First-generation citizens in Singapore
Their children grew up in Singapore, attended local schools, established their careers and businesses as part of the local community.
Read on for the personal testimonies, including that of Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister Wong Kan Seng, millionaire businessman Shaik Mohamad Abdul Jaleel, and theatre director Kuo Jian Hong, to find out more about Singapore’s immigrant heritage.
If our parents had not made Singapore home
You recognise them as the faces of Singaporeans who contribute immensely to society, public service, the law, the economy and the arts. But do you know their origins? Insight speaks to five first-generation Singaporeans whose parents arrived here from the region and beyond in search of a better life.
Senior Counsel Harry Elias' parents hailed from Baghdad, while retired public servant Ridzwan Dzafir's father sailed from Bawean Island.
Deputy Prime Minister Wong Kan Seng's parents arrived from Guangzhou in the 1930s but returned home once before deciding to sink their roots here.
Mr Shaik Mohamad Abdul Jaleel's parents came from Madras - today's Chennai - and Taiping, while Ms Kuo Jian Hong's parents left Hebei and Sumatra.
They came, they saw, they conquered their fears and made Singapore home.
Their children were born and bred here, attended local schools and established careers or businesses which made them part of the local community and an asset to society and the economy.
These are the stories that reflect Singapore as an island of immigrants since its founding by Sir Stamford Raffles in 1819.
As a trading post and gateway to the region, it attracted workmen from China, India and elsewhere. Successive waves of immigrants followed as Singapore and Malaya developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
In 1957, as Singapore progressed towards self-government and later independence, people who were British subjects or born here automatically gained citizenship.
Like today's newcomers, migrants who lived here long enough and swore loyalty to Singapore became citizens.
For first-generation Singaporeans, their ancestral links had become a distant memory and Singapore is their only home.
As DPM Wong told Parliament earlier this month: 'We are all descendants of immigrants.'
Had the forefathers of today's citizens been denied the chance to come and settle here, today's Singaporeans would not have been born here and Singapore would not be what it is today, he said.
Similarly, he tells Insight, the first-generation children of today's migrants will likewise contribute to Singapore and be as Singaporean as 'old' citizens.
'The children and grandchildren of today's immigrants who sink roots here will grow up with our children and grandchildren.
'Together they will be the next generation of Singaporeans and Singapore will be their home, just as much as it is our home today.'
Keeping alive the legacy of her late father, Kuo Pao Kun
What theatre director Kuo Jian Hong, 42, inherited from her immigrant father, who died in 2002, is the legacy of social consciousness.
Her late father was Singapore's most famous playwright, Mr Kuo Pao Kun, and her mother is ballerina Goh Lay Kuan.
When Ms Kuo was growing up here, she did not play with the things other little girls did.
Instead, she sang and played with younger sister Jing Hong and the students at The Practice Performing Arts School, founded by her parents in 1965.
For her, those were the simple pleasures of life, and family included everyone in the school.
'My parents loved life and loved people. I think they had a real big heart for people, and that has influenced how my sister and I view life and family,' says Ms Kuo, who is artistic co-director at The Theatre Practice (TPP), a bilingual theatre her father founded in 1986.
Her parents' deep concern for others, she says, created a strong sense of goodwill within their theatre 'family', which she enjoys to this day.
Mr Kuo came from Hebei, China to Singapore when he was 10, at his father's request. The elder Kuo was a successful businessman who owned Singapore's first multi-level department store, Peking, in the City Hall area.
Madam Goh moved here in her teens from Sumatra, Indonesia after World War II. Her parents were educators who sought teaching opportunities here.
The two met at Rediffusion's Mandarin radio play section, married, and lived in a bungalow off Orchard Road.
For immigrants like her parents, the theatre community offered them a place away from their home provinces in which to sink their roots, Ms Kuo says.
The innumerable acts of goodwill that people extended to one another forged a strong sense of community at a time when life was hard.
It seemed almost natural then that Mr Kuo would express his discontent with the socio-political turmoil in China and Singapore through his plays.
'There was discrimination, racial tension - there were all these things that were prime material for artistic creation,' says Ms Kuo.
His works were so critical that some were banned from the stage, such as The Struggle (1969), about the social turmoil that results from rapid urbanisation and capitalism. Eventually, he was arrested during the leftist purge in 1976.
He was detained for over four years and stripped of his Singapore citizenship. His citizenship was reinstated in 1992.
To Ms Kuo, her parents' social activism was less about being political than it was about being socially conscious of how people were being affected by regimes and policies.
'One of their concerns was the underdogs: the old, the youth, those who were ripped off by the opportunistic acts that were going on...materialistic quest was the last thing on our minds.'
This is the legacy of social consciousness that her father left Ms Kuo. She became TPP's artistic co-director in 2005 after spending 20 years studying theatre design and working in film and theatre in the United States.
She is married to freelance producer-director Christopher Hatton, 41, an American. They have a daughter, Olivia, who is five years old.
What brought her home was her sense of mission to grow the audience for Chinese theatre. This is why she chose to produce the Chinese modern rock musical Liao Zhai Rocks, which opens on Thursday.
Musicals, she says, can bring in audiences who would not ordinarily choose to watch a Chinese play. They also draw in artists from the music and English theatre scene who would otherwise stay away from Chinese theatre.
'For a lot of people who don't speak Mandarin any more, the only time they speak (Mandarin) is when they are singing karaoke. So songs are this thin thread that connects a lot of people to Chinese culture.'
No home, but dad knew he just had to make it here
Millionaire businessman Shaik Mohamad Abdul Jaleel lives in a bungalow off Orchard Road, but prefers to sleep on the floor.
'I'm used to it - it's more comfortable for me,' says the founder and managing director of Mini Environment Services (MES), a dormitory builder and operator with an annual revenue of $80 million.
He recalls the times when he and his immigrant father, Mr Muthumaricar Shaik Mohamed, slept under the stars.
With no home of their own, they showered in the washing bay of the Stamford Road hawker stall where his father sold groceries.
Earlier, they had lived and worked at the family shophouse in Colombo Court, until they were asked to move out in 1967 by the authorities.
'My father was given the choice of relocating to Jurong or Toa Payoh. But he could not afford the monthly rent. So he chose a hawker stall instead,' says Mr Jaleel, 52.
It had been a gruelling and gritty life for Mr Jaleel's father, who first came to Singapore from Madras, now known as Chennai, in the 1930s to join his family.
Mr Shaik, then in his 20s, made a living here by helping his father run the family business in the City Hall area. His father and three brothers had arrived earlier to pave the way for the rest of their family to join them.
Over the years, the store expanded to three shophouses selling groceries, food and textiles. But business faltered after their father's death and the siblings went their separate ways in 1964.
By then, Mr Shaik had married Ms Syedunisa Bi, his Taiping-born bride, and had five children, including the youngest child and only son, Mr Jaleel.
Without education or skills, Mr Shaik was unsure how he would support his family on his own. He returned to Madras, his hometown, that year, with his family in tow.
But the limited opportunities there and his longing for a better life saw Mr Shaik get back on a ship bound for Singapore. He took only Mr Jaleel, leaving the rest of his family behind.
Home for father and son was the shophouse where they ran their business. When it was taken over for redevelopment, they found themselves without a roof over their heads.
Recollecting those homeless days spent eking out a meagre existence, Mr Jaleel says: 'That's where my life of sleeping in back lanes started for me. My dad took it. He did not feel sorry for himself. He knew he just had to make it here.'
An MP came to know of their plight and took them off the streets by securing a one-room flat in Mosque Street for them.
Every month, his father would earn about $200, and send up to $80 home to support his family.
Mr Jaleel had to drop out of school at Secondary 2 to help make ends meet.
He took odd jobs like washing cars and selling cosmetics from the age of 12, and soon found work as a cleaning contractor for a Chinese businessman.
Mr Jaleel credits his father with teaching him the value of hard work, discipline and honesty - three traits that kept Mr Shaik, who eventually became a Singapore citizen, going.
'He had no other choice. He decided that this was the place where he was going to be.'
In 1976, Mr Jaleel founded his firm MES. Over time, it grew to become today's 20,000-strong international firm based in Lower Delta Road.
In 1980, he married Ms Daulath Bee, a Chennai native. They have six children aged 14 to 27 and five grandchildren.
An active grassroots activist in Aljunied and Bishan-Toa Payoh GRCs, he recently announced plans for a $1 million foundation to support children's education and broken families.
He says: 'My life is here, my future is here, therefore I have to be here. I don't mind contributing back to the country, to the community, whatever extra I have.'
Immigrant children 'will be like us'
When Deputy Prime Minister Wong Kan Seng's parents first came to Singapore to look for a better life in the 1930s, they sold sundry provisions.
But business was not good after World War II, so they returned to their village in Zhongshan prefecture in Guangdong, China, taking their young daughter and son who were born here with them.
After six months, they returned here in 1949. Mr Wong was three years old.
'I don't think the conditions in China were favourable,' Mr Wong, 63, tells Insight.
'Having been in Singapore for some years, my parents thought Singapore was a better place to make a living.'
What led them to move here is no different from why many of today's migrants decided to come here.
Back in their village, his parents and others lived off the soil as farmers.
When they came here for the second time, they became hawkers in what is today Farrer Park, selling noodles at a coffee shop at the corner of Race Course Road and Owen Road.
Life was tough, for they had to move from one rented room to another in the area - including a converted garage - each time the rent went up. They also had three more daughters.
'Since life was still not very good in China in the 1950s, and the children were all here, my parents decided to make Singapore home,' says Mr Wong.
They could speak only Cantonese, but picked up bazaar Malay and Hokkien to get by at the market.
After several years, they took over the tenancy of a pre-war single-storey terrace house in Race Course Road, and set up a stall in front of their home.
They were determined to give their children a good education, even though Mr Wong's father had only a few years of education and his mother, none.
There were not many English-medium schools then, but the former tenant of their new house helped register Mr Wong in the Rangoon Road Primary School, where he began his education.
He also attended a Chinese school for the other half of the day. He went on to Outram Secondary School and the University of Singapore before joining the Administrative Service. He entered politics in 1984.
Mr Wong's younger sisters went to Methodist Girls' School. One became a nurse, another a legal clerk, and the youngest an accountant.
When not at school, they would help out at the noodle stall.
To earn extra income, their father would travel around selling sundry goods, cloth and fruits from a tricycle cart. He also helped friends and fellow migrants from his village write letters home.
As Singapore moved towards self-government, the law was changed in 1957 to allow those born here or who had lived here for 10 years to become citizens.
Like many of the 220,000 China-born Chinese here, Mr Wong's parents registered as Singapore citizens.
This entitled them to vote in the May 1959 elections, which brought the People's Action Party to power.
Mr Wong remembers accompanying his parents to the polling station at his old school and listening to the results over the radio.
Many of his classmates had parents who were born elsewhere, but this was never an issue, he recalls.
He notes that not many Singaporeans can really claim to have been here for more than five generations.
'Now, we feel foreigners who come here are intruding into our space. But we forget that that's what our parents did before - intruding into the space of those who were here before them.
'We should remember that immigrant children will one day be like us,' he adds.
Mr Wong speaks from experience when he says: 'Many of us are first generation. When you are born here, your friends are here in the same school, with the same language, you will feel Singaporean.'
This country 'gave me every opportunity'
Whenever Senior Counsel Harry Elias, 72, recalls his days at St Andrew's School from 1945 to 1954, one vivid scene inevitably comes to mind.
Before each competitive game, the Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Hindu players of the school rugby team would huddle and pray together.
'They all prayed to their own gods, but they all prayed together,' says the son of Baghdadi Jewish immigrants, who is today one of Singapore's leading lawyers.
The unusual ritual puzzled onlookers then, but to the young and impressionable Harry, it embodied the racial and religious freedoms his parents could not enjoy back in Iraq.
His parents, Mr Elias Jonas and Ms Sophie Reuben, left their country with their families at the turn of the 20th century, during the reign of the Ottoman empire.
Because of the lack of opportunities at home, many Jews sought better lives in the east, says Mr Elias, who took his father's first name as his last.
His father, then in his early 20s, became a successful merchant who ran four knick-knack shops along Arab Street, while his mother, in her mid-teens, was a housewife and midwife. She also volunteered as a chevra kadisha, who prepares the dead for burial.
Mr Elias is the youngest of 12 children, 10 of whom survived.
Back then, about 30 family members lived together in a rented bungalow in Burmah Road, off Serangoon Road, where Mr Elias was born.
'It was cramped, we didn't have modern sanitation. The faeces used to be collected in a bucket,' recalls Mr Elias, who spoke to his parents in Arabic and Malay.
They never went hungry, but meals were straightforward affairs. Boiled chicken feet with rice and saffron was a common item on their menu.
Life might have been simple, but what struck the Sephardic Jewish family was the lack of anti-Semitism in their new home.
'We never found any discrimination any time, any place, anywhere,' he says firmly. He recounts how his school principal recognised Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, as a holiday for his Jewish students.
Almost everyone was an immigrant then, so there was no reason to view others as trespassers, Mr Elias points out.
Although he had lost both parents by the age of 22, Mr Elias was able to pursue his dreams because many doors were open to him. A string of scholarships took him through to university in Britain, where he studied law.
He was called to the Singapore Bar in 1969, and started his own firm here in 1988. Today, Harry Elias Partnership is a top law firm.
Mr Elias is married to Ms Thelma Sharbanee, a Singapore-born Jew with Iraqi roots. They have two children each from previous marriages.
He is keenly aware that his success would have been unlikely elsewhere: 'This is the country that gave me every bloody opportunity I could get. No one hindered it, not a single obstacle.'
Source: 20 March 2010, The Straits Times © Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. Permission required for reproduction.