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Chinese Kinship and Marriage in Singapore

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2009

Maurice Freedman
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Extract

When the history of Chinese social institutions in Malaya comes to be written it will, I suspect, be especially difficult to construct a picture of the life associated with the domestic family and ties based upon common descent and marriage. The sources of material on these matters are likely to be very limited, at least in regard to the nineteenth century. Yet, as a social anthropologist I shall draw attention to a number of facts drawn from published material on nineteenth-century Singapore, hoping to show that there are some interesting problems in the analysis of the Chinese kinship institutions of the period and that, however hard it may be to come by the data, a worthwhile task awaits the historian with some sociological insight.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian History , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , September 1962 , pp. 65 - 73
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1962

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References

1. See e.g. Purcell, V., The Chinese in Malaya, London, 1948, p. 87Google Scholar, fn. 1, and Jones, S. W.. Public Administration in Malaya, London, 1953, p. 3.Google Scholar The name Baba is Malay, being written in Chinese with a specially made up character. The women of the Babas were known as nyonya(h), also a word of non-Chinese origin.

2. As recently as 1913 a Western observer of the Babas in the Straits Settlements could regard them as the “most highly educated and the most influential section of the Chinese community…” The Rev. Shellabear, W. G., “Baba Malay. An Introduction to the Language of the Straits-born Chinese”, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Straits Branch, no. 65, 12 1913, p. 52.Google ScholarShellabear, (p. 51)Google Scholar says that Baba Malay was the business language of Singapore, Penang, and the F.M.S. Some idea of the extent to which Baba culture was dominant at this period may be gathered from the fact that when in 1906 discussions took place in the Hokkien Temple in Singapore on the reform of religious festivals, Baba terms were apparently used. The seventh moon masses were referred to as sembayang hantu, a Malayism which would have been unthinkable in more modern times in any gathering other than one composed only of Babas. See Siang, Song Ong, One Hundred Years' History of the Chinese in Singapore, London, 1923, pp. 407ff.Google Scholar

3. In the 1881 census there were 4,513 “Straits-born” men in a total Chinese male population of 72,571, and 5,014 “Straits-born” women in a total Chinese female population of 14,195. Chin, Siah U, “The Chinese in Singapore”, Journal of the Indian Archipelago (Logan's Journal), vol. II, 1848, p. 290Google Scholar, shows 1,000 “Malacca Chinese (descendants of Hokien immigrants)” as against 9,000 Hokkiens, 19,000 Tiuchius, 6,000 Cantonese, 4,000 Hakkas, and 700 Hainanese; the figures are of gainfully occupied men only, but they still seem to underestimate the size of the Baba component. Siah was himself a Tiuchiu.

4. Tracy, I., “Description of a Chinese Wedding; containing notices of the ceremonies performed on the occasion. Extracted from a journal at Singapore”, The Chinese Repository (Canton), vol. IV, no. 12, 04 1836, pp. 568–72.Google Scholar

5. Minchin, G., Notes and Queries on China and Japan, New series, vol. 4, no. 6, 1870 (Hong Kong), pp. 81–6.Google Scholar

6. The romanisation of Hokkien follows that in Douglas, Carstairs, Chinese-English dictionary of the Vernacular or Spoken Language of Amoy, London, 1873.Google Scholar On chìn-tsòe ct. Freedman, Maurice, Chinese Family and Marriage in Singapore, 1957, pp. 122f.Google Scholar

7. Op. cit., p. 85.

8. Ibid., pp. 83ff.

9. Ibid., p. 82.

10. Cf. Freedman, , op. cit., pp. 134ff.Google Scholar

11. Tracy, op. cit.

12. Minchin, , op. cit., pp. 82ff.Google Scholar

13. Chinese Marriage Committee…Proceedings of the Committee Appointed by His Excellency the Governor to Report on Matters Concerning Chinese Marriages, 1926, Govt. Printing Office, Singapore, 1926, pp. 28, 34–37, 38f., 82–86, and 123–125.Google Scholar

14. Keng, Lim Boon, “Our Enemies”, The Straits Chinese Magazine, vol. 1, no. 2. 06 1897, p. 56.Google Scholar

15. Note a work evidently published for the guidance of puzzled Straits Chinese: Teck, Tan Pow, The Pek Kah Seng, Kuala Lumpur, 1924Google Scholar, a book on the Chinese surnames. Tan, refers, p. 3Google Scholar, to the misunderstandings which may arise because of the different pronunciations of the same surnames. Stressing the difficulty of dealing with the dialectal variations, Tan says he persisted in the arduous task he set himself out of “love and moral compassion for the ever-increasing number of the Straits-born Chinese who are always found to be lacking in the light of Chinese virtue, the knowledge of the Chinese surnames and their proper use”.

16. Cf. Tan, 's poem “The Chinese Surnames, Some Moral Advices”Google Scholar, ibid., p. 88.

17. See Shellabear, op. cit., and Sit, Chia Cheng, “The Language of the Babas”, The Straits Chinese Magazine, vol. 3, no. 9, 03, 1899.Google Scholar

18. Cf. Shellabear, , op. cit., pp 54, 59ff.Google Scholar

19. Cf. Freedman, , op. cit., p. 83.Google Scholar

20. Song, , op. cit., pp. 14, 30, 100.Google Scholar

21. Napier, W. J., “The Application of English Law to Asiatic Races”, 1899, in Noctes Orientales, A Selection of Essays Read before the Straits Philosophical Society, 1893–1910, Singapore, 1913, p. 146.Google Scholar For comparative material on this topic on Chinese in the Netherlands Indies see Vleming, J. L., Het Chineesche Zakenleven in Nederlandsch-Indië, Weltevreden, 1926Google Scholar, chapter 13: Familie fondsen”.

22. Song, , op. cit., p. 86Google Scholar, cites a newspaper report of 1853 that among the arrivals from Amoy “were the wives and families of several of the most respectable Chinese merchants”, but he forgets that this unusual event was probably the effect of the fighting going on at Amoy at that time. Cf. Minchin, , op. cit., p. 81Google Scholar, and Buckley, C. B., An Anecdotal History of Old Times in Singapore, 2 vols, Singapore, 1902, p. 580.Google Scholar

23. Cf. Minchin, , op. cit., p. 86Google Scholar: “The maiden ‘Nonias’ at any of these places prefer the ‘Babas’ as husbands to the pure Chinese; when they get the latter as husbands… they force them to wear the tight sleeve jackets usually worn by the ‘Babas’ in order to make them appear as such.”

24. Braddell, R. St. J., The Laws of the Straits Settlements, A Commentary, 2nd. edn., Singapore, 1931, vol. 1, p. 85.Google Scholar See Freedman, Maurice, “Colonial Law and Chinese Society”, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, vol. LXXX, parts 1 and 2, 1950 (published 1952), p. 102.Google Scholar

25. Ibid., p. 101.

26. Song, , op. cit., p. 14.Google Scholar

27. Ibid., p. 100. For a note on the law against perpetuities see Freedman, , “Colonial Law”, p. 116.Google Scholar

28. I treat this question at length in Lineage Organization in Southeastern China, London, 1958, pp. 47ff., 129.Google Scholar

29. His sexual needs were, however, partly cared for. Lim Boon Keng, quoted by Song, , op. cit., pp. 125f.Google Scholar, says that 1863 saw the first recorded importation of Chinese prostitutes; but there must have been facilities before this time. Vaughan, J. D., Manners and Customs of the Chinese in the Straits Settlements, Singapore, 1879, p. 8Google Scholar, darkly hints at less conventional methods of sexual satisfaction. Reference is made to quarrels over catamites in the secret society oaths given in Ward, J. S. M. and Stirling, W. G., The Hung Society or The Society of Heaven and Earth, vol. I, London, 1925, p. 65.Google Scholar

30. I have attempted to outline and discuss these groupings in “Immigrants and Associations: Chinese in Nineteenth-Century Singapore”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, The Hague, vol. Ill, no. 1, 10 1960.Google Scholar

31. Cf. Chen, Ta, Emigrant Communities in South China, London and N.Y., 1939, pp. 8f.Google Scholar In recent years there has been some historical study touching on this question in mainland China. See papers published in Hsia-men Ta-hsüeh hsüeh-pao, She-hui k'o hsüeh Pan (Universitatis Amoiensis, Acta Scientiarum Socialium), no. 1, 1957, and no. 1, 1958, Amoy.Google Scholar

32. Chinese, A Straits, “Local Chinese Social Organisations”, Straits Chinese Magazine, vol. VIII, 1899, p. 45.Google Scholar On the matters touched on in this paragraph see my “Immigrants and Associations”, pp. 39ff.Google Scholar