One of the oldest of these clan associations in Singapore is the Char Yong (Dabu) Association, which was formed in 1858 to serve newcomers from Dabu County, in China’s southern Guangdong Province. If you want to learn about Hakka heritage in Singapore, there’s no better place to do it.

Clan Associations in Singapore

When Chinese immigrants first started coming to Singapore in large numbers in the mid-nineteenth century, they found themselves missing home and often in need of social services. To serve the needs of their communities, immigrants banded together and began forming clan associations. Immigrants joined the clan association of the people from their original home regions — if you were a Hakka immigrant from Jia Ying prefecture, for example, you joined the Ying Fo Fui Kun clan association; if you were from the Taishan district in Guangdong Province, you joined the Cho Kah Koon clan association, and so on.

Hakka Heritage in Singapore

The Char Yong Association continues to this day, serving the Hakka people of Singapore by donating to charitable causes, working alongside nonprofit organizations, and engaging in Chinese traditional festivals. (As a lengthy side note: the Hakka are a subgroup of the Han Chinese in China. The Char Yong Association says that “Hakka people belonged to a nomadic tribe of people who inherited the essence of the culture from Central China. It gradually transformed into its own unique culture, the so-called Hakkalogy.” The Hakka make up the majority of the population in Guangdong province; they were also the fourth-largest Chinese immigrant group to Singapore.)

Visiting the Galleries

The Char Yong Association has a space in Geylang with two floors of galleries where you can learn about their history and the Hakka people — and it’s a wonderful and fascinating place. We started out our tour in the small but impressive seventh-floor library, which is bursting at the seams with books by and about Hakka people.

We then visited the Char Yong Gallery, which focuses on the history and many accomplishments of the Char Yong Association.

This gallery has walls and walls of photos that give a glimpse into the many institutions founded by the Char Yong Association, from schools to hospitals to basketball teams.

Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s Hakka Son

There’s also a huge section on Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father of modern Singapore.

Lee Kuan Yew was from Dabu, and you can even see a model of the house in which he was born.

I appreciated the Char Yong Gallery, but I had much more enthusiasm for the eighth-floor Dabu Gallery.

From Dabu to Singapore

This section walks visitors through the history and lives of Dabu immigrants. Our tour guide started by showing us maps of Hakka emigration …

… and of the Dabu region.

There’s a wall display with pictures of the various areas of Dabu …

… examples to show how people in Dabu once lived …

… and artifacts from the region (that scary guy on the left is a mask from a traditional Hakka lion dance).

Then the gallery transitions to a section on the life of Hakka immigrants in Singapore. Here, you can learn about traditional immigrant occupations …

… and see objects that immigrants would have made or used.

I appreciated that these galleries were small and intimate — we learned a good deal in a short amount of time. Our tour guide was clearly passionate about his organization and his people. And the Char Yong folks accommodated our visit on very short notice, for which we were grateful. It was a fascinating visit!

Before You Go: Visiting the Char Yong (Dabu) Association

• The galleries are only open by appointment. Please contact the Char Yong (Dabu) Association before you go.
• You won’t need long; our visit took roughly twenty-five minutes.
• It’s easy to include these galleries in a larger Geylang tour. For more ideas on things to see in that neighborhood, check out my post on Geylang Serai.