‘Your personal history ah? What does that mean?’ he says.

I explain to my uncle the scope of

the assignment, that it’s not so much a scholarly article as it is a personal retelling of my history
interwoven with the themes of the module. I’m focusing on personal identity.

‘Migration? Interesting. Your great-grandfather, do you know why he came to Singapore?’ I

shake my head.

‘He was a man of great renown in China. A teacher. People loved him. So he came to
Singapore as a teacher, you know? Set up one of the first schools in Singapore. Taught a
hundred over students by himself! Your aunt and I attended for a few years, actually.

As for your grandmother, have you heard of Tiandihui?’ I have. It’s one of the most well-known
Triad groups in history. ‘She was, what do you call it? That thing where they’ve never met and
then they’re married…’

‘A mail-order bride?’ My dad says, half-joking. My uncle is less than amused. ‘Well, something
like that. But she was a daughter of one of the Triad chiefs in China. A fearsome woman. Chain-
smoker, too. The whole house stank of cigarettes.

One day, one of my uncles, he went and got into a fight with some gang members. I remember
the next day, I saw someone kneeling at the door of my grandmother’s house. He was there the
whole day! It turns out that when the guy found out who my uncle was the son of, he went to
beg for forgiveness, and she made him kneel outside the house all day. She really was scary!’

I considered the reasons for migration in my head. I had recalled, from lecture 2 and Amrith
(2011), that there were a variety of factors, economic and political, that influenced migration. I
had never heard of daughters being sent overseas to marry men they’ve never met. But it was
enough to deduce that my great-grandparents had migrated primarily due to economic reasons,
looking for jobs. Their history could be linked to the movement of labour across long distances
in the late 19th-century (Amrith, 2011).

My uncle is speaking again. I know that he’s been heavily invested in researching my family
history on my father’s side. He speaks of the time his grandfather brought him to ceremonial
dinners when he was young.

‘The name of the organisation that he brought us to was called “Liu Zhang Guan”.1 So, you
know, our grandfather knew we were descended from Liu Bei!’

‘No Lah!’ My dad is laughing. I’m not sure what to make of the situation. My dad is incredulous.
‘The chance of that is astronomically low, and we don’t even have solid evidence!’

1 This is referring to Liu Bei, Zhang Fei, and Guan Yu, famous generals from the epic ‘Romance of the
Three Kingdoms’.
My uncle pugnaciously takes a large sip of wine. ‘Well, you never know.’ The idea of being
descended from the three brothers was enough to foster community amongst the Chinese
diaspora in Singapore. I contrasted this with the construction of the Malay ethnicity (Shamsul,
2001). While the Malay ethnicity seems to have been constructed by colonial powers, Chinese
people, according to my uncle, had a latent idea of their identity owing to their extensive
knowledge of their history. I reckon that it might be due to power imbalances in the two groups -
the Malay people were actively subjugated by the British and had their culture repressed, whilst
the Chinese were not, at least to a lesser degree.

A week later my maternal grandparents are over, again for dinner. My grandfather is relaxing by
the window while my father prepares the food. I approach him, and tell him the scope of the
assignment. He’s attentive, and asks if I want to know more about his history. I nod.

‘Well, honestly I don’t know that much. I remember my dad, he was a very successful
businessman. Owned shops all along the lane in Chinatown. But he used all his money to buy
land in China. When the communists came and implemented land reform, he lost everything.

I remember one story about him. During the Japanese occupation, he was one of the ones
chosen to go to Changi beach, to be killed. But they saw him wearing a Red Cross and decided
against it. He survived because they thought he was useful.

As for the rest, I’m not so sure. I know that I’m quarter Peranakan, and that my Dad comes from
Southern China, not sure where.’

It’s interesting to me that the Japanese only saw him for his usefulness. Their so-called pan-
Asian society was again based on Western concepts of imperialism and exclusion, as seen in
lecture 5. Who else to judge what Asian-ness is other than Asians? And yet when it comes to it,
it all leads back to imperialism. Maybe Asian-ness doesn’t refer to anything in particular, as
Pillalamarri (2014) had suggested, and had been brought up in the introductory lectures. It’s
also interesting to me that my great-grandfather bought land in his homeland. Perhaps there
was a deep connection that he still felt despite his migration? I ask whether it bothers my
grandfather that he doesn’t really understand his lineage, and what being Asian means to him.

‘Not really. The fact that I know I’m Chinese is enough. What is Asian is how far they embody
the values of Asian-ness. Like Lee Kuan Yew said, it doesn’t really matter the race. It’s about
the family, and all the other things.’

‘No lah!’ My grandmother is more assertive. ‘What these Westerners don’t understand is that all
these Asian-ness, it’s a response to centuries of oppression. If we were never colonised, we
wouldn’t even be having this conversation.’
‘Maybe.’ My grandfather replies. I recall colonialism’s impact on Asian identity; the classification
of races according to Western divisions had led to greater animosity between ethnic groups.
‘But there must be something innately Asian about us, not touched by the Ang Mohs, right?’

I contrasted my grandfather’s ideas of identity with my uncle’s. My uncle’s identity as Asian is

heavily linked to his proud lineage. My grandfather had offered a different perspective, that the
concept of ‘Asian-ness’ is socially constructed. It seems unintuitive to consider something
essential to one’s identity as an abstract, malleable concept. At the same time, if we tie Asian
identity purely to our lineage, resorting to essentialism, it seems like an oversimplification. My
Asian identity feels like a vapour - the more I try to grasp it, the more it eludes me.
 Reference List

Pillalamarri, A. (2014, September 24). Kissinger is right: 'Asia' is a western construct. The
Diplomat. Retrieved February 16, 2023, from https://thediplomat.com/2014/09/kissinger-is-
right-asia-is-a-western-construct/

Shamsul, A.B. (2001). A History of an Identity, an Identity of a History: The Idea and
Practice of 'Malayness' in Malaysia Reconsidered. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies,
32(3), 355-366. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20072352

Amrith, S. (2011). Introduction. In Migration and Diaspora in Modern Asia (New

Approaches to Asian History, pp. 1-17). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
doi:10.1017/CBO9780511976346.004

People Interviewed

William Lau
Earnest Lau
Tan Cheng Bock
Lee Choon Lian

Questions asked:

Can you tell me about your grandparent’s history, and why they came to Singapore?
What does being Asian mean to you?
Why should we care about being Asian?