Rebuilding the Ancestral Village: Singaporeans in China

4 Negotiating Collective Memories and Social Experiences

Since the nineteenth century, emigrants have moved out of Fujian to Nanyang and elsewhere in search of better economic opportunities, and a large number moved to Malaya and Singapore and settled there. After World War II, another 20,000 Anxi villagers immigrated to Singapore. Today, the number of emigrants from Anxi to Singapore and their descendents totals 185,309, or about 10 per cent of the Chinese Singaporean population. Of these, 41,075 came from Penglai (Anxi Xianzhi, vol. 2: 854). The primary reason for this early emigration trend was extreme poverty. From the late 1970s through the 1990s, it was this poverty in Anxi that lured the same Singapore Anxi Chinese to visit their ancestral villages and assist with the rebuilding of their ancestral homes. Several factors accounted for this. Some remembered their ancestral village, having experienced the poverty and later witnessed its continuation when they first returned for visits in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Many felt simultaneously fortunate and guilty about their relatively comfortable status in Singapore and their helplessness to assist during the 1960s and 1970s. After the 1978 reform, the changing political climates in both China and Singapore have enabled them to re-evaluate their situation and their relationship with their Anxi kin. They are now in a position to assist, and feel the compelling need to provide assistance to their village kin and to the villages in general. This chapter will explore how collective memories serve as an important power and moral capital that constantly nags the Singapore Anxi Chinese and tugs at their conscience. These memories do not go away, but challenge their emotions and sentiments until they have done something for their respective ancestral villages. However, the same set of passed-on collective memories also serve to discourage their Singapore-born descendants from visiting the villages, 4 Negotiating Collective Memories and Social Experiences Kuah_04_ch04.indd 71 11/11/2010 11:36 AM 72 Rebuilding the Ancestral Village and the result has been an inter-generational tension between the China-born and the Singapore-born Chinese. This is also the case between the Singapore Anxi Chinese and their village kin. The Flow of Collective Memories For the Singapore Chinese, the collective memories of their ancestral homes are selective ones. In reconstructing past events, many recount the great difficulties and poverty that they faced, their fear of the unknown when they set sail for Singapore, and their eventual success, however modest, in Singapore. They also remember the early years of struggle for survival in the villages. It is these memories that they have kept alive and that they choose to pass on to their descendants. Poverty and great difficulties not only pushed these migrants out of their villages but also pushed them to work hard and overcome difficulties of their early years in Singapore. This contributed to the ‘refugee mentality’ and the spirit of survival. Today, even after attaining success and wealth, some of these Singapore Chinese continue to work hard. And memory has guided the migrants in providing assistance and involving themselves in constructing and reconstructing their ancestral villages and to help to eradicate poverty among their kin. Projects which began with the aim of helping immediate family members and lineage kin have gradually shifted towards helping the wider community. In making this shift, the migrants have attempted, with their contributions, to make clear distinctions between private needs and public demands. The migrants’ memories and strong sense of belonging allow them to locate themselves within a known and manageable social framework grounded in kinship ties, and facilitate the revival of relationships. This in turn involves taking a measure of their self-worth and fulfilling moral duties, which include providing a bridge to link the younger Singapore Chinese to their ancestral homes. Through routine conversation, they have had some success in making the younger Singapore Chinese aware of the plight of their ancestral villages. In keeping alive the memories of their home villages the Singapore Chinese are reminded of ritual obligations and of their initial failures to carry them out, either in Singapore or in their ancestral villages, during times when the Communist regime even prevented the villagers from carrying out religious rituals and ancestor worship. Now that political pressure has eased, the Singaporeans hope to revive and reproduce these rituals. Kuah_04_ch04.indd 72 11/11/2010 11:36 AM Negotiating Collective Memories and Social Experiences 73 Maintaining Links from 1960...