Hokkien Research Articles

The Meaning of The Shen Nong Da Di's (神农大帝Shen Nong Da Di) Birthday Ceremony at Ngo Kok Ong Temple Cibarusah, West Java

<p>This article discusses the meaning of the tradition Shen Nong Da di’s birthday ceremony (sejit) at Ngo Kok Ong Temple, Cibarusah, West Java. Ngo Kok Ong temple put Shennong Dadi in Hokkien dialect is called Sin Long Tay Te which means Agricultural Emperor as the main deity. The research methodology and data collection techniques used are qualitative methods. Data collection by indepth interviews and participant observations. Observations and participant observation carried out during the ceremony of Shen Nong's birthday from 26 June 2019 to 29 June 2019 with a descriptive analysis design. The purpose of this research is to describe the meaning of traditions at the Shen Nong’s birthday ceremony. The results of the research show that there are various traditions during this ceremony, prayer together, mediumship such as making amulet, slashing the tongue, stamping on coals lion dance and liong performances, and the tradition of electing locu. These various traditions have religious functions, social functions and psychological functions. Apart from that, the contained meaning in this tradition is the symbolic meaning and philosophical meaning for every Chinese community.</p>

Negotiating Routes and/or Roots: Heritagisation of nanyin in China and Singapore, 1970s to 2010s

Originated in southern China, nanyin (南音) is regarded as ‘the sound of motherland’ (乡音) performed and loved by the Hokkien dialect speakers in Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and diasporic populations living in Southeast Asia. Having thrived in transnational spaces, nanyin is now celebrated as a shared heritage in China and Southeast Asian countries, such as Singapore. This paper explores the process of heritage‐making, that is, the ways in which the art form and cultural practice of nanyin have been re‐shaped and re‐appropriated by the diasporic communities and the native place to articulate different understandings of the Chinese identity in their distinct nation‐state frameworks. In this ambivalent entanglement, China has re‐appropriated the diasporic history of nanyin to gain international recognition and build soft power through United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. In Singapore, the Siong Leng Music Association has actively engaged in the heritage‐making of nanyin, leading to the creation of a unique Singapore brand that speaks to hybridity and cosmopolitanism, in the same way as the re‐construction of their Chinese identity. Examining the two processes of heritagisation of nanyin along the China‐Singapore ‘heritage corridors’, the paper argues that the two ends are connected in important ways but always seek to maintain distance to articulate their own cultural representations at international stages. Thus, nanyin through a comparative perspective enables a critical examination of issues of centre versus periphery, authenticity, and hybridity in the Sinophone world.

Communication and Social Interaction between Chinese and Indigenous Ethnics in Bandar Lampung, Indonesia

This study discusses the language used and neighboring social interaction between the Chinese and the Indigenous Ethnics in Teluk Betung Selatan District, Lampung Province. The Indigenous Ethnics in this area consist of Lampung, Javanese, Minang, and Malay. Indonesia has a mixed population of racial and ethnic origins. Ethnicity, language, geography, and customs of each region make up the domestic background which includes indians, chinese, european, and arabs from outside Indonesia. Chinese and Indigenous Ethnics are represented in this study by ethnicity. The research uses a qualitative approach, data obtained from observations and interviews with 24 informants. The data analysis technique includes several stages, namely collection, reduction, and display of data. The findings show that the communication between the Chinese and the Indigenous Ethnics language use, if the Chinese communicate with Chinese, they use the Hokkien dialect for social relations/economic relations to support everyday life. In daily social activities, communication and social connections underpin economic relationships. Communication in social interaction must be managed properly or it will become a latent danger to the community’s harmony. The recommendation to the local government is to practice one day of the week to speak the local language and respect indigenous ethnicity. Keywords: Chinese Ethnics, indigenous ethnics, intercultural communication, stereotype.

The Nostalgic Negotiation of Post-TV Legibility in <i>Mom, Don’t Do That!</i>

The success and legibility of South Korean Netflix dramas like Squid Game (2021) have reinforced the position of Korean television dramas (K-dramas) at the forefront of both Asian and global entertainment. As one of the major consumers of Korean Wave products, Taiwan’s entertainment industry necessarily situates itself regionally, transnationally, and globally in relation to and in response to K-dramas’ dominance. The recently released Taiwanese Netflix television series Mom, Don’t Do That! (媽,別鬧了!, 2022) is a key development in Global Taiwanese television drama that reflects on and responds to the unabating Korean Wave (Hallyu or K-Wave) and the regional and global popularity of K-dramas on Netflix and other post-television over-the-top (OTT) media-viewing platforms. By alluding to the genre conventions that characterize Taiwanese prime time Hokkien dialect (Minnan) dramas and Taiwanese Mandarin idol-dramas, Mom Don’t Do That! (MDDT) strategically encourages a transnational nostalgia toward a golden era of Taiwanese dramas. This nostalgia, in turn, strategically allows MDDT to negotiate a new position for global Taiwanese television drama, challenging K-dramas’ ubiquity and Netflix’s curative influence on global media-consumption cultures. MDDT self-reflexively stages the domestic obsolescence of television, juxtaposes their screen-mediated food-consumption practices with the mediated foodways that have come to characterize the K-Wave, and highlights the unlikely and unhealthy nature of K-drama’s romantic tropes and archetypes. These strategic moves variously establish MDDT as a sustained metacommentary on the K-drama-dominated, post-TV conditions that continue to shape media-viewing practices and cultures of today.

The Development and Changes of Singapore Chinese Society in 19–20th Century—An Analysis from the Perspective of Dialect Group Cemetery Hills

The development of Chinese cemetery hills in Singapore reflects the changing dominance of the dialect groups between the 19th and 20th centuries. Heng San Ting 恒山亭 is the earliest cemetery hill of the Hokkien dialect group, and newly excavated burials indicate that early Singaporean Hokkien came not only from Zhangzhou 漳州 and Quanzhou 泉州 in southern Fujian 福建, but also from places such as Yongchun 永春 from the interior of Fujian. Apart from the Hokkien dialect group, the Cantonese 广东, Hakka 客家, Teochew 潮州 and Hainan 海南 communities also established their cemetery hills. In the early 19th century, the Chinese communities were divided into different dialect groups to form their representative cemetery hills, but the smaller communities within the dialect groups started to form and develop their own cemeteries due to increasing economic power from the mid to late 19th century. Scholars generally believe that the other four dialect groups, led by the Cantonese and Hakka dialect groups, formed a “United Front 联合阵线” to confront the Hokkien dialect group. However, this paper looks at the smaller communities under the five dialect groups and discovers that these communities developed and maintained their own cemetery hills and communicated with the smaller communities from different dialect groups. It was not a direct confrontation. In the 20th century, although the government introduced a series of policies to restrict the development of Chinese burial mounds, the different communities retained their autonomy under the government’s policies. From the development and changes of the Chinese dialect group cemeteries in Singapore, we see that the Chinese community still retains its own autonomy despite the rapid changes of society and the change of times.

Speech Act Varieties of Chinese and Non-Chinese Community in Medan Traditional Markets

In this study focused on to describing the types and functions of the Tionghoa community utterances that tend to use Hokkien language and the non Tionghoa community that typically to use Indonesian language. The theory proposed by Austin and Leech was used to classify and analyze the speech act data delivered and collected through a non-participative observation and taking notes technique. The data were obtained from five traditional markets in Medan from July to September 2020. The data showed five kinds of speech acts from both the Tionghoa and non-Tionghoa communities. A directive speech act was the dominant speech act obtained because the directive speech act influenced the interlocutor. In this case, the customer dominated the seller to do what the customer demanded. The directive speech act also showed the chief ordering function found in the Tionghoa community, and the bargaining function was located in the nonTionghoa community. The ordering directive speech act prevalent in Tionghoa speakers related to the character of the majority of Tionghoa community members in Medan, which was straightforward. In this case, they gave orders or directly asked for what they needed or sought. Meanwhile, in the non-Tionghoa community, the utterances refer to buying and selling laws, dominated by bargaining utterances, both bargaining for goods or prices. In comparison, the declarative speech act is the minor speech act found to express resignation towards the COVID-19 condition.

Maintenance of Hokkien Language by Its Speakers in Medan

Indonesia is famous for various culture that attracts many tourists from several part of the world to have a visit. Besides having numerous culture, Indonesia is flourished with different ethnics, too, such as the Javanese, the Bataknese, the Indian and the Chinese. Every ethnic speak with different language, but formally the national language is Indonesian language. In this study, the researcher, who derives from Chinese ethnic and resides in Medan, has taken interest in preserving her mother tongue which is Hokkien language. Hokkien language is an informal language which is used by the Hokkien speakers to communicate with one another. In maintaining language, the researcher focuses on the phenomena that happens lately, the researcher feels that Hokkien language is not important for some of the young family in Medan, they teach their children the other language that develops immensely throughout people life. Even though some still maintain Hokkien language, the researcher feels that children do not put any interest in speaking their mother tongue. This will give negative impact to the language existence. The problem in this study is concerned with factors influencing the preservation of Hokkien language. The presentation of the data described in qualitative descriptive method and this study conducted through field survey with interviews and observation. The findings revealed that there are two kinds of language maintenance between young speakers and old speakers. The former has lesser effort in maintaining the language, while the latter has stronger effort. Despite the difference, all of Hokkien speakers still make use of the language in their daily activities. Other factors are the language status of Hokkien language as the mother tongue as well as the identity of Hokkien ethnic, the pride of the culture, and the solidary among Hokkien speakers.

The Effect of Indonesian and Hokkien Mobile Learning Application Models

Tiongkok is a country with a large population and is in several states. In addition, Tiongkok has a variety of languages. Hokkien is the worldwide language of China and is widely known to many people. This is evidenced by the many China Town markets. In Indonesia there has been a lot of Hokkien language guidance. In almost every elementary school in the city, adding Hokkien language lessons is a must for elementary school students. Even starting from the playgroup has also been taught Hokkien. But still there are children who do not understand because of the different ways of writing by reading Hokkien. In this research, the writer makes an android-based hokkien language learning media which can be utilized by users with mobile technology, designed learning media adapted to the curriculum in elementary schools with 5 subject matter. From the results of testing designed learning media can help make it easier for students to better understand hokkien language.

THE LANGUAGE CHOICE OF CHINESE COMMUNITY IN MEDAN: A SOCIOLINGUISTICS STUDY

This study aims to describe the manifestation of language choice and the dominant factors of determining language choice among Chinese community inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic relations in Medan. This study used descriptive qualitative method emphasized on a multiethnic and multilingual Chinese community background. The sociolinguistic theory of language choice focused on the domain features involving family and occupation domains was used as the basis of this study. It applied Miles and Huberman technique for analyzing the data and the Bungin formula for calculating the data. Of the 80 respondents, the results of the questionnaire showed that the Hokkien sub-ethnic was the dominant sub-ethnic in Medan compared to other Chinese sub-ethnicities. The manifestation of language choice in the domain of family and occupation especially in inter-ethnic relation is dominated by vernacular language, especially Hokkien language although respondents come from non-Hokkien ethnic. However, Indonesia language becomes the main language used related to intra-ethnic relation. In addition, the dominant language choice factor is influenced by Chinese participant’s cultural backgrounds similarity.

FROM DIALECT TO ETHNIC IDENTITY: THE CHINESE COMMUNITY IN THE KLANG VALLEY AS A CASE STUDY

This article reviews the history of the Hakka, Cantonese and Hokkien dialect groups who had successively become the leading forces among the Chinese in the Klang Valley from 1860 prior to the World War II. It also examines rivalries between different dialect groups which were related to the Chinese community leadership in four aspects covered by the position of Kapitan Cina; the management rights in Chinese temples and ancestral halls; the bloody riots and the presidentship in the Chinese economic and social bodies like the Selangor Chinese Chamber of Commerce and the Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall. The objectives of this article are to identify two dialect groups power transformations within the Chinese community and to analyze the factors which resulted to these dialect power shifts and the Chinese ethnic integration. This article is using qualitative method and analysing data based on the primary sources consisting of the files of Colonial Office from the National Archives, London, Selangor Annual Reports from the National Archives of Malaysia, the secondary sources consisting of the magazines from different Chinese associations in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur, Chinese newspapers which preserved in Singapore and some Chinese Foreign Ministry records from Academia Historica, Taiwan. This study found that the Hakka power was based on its authoritarian leadership, the Cantonese power was based on their economic strength and the Hokkien power was based on their abilities to stimulate the Chinese ethnic integration. Received: 11 November 2019 Reviewed: 21 November 2019 Accepted:28 December 2019

SISTEM KESANTUNAN SERTA REFLEKSI BUDAYA DARI KOMUNITAS ORANG TUA MURID TIONGHOA SURABAYA DI TBI SURABAYA

This study examines the prevailing politeness system in the Tionghoa parent community students in TBI (The British Institute) Surabaya and the cultural reflection that can be seen from the use of language in the community. The method that was applied in this research is qualitative method. Sources of data in this study were taken from conversation recordings among the informants. Meanwhile, the theory used in the research was the theory of politeness system formulated by Scollon and Scollon (2001). The results of this study indicated that the system of politeness adopted by the Tionghoa parent community of students in TBI Surabaya was a system of solidarity politeness. In this system of politeness there was no difference in distance and power among members of the community. In addition, the Tionghoa parent community in TBI Surabaya also had a distinctive feature of using the language; there was a mixing of Javanese Ngoko, Indonesian and Hokkien dialect, Mandarin as linguistic markers that distinguished their language use from the indigenous people of Surabaya. Moreover, cultural reflection resulting from the use of mixed language between Javanese Ngoko and Hokkien dialect showed that there is an egalitarian system applied in the community.

Review of Economic Success of Chinese Merchants in Southeast Asia: Identity, Ethnic Cooperation and Conflict. Integrating the Social Science with Evolutionary Biology

Abstract Janet Landa interprets informal economic network of traders or middlemen as an institution for lowering transaction costs in communities that have not developed reliable legal infrastructure for enforcing contracts. In economics, Landa has pioneered the study of trust in trade networks and her new book reveals the intellectual development of an original scholar over a period of thirty years. Of the 14 essays in the book, 5 have not been published before. The story begins on the ground in Singapore and West Malaysia in 1969 when a young doctoral student wonders why Chinese middlemen, belonging the Hokkien dialect group, dominate the marketing of rubber made by small-scale Malay producers. The student herself is part of the Chinese diaspora but studies at a Canadian university.

Evaluating Student-Led Medical Foreign Language Courses: A Preliminary Study

Objective: Language barriers between physicians and patients are linked to poorer clinical outcomes,higher healthcare costs, and worse patient satisfaction. Incorporating medical foreign language intomedical school curriculums can be costly and time-consuming. We sought to evaluate the efficacy of astudent-initiated medical foreign language course in communicating with patients with limited Englishproficiency (LEP). Methods: Senior medical students designed the curriculum and textbook for amedical foreign language course aimed at teaching basic medical Mandarin Chinese, Hokkien Chineseand Malay. After the course, students completed questionnaire on their comfort engaging in patientswith LEP and whether they would take a second course. Results: A total of 38 students enrolled and22 completed the post-course questionnaire. Students felt significantly more comfortable engagingpatients with LEP (p < 0.05). All students agreed the course was effective at teaching medical foreignlanguage and the majority would take a second LINGO course in the future. Conclusion: Studentledmedical foreign languages classes may be effective in helping medical students communicate withpatients with LEP.

Hokkien Merchants and the Kian Teik Tong: Economic and Political Influence in Nineteenth- Century Penang and Its Region

This article explores nineteenth-century Penang’s Hokkkien merchants and their secret society or hui —the Kian Teik Tong (Jiande Tang)—which had a variety of roles and an extensive network. It contextualizes the merchants’ secret society as a transnational socioeconomic and political organization rather than as an overseas Chinese criminal group in the wider Penang area. By recovering Kian Teik Tong and its network, it can be shown how these merchants secured and mobilized labour, capital, and allies in a way that cut across linguistic, ethnic, class and state boundaries in order to establish control of coolies and the lucrative opium, tin, and rice businesses, in order to exert political influence in the colonial and indigenous milieus of the nineteenth-century Penang region. They established a social contract through their Kian Teik Tong relief activities and initiation rituals, and thus were able to recruit thousands of members who were mainly labourers. With such a substantial social force, the merchants launched organized violence against their rivals to attain dominance in opium revenue farming and tin mining businesses in Penang, Krabi, and Perak. The widespread and strategic location of the Kian Teik Tong in Burma also enabled the same merchants to monopolize the Penang-Burma rice trade. The versatility of the Kian Teik Tong’s functions allowed them to operate as an alternative political order vis-a-vis the colonial and indigenous powers. This arrangement allowed the Hokkien merchants to gain significant political clout in confronting the Siamese and Dutch authorities.

Translingual Narration: Colonial and Postcolonial Taiwanese Fiction and Film by Bert Scruggs

Reviewed by: Translingual Narration: Colonial and Postcolonial Taiwanese Fiction and Film by Bert Scruggs Elaine Wong Scruggs, Bert. Translingual Narration: Colonial and Postcolonial Taiwanese Fiction and Film. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2015. 216pp. $65.00 hardcover. The object of scrutiny in Translingual Narration: Colonial and Postcolonial Taiwanese Fiction and Film is the formation of colonial identity or consciousness during Japan’s rule of Taiwan from 1895 to 1945. Specifically, Bert Scruggs examines the colonial identity of the Han Chinese people who had settled in Taiwan before the Japanese occupation. Many of them came from southern China and the language they spoke, which became known as Taiwanese, originated from the Hokkien dialect of Fujian province. Since Taiwanese was a vernacular without a written form, the literature of these people was written in Chinese and, during the colonization, in Japanese. Apparently, it is in this linguistic context that Scruggs uses “translingual narration” to refer to the body of materials of his study: short fiction of the colonial period, as well as films of colonial topics produced in colonial and postcolonial times. Readers interested in colonial and postcolonial conditions will uncover such conditions in the specificities intricately carved into the ideological contours of a textual landscape. However, readers interested in translingualism might find its treatment compromised by conceptual limitations. Scruggs’s selection of fiction and film cogently shows the impossibility of pinning down a colonial Taiwanese identity in the colonizer-colonized dichotomy. As Scruggs notes when outlining the theoretical horizons in chapter one, for one thing, “Taiwan never attained independence or underwent formal decolonization” (5), but only passed from the hands of imperial Japan to those of a Chinese republic. For another, it was under Japanese colonization that the Taiwanese people experienced modernity, which, besides advancing material progress, stimulated awareness of personal choice, social opposition, and social empathy beyond the confines of colonialism. This conceptual frame enables nuanced readings of the colonial texts. The study delineates free will in the main characters of Weng Nao’s “The Remaining Snow,” Wu Zhuoliu’s “The Doctor’s Mother,” and Wang Changxiong’s “Torrent,” examined vis-à-vis ambivalence and mimicry in colonial identity construction in chapter three. Chapter four locates agency and action of revolutionary change in Yang Kui’s left-wing fiction, in contradistinction to the works of Yang Shouyu, Wang Shilang, and Zhu Dianren, which only passively reflect activism (72). Turning to the colonial female writers Zhang Bihua, Ye Tao, Huang Baotao, and Yang Qianhe, chapter five situates their female characters’ abilities to transcend class and ethnic boundaries in “a hegemony of matrimony” (96), one that while prescribing women’s roles as wives and mothers, paradoxically unified women in colonial Taiwan through common matrimonial concerns. The sixth and last chapter observes “cultural solastalgia”—a term used by Scruggs to describe the longings for a vanishing Taiwanese culture as a result of both colonialism and modernity (115; see also Albrecht et al, “Solastalgia,” Australasian Psychiatry 15.1 [2007])—in Zhu Dianren’s “Autumn Tidings,” Lü Heruo’s “Fengshui,” and Wang Changxiong’s “Torrent,” before exploring affective and pragmatic memories in the filmic narratives of Viva Tonal: Tiaowushidai, Lüde haipingxian (Emerald Horizon), Nanshin Taiwan, Wuyan de shanqiu (Hill of No Return), and Tianma Chafang (March of Happiness). In all these discussions, Scruggs facilitates critical intersections between global theoretical perspectives and Taiwanese studies vantage points, assessing their applicability to specific colonial and postcolonial circumstances along the way. Whereas each chapter has a well-grounded [End Page 517] conceptual frame, the individual frames only occasionally bridge across the chapters. Problematizing the free will that empowers selected members of the colonized in the stories examined in chapter three, for instance, might expand the understanding of why the “despondent, discouraged, or disappearing characters” of the exploited class in colonial capitalism discussed in chapter four “fail to inspire or lead” (86). This might also offer a more impartial alternative to Scruggs’s celebration of Yang Kui’s activist characters and sustain the otherwise open dialogue throughout the study. Yang Kui wrote in Japanese during colonial times, including the stories perused in the study. However, he switched to writing in Chinese under the Republic of China’s rule. For...

Tua Ji Peh: The Intricacies of Liminality in the Deification of Chinese non-Buddhist Supernatural Beings in Chinese-Malaysian Communities

The pragmatic, responsive, and syncretic nature of popular Chinese religion is well known and is thought to result, in part, from the religion’s close connection to the fluxes of the social system in which its adherents live. These characteristics often result in considerable change when the social fabric is greatly disrupted, such as in the immigration of Chinese to new and unfamiliar places. This process of change is commonly seen among Chinese deities. Tua Peh大伯 and Ji Peh 二伯 (in Hokkien dialect “First Uncle” and “Second Uncle”), two ghostly deities of popular Chinese Malaysian religion, are understood to have an ambiguous status in the Chinese pantheon as they possess characteristics of both gods and ghosts. In China, these figures were simply part of the otherworldly bureaucracy of the hell realm with a very limited role and were worshipped infrequently. In the past 20 years, their worship has become extremely ubiquitous, with many shrines and temples proliferating. Now a variety of people come to them for wealth, for healings, and for protection. This coincides during a time in which the economic situation of Chinese Malaysians has become more difficult which parallels a significant rise in political tensions between Malays and non-Malays. This has caused a shift towards favorability in the deities’ reputation, the demographics of their worshippers, and the reasons patrons seek their assistance. Overall, the elevation of Tua Ji Peh seems to work towards lending legitimacy to those desperately seeking efficacious aid in a increasingly discriminatory and poltically unstable environment with harsher realities.

Language choice and code switching of the elderly and the youth

The language of the aged has not been given as much attention as that of the youth. Hence, the aim of this research is to compare the language choices and discoursal features of the aged with that of the youth. This study focuses on the Chinese community from Tangkak, Johor, in Peninsular Malaysia, who use the Hokkien dialect. The older informants preferred to speak in their dialect while the younger informants preferred Mandarin. Older informants seldom code-switched but when they did, the codes in their mixed discourse were Hokkien and Mandarin, while that of the younger informants were Mandarin, Malay, and/or English. On the basis of an analysis of the audio recordings, observations, field notes, and informal interviews, the features are identified in the discourse of the aged, i.e., off-target verbosity (OTV), painful self-disclosure (PSD), and self-handicapping talk. The study shows that the discoursal features of the aged are clearly different from that of the youth.

The Silent Chinese: The Influence of Face and Kiasuism on Student Feedback-Seeking Behaviors

Based on a qualitative study and a follow-up survey of 503 Singapore management students, the authors discuss the emergence of a new cultural attitude, kiasuism, one that has roots in the Chinese concept of face. The term kiasu, literally meaning “afraid to lose” in the Chinese Hokkien dialect, may lead students either to put in more effort so as to gain an upper hand over others (kiasu-positive) or to act in ways to prevent others from getting ahead of them (kiasu-negative). The impact of this attitude on in-class and out-of-class feedback-seeking behaviors is examined.