’m not quite sure. But we know that she founded this temple, and then when she came to Singapore, she was working. It was said that her business fortunes failed, and then she had to recoup her losses or savings again. Then she ventured with the other vegetarian nuns to open this restaurant in 1953, when she had enough savings to open this restaurant. 

Jimmy
And where was this restaurant located? 

Kelvin
Kitchener Road. 

Jimmy
So, in having these restaurants, obviously, it serves the Chinese Buddhist community because they want to eat vegetarian food. And, you know, it’s now available in these restaurants for them to eat. But that helps obviously to spread vegetarianism. But apart from restaurants, they published cookbooks as well, which of course makes sense. Maybe you can tell us a bit about that. 

Kelvin
I hoped I could find cookbooks from the three restaurants that I [mentioned] earlier but unfortunately none [that I could find]. But yes, cookbooks by Chinese Buddhist women who were abbesses of the temples. So, one prominent one I can raise is Top 100 Vegetarian Delights. 

Jimmy
Who was it by? 

Kelvin
By Venerable Ho Yuen Hoe. He Ren Hao. 

Jimmy
And which temple was she from? 

Kelvin
Ling Chee Cheng Sia in Kovan. So Venerable Ho, like I said, joined the ranks of Chinese female pioneers in Singapore. She was known as Singapore’s grand dame of charity. It means that she advocated for charitable causes. And she actually came up with the idea of Man Fut Tong nursing home. Man Fut Tong was a temple, but she came up with this nursing home concept in 1969. She was known for raising funds from selling vegetarian food at dharma assemblies in the Phor Kark See monastery on Bright Hill. When the nursing home needed to expand in the 1990s, I think she raised about S$10,000. But if we open the cookbook and see the foreword she penned, her main purpose was actually to share the secrets of living healthily and longevity to as many people as possible in her own words, because she believed that renewed concentration and vitality helps healthy aging. 

Jimmy
So vegetarianism wasn’t just a question of religious principle, but also it had health benefits as well. 

Kelvin
So interestingly, she wrote another book, which was an account of her life, A Life for Others. She also gave cooking classes to housewives. It was written that she even downplayed religion, but more to focus on conserving her temples, cooking techniques, recipes so that they could be shared widely. 

Jimmy
Okay, so I mean that’s very important because cookbooks and cooking classes are ways in which people can spread knowledge and get other people also to start cooking vegetarian food, right? 

In the episode of From Book to Cook, where you were a guest cook, you made a vegetarian soon kueh, which was originally produced by abbess of the temple Hai Inn See. So, tell us about it. 

Kelvin
First of all, Hai Inn See was a Minnan vegetarian hall. 

Jimmy
Where was it located? 

Kelvin
In Nam Sam village area. 

Jimmy
Is it still there? 

Kelvin
Yeah, it’s still there. So today it’s run by monks mostly. Yeah. Because, I think, the third abbess passed on, and then it was transferred to the monk community. 

Yang herself found that her backyard had plenty of this ingredient called bamboo shoots. So, bamboo shoots translate into the soon term for the soon kueh. The devotees would sort of send offerings, or what we call the xiang yu qian. They would make donations to the temple, then they would have the soon kueh at the same time. 

In 1960s, a nearby coffee shop owner approached her and then asked her if he could set up a stall, you know, in a nearby coffee shop and then she agreed. Then interestingly the soon kueh was sold at the coffee shop at a price, quite cheap, at about 5 cents. 

So, soon it became a hit, not just as a business opportunity for her, but a hit with the local residents. So, from the records in the periodical, it was said that the former devotees and customers always have fond memories of this kueh. A taste of nostalgia. 

Jimmy
Those three vegetarian restaurants you talk about in your article in BiblioAsia, they're not around anymore. What can we say has been the legacy? Now that you've studied them, we know what has happened since. 

Kelvin
One for sure is that the most important legacy will be their strong beliefs in Buddhist philanthropy, in education, not just Nantah, but in Buddhist education. They were proponents of reforming Buddhist education in Singapore. Hence, the two restaurants Fut Sai Kai and Loke Wo Yuan actually teamed up with other vegetarian nuns in Singapore as high as other prominent Buddhist institutions, like the temples of some of the abbesses that we mentioned. 

Chen Ta Tsien, Ling Ta Tsien. So, they actually helped to organise fundraisers together with, like I said, the other vegetarian nun community, to help the founding and expansion of two prominent Buddhist educational institutes in Singapore. First was Maha Bodhi School. Maha Bodhi School was Singapore's first Buddhist [school]. I mean, according to this, today’s context, primary school, the other one was the first female Buddhist seminary in Singapore for higher education, Buddhist education, which was the Singapore Girls’ Buddhist Institute, or what we call xinjiapo nüzi fo xueyuan. 

Jimmy
Where was that? 

Kelvin
Maha Bodhi School was opened in 1946, due for expansion in 1958. For the xinjiapo nüzi fo xueyuan, or the Singapore Girls’ Buddhist Institute, it was opened in 1962. 

Jimmy
Tell me a little bit about your research process. I mean, obviously you managed to interview the nuns and all that. What resources did you use? 

Kelvin
The Mapping the Female Religious Heritage project was quite difficult because some of the temples and nuns were quite hesitant. They were in their old age, the surviving vegetarian nuns, and some of them preferred not to be disturbed by others. 

The easiest way was to do archival research. I went to NLB’s repository first. One is actually NewspaperSG, the best resource that we could trace, in fact, the most important one. The repository itself is very good in finding the earliest records of vegetarian restaurants, their menus, advertisements, etc. 

I [also] went to the Lee Kong Chian Reference Library and that opened another new repository for me. Cookbooks, like I said previously, Top 100 Vegetarian Delights, Venerable Ho’s accounts like A Life for Others by Uma Rajanand also some other vegetarian temples in Singapore. 

Jimmy
Oh okay. 

Kelvin
We already found cookbooks, we found temple periodicals, which could help to map the heritage of Chinese female, sort of, religious heritage in Singapore. What about we hear personally, from the surviving nuns themselves? Then I went to look at the National Archives. So, oral history records. There was a very prominent one by Venerable Seck Cheng Charn or Jing Chan Fazhi. She was a disciple of Venerable Ho Yuen Hoe, in terms of artistic culinary skills. 

She opened the restaurant in 1984, along Changi Road, called Ru Yi Vegetarian Restaurant, which was one of the last surviving traditional restaurants that was opened by Chinese Buddhist women. So, inheriting her legacy from Venerable Ho. You could park the Ru Yi Restaurant as part of the heritage of Chinese female restaurateurs of a Buddhist tradition. 

Jimmy
Right. 

Kelvin
Because for Chinese Buddhist women we know that they led a very pious, celibate as well as a very autonomous life. The late 19th and early 20th centuries were a time of female oppression. So, the lack of female voice in a gendered space, actually, these women were able to access the autonomy. 

And in this case, the closest comparison is actually the majie, because for vegetarian nuns and majies, they observe a sort of hair-combing ceremony, the So Hei ceremony, whereby they observe a vow of celibacy. So, they vow not to have any marital relations. Hence, some of the majie actually converted to become vegetarian nuns. 

Jimmy
I see. There’s a very strong Cantonese element in all of this. Why is that? Because the majie are Cantonese also, right? 

Kelvin
Yeah. Hence, like I said, to give you some possible explanation. One is that some of the majie eventually became Cantonese vegetarian nuns. And then we know the majie came from Guangdong province in the 1930s. The second part: most of the earliest female restaurateurs were Cantonese. They came from Guangdong province, and then they eventually subscribed to the householder tradition. So, since they hailed from that province, they also got some of the Cantonese heritage and infused it into the cuisines. So, there’s actually a stark comparison to the restaurant halls that were part of the Minnan or Hokkien heritage. 

Jimmy
That’s very interesting. What are you doing now? 

Kelvin
Well, I’m a researcher at the Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre researching Singapore’s Chinese history. But in my free time, I’m aiming to contribute a piece to BiblioAsia again. Hopefully the readers will like it. 

Jimmy
What will this one be about? 

Kelvin
So, I was doing the research for the first article. Then I thought about it, I read the newspaper articles of Fut Sai Kai, Loke Woh Yuen, Bodhi Lin, and interestingly, in the 1980s, they faded away in popular memory. I was wondering to myself, well, why is this the case and who were the successors? So of course, one successor, a clear lineage, was the Ru Yi restaurant opened by this disciple of Venerable Ho. 

The second one is about 150 hawker stalls that opened, sprung up across the island and then that added to the mix. And then where did they get their supplies from? From foodstuff suppliers and supermarkets. So, it was a vibrant scene actually driven by a pent-up demand because we know in the 1980s, soaring incomes, fast food chains, A&W, McDonald’s, KFC, as well as affluent lifestyles. 

So that that prompted a shift in consumption patterns and, of course, sort of lifestyle changes in Chinese Singaporeans and also the Singaporean community at large. 

I hope the readers will like it. 

Jimmy
I’m sure they will. Okay. We’ve come to the end of the main interview. We always end our interviews by asking, you know, light-hearted questions. So, let me ask you now that you are a soon kueh expert, what is the next vegetarian dish that you are planning to make? 

Kelvin
I’m thinking of vegetarian chicken curry. 

Jimmy
Okay. Why vegetarian chicken curry? 

Kelvin
I was inspired by another cookbook again from Madam Lew Nyok Thye, a proponent of nutritive vegetarianism. So, like I said you know in the 1980s we had a generation of vegetarian converts or, what you call practicing vegetarians. They left a legacy for women to take on vegetarian culinary skills and to fit into the landscape. 

So, Madam Lew was that proponent, and she compiled her recipes into two cookbooks. One was Imperial Chef, one was vegetarian confinement recipes that you can find in NLB’s [collection]. One of the recipes was vegetarian curry chicken. So, I thought, “Hmm vegetarian curry chicken. What would it be made of?” I suppose soy will come in; I suppose gluten flour will come in. I just wanted to see, to try my hand in the future. 

Jimmy
Yeah, well, not just the expectations of Madam Lew. Your mother also. Yeah, well, we’ll be expecting you to make something delicious. 

Kelvin
Beyond soon kueh. 

Jimmy
Because she’s sick of soon kueh.
Complete this sentence. Food is… 

Kelvin
Eclectic. 

Jimmy
Eclectic. Okay. All right. Well, it is because especially in Singapore, we have so many choices that we can go to. 

Kelvin, thank you for joining me on BiblioAsia+. So, read his article on these restaurants and these women in Asia. And don’t miss watching Kelvin make the best ever vegetarian soon kueh ever made, on From Book the Cook on YouTube. All links and all the information about the show can be found in the show notes or on the BiblioAsia website at BiblioAsia.nlb.gov.sg. 

Okay, So Kelvin, thank you once again. 

Kelvin
Thank you. It’s my pleasure. 

Jimmy
If you’ve enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the podcast and the BiblioAsia newsletter. Thank you for joining me on BiblioAsia+.

Resources

Kelvin Tan, “How Chinese Buddhist Women Shaped the Food Landscape in Singapore,” BiblioAsia 18, no. 2 (July–September 2022).

Ho Yuen Hoe (Venerable Chin Yam), oral history interview by Chiang Wai Fong, 13 April 1998, mp3 and transcript, 03:26:53, National Archives of Singapore (accession no. 002012). 

Lew Nyok Thye 刘砡娣, Yuchu tianxia zhi su qi muzi 御厨天下之素起母子 [Imperial chef] (Singapore: Imperial Chef, 2015). 

Uma Rajan, A Life for Others (Singapore : Man Fut Tong Nursing Home, 2007) (From National Library, Singapore, call no. R 361.95957 RAJ-[LHL]) 

Shi Chin Yam 释净润, Bai wei cai gen Xiang 百味菜根香 [Top 100 vegetarian delights] (Singapore: Man Fut Tong Old People’s Home, 1998). (From National Library, Singapore, call no. RSING 641.5636 SHI). 

Soon Yoke Lian (Venerable Seck Cheng Charn), oral history interview by Au Yue Pak, 5 August 2004, mp3 and transcript, 01:03:30, National Archives of Singapore (accession no. 002872)

This episode of BiblioAsia Podcast was hosted by Jimmy Yap and produced by Soh Gek Han. Sound engineering was done by One Dash. The background music "Di Tanjong Katong" was composed by Ahmad Patek and performed by Chords Haven. Special thanks to Kelvin for coming on the show.

The BiblioAsia Podcast by the National Library Singapore tells stories about Singapore history.