[Vox pop] Blood, lion dance or dialect: What makes a Chinese Singaporean?

This year’s breakout Chinese film, Dear You, is now showing in Singapore. Through qiaopi, the letters and remittances sent home by early Chinese migrants who travelled to Southeast Asia in search of a better life, the film tells a deeply personal story of loyalty, obligation and emotional connection.

For many descendants of overseas Chinese, this history is not distant. It lives on in family stories, ancestral hometowns, dialects and traditions. In our Vox Pop, many respondents traced their roots to places such as Chaozhou, Xiamen, Hainan and Fujian. Some still keep in touch with relatives in China, while many others only know fragments of where their families first came from.

Across the interviews, older respondents were generally fluent in Mandarin, and spoke of Chinese identity as something closely tied to heritage and remembering one’s roots. At the same time, they also saw this identity as part of Singapore’s wider multicultural society. For them, being Chinese Singaporean means respecting Chinese traditions, while also being part of a multiracial country.

But the connection has changed across generations. Among younger respondents, the picture was more mixed. Most interviews with them were conducted in English. Many said they were not fluent in Mandarin or dialect, or that they only used Mandarin in certain situations, usually when speaking to parents or older relatives. Some said their Chinese used to be better, but became “rusty” once they no longer had a Chinese-speaking environment.

So what does Chinese identity mean to Chinese Singaporeans today?  Is that identity still shaped by family history and tradition, or are those connections slowly fading over time? Watch the video to hear what Chinese Singaporeans have to say.

Related: Dear You: China’s Nanyang dream and Singapore’s lived reality | The truth behind Dear You, from a first-generation Nanyang migrant