(George Yeo Yong-Boon (Chinese: 杨荣文; pinyin: Yáng Róngwén; born 13 September 1954)
Chapter 1
Identity
In Chapters 1 and 2, George Yeo discusses his identity as a Teochew Chinese, a Roman Catholic and a native Singaporean.
Q: You relate well to different communities. How do you describe your own identity?
When I applied to join the People’s Action Party (PAP) after resigning from the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) in 1988, I described my values as Chinese and Christian.
My identity came from my family. My paternal grandfather came to the Nanyang region from Wenli (文里) Village in the town of Anbu (庵埠).
He owned rubber plantations along the Johor River, only accessible by boat, and became a man of means. With the money he made, he came to own substantial farmland back in Anbu Town and built a big house in the village. He attained a certain social status when he returned to China and was called Ah Ye (阿爷).
My father was born in Johor in 1916 on a rubber plantation but had his birth registered in Singapore.
When my grandfather died, my father, then aged 21, went to China in 1937 for the funeral. Under local custom, he could marry within 100 days or observe mourning for three years. Relatives advised him to find a wife. With the help of intermediaries, he married my mother, who was from the nearby village of Xianxi (仙溪), also in Anbu Town.
She was born in 1919 and was 19 years old then. The bridal chamber with the old bridal bed are still in the old Yeo house in Wenli Village.
My parents’ marriage certificate in Anbu Town, 1937.
1986, with my wife at my parents’ bridal chamber at the Yeo ancestral home.
A month after their marriage, the Marco Polo Bridge Incident happened, marking the beginning of Japan’s invasion of China proper.
My parents hurried back to Singapore. For over 40 years, my mother was not able to return to China. When she finally did in 1978, she knelt before her parents to seek forgiveness for her prolonged absence. She had left as a young bride and returned as a grandmother.
Being the eldest in her family, my mother always felt a strong sense of responsibility for her parents and siblings in China. No matter our family’s circumstances, she would try to eke out some money to send home every month. During difficult famine years, she and her relatives in Singapore would pack salted pork lard in kerosene tins and ship them to China. Those kept entire families alive.
In my secondary school days, I did the remittances for her at the Bank of China Katong branch. I still remember handing $40 or $50 over the counter and being given little receipts made of thin paper, which tore easily if written too hard on. Inside the bank, I was in a different world. Chinese Communist propaganda posters hung on the walls and leaflets were freely available on side tables. I knew such material was either banned or frowned upon in Singapore but took some regardless.
I treasured a little calendar card with a picture of the first bridge erected across the Yangtze River in Nanjing in 1968. Naturally, China was very proud of that achievement. After Soviet advisors pulled out from China, they had to bootstrap themselves and overcome many challenges. Today, the bridges across the Yangtze River are too many to count. Read here
As a young Chinese boy, I felt an affinity to China and was proud of its achievements, including the first atomic bomb in 1964 and the first hydrogen bomb in 1967. As I grew older, I came to realise that this was partly the result of my mother’s influence. She kept up constant correspondence with her relatives, the content of which kept clear of politics. As her youngest child, I probably spent more time with her than my older siblings. She would show me pictures of her parents, siblings and my cousins, and tell me stories about them. I only communicated with her in Teochew.
Q: Tell us about your first trip to China.
In 1983, I decided to follow my parents to China. After 1978, visiting China became an annual pilgrimage for them. I was then 29 and a Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force. At that time, our passports did not allow for travel to China, Cuba and North Korea. I had to apply for special permission to travel to China.
The Internal Security Department (ISD) called me down for a one-hour interview. They were polite and offered me coffee. The rules in those days allowed older Singaporeans to visit China, but younger ones needed a good reason to make the trip. However, the Singapore government was gradually relaxing its controls because China was changing under Deng Xiaoping. It was only because of China’s change of policy that my parents had been able to visit China in 1978 with one of my older brothers, who is an American citizen. Singapore was reviewing its position and the ISD wanted to know about my reaction to China. They requested that I inform them upon my return to Singapore and be interviewed again.
As I did not inform the ISD immediately upon coming back to Singapore, they called me instead. I spent another hour with them giving my impressions and drank another cup of coffee. Being from the SAF, I understood full well why I was given special attention: the Singapore government did not want me, an SAF scholar, to somehow be captured by communist China. For this reason, when Malay friends complain about the special security consideration they receive in the SAF, I tell them my own story, which gives comfort to some of them. There is nothing personal and it is certainly not racist.
During Sukarno’s Konfrontasi, all those with Indonesian connections came under security interest. Security classifications varied with the security situation. For example, an old friend of mine, Mohamed Rahmat, affectionately known as Tok Mat, the former Information Minister of Malaysia, told me how he had been denied a scholarship by the Malaysian government in the 1960s because he was Javanese.
Looking back, it is amusing how my two encounters with the ISD bookended my first visit to China. Since then, the world has changed dramatically and China has become very important for Singapore’s future. Today, if you are a new migrant to Singapore with strong mainland Chinese connections, you will naturally come under interest to the security services. It is the ISD’s responsibility to ensure that foreign powers do not make use of their connections in Singapore to groom agents of influence. We can only have good relations with them if the ISD does its work.
My first visit to China was eye-opening. We first spent a couple of days in Hong Kong. At the hotel, my father wanted to call my mother’s brother in Anbu Town. We waited hours in the hotel room for the call to be put through. That was the state of connectivity with China then.
We took a slow boat to China from Hong Kong. It was an old German ship bought by China named Dinghu (鼎湖). The moment we boarded, we were in a different world. Rousing mainland songs were being played on the public address system. All payments were in foreign exchange certificates, or waihui juan (外汇卷). My parents and I had bought tickets for a cabin with six seats.
Arrival in ShantouBoarding the ship in Hong Kong.
At my maternal grandparent’s house in 1983.
When we entered the cabin, we saw a man sitting across from us whose right hand looked as if it had melted. Our immediate thought was that he might have leprosy. My father and I looked at each other.
Without saying a word, we quickly left the cabin and decided to sleep on deck. My parents found benches. I slept beneath a staircase.
The following morning, we arrived in Shantou (汕头). I felt great excitement arriving at my ancestral home. Everyone was wearing blue, grey or black. We had to collect our bags from a shed. A young girl helped us with the luggage. My mother wanted to tip her for her service but she refused. My mother persisted and chased her around the corner until, out of sight of others, she accepted the money. My mother understood what was in her mind.
We were enthusiastically received by my relatives. One of my uncles, who was an official, provided a van to send us to the village. As a youth, he was in the Communist underground and only surfaced after the Cultural Revolution to become part of the new local leadership. From Shantou to Anbu Town, we trundled for an hour on a bad road. During the Japanese occupation, there had been a railroad running from Shantou to Chaozhou City. The rails have since been removed, but the road is still referred to as the railroad, or huo che lu (火车路).
For a week, I stayed at my maternal grandparents’ house. We did not have close relatives on my father’s side. The Yeo family had been classified as rich farmers in 1949 and their properties expropriated. After 1978, the Yeo ancestral home was legally returned to the family but not the farmland. It is now being looked after by a distant relative who rents it out for various uses.
In contrast, my maternal grandfather had been adjudged to be a good man at a mass gathering following the capture of power by the Communist Party of China. His house was therefore never taken away from him. He worked in a pharmacy.
Q: What were living conditions like?
They were not good at all. It was a tough adjustment for me. For 30 years, the part of China facing Taiwan was in a potential war zone and deliberately under-developed. That included all of Fujian and eastern Guangdong province, where the majority of Chinese Singaporeans came from originally.
Accompanying father to the Yeo House.
Outdoor toilets. My wife posing with a child. At the back, my father on the right and my cousin on the left doing their business, while a water buffalo stood watching.
Anbu Town was backward. Without sewer lines, the smell of dung and night soil was everywhere. Everywhere we went, beggars would come up to my parents. Once, to rid himself of one, my father tossed him a 5 RMB note which caused our relatives to protest.
I immediately recognised my maternal grandparents’ house from the pictures I had seen in Singapore. Plastered on the wall, in multi-coloured mosaic which had seen better days, were the characters“高举毛泽东思想 伟大红旗” Gāo-jǔ máo-zé-dōng sī-xiǎng wěi-dà hóng-qí (Hold high the great red flag of the Mao Zedong Thought). It had been some years since the end of the Cultural Revolution. Even though pieces of mosaic had fallen off, Mao’s legacy was obviously still there for everyone to see.
I was not used to outdoor toilets and had to learn how to scoop water from a well. I stayed in a room so damp that a book left on the floor at night became soft and wet the next morning. Beds were raised from the floor. I slept under a mosquito net. The trick was making sure that there were no mosquitoes inside the net before sealing it.
The house did not have a refrigerator. There was not enough electricity, and the sole lightbulb in the house turned brown in the evening.
Leftover food was brought to a boil and kept covered in cabinets, which had footings surrounded by little saucers of water to keep ants out.
Despite what seemed to me primitive conditions, hygiene standards were high. Water was always boiled. Teochew tea (功夫茶) (Gōng-fū-chá) (Kung Fu Tea) was drunk everywhere, late into the night. People fussed over their food, which was consistently good and fresh.
Q: What were your impressions of your grandparents?
Both my grandparents were in their 90s. My grandmother was suffering from dementia. She repeatedly mistook me for my elder brother, who is a medical doctor, and kept asking me to help her. In contrast, my slightly-built grandfather was spry and lucid.
One of the rooms had a ladder which led to an attic. Curious, I asked my grandfather what was kept up there. He told me that they used to keep old documents there but burned them all during the Cultural Revolution. It was now empty. During the Cultural Revolution, those caught with documents of the past were accused of harboring hopes to reclaim old properties, which was seen as evidence of reactionary intent.
A hundred years ago, the Communist Party of China (CPC) was formed. In 1949, the People’s Republic of China was established. This was followed by land reform, but many people still nursed the wish to recover their old possessions. The creation of communes during the Great Leap Forward (大跃进 ; Dà yuè-jìn ) contributed to the severity of the subsequent famine affecting large parts of China. Mao was criticised and retreated to the second line. Some policies were reversed. Mao saw his revolution subverted and launched the Cultural Revolution. When it went out of control, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) was called in to re-establish order. Mao was too much of a romantic and made serious mistakes in his later years. In his youth, he was adamant that cadres conduct thorough social investigations before formulating policies. In his later years, he was too cut off from ground reality and became subjective.
Maternal grandparents in 1983.
For all the cruelty and harm done by the Cultural Revolution, this tragic period of Chinese history marked the final clearing of the land before a new China under Deng Xiaoping could make a fresh start. ( Deng Xiaoping in Chinese: 邓小平; 22 August 1904 - 19 February 1997)
Unjust distribution of land had led to the Communist Revolution. One of its most important achievements was bringing land under collective control. The collectivisation of land after 1949 made China’s remarkable progress after 1978 possible. Today, one can invest in Chinese properties as a foreigner and choose where to live, but only on a leasehold basis. Read here
This collective control of land enabled China to urbanise rapidly and build infrastructure on a scale that astonished the world.
In his life, my maternal grandfather never travelled beyond the Chaoshan (潮汕) region. Yet, when I spoke to him, he had a good understanding of China’s geography and history. He leafed through some of the material I brought on China from Singapore and showed familiarity with the information contained in them. I don’t think he was an exception. Chinese students study China and are thus familiar with a big canvas. Despite living in the same village his whole life, he knew China’s mountains and rivers, its resources and history.
If I were to ask a young Singaporean today where Palembang or Kuala Lipis is, he would struggle to give me the answer. We do not teach our Singaporean students enough about the region we live in. This is a great deficiency.
In my school days, we learned about Malaya from old British textbooks.
Our historical links then were with Malaya. Then, we merged with Malaya to form the new Malaysia. Indonesia was however largely terra incognita. One day, when I was in St Patrick’s Primary School, we were standing on the beach by the sea when my teacher pointed to the land on the horizon and said that that was Indonesia. Indonesia seemed so mysterious then, made worse by newspaper and radio reports of Sukarno’s shrill attack on the Malaysian proposal.
When I joined the Air Force, I was acutely aware of my lack of knowledge of Indonesia and resolved to put this to rights. I went on a Nam Ho tour to Sumatra and Java, armed with a travel book called the Indonesian Handbook. (Read here) It was my first visit to Indonesia. The tour guide was more interested in taking us shopping. For the single men who were interested, he brought them to catch chickens (鸡, Jī , Chinese slang word for female prostitute) at night.
I became the tour guide for those with intellectual interests. The Indonesian Handbook, which was a treasure trove of information, was banned in Indonesia because it described the corruption of the First Lady and others. Some years later, over lunch, I was greatly amused when the Indonesian Ambassador to Singapore made a request to Eddie Teo, our Director of Security and Intelligence, to have the book banned.
In my office, I pinned up Air Force maps covering the entire Nusantara, from Aceh to Papua. In my free time, I committed key features like towns, volcanoes, airbases and military districts to memory.
The point I am making is this. If you are Chinese, Indonesian, American or European, you are likely to have a big mental map because, like my grandfather, you are required to know your own country and region. In Singapore, we are too focused on ourselves and neglect the region around us. In fact, we have a tendency to look down on our region, thinking that we are an advanced country. This lack of knowledge about the larger environment in which we live in can be serious weakness.
Q: What about your other relatives in China? What was your general impression of the Chaoshan region?
They saw us as rich relatives then. Not so now. For years, we were their lifeline, for which they were penalised in China. None of my immediate cousins went to university for this reason.
One day, one of my cousins decided to try my Heads and Shoulders shampoo and washed his hair beside the well with visible delight. That picture of him with a full head of lather would have made a great shampoo advertisement. On another day, I found bits of hair on my Gillette razor, which someone else must have decided to try on his whiskers.
On the day we left Shantou for Guangzhou, one of my cousins asked if I could give him my old Olympus camera as he knew that I had a new one. I happily handed it over to him and saw how he immediately tinkered with his new possession. He had no difficulty mastering the functions at all. Young Chinese did not lack education. What they needed was opportunity. Their desire to learn and improve was palpable.
In 1986, when I brought my wife to Chaoshan and to China for the first time, an uncle who was a professor at the new Shantou University (汕头大学 ; Shàn-tóu dà-xué) brought us on a campus tour. The university was founded and endowed by Li Ka-shing. ( In Chinese: 李嘉誠; born 29 July 1928) is a Hong Kong billionaire business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. He was born in Chaozhou City and, like many Chinese businessmen who made good overseas, he never forgot his roots. The spanking new campus stood out in stark contrast to the dilapidation of the surrounding area, like an oasis in the desert. As we wandered around the modern facilities, I saw female students dancing to the tune of Michael Jackson’s music. It felt surreal. China was opening an exciting new chapter in its history. Shantou University has since achieved a certain reputation because it is seen as Li Ka-shing’s university.
Mr Li told me once how when he launched a condominium project in Shantou, he decided at the spur of the moment to donate the entire project, without debt, as an endowment to the university.
As a child, my mother would talk to me about the relationship of the village to the town, and of the town to the city. We were from Wenli Village, which, as part of Anbu Town, came under the jurisdiction of Chao’an (府城). Guangzhou was far away from the provincial capital (省城). Since then, there have been a number of administrative changes, but the same names are re-used. Chao’an is now Chaozhou City. Chao’an has been retained as the name of a district and Anbu Town has become its capital city. In the Confucianist world, hierarchy is important.
The first Yeos migrated from Fujian Province to Anbu Town during the Southern Sung (宋 Sòng) Dynasty. My ancestral village produced two Yeo brothers who were high scholar-mandarins, or jin-shi (进士) serving Ming Emperor Zhengde. Wenli was the name given by the Emperor to honour them. Till today, the majority of the families in Wenli Village carry the surname Yeo, 杨 Yáng.
Undergraduates doing aerobics to Michael Jackson’s music.
Shantou University in 1986.
Yi’an (义安), as in Ngee Ann Kongsi, was an old name of the Chaoshan region. For a long time, the Chaoshan region had eight major districts, and was hence known as Ba-yi (八邑) (Eight Towns). Today there are three major cities, Shantou, Chaozhou and Jieyang. The famous Singaporean artist, Chen Wen Hsi, was from Jieyang. The Singaporean tycoon, Goh Cheng Liang, came from Chaozhou (like Li Ka-shing). The best goose for braising comes from Chenghai (澄海). Many famous Teochew businessmen are from Chaoyang (潮阳). Both Chenghai and Chaoyang are now part of Shantou City.
Among Teochews, these sub-divisions are sometimes made much of. My regular bak kut teh 肉骨茶, Ròu gǔ chá coffeeshop in Tiong Bahru is run by people from Chao’an, which makes me feel strangely at home there. According to a programme I watched on CGTN, the Chaoshan region gives the most attention to ancestral temples in all of China. This is intriguing and perhaps a reason why the Teochews are sometimes thought of as being clannish.
History of Wen Li
The Teochew people were blessed to have the great scholar-mandarin Han Yu (韩愈) spend some months in Chaozhou during the Tang Dynasty.
It was the good fortune of the Teochew dialect people that Han Yu was exiled by Emperor Xianzong for his memorial opposing the excessive veneration of a Buddha relic. During the Ming Dynasty 明代 Míng-dài, of the top eight scholars of the Tang and Sung listed, Han Yu was ranked number one.
In Chaozhou, he got rid of crocodiles which infested a swampy estuary. Apparently, to propitiate them, the local people sometimes sacrificed young girls. He wrote a famous memorial to the crocodiles giving them ample warning to go away or face the consequences. Han Yu could have killed the crocodiles from the beginning but knew that he needed to rid the Teochew people of the thinking that the crocodiles were deities. The intention of the memorial was to exorcise their minds.
I decided to write a few characters from this famous memorial in my calligraphy class: 潮之州，大海在其南，鲸鹏之大，虾蟹之细 Cháo zhī zhōu, dà-hǎi zài qí nán, jīng péng zhī dà, xiā xiè zhī xì (roughly translated as ‘In the region of the tides, where the vast sea is to the south, the whales and crocs are large while the prawns and crabs are delicate.’).
I found the prawn and crab references particularly interesting. When I first visited the temple across the river in Chaozhou City, which is named after him, it had been damaged during the Cultural Revolution. His statue was disfigured. Since then, it has been restored, renovated, and enlarged.
Chinese leaders visiting Chaozhou City pay their respects to him at the temple. The main river in Chaoshan is also named after Han Yu.
In the past, I visited Chaoshan every two to three years, always with my wife, sometimes with my children. When I worked in Hong Kong, my wife and I found it most convenient to take the fast train from West Kowloon 西九龙 Xī jiǔ-lóng. We might go twice a year, principally to enjoy the food. Over time, the older relatives gradually passed away, leaving just my cousins and their children on my mother’s side. On the Yeo side, a deep sense of kinship remains even though there are no close relatives.
As a political minister or former minister, I would always lead a ceremony to pay respects to our ancestors, which takes place two weeks before Chinese New Year, at the branch ancestral temple whenever I am present.
My attempt at calligraphy of a passage from Han Yu’s famous Memorial to the Crocodiles written in Chaozhou
Han River named after Han Yu. My father and mum’s brother resting below a tree on the river dyke.
At Han Yu’s temple 韩文公.
With family, relatives and friends before the statue of Han Yu
There are two levels of ancestral temples in the Yeo clan, the branch and the main. The ancestral worship ceremony takes place at the branch temple, while the main Yeo temple has a history going back to the Southern Sung period 南宋时期 Nán-sòng shí-qí . When it was renovated, they asked my brothers and I to make a major donation, which was not a lot of money. Many businessmen would have been happy to donate much more but, as a Singapore minister, they wanted my name inscribed on the pillars.
At some time during the Kangxi era 康熙 时代 Kāng-xī shí-dài, three sub-temples were established for three sons. My family belongs to the er fang (二房) branch temple, which is the one I visit regularly. It was shut down for many years and only revived in 1994. I am happy to see my sons also showing some interest. Daughters are traditionally excluded from the registry because their place is supposed to be with their husbands.
The ceremony to pay respect to ancestors is held a fortnight before Chinese New Year. It lasts two to three hours. The smell of incense fills the courtyard, and those participating wear traditional robes. It is a formal ceremony. A pig and a goat are disembowelled beautifully, their organs neatly arranged in basins placed below the carcasses. Offerings of fish, fowl and fruit are also laid out on long tables.
We have to kneel, make offerings, stand, process and pour libations of wine repeatedly before the ancestral tablets. At the end of the ceremony, pieces of paper with the names of prominent ancestors are read out and burned, including those of my parents and grandparents.
At the main Yeo temple when it was refurbished.
Officiating the opening of the Yeo branch temple.
At the Yeo Branch Ancestral Temple.
With two of my sons at Yeo branch ancestral temple. Wife and daughter standing behind.
At the the Yeo branch temple before ancestral tablets. My second son and I holding the tablets of my father and grandfather.
Yeo forebears
One cousin once commented that I seemed to have no difficulty kneeling for long stretches. I told her I am Catholic and used to kneeling.
On one of our earlier visits, one of my sons asked if I was allowed to hold joss sticks as a Catholic. Should I not bring candles instead? It was a funny suggestion. I told him that joss sticks and candles are the same. In Singapore, I do not normally use joss sticks because of tradition.
As a politician, I never held joss sticks so that I would not be seen as an opportunist.
In China, conforming to traditional rites is important. This issue of Chinese rites was debated within the Catholic Church for centuries.
The Jesuits argued that ancestral worship was a mark of respect, not idolatry, while the Dominicans and Franciscans disagreed. The debate was intense and went all the way to the Vatican. Historically, it was called the ‘Rites Controversy’.
Among Protestants, some still see ancestral worship as idolatry or superstition. This has created divisions within families when some children refuse to take part in ceremonies honouring deceased parents.
When I attend such ceremonies in Wenli Village, I usually say Catholic prayers in my heart silently.
The Red Dust
The PAP MPS I worked with are a diverse lot, but all were good people who cared for their residents. The comradeship we forged will follow us to our graves. After I lost the 2011 GE, PM Lee Hsien Loong requested me to step down from the PAP Central Executive Committee (CEC) together with Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Chok Tong. I was surprised and somewhat disappointed to be so asked. I had always been voted into the CEC by the cadres in my own right, never because the outgoing CEC had nominated me. It was a signal to me that I had no role to play in the PAP anymore. But it was also a relief to me because it also meant I had no more obligations. I considered resigning from the PAP but was discouraged by old friends from doing so. Without the PAP, there would have been no Singapore. The PAP is not an ideological party. Its pragmatism is founded on values that sustain our niche in the global ecosystem. If we lose those values, we will lose our position and go extinct unless the global system changes dramatically. When the PAP Youth (later renamed Young PAP) celebrated its fifth anniversary in 1991, I wrote a short piece on "The Future: Looking Beyond." I asked first, "What are we?" and ended saying: "In a larger sense, nothing has changed. From the beginning, the PAP believed in the market, in socialism, in democracy, in multi-racialism, and in international cooperation. But, like a renewal of faith, these beliefs must now be brought up to date and given new life. Our thinking has to reflect the times we live in." The PAP stays relevant only because it is deeply inserted in the lives of Singaporeans.
There was never animosity between the PAP and the Opposition in Aljunied GRC. Francis Seow's son, Ashleigh, contested us in 1988. He was a gentleman. Mohamed Jufrie was an eloquent speaker who never made personal attacks. J. B. Jeyaretnam's wife, who campaigned for the SDP slate against me in 1996, was gracious. So, too, was Goh Meng Seng, who years later in Hong Kong encouraged me to return to parliamentary politics. The Workers Party candidates - Low Thia Khiang, Sylvia Lim, Chen Show Mao, Pritam Singh, and Muhammad Faisal were tough opponents but never rough. As an MP, I remember an early encounter with J.B. Jeyaretnam, not long after entering politics. We were at a forum together organised by the National University of Singapore Society (NUSS). He was courteous, thanked me for
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