In 1824 Robert Hunter, a Scottish trader who had recently established himself in Siam, was passing on the Menam River when he spotted from some distance "a strange animal" with two heads, four hands and four legs swimming up to a boat "in perfect coordination." Being then dusk he realised only after the half-naked "animal" reached the boat that it was a pair of physically joined brothers. Their names were Chang and Eng, which were claimed to be derived from the Siamese words for “left” and “right” respectively.
Born in May 1811 in Maklong, a small village sixty miles distant from Bangkok, the boys’ abnormality stemmed from their union at the sternum by a small piece of cartilage. The ligament was so short at birth that they were locked to a face-to-face position. Fortunately it gradually stretched as they grew older until the two could stand side by side, and back to back, and turn themselves in bed by rolling one over the other. Still their strange form caused no small consternation in a land steep in ancient beliefs. According to murmurs their birth was conceived to be an ill omen, and the King of Siam thought of putting them to death, but in the end relented to pleas to demonstrate his forbearance.
The father of Chang and Eng, a Chinese and a fisherman, reportedly passed away when they were just eight. The circumstance left them to face the responsibility of helping to upkeep the household early on. Hunter tried to bring the boys to the West shortly after his encounter with them, but failed to obtain the permission of the Siamese officials. An American Captain Abel Coffin later attempted the same and was more successful through his promise of $500 to the boys’ mother for releasing them for two and a half years. Chang and Eng sailed from Bangkok in April 1829 and never again did they return to their birthplace.
Establishing themselves in the US
They reached Boston in August that year and immediately they found themselves the objects of curiosity of both the medical community and the public. After a short tour of the nearby cities, they embarked for London, where they were examined by a great number of medical and scientific men. What followed were a seven-month stay in the city, where they were gawked by hundreds of visitors each day, and extended tours through the rest of Britain, the US, Canada and Cuba. At the end of their contract with Coffin, the enterprising brothers decided to take over their own careers and they capitalised their growing fame as the biggest name freaks in the Western civilisation to earn a fortune for themselves.
By 1839 the brothers had become weary from their endless travels and determined to lead normal lives. Using their savings they purchased a plantation in Wilkes county (later moving to Surry County), North Carolina. There they built a spacious home, bought slaves to run their estate and underwent their naturalization become American citizens – a process during which they adopted from a friend the surname Bunker.
On 13 April 1843 Chang and Eng took as their wives a pair of sisters Adelaide and Sarah Yates. News of their matrimonies caused newspapers all over the country to express incredulity. The Liberator, for example, condemned the union as "bestial”, and the community that tolerated it to be “below the very Sodomites in lasciviousness”. The outrage, it seemed, was not solely due to their deformed physicality. At the time there were but hundreds of Chinese living in America, and it would be only close a decade after that the California Gold Rush sparked the first major onrush of Chinese migration. The twins’ audacity to seek assimilation was most offending to the senses of those who thought themselves as the spokespersons of the mainstream white society.
Chang and Eng did not care. In the following year their first children were born within six days of each other. In total Chang would father ten children, and Eng one better. The burden of maintaining two large families eventually turned too heavy to bear. Now close to 50, and used to their status as slave-owning gentlemen, Chang and Eng reluctantly returned to public glare in 1860 after agreeing to an engagement with the controversial freak show proprietor P.T. Barnum in New York. As a result of several financial losses from the defeat of the Confederacy in the American Civil War, the brothers embarked on another European tour eight years later. It was to be their final road trip as Chang developed a paralytic stroke in 1870.
Chang and Eng did not care. In the following year their first children were born within six days of each other. In total Chang would father ten children, and Eng one better. The burden of maintaining two large families eventually turned too heavy to bear. Now close to 50, and used to their status as slave-owning gentlemen, Chang and Eng reluctantly returned to public glare in 1860 after agreeing to an engagement with the controversial freak show proprietor P.T. Barnum in New York. As a result of several financial losses from the defeat of the Confederacy in the American Civil War, the brothers embarked on another European tour eight years later. It was to be their final road trip as Chang developed a paralytic stroke in 1870.
Chang became despondent. His health deteriorated drastically and he died in the middle of sleep on 17 January 1874. When Eng woke up and found out what happened, he told his family, "If Chang is dead, then I am going". He expired two hours later before the doctor arrived. An autopsy indicated that Chang died of a cerebral blood clot, while “shock” was registered as Eng’s cause of death.
"Chinese Twins", were they Teochews?
The lives of Chang and Eng have spawned a number of books, musical plays and at least one movie production attempt. They are now renowned as the world’s first Siamese twins. The reference of course is only to their country of birth, where they were acknowledged as the “Chinese twins”. And rightly so. By all accounts Chang and Eng’s father was an immigrant from China, while their mother was of some say mixed Chinese-Siamese, others mixed Chinese-Malay, parentage. Given the majority representation of the Teochews amongst the Chinese in Thailand (as Siam is now known), we are left to ponder if Chang and Eng were also Teochews?
Few clues to the puzzle can be gleaned from what is known about Chang and Eng themselves, in view of their apparent Siamese upbringing – as reflected by the Siamese origin of their names and absence of a family name, and their adoption of the American language and culture in their adulthood. There is assurance at least that they were of southern Chinese stock, as observed (in less than inappropriate language by today’s standards) by their medical attendant in London George Buckley Bolton, that they had “not the broad and flat forehead so characteristic of the Chinese race, but resemble the lower class of the people of Canton in the colour of their skins, and in the forms of their noses, lips, eyes, and ears.”
Fortunately the demographic of the Chinese population in Siam during the reign of Rama II (1809 to 1824) was decidedly divided between the Hokkiens and the Teochews. During the Ayutthaya era (1351 to 1767) Siam received a considerable number of Hokkien settlers, who were predominantly merchants or refugee loyalists of the Ming dynasty that fell to Manchu conquest. Due to their commercial and political profiles, as well as intermarriage with the elite Siamese, they mostly occupied the upper strata of society.
The Teochews on the other hand were a rougher lot. They consisted of junk traders, who managed to establish a foothold during the brief reign of part-Teochew King Taksin (1767–82), as well as migrant labourers who began arriving by the thousands each year during the reign of Rama II (1809 to 1824). Of the latter, many belonged to the poorest of poor from the coastal parts of the Teochew prefecture, and in Siam they were excluding from residing in within the walls of Bangkok city. As a recent immigrant and a humble fisherman, the father of Chang and Eng fits better the profile of a Teochew than a Hokkien.
So we might call Chang and Eng as the famous “Teochew twins”, and not the “Siamese twins”? And further taking into account that the overwhelming majority of Teochews in the US (estimated to total about 100,000) today are first or second-generation immigrants who were driven here by political upheavals and violence in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos in the 1970s and 1980s, this celebrated pair of brothers could well also be the first Teochews in America.
"Like" our Facebook page to stay updated with The Teochew Store.