The Teochew Store Blog

As the mid-Autumn festival approaches, The Teochew Store has invited Tan Pia Hua 陈冰桦, a food lover and blogger from Teochew, to share her original recipe to make your own special taste Teochew-style mooncake.

Ah Ma 阿嬷, a song for one of the most important persons in many of our lives. 

Learn about Tshuk-hue-hng (出花園), the unique coming of age ritual for the Teochew people.

Share with the community, take part in our Poll of the Month.

Taiwanese travel programme featuring rare footages of early 1990s Teochew 潮州. In Mandarin, with some interviews in Teochew and English subtitles.

We have migrated our contents to a new online platform in order to serve our readers and customers better. Unfortunately due to technical reasons, we are unable to redirect the old URLs of our pages to the new ones. If you have previously bookmarked any of our pages, please note that the URL may have changed. Our contents remain available on our website www.theteochewstore.org

The Teochew Store would like to take this opportunity to thank all for your continued support.

A list of the top 100 most common surnames in the Teochew region.

Swatow is today of three prefectural-level cities of the Teochew region, the other two being Teochew 潮州 (Chaozhou) and Gek-yor 揭陽 (Jieyang). Being the Teochew people’s gateway to the world in the early 20th century, it was the port where our families embarked on their migratory journeys. As such the name Swatow rings familiar even for us who have never visited, and it has a special place in the heart of every overseas Teochews.

Until the 1850s Swatow was...

Good Morning Swatow!.. more great music out of Swatow

List of Towns and Villages in Teochew in 1946. Source: 《马来亚潮侨通鉴》， 新加坡 : 南岛出版社, 1950.

Many of us amongst the overseas Teochews are the children and grandchildren of men and women who left the Teochew region between the 1920s and the 1950s. Ever wondered what the land of our fathers was like back then, or where your ancestral village is/was located? Here are some maps to help:

To download maps in JPEG files, please click here

Source: 《马来亚潮侨通鉴》， 新加坡 : 南岛出版社, 1950.

Teo-an 潮安 (Chao'an)

Thenghai 澄海 (Chenghai) 

Jaopeng 饒平 (Raoping)

Gek-yor 揭陽 (Jieyang)

Teo-yor 潮陽 (Chaoyang)

Pholeng 普寧 (Puning)

Huilai 惠来 (Huilai)

Hongsun 豐順 (Fengshun)

Namoa 南澳 (Nan'ao)

Tuapou 大埔 (Dapu) - historically part of Teochew territory till 1733.

See also List of Towns and Villages in Teochew in 1946

The Teochew culture is not only about the past and old people. The language is vibrant and alive, and so are the dreams of our youths. Here's an example:

In this age of open information, Wikipedia is often the site where people visit to seek knowledge on a new subject or topic of interest. When conducting an online search on the keyword “Teochew”, Wikipedia’s pages on “Teochew people”, “Teochew dialect” and “Chaozhou” appear on top of Google’s results. Although largely informative, the Wikipedia page on “Teochew people” contains a curious introduction to our background, stating:

“Historically, these people were called Helao or Fulao, as they came mostly from Henan and Shanxi via Fujian, with well-maintained language and customs from north-central China.”

For certain readers can testify that Helao/Fulao does not exist in our daily vocabulary. Whether in China or Southeast Asia, Teochew people uniformly identify ourselves as “Teochew”, or more recently in mainland China “Teo-swa”.

Through further research on Wikipedia, one discovers “Fulao” is actually the Mandarin rendition of the Hokkien expression Hoklo 福佬/老 – meaning literally “Fujian men”. “Helao” 河老 on the other hand is linked to “Heluo” 河洛 (pronounced “Ho-lok” in Hokkien and Teochew), an inaccurate transliteration of Hoklo that has surfaced in literate stressing the purported origin of the Hokkien (and Teochew) people from Henan, in particular the Luo River basin. (Incidentally, the river itself is called Luohe 洛河, and not Heluo).

“Hoklo” is today widely used in Taiwan as a category for the section of its Chinese population whose forefathers migrated from Fujian’s coastal areas between the Qing dynasty and the Kuomintang’s retreat to the island in 1949. It is opposed to the Hakkas whose roots are traced to adjacent inland mountains or Chinese immigrants from other provinces. In a very similar way, the tags “Hoklo” and “Hakka” were adopted by late 19th and early 20th century Western Christian missionaries working in the Teochew region to different its inhabitants in the lowland plains from migrant settlers in the highland borders, whose distinctions in language, self-identity and customs were readily recognised In this context “Hoklo” clearly referred to the Teochew people (for more see The Bible and the gun: Christianity in South China, 1860-1900 by Joseph Tse-Hei Lee).

However there is evidence that at an earlier time “Hoklo” did not apply to the Teochew people. In 1843 Baptist preacher I. J. Roberts visited Hong Kong island, shortly after it was ceded to British possession, and made a family visiting tour. In his journal he recorded an encounter in a village with a family, “who speak the Hoklo dialect; which is nearly the same as Tiéchiú, which the assistant speaks” (cited in The Baptist Missionary Magazine, Volume 23).

This passage highlights pertinently that a close resemblance in speech between Teochews and Hokkiens from southern Fujian, which third parties are often unable to tell apart. At the same time, it gives an important clue to the etymology of the “Hoklo” expression.

In common usage, the reference to a person or a collective group of people in the Teochew is “nang” 人, and the Hokkien variation is “lang”. In both sets of vernaculars “lo” 佬 is rarely spoken. In contrast the Cantonese habitually use this word in their conversations, such as “dai-lo” 大佬 (“big brother”) or “gwai-lo” 鬼佬 (“devil-people”, meaning Westerners).  As such, it is all likely that Hok-lo was in fact a nomenclature coined by Cantonese-speakers to refer to Hokkien migrants into their territory. As Hong Kong was the primary transit point for Christian preachers entering China in the past, the likelihood those who worked in the Teochew region picked up the “Hoklo” expression from their interactions with the locals or fellow missionaries who spoke Cantonese, and later wrongly applied it to the Teochews.

Besides being consistent with the fact that Teochews never call ourselves Hoklo, this is supported by the observation and writing of James Dyer Ball, an Englishman whose credentials included being chief interpreter in the Hong Kong civil service. In Things Chinese published at the turn of the 20th century, he explained:

"Teo Chews is the term applied generally to them (i.e. the Teochew people) in Singapore, Penang, and the Malay States, while “Hok-lo” is the name by which they are generally known by the Cantonese speakers in China. The former name being derived from the departmental city of Ch'ao Chao Fu (in local dialect—Tiu Chiu Fu or Teo Chew Fu) to which the different districts, from which many of the Hok-lo, came, belong; while Hok-lo means “men from the Hok province i.e. Fukien province”.

Between the Teochews and the Hokkiens, many similarities in language and manners are shared. This is unsurprising since they occupy an adjoined territory in Southeast China. However there was definitely no confusion to the distinction of their collective identities in the 19th century, as attested by major violent clashes between migrants from the two groups in Shanghai in 1850 and in Singapore in 1854 – the latter lasted for more than ten days and resulted in the destruction of 300 houses and 500 deaths. The divide in identity may be traced during the Song dynasty (960-1279) when Teochew prefecture was joined with the Cantonese heartlands to form Guangdong province, whereas Hokkien-speaking Zhangzhou and Quanzhou prefectures were made part of Fujian. If the line of separation is so clear and ancient, how could a view persist amongst the Cantonese that the Teochews were “Fujian men”.

The answer appears to lie in the districts of Haifeng and Lufeng, where a Hokkien-speaking coastal enclave exists right between the realms of the Teochews and the Cantonese. Now administered under Shanwei (or Swabue) city, this area was governed shortly under Swatow from the 1950s to 1980s. However the non-Hakka/Cantonese section of its population vigorously rejects any suggestion that they are Teochew and instead insist in emphasising their descent from migrants out of Zhangzhou about 300 years ago. Their location and background strongly suggest that they are the original Hoklo, the “Fujian men”.  

The most famous son of the Hoklos in Guangdong is arguably Chen Jiongming, one-time governor of Guangdong in Sun Yat Sen’s government. An anecdote told that Chen was once asked to play judge and suss out the guilty party of a crime between two suspects, a Teochew and a fellow Hoklo. However Chen was more interested in rescuing his own than the execution of justice. The near identical speech and accent of the two presented him the challenge of telling who was Teochew or Hoklo, since he could not openly display his bias.

Cunningly Chen ordered both men to be beaten and in an instance his answer was derived.  Because the patrilineal character of the Teochew society, the man who was Teochew yelled in his moment of anguish “ua-pe-lu” 我父噜 (Oh my father)! At the same time, the Hoklo being brought up under stronger matrilineal influence, shouted out “ua-bhou-ui” 我母喂 (oh my mother)! Things happening exactly as he expected, Chen ordered the beating for the poor Teochew to be continued, while the Hoklo was released on the sly from the backdoor.

Whether this is a true story is unknown, but it tells an important point: Teochews are Teochews, and “Hoklo” means precisely what it states: “Fujian men”. 

The name “Teochew” is written in many ways. The variant we at The Teochew Store have chosen is the postal map spelling used in China during the republican era, as well as the standard form adopted in Singapore and Malaysia. However, literature out of Thailand generally stick to the spelling “Teochiu”, and those from Indonesia “Tiochiu”. Other variations that can be found on the Internet include “Diojiu”, “Taejiu” and “Tiuchiu”. These are all transliteration of the Chinese characters 潮州, which based on the Teochew “high language” spoken in the district’s prefectural city is pronounced diê-tsiu. At the same time “Teochew” is not infrequently represented in other language forms such as “Chiuchow” in Hong Kong Cantonese, “Trieuchau” in Vietnamese and of course “Chaozhou” in Mandarin (written in the past as “Chao-chow”).

Adding to the confusion, overseas Teochews who returned to their homeland after China re-opened its doors in the 1980s found that the region had adopted a new name – “Teo-swa” 潮汕. This name – derived by putting together “Teochew” and “Swatow” – was adopted after the historical Teochew prefecture was made defunct and replaced under Communist rule by an administrative unit centred on Swatow. As a result of the labours of the present government in China to promote Putonghua (Mandarin) and Hanyu Pinyin romanisation, recent English language pieces by writers in the mainland who are unfamiliar with old name Teochew, have designated the place by the appellation “Chaoshan” and its people the rather awful sounding “Chaoshanese”.

These are of course aberrations to Teochews who cherish their identity, and who know and appreciate its long of history. The name Teochew 潮州, literally the “Tidal Prefecture”, was adopted in 592 CE by the Sui dynasty on inspiration of the eternal flow and ebb of the South China Sea. That being said, the Teochew region actually first appeared on Imperial China maps as Kikyor 揭陽 (in Mandarin: Jieyang) county after the Han dynasty annexed the southern coast of China in 110 BCE. It was subsequently re-organised into a separate administrative area in 413 CE with the name Ngee Ann Commandery 義安郡, or the “Righteous Peace" Commandery.

The earliest Western literature in which Teochew was mentioned is possibly Juan González de Mendoza's The History of the Great and Mighty Kingdom of China and the Situation Thereof, which was first published in Spanish in 1586 as Historia de las cosas más notables, ritos y costumbres del gran reyno de la China and translated in English in 1588 by Robert Parke. Possibly the first full-length book on China published in Europe since the days of Marco Polo (who apparently visited Guangzhou in Guangdong and Quanzhou in Fujian but not Teochew), the collection of tales by Spanish travellers in the Far East spoke of Teochew as the home of the infamous pirate Limahong and gave its name as “Trucheo”.    

It is probable that Juan González de Mendoza had learned about “Trucheo” from Teochew or Hokkien-speaking oral sources trading in Manila. However, Western navigation maps of China that appeared at around the same time marked the location of Teochew almost uniformly by various corruptions of its Mandarin name “Chaozhou”.

One of the earliest example is the map below (oriented with East direction on top) produced in 1598 by Jan Huygen van Linschoten, a Dutch acquainted with the Portuguese trade in the Orient. Here the Portuguese label “Chabaqueo” can be seen beside “I. de Lamao” (i.e. Namoa, or Nan’ao, island) and below right of “Chincheo” (Zhangzhou).

Any Teochew of age twoscore and above will remember a time when our fathers or grandfathers called themselves Dengnang 唐人 (“Tang people”), and spoke fondly of coming from Dengsua唐山 (the “Tang Mountains”), as China was known before the current term Tiongkok 中國became standard. This use of these references to the Tang dynasty (618–907 AD) is not limited to the Teochew people and is shared by overseas Chinese of origin from the provinces of Guangdong and Fujian (including the Cantonese, Hokkien, Hainanese and Hakka). The Chinese language is uniformly identified as Dengnang-ue 唐人話 (“Tang people language”), its written charactersDengnang-ji 唐人字 (“Tang people words”), and the Chinatowns in the West are “Tang people street” (唐人街). This phenomenon is undoubtedly linked to the glory of the Tang civilization, as even the Japanese till the 17th century saw China as “Tang territory” (唐土) and its inhabitants also as Tang people.

The old Teochews had a particularly penchant to speak of “land” as “mountain” (or “hill”, as the Teochew term sua does not differentiate the two). When a group of Teochews crossed over from Singapore to open new gambier and pepper plantations on the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula in the 1840s, the new town they helped to found, Johor Bahru, was termed as Singsua 新山, the “New Mountain”, though the surrounding terrain is flat. This is dumbfounding as Teochews are seafarers by traditional, and a survey of the geography of the Teochew homeland and the rest of the southern Chinese coast quickly reveals that the concentration of human activity on river estuaries and along the shore. Even though more than two-thirds of Guangdong and Fujian are occupied by the Nanling and Wuyi mountain ranges respectively, these interior highlands are sparsely populated. They are overwhelmingly tall – the highest point in Teochew is the 1497-metres Honghuang-sua 鳳凰山 (Phoenix Mountain) summit, but have barren soil. So why did our forefathers associate in their vocabulary “land” with “mountains”, and where exactly is Dengsua?

A Google map check reveals a city in China called Tangshan (唐山), but its location in the Northeast is closer to Mongolia and North Korea than the South China Sea. The unlikelihood that it was the Dengsua our ancestors had in mind is certain from its past as a nondescript village until it was given its name by a Tang era emperor mourning the death of a beloved concubine in a nearby mountain. Moreover, it seems that the term Dengsua is familiar with Chinese from Guangdong and Fujian, and so the answer must lie closer to home.

Until the Meiling pass was cut through mountains in northern Guangdong in 716, China’s coastal region in the south was practically inaccessible from its political centre in the Central Plain except by sea. The Teochew area was extremely remote and could only be reached by land from Fujian’s Tingzhou and Hakka territory in Meizhou via the Hangkang’s 韓江 (Han River) upstream tributaries, or from other parts of Guangdong through a pass within the Noihue-sua 蓮花山 (Lotus Flower Mountain) range in Pholeng (Puning) county. These journeys lasting weeks were arduous and dangerous. As such, a posting to the Teochew prefecture was abhorred by Tang period imperial officials. The horror of such a fate was highlighted when Han Yu was given the death sentence for criticising a Tang emperor’s Buddhist beliefs, but banished instead to Teochew after his colleagues pleaded for his life.

The angst suffered by the elderly Confucian scholar was tersely expressed in a poem he wrote on his way to Teochew, in which he urged in the final line his nephew to be prepared to collect his bones “from the side of the miasmic river” (full poem shown below). Even worse than disgrace and isolation, Han Yu’s mind was weighed down by the infamous reputation of the prefecture’s chief waterway, which before being named after himself, was known as the “Crocodile River” (鳄江). The fear factor was linked not just to the frequency of attacks on humans by the reptilian beasts, but also deadly diseases like malaria that arose from swamp conditions of the environment.

Palynological studies (the scientific study of spores and pollen, both living and fossilized) reveal that the Hangkang river delta was completely submerged from circa 4000 to 2500 BCE when sea levels over 2.5 metres higher than present. The shoreline, about 30 kilometres further in from today’s limits, gradually retreated after 2000 BCE to leave behind lagoons, semi-enclosed estuaries and marshes. Supporting geomorphological data (geomorphology: the scientific study of the origin and evolution of topographic and bathymetric features created by physical or chemical processes at or near Earth's surface) show that 23.62% of the delta area was formed between 50 BCE and 550, and another 29.72% more recently between 950 and 1250.

(The Neolithic of Southeast China: Cultural Transformation and Regional by Jiao Tianlong andCharacteristics of the Han River Delta in Geomorphological Development by Zong Yongqiang are recommended readings by those interested in learning more on this topic.)

What these basically tell us is that most of the lowlands occupied by the cities, towns and villages in Teochew were until less than a thousand years ago covered under water and mud. This is confirmed by historical evidences that related to the Teochew prefectural city (Chaozhou), now a distance of 30 kilometres from the shore, as a thriving seaport from the time of its founding in circa 413 to the Sui dynasty (581 to 618). By plotting on a map (see below) showing the Hangkang delta in its various stages of advancement, the local spots of human settlements known to exist before or during the Song dynasty, two interesting trends can be noticed. Firstly almost all those locations dated before or during Tang are lined on the edge of pre-existing dry land; and secondly those that sprung up thereafter in Song sit close to the present course of Hangkang, and the other two major rivers Iongkang  榕江 and Liengkang 練江.

One of many noble acts attributed to Han Yu during his eight-month stint as governor was the eradication of the crocodile malice, supposedly through a ritual offering of a pig and a goat to the giant reptiles and an impassioned order for them to remove themselves to the sea in seven days. This is of course fantasy, but the crocodiles did completely disappear after the destruction of their habitats by extensive engineering works carried out initially to mitigate flood incursions and later to reclaim the wetlands for rice cultivation. The first dikes were apparently built on Liengkang and this facilitated the relocation of the seat of Teo-yor county to the appropriately-named Singheng 新興 (“New Prosperity”) town in 793. Against the background of an agricultural revolution in Song to increase food production, at least 18 major dike construction and repair projects supervised by prefectural officials were undertaken in Teochew from the 10th to 13th centuries (see: Study of Chaozhou Jincheng Rice by Huang, Gui)

These developments on the Han River delta were not unique. From the writings of various mid-imperial China sources, it is known that the other major river basins in Guangdong and Fujian were similarly plagued by the maladies of man-eating reptiles and epidemics arising from the natural environment during Tang, but they disappeared with extensive reclamation of swamps and coastal flats for agriculture in Song. As is Teochew, the two other pre-Tang port cities in the coastal south, Guangzhou and Fuzhou, are now situated fairly upriver, away from the sea.

Centuries ago when Teochew got its name the “Tidal Prefecture” (潮州), little space separated the tides of the South China Sea and the foot of the high grounds where our ancient forefathers had their dwellings. At an age when the Chinese civilisation and culture in Teochew were at their pinnacle, they learned to master the natural environment and gained great strength as a people. Though this prosperity was followed by many ebbs and flows of fortunes, one thing the passage of time did not take way: the home of our people is found in Tang mountains.

A New Year is here again. This is the time when many of us look back to take stock of our experiences in the past twelve months, and make plans to better ourselves with a list of resolutions.

The idea of New Year resolution is closely tied to modern concepts of time management and goal settings, although its root is traced to religious festivals from the West. At its centre is the notion that time exists on a linear time-scale, as indicated by the progressive numbers that mark each different year. However, time was not tracked in the same way in the old Chinese society, which used a lunisolar calendar tied to the four seasons of nature, as well as a recurring sexagenary (60 years) cycle. In this world that our forefathers were familiar with, perpetuity, and not progress, was the keyword.

The emphasis on the perpetual is critical in shaping aspirations and hopes in ways different to what many of us are used to. Here the individual self is merely a part of a larger scheme of things, and the pursuit of his/her personal ambitions are secondary. Instead future happiness is staked on the well-being and the achievements of the next generation. While this is not unique to the Teochew people, no one else takes this more seriously than any Teochew father or mother. At any family gathering, there is always a proud uncle boasting how well his son is doing in his career, or a grinning grandmother counting aloud the number of grandchildren she has.

Coinciding with the evolution of the competitive modern society, recent generations of Teochew parents have made their primary concern the performance of their children in school. Good grades, they believe, will translate into good jobs and security in life. By performance in school, this often refers narrowly to the attainment of high scores in academic subjects like English, Mandarin (or another local national language), science, mathematics, history, literature, etc. At the same time, any interests in other fields, including different aspects of the Teochew culture, is deemed as irrelevant and burdensome. More than once comments have been noted from young overseas Teochews of their parents’ criticism of their desire to pick up the “useless” Teochew language. Not a small number of friends have also questioned the purpose of promoting something as “backward” as the Teochew identity. Its practical value as a medium for business in Southeast Asia, they point out, has greatly diminished since the 1970s.

But as the old saying goes, there are many things money can’t buy. And moving forward in life is not only dependent on the plans we make today. Looking to the past to learn from those who ventured ahead of us in life’s journey is just as important.

One of the best ways to do so is paying attention to the counsel of our Teochew elders. You see, Teochews are traditionally “village people”, whose lives are not regulated by power of the law or the knowledge of elites, but by the agreement of members of family and neighbours on “the immutable law of reason”. This reason contains lessons in life picked up and accumulated over many generations, and further refined from endless debates over tea and across the dinner table. As a result, even a simple conversation with an old Teochew can yield nuggets of wisdom that cannot be learned in any textbook or prestigious MBA courses.

Take for example, five words left behind by my grandfather: zo nang dieh lao sik 做人著老實 – “we have to honest at all times” – forms a short, but precious cornerstone advice invaluable for anybody. My grandmother’s advice to me to marry only a partner who is of “one heart and mind” (dang sim dang yi 同心同意) with myself is another that I fully cherish. Because Teochew wisdom is not housed in books, but shared through daily interactions, enlightenment to the principles of living a rewarding life is not limited solely to the highly-educated, as this short interview with this sparkling former noodle-seller shows:

In the coming year some of us will be seeking “completion” by making “root-finding” trips to our ancestral homeland, while others will strive for the same by more learning and more sharing. The Teochew Store hopes that we can be part of your journey in 2015.

We wish all our fans and readers a Blessed and Fruitful New Year.

"Like" our Facebook page to stay updated with The Teochew Store.