Tracing the Early Maritime Roots of Singapore’s Chinese Communities

By Gregory Sattler

Despite evidence from textual and archaeological sources showing that the history of Chinese sojourners in Southeast Asia can be traced to over one thousand years ago, there is a common misconception among the greater public that their history in Southeast Asia began with the arrival of European seafarers around the 16th or 17th century, or with Admiral Zheng He’s (郑和, 1371–1433) expeditions during the early Ming (1368–1644) dynasty. 

In fact, recent scholarship provides many details about the Chinese seafarers who were active in the region from an early time.¹ As such, with a greater understanding of the long-established presence of Chinese people and communities in Southeast Asia, new questions emerge about the heritage of Singapore’s Chinese communities. For instance, were Singapore’s Chinese inhabitants merely passive recipients of culture transmitted from China and the Western world over the last several centuries, or did they also inherit an older culture unique to the region? And to what extent did the Peranakans (those with mixed Chinese-Malay ancestry) perpetuate the customs and traditions of the earliest Chinese in the region? Answers to such questions must invariably derive from continued research on early overseas Chinese communities, though a comparison of the earliest Chinese communities and seafarers (c. 11th–13th centuries) with more recent history (c. 19th–20th centuries) provides immediate insights. 

This essay will form such a comparison, with the goal of identifying strains of cultural continuity. The work will highlight that the Chinese who did eventually inhabit Singapore maintained distinct cultural characteristics that were also prevalent in earlier overseas Chinese communities located throughout maritime Asia, and that many of those characteristics have remained identifiable until recent times or the present day. Moreover, such characteristics can often be identified specifically in the early history of the Malacca Straits region and its immediate surroundings. This essay will consider four aspects in which long-spanning cultural continuity in Singapore’s Chinese communities are most apparent. They are the demographics of Chinese language and dialect groups overseas; the value of education in trade communities; cooperation with those of non-Chinese ethnicity; and the use of temples as centres for community organisation. This work will also focus mainly on the lives and activities of Chinese traders, as they feature much more prominently in both early and recent sources. This was largely because they captained ships that sailed throughout the region and led the Chinese communities that were established on land.

To provide some historical context about the importance of Singapore and the Malacca straits, frequent maritime traffic in the area is noted in records like Daoyi Zhilüe (岛夷志略, a record of Wang Dayuan’s 汪大渊 travels compiled in 1349) and Sejarah Melayu (a chronicle of Malay sultanates and legends compiled in the early 17th century), though long-distance travel through the passage dates to before the 8th century. The Straits area was located along the main shipping routes that connected Chinese, Indian and Middle Eastern polities, and thus major trade hubs and entrepôts gained prominence from catering to the merchants, sailors, pirates, monks and labourers who passed through. The rich ethnic diversity of the region is also acknowledged in many Arabic and Chinese language sources of the 9th to 14th centuries.² Therefore, while settlements in Singapore existed over the past several centuries under Malay or British rule, the heritage, culture and experiences of the island’s inhabitants also drew from similar hubs of earlier times in the greater Straits area, not least because populations were known to migrate from one port to another in times of danger, upheaval or opportunity.³ Singapore’s early colonial population was comprised mainly of such peoples, who relocated there for economic opportunities or to avoid the less favorable treatment of nearby rulers and administrators. 

One of the earliest written records of settlement in Singapore mentions Chinese people living together with other ethnic groups. A description of Longyamen (龙牙门, considered by many scholars to be present-day Keppel Harbour) in the 14th-century Daoyi Zhilüe states simply that “Chinese people live among the men and women there” (男女兼中国人居之).⁴ Archeological evidence also supports this description of Chinese and other ethnic groups living on the island in the 14th century, with the prevalent theory being that the island’s population eventually relocated to Malacca in the decades that followed.⁵ Singapore is also described in the 17th-century Sejarah Melayu as a great city with a large foreign population.⁶ By the time the British arrived in 1819, the island was sparsely populated, as earlier inhabitants had long since reestablished themselves in nearby ports; however, even at that time, Teochews (Chinese from the Chaozhou 潮州 area of eastern Guangdong) operated around 20 gambier plantations there.⁷

Demographics of Chinese Language and Dialect Groups

According to data from the early first millennium and the most recent census of Singapore (2020), one of the most obvious aspects of cultural continuity is the composition of Chinese language group demographics. Simply put, the demographics of overseas Chinese groups approximately a thousand years ago were very much like they are in present day Singapore (see Table 1).⁸ While conducting my dissertation research, I compiled a database of biographies for approximately 350 Chinese sea merchants who were active in East Asia, Southeast Asia, India and West Asia from the 9th to 13th centuries. Of these merchants, the geographic origins of about a third could be ascertained. In Table 1, the backgrounds of these groups are ranked from the most to the least common according to their descriptions in 11th to 13th century primary sources and in the Department of Statistics of Singapore’s 2020 census.   

Hokkiens and Cantonese
From the data, it is immediately clear that Hokkiens (those with ancestry from the southern part of China’s Fujian province) formed the largest group of overseas Chinese from the 11th to 13th centuries, just as they form the largest group of Chinese in Singapore and many other Southeast Asian countries today. During that earlier period, the majority of Hokkiens who travelled overseas were from the southern Fujian port of Quanzhou (泉州) and its vicinity, with smaller numbers coming from nearby Zhangzhou (漳州).¹¹

Cantonese people (mainly from the central and western Guangdong province) were the third largest group. Unfortunately, since many textual sources only make vague mention of Min (闽, also referring to Fujian) or Yue (粤, also referring to Guangdong) sea merchants without providing details about the specific prefectures or counties they were from, it is often not possible to distinguish between Cantonese from the Guangzhou area in central Guangdong and Teochews from the Chaozhou area of eastern Guangdong. This distinction is important because both groups maintained distinct languages and customs – as they do in the present day. The language and customs of Teochews are, in fact, much closer to those of the people of southern Fujian. Several records do specifically describe sea merchants and ships from Guangzhou, which seems to be the port most Cantonese merchants departed from.¹² Although no early records mention merchants from Chaozhou specifically, the Chaozhou area was a major producer of export ceramics from 1050 to 1150.¹³ As regions that mass produced export commodities (such as ceramics) for sea trade were also usually the hometowns of sea merchants, it is likely that at least some Teochews settled in ports or cities in Southeast Asia in the early first millennium. 

Chinese texts state that polities in and around the Straits area, particularly Srivijaya and Shepo (southeast Sumatra and Java, respectively) hosted the most lucrative and popular markets for Chinese sea merchants. However, relatively little information on this region in early centuries exists, in comparison to the histories of polities in East Asia, as there are very few surviving early textual records from archipelagic Southeast Asia. It is thus fortunate that recently discovered copper plate inscriptions from Muara Jambi (in southeastern Sumatra), dating between the 11th and 12th centuries, provide some insight into the backgrounds of people who were trading there.¹⁴ The inscriptions discuss a shipment of Chinese goods to Buddhist temples in India. Although the inscriptions were written in Old Malay, one word is not of known Malay, Sanskrit or Tamil origin. Upon careful consideration and analysis, it was determined that this word was a phonological match with the Hokkien pronunciation of the Chinese word 丹朱 (danzhu, pronounced tanchu in Hokkien) meaning “cinnabar” (or mercury sulfide, a mineral sought after for its red pigment), a common export item from China at that time. The discovery compliments several Chinese sources that record that Chinese merchants who went to Southeast Asia were from Fujian and Guangdong.¹⁵

Hakkas
The term “Hakkas” did not exist from the 11th to 13th centuries (it only came into use in the 17th century), so the ancestors of such people would have been grouped as “Cantonese” or “Yue” in the same way that Teochews were. The term “Yue” described the entire region of Guangdong, and the ancestors of many Hakka people were residing in northern Guangdong at this time. There is one example of a sea merchant from the northern inland part of Guangdong, a man from Nanxiong (南雄),¹⁶ which is an area with close linguistic links to the Hakka language. 

Hainanese
As for Hainan, this area was commonly visited by Hokkien merchants from the 11th century.¹⁷ Considering that most Hainanese speak a dialect of Min, it would be apt to tie long-spanning Hainan ancestry with those of Hokkiens, in addition to people native to Hainan Island such as the Li (黎) ethnic group. 

Sanjiang
Until the 11th century, merchants from Zhejiang province were by far the most common merchant group mentioned in textual sources. They came to be shut out of overseas trade in the early 11th century, though it appears that, until that time, they were mainly active in East Asia due to their closer proximity to Japanese and Korean ports.¹⁸ By colonial times, Singaporeans referred to people from the several provinces north of Fujian as “Sanjiang” 三江 people (those from Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Jiangxi). However, such people only ever formed less than 2 percent of Singapore’s Chinese population. 

Probably the largest difference between recent Singapore demographics and the overseas Chinese of the distant past is that in earlier times, Fuzhou (also known as Foochow) merchants were the second-most active group overseas, whereas in Singapore they never comprised more than 2 percent of the Chinese population.¹⁹ This may be because Fuzhou was less deeply integrated into the labour recruitment networks that sent workers overseas during the 19th century than southern Fujian and Guangdong were. One final observation is that of the 350 profiles of sea merchants that I made, only one of them was from Northern China.²⁰ However, upon closer examination, this merchant had a Korean name and not a Chinese one. Until recent times, northern Chinese were simply not involved in private overseas trade, and did not appear to have established communities overseas.

Education

Education is another area where we can see a great degree of cultural continuity connecting Singapore’s Chinese communities with the more distant past. Sulaymān the Merchant, in his observations of the port of Guangzhou in c. 851, said, “The Chinese, whether poor or rich, young or old, all learn how to form letters and to write”.²¹ Similarly, Assistant Resident of Singapore, J.D. Vaughn, said in c. 1854, “The Chinese are keenly alive to the benefits of a good education, and every man of any means has a teacher for his children residing on the premises, who daily imparts the knowledge of Chinese classics to his pupils. The poor do their utmost to save enough out of their hard earnings to maintain their children at the schools established in the Colony…”²² Although these observations of Chinese communities in sea trade ports made by non-Chinese were almost exactly 1,000 years apart, they highlight how education was commonplace in Chinese trade ports, and that even low-income families strove to educate their children. 

Many of the Chinese merchants who ventured overseas from the 9th century until recent times often had high levels of literacy and formal education.²³ There are dozens of examples of such figures in early texts – many of them wrote poetry or were well-read in the Chinese classics and histories. In countries with traditions of Chinese writing in the present-day locations of Japan, Korea and Vietnam, sea merchants would often impress courts and leaders with their literary abilities. One such merchant, a certain Shen Daogu (沈道古), was recorded in Japanese sources as exchanging poetry with government officials and transmitting the works of the famed poet Bo Juyi (白居易) to the Japanese court in 838. In Southeast Asia, these merchants used their knowledge of Chinese histories to advise local rulers on matters of diplomacy and trade with Chinese courts. We know that literate and educated Chinese in the vicinity of the Straits area worked closely with the ruler of Srivijaya, Cūḍāmaṇivarman, as far back as the year 1003.²⁴

Furthermore, I have thus far counted 10 unique (non-export) Chinese writing implements that were recovered from shipwrecks in Southeast Asia dating from the 9th to 11th centuries.²⁵ Such items include inkstones and water droppers. I believe that in most cases these items belonged to educated Chinese merchants, who were frequently mentioned in Japanese and Korean sources at this time, and that in addition to writing for the purpose of correspondence and partaking in literary pursuits, some individuals also undertook clerical duties aboard ships. In later periods, we see that this was a common job aboard trade ships with Chinese crews.²⁶ Perhaps the most famous person to hold such a position was the financier Seah Eu Chin (discussed below), who served as a clerk on trade ships before building his business empire in Singapore.²⁷ 

The reason for the abundance of such examples of literacy among Chinese sea merchants, especially in comparison to non-Chinese merchants, can be traced to the Tang (618–907) and Song (960–1279) dynasties, when such figures were among or aspired to be among the most influential individuals in their communities (both in China and overseas). The greatest degree of social status was earned by participating in or passing civil service examinations, and preparation for the examinations began at a young age. Merchants who demonstrated high levels of education were often those who did not pass the highly competitive examinations and thus turned to commerce for their livelihoods. Nevertheless, some were able to pass provincial-level examinations (which took place before the higher-level examinations in the capital), which was likewise a remarkable accomplishment that raised one’s status on a local level. Demonstrating education allowed one to be regarded as cultured and worthy of respect, and as such, even merchants who never passed local or provincial examinations were often described as chushi (处士, reclusive scholars), which referred to learning and high character for those without government office or a prestigious title. 

The records of Singapore under British rule provide even more details of how overseas Chinese communities valued education. Like in earlier centuries, the overseas Chinese communities in Singapore and the region were led by successful Chinese merchants who were often also philanthropists. Their philanthropy was primarily focused on the construction, maintenance and administration of schools, which mostly served students of middle or lower income groups.²⁸ This was one of the most common forms of philanthropy among influential Chinese in Singapore, as is evident throughout much of Song Ong Siang’s One Hundred Years’ History of the Chinese in Singapore (compiled in 1919),  and it was practiced as early as the first decade of Singapore’s establishment, when two small Cantonese schools and a Hokkien school were established from private income.²⁹  

Some of the most well-known Chinese businessmen in Singapore were also highly educated. For instance, Seah Eu Chin, one of Singapore’s wealthiest businessmen of the mid- to late-19th century, was a highly educated son of a minor official in China. His intellect was respected both within Singapore’s Chinese communities and among British colonial administrators. When Seah retired at the age of 60, he spent his remaining years studying Chinese literature and contributing articles to academic journals.³⁰ Another prominent figure among Singapore-Chinese was Lee Kong Chian. One of the richest men in Singapore in the mid-20th century, he was a schoolteacher before he made his fortune as a banker and rubber tycoon.³¹ Lee donated much of his wealth to education initiatives after he became a successful businessman.³²  

Other examples of Singapore locals attaining high levels of academic distinction include one individual earning the extremely competitive jinshi (進士) degree, which was the highest academic degree in imperial China, and two instances of locals earning juren (举人) degrees, which was the next highest degree.³³ Quite a few men and women from Singapore’s Chinese communities were also awarded the prestigious Queen’s Scholarship, with the University of Cambridge being a particularly popular choice among those looking to study in England.³⁴ Others had their education financed by either individual business leaders or business leaders from within their respective clan associations (also known as 会馆, huiguan).³⁵ Even today, one of the main objectives of Singapore’s various clan associations is to finance and award academic scholarships. For example, the Singapore Hokkien Huay Kuan is notable for overseeing a range of bilingual schools and awarding the Hokkien Foundation–SUTD Scholarship (SUTD is the Singapore University of Technology and Design).³⁶

Cooperation with People of Diverse Backgrounds

Mixed Marriages
Another aspect of Straits inhabitants that predates recorded history is frequent cooperation and intermarriage with those of different ethnic groups and backgrounds. Mixed marriages were commonly practiced by overseas Chinese throughout maritime Asia, which is evident in some of the earliest textual descriptions of them. For instance, there are several examples of merchants with Chinese fathers and Japanese mothers around Hakata (Fukuoka), Japan, in the 11th and 12th centuries.³⁷ Chinese sources also describe a wealthy Chinese merchant who married the daughters of two influential courtiers of Champa (southern Vietnam) in the 12th century.³⁸ In colonial times and in recent history, the more iconic representation of such relationships are the Peranakan (known also as Babas and Nyonyas) families of Singapore and its surrounding area. Such marriages between Chinese and Malay peoples were certainly quite common, and much scholarship has discussed those relationships as they pertain to the last several centuries.³⁹ Yet the prevalence of Peranakans can, in fact, be traced to much earlier times, as they are frequently mentioned in Old Javanese inscriptions from the 9th to 11th centuries.⁴⁰ Java at that time was a wealthy and cosmopolitan meeting ground for merchants throughout Asia, and the frequent mention of “paranakan” in the island’s inscriptions testifies to the importance of interethnic marriage alliances in business and political networks there. Although the term itself more broadly describes people of mixed native-foreign ethnic descent, Chinese traders were very active in Java at that time. 

Business Relationships
Generally, the motivation for close cooperation between ethnic groups was business.⁴¹ Close relations with government officials benefited the business practices of merchants when they traded in other countries. Business partners with whom one traveled or traded with were also very important. In the approximately two dozen shipwrecks discovered in Southeast Asia between the 8th to 14th centuries there is a wide range of ethnographic evidence demonstrating that such ships often carried crews of diverse ethnic backgrounds.⁴² The items that most strongly implied a Chinese presence are the many Chinese writing implements recovered from a variety of the wrecks.⁴³ Many textual sources also demonstrate that ethnically mixed crews were quite common, if not the norm.⁴⁴ One particularly interesting quote dating to around 1000 CE describes the crew of a Persian ship sailing from Siraf to China caught in the midst of a great storm: 

“In a night that was so long, without hope of rescue, a prey to the violence of the gale, in a sea that boiled, beaten about by frightening waves, on a ship that leapt and plunged, shuddered and trembled, the passengers said farewell to one another, and each of them prayed according to his religion, for there were men from China, India, Persia, and the islands”.⁴⁵ 

Kangchu or Kapitan China
In both recent times and in the distant past, the leader of the Chinese merchant community usually acted as a representative who dealt directly with state sovereigns or ministers on behalf of the local Chinese population. Such roles took on a variety of names. For instance, in the early period of Malay rule in Malacca (the 15th and early 16th centuries), some Chinese were given the title of biduanda, which described court followers of a different ethnicity who performed special functions for the ruler.⁴⁶ In the centuries that followed, common titles for such roles in the Singapore and Straits region were those of “Kangchu” or “Kapitan China” (or “Kapitan Cina”). 

Although Carl Trocki believed that Kangchu and Kapitan China were separate roles, there is reason to believe that they were by and large the same.⁴⁷ This is apparent when we consider that some who held the title of Kangchu, which was used most commonly in the Johor area of the Malay peninsula, were also considered Kapitan China by other Chinese.⁴⁸ As both of these titles are derived from different languages (Kangchu was a Hokkien or Teochew term, and Kapitan China was a Malay term apparently adapted from Portuguese), it seems more apt to consider that their meaning was either very similar or the same. 

Another point to consider in the link between Kangchu and Kaptian China is an older term for the same role that is very common in East Asian texts of the 11th to 13th centuries. The term gangshou (纲首, literally “head of the network”) was used to describe Chinese merchant captains who traded in Japan, Korea and Southeast Asia. These men were also leaders of Chinese communities overseas and representatives who dealt with governments of the states they lived or traded in.⁴⁹ This is thus the earliest known designation for a role that persisted over many centuries. Moreover, it bears linguistic similarity to the term kangchu. Trocki was unable to pinpoint the precise meaning of this latter term and identified it as both “the Teochew pronunciation of 港主 (gangzhu)”, which would translate to “lord of the harbour”, and as “lord of the river” (presumably jiangzhu 江主).⁵⁰ Yet the pronunciation of gangshou (纲首) in Hokkien would approximate to either kangsiu or kangchiu, suggesting that kangchu evolved from this term. 

In the British Straits colonies, such a role took the name of Justice of the Peace, though this was just a case of placing a new façade over a longstanding and deeply rooted practice. Although British authorities formally ended the Kapitan China system several years after the founding of Singapore, Chinese residents continued to refer to community leaders (who were all also businessmen) as Kapitan China until the end of the 19th century, if not later.⁵¹

Temples as Community Centres

From the earliest records of overseas Chinese until today, temples have always functioned as the centres of communities and community leadership (such as the “Kapitan China”). They were not only places of worship but also places for business and to organise major community events. In turn, the high costs of constructing and maintaining such temples were covered by prominent merchant leaders in Chinese communities. For earlier periods (11th to 14th centuries), Japanese records provide the most details about how temples were used as community centers for overseas Chinese, though we do see in one instance that a temple established by Chinese merchants in Hakata in the 13th century was named after a temple in Sumatra that scholars believe was established for a Chinese community in the 11th century.⁵² Details of such endeavours in more recent times are widely available in the documentary collections of clan associations, such as the Singapore Hokkien Huay Kuan Collection, held at the National Library of Singapore.⁵³

Signboards
Two of Singapore’s most iconic temples, Thian Hock Keng (天福宮) and Wak Hai Cheng Bio (粤海清庙), have functioned as the centres of the Hokkien and Teochew communities respectively. Much public and academic attention have been drawn to the signboards of both temples, and for good reason.⁵⁴ In 1899, Qing dynasty’s (1644–1912) Emperor Guangxu (光绪, 1871–1908, r. 1875–1908) donated a signboard to Wak Hai Cheng Bio Temple. In 1907, Emperor Guangxu also donated a signboard to Thian Hock Keng Temple. These donations were considered as a tremendous honour that granted much symbolic and cultural prestige to Singapore’s Chinese communities, and these signboards have since become important markers of Singapore’s Chinese heritage – particularly as symbols of the connections that community associations maintained with China. However, despite the interest generated by these artefacts, there is still much research on them that needs to be carried out. 

While the inscriptions on the two signboards have been translated into English, their deeper meanings and how they relate to the history of overseas migration and diplomacy have yet to be properly studied.⁵⁵ The Wak Hai Cheng Bio sign contains the inscription shuhai xiangyun (曙海祥云), which literally means “gleaming sea and auspicious clouds”.  The “auspicious clouds” are a historical reference to a signboard donated by Song Dynasty Emperor Zhenzong (真宗, 968–1022, r. 997–1022) to a temple being constructed by Chinese merchants in northern Kyushu, Japan, in the early 11th century.⁵⁶ At the time, Chinese merchant envoys based in Japan had been paying tribute at the Song court and told the emperor that auspicious clouds observed in Japan were a portent of a virtuous emperor reigning in China. These merchants were referencing a portent from the poem of the late Tang literatus Han Wo (韩偓), who wrote of auspicious vapours symbolising the rise of a royal crown when attempting to view Japan from the shores of Fuzhou, China. 

The Thian Hock Keng signboard likewise carries additional meaning beyond its immediate interpretation. The inscription for this sign reads bo jing nan ming (波靖南溟), which can be translated as “pacify the waves of the southern seas”, and implies an appeal to the goddess Mazu for safe passage for merchant ships across the sea. However, the character jing (靖) carries political overtones, particularly when used in the context of ethnicity and foreign diplomacy. “Pacification” in East Asian languages is a common euphemism for subjecting conquered peoples, and as such, this character jing is commonly found in the place names of non-Chinese settlements along the former frontiers of Chinese empires, such as Jingxi (靖西) near the Guangxi-Vietnam border and Jingbian (靖边) in northern Shaanxi province. Nevertheless, one should be careful not to read this as an imperialistic assertion by the Qing government. At the time of the inscription, the Qing empire was teetering on the verge of collapse, and the government did not hold enough power to consolidate control over its own territories, let alone those beyond its borders. Rather, the inscription was merely a rehashing of traditional rhetoric that implied the transfer of Chinese moral values to the region, similar to language used in tributary relations with diplomatic partners.⁵⁷ 

Another apparently unrecognised facet of the two signboards is that they were among a number of signboards donated by the Qing court to overseas Chinese communities across much of the world from the late 19th century to the end of the dynasty in 1912. Most of the signboards were donated to temples, as they were locations where wealthy and influential Chinese community leaders congregated and made important decisions for and on behalf of the groups they represented (typically organised according to dialect-language affiliation and ancestral homeland in southern China). Sending signboards to the temples symbolised recognition from the highest political entity in China of the contributions that specific segments of a Chinese community made, as the fundraising was coordinated at the temples and similar community-funded institutions. By the late 19th century, the Qing dynasty was plagued by war and calamity, which forced the Qing court to seek out alternative sources of revenue to sustain its empire – one source of which was the donations of overseas Chinese. Rewarding community centers, such as temples, with such recognition was an important part of this process. Singapore, in fact, played a more significant role in that initiative than was previously believed. 

Fundraising from Overseas Chinese
Rather than beginning as an initiative among provincial leaders in China, early fundraising was prompted by the most powerful individuals in Beijing. The mastermind behind this fundraising was Li Hongzhang (李鸿章, 1823–1901), who became one of the most influential officials in China after he orchestrated a coup in 1875 to place the child Emperor Guangxu onto the throne under the regency of Empress Dowager Cixi (慈禧, 1835–1908). Singapore’s paramount role in fundraising efforts is evident by the choice of the Qing government to establish what seems to have been its first consulate there in 1877, nine months after it had established a legation in London and just two years after the rise to power of Li and Cixi. The main purpose of the consulate was to extend influence over overseas Chinese communities, and, more importantly, to elicit financial contributions from them.⁵⁸ 

In the following year of 1878, Li devised a plan to raise funds from Teochews residing in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia.⁵⁹ He tasked Chen Zhan’ao (陈占鳌), a member of the gentry in the city of Chaozhou to carry out his plan. Chen at the time was residing in Singapore and so gathered several other influential men with him and sailed to Siam (Thailand). There, they not only persuaded officials and Chinese merchants to donate funds to the Qing government under the pretext of relieving a famine in northern China, but also convinced the King of Siam, Chulalongkorn (1853–1910, r. 1868–1910), to donate a large sum of money as well. It should be noted that a Chinese government requesting financial aid from a foreign country for the sake of its survival was highly unorthodox and possibly unprecedented in imperial Chinese history. Nevertheless, the arrangement worked to the satisfaction of the Qing court and the contributors in Siam were bestowed with honours. 

In addition to Siam, Chen was also able to successfully raise donations from Chinese communities in Singapore, Manila, Penang and Malacca.⁶⁰ For his efforts, he was made a high official, and Emperor Guangxu bestowed signboards to one Guandi 关帝 and one Tianhou 天后 temple belonging to clan associations in Chaozhou.⁶¹ That signboards were not instead sent to Siam, Singapore, or other places that had made financial contributions to the Qing court demonstrates that the court was reluctant to send the signboards overseas. This was due to ideological convention in imperial China which held that emperors were supposed to attract peoples from great distances by their virtue rather than push their own subjects away. Throughout much of Chinese history, emperors and their ministers were reluctant to acknowledge overseas Chinese communities, as permanent departures from the Chinese domain implied that a ruler lacked the moral virtue to keep his subjects within his domain.⁶² Thus, overseas Chinese communities were not seen as extensions of the Chinese empire, but rather, viewed as permanent departures from the Chinese domain. The initial reluctance to send signboards overseas can be understood in the context that such an act would have been a breach of orthodoxy by the Qing court. 

Acknowledgement of Overseas Chinese Communities
However, just as the late Qing court broke with tradition in accepting donations from the Siamese king, so too did it overcome its hesitance in directly acknowledging Chinese communities abroad. In 1885, British officials complained to Li Hongzhang that the Chinese consul in Singapore was pressuring Chinese residents to raise funds for the Qing government.⁶³ It was around this time that Guangxu’s court also began to send signboards to overseas Chinese communities. Qing texts reveal that one was sent to a Guandi temple in San Francisco in 1884,⁶⁴ to a Chinese hospital in Hong Kong in 1885,⁶⁵ and to a Guandi temple in Yokohama, Japan in 1886.⁶⁶ By 1887, a restriction on the sale of Qing honours to the overseas Chinese was lifted, and in that same year Li Hongzhang promoted the sale of such titles in a Singapore newspaper.⁶⁷ There were additional instances of imperial signboards being sent to Chinese communities in San Francisco, Nagasaki and Penang, and then finally to Singapore’s Wak Hai Cheng Bio and Thian Hock Keng in 1899 and 1907, respectively.⁶⁸ Of all of these examples, as well as two additional instances of imperial signboards being sent to Penang and Java, the only extant signboards today appear to be both of the signboards sent to Singapore, two sent to Penang, and one sent to Hong Kong.⁶⁹ 

Although such an initiative was highly unorthodox, it was not unprecedented. Ming Dynasty Emperor Yongle (永乐, 1360–1424, r. 1402–1424) sent imperial inscriptions (apparently on scrolls rather than signboards) to states that hosted overseas Chinese communities, such as Malacca, Japan, Brunei and Vietnam, though these inscriptions were granted to the sovereigns of those polities through state-to-state diplomacy, and not directly to temples in the Chinese communities.⁷⁰ There is reason to believe that either a knowledgeable Qing courtier or a well-educated member of the Teochew community in either Chaozhou, Singapore or Siam had come across historical precedents of the Song dynasty where the 11th-century Song Emperor Zhenzong provided signboards for temples in overseas Chinese communities, with the most notable example being a temple in Palembang, Sumatra.⁷¹ Even at that time, however, the practice was considered unorthodox, and ended as soon as Zhenzong passed away. 

There were two reasons why this practice was stopped during the early Song dynasty not long after it began. First, as stated previously, Chinese emperors were not supposed to acknowledge Chinese people voluntarily living outside their domain, as that would legitimise such a practice. Second, the forms of diplomacy from which the donation of signboards derived originated in the Indian Ocean region rather than in China.⁷² Non-Chinese diplomatic practices could be accepted from time to time when foreign envoys paid tribute to a Chinese emperor, as this demonstrated the emperor’s benevolence and tolerance toward foreign peoples. However, Chinese governments tended to avoid diplomatic outreach, and doing so through foreign practices would have been considered even more unacceptable to those advisors and remonstrators with broad knowledge of historical precedents.

Conclusion

This essay has discussed several of the key aspects in which traditions have persisted over the span of hundreds of years and continue to persist in present-day Singapore society. For instance, most of the city state’s population continues to trace its ancestry to southern China. Yet Chinese have married, lived with, and conducted business with people of different backgrounds in the region for many centuries until the present day. Knowledge of earlier periods of maritime Asian history thus allows us to recognise that the cohabitation of Chinese, Malay, Indian and other peoples originally occurred as a part of migration patterns and economic drivers that began over a millennium ago and predated more recent colonial and post-colonial policies. Likewise, the high value that many of the earliest Chinese in the region placed on education remains undiminished in the present day. 

If there is one tangible symbol that best encapsulates the image of an overseas Chinese community and its traditions, it would be that of a temple. The Chinese government officials and educated merchants who wished to foster close relations in the colonial period understood this and astutely identified one of the only moments in history when a Chinese emperor cooperated with overseas Chinese for the mutual gain of both parties. Knowledge of this thousand-year-old precedent allows us to understand why the granting of signboards during the Qing dynasty was a means to strengthen those ties, and why Singapore’s two most influential temples were chosen as the sites to house them. Though such a move contradicted fundamental principles of traditional Chinese ideology, it was not without precedent and it did successfully buttress a transnational fundraising network in which great sums of wealth were transferred to China from Chinese people around the world.⁷³ The wealthy Chinese who comprised the network, most of them merchants, recognised value in the status that was granted in return for their donations. Such is the way that Singapore and the Straits region have functioned over a long period of time as both a gateway and a centre of tradition, hybridity and cultural exchange.

About the Author
Gregory Sattler is a Visiting Assistant Professor from New York University’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World. His research examines migration, networks, trade and interethnic cooperation based on textual sources and archaeological evidence from throughout maritime Asia. He received his Ph.D. in History from UCLA and was a Lee Kong Chian Research Fellow at the National Library of Singapore in 2025.