Extracted from: The Asian Insider: Unconventional Wisdom for Asian Business by Michael Backman
It was the babas who were the framers of Singapore’s rules and institutions.
Many of Singapore’s most prominent Chinese have baba backgrounds.
Lee Kuan Yew, who incidentally became prime minister of Singapore when
aged just 35, is the most obvious example. He claims a
Hakka heritage, although his upbringing was that of a baba. At home, he
spoke English with his parents and Baba Malay to his grandparents.
‘Mandarin was totally alien to me, and unconnected with my life,’ Lee has
said of his childhood.
But then that was true of other Chinese dialects too.
Lee’s paternal great grandfather was a Hakka born in China. He married
a local Hakka girl. His paternal grandfather was locally born. Lee
describes him as an ‘Anglophile’. He married a Semarang-born Chinese.
His maternal grandfather was a Hokkien from Malacca. His maternal
grandmother was a Pontianak-born Chinese who spoke Hakka and Malay.
They were a wealthy Straits family. Their daughter – Lee’s mother – was
married in 1922 at the age of 15. Lee says in his autobiography that part of
her dowry included a little slave girl whose duty it was to help bathe and
dress her.
And when Lee himself married, he chose a local nonya woman,
Kwa Geok Choo, whose father was a Java-born Chinese and mother was a
Straits-born Chinese, ‘like my own mother’, says Lee.
Lee’s mother, Lee Chin Koon, was a highly respected authority on
nonya/baba cuisine. She wrote a book on the subject, Mrs Lee’s Cookbook
first published in 1974.
It was edited by her Hawaiian-born
daughter-in-law Pamelia Lee, who married Lee Kuan Yew’s brother Lee
Suan Yew. The preface was written by Wee Kim Wee, another baba, and
in fact, her cousin. Wee served as the high commissioner to Malaysia
(1973–80) and in 1985 was appointed president of Singapore. Wee’s
wife is a nonya and the two have shown significant interest in baba
history and culture.
Those who doubt Lee Kuan Yew’s baba origins (and some do) should
consider the opening lines of his mother’s cookbook:
"We Straits-born Chinese are known as the Peranakan – the ladies are called
nonyas while the men are called babas. We are the descendants of the early
Chinese in the Straits Settlements of Penang, Malacca and Singapore … Malay
influence, because of mingling and intermarriage, has produced a unique
Peranakan culture and set of customs distinct from those of the Chinese
community who came from China."
Learning to be Chinese
For Lee, Chineseness was something of an acquired skill and later a political
necessity. He was not brought up as a Chinese with a focus on China,
but as a baba who looked to England. His language, food and culture were
not that of a Chinese. And he followed the conventional career path of a
baba. Not for him shopkeeping or trading. He went to London to study
law. And so Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore became Harry Lee of Fitzwilliam
College, Cambridge. His father had given him and two of his brothers
English as well as Chinese names.
Did Lee run Singapore as a piece of Asia mired in Chinese ways? No.
He ran it in a manner to which a British colonial administrator would have
aspired. He ran it as a baba.
Goh Keng Swee, that other great framer of Singapore’s institutions,
who rose to become finance minister and deputy prime minister, was the
epitome of the baba elite. Goh was born in 1918 in Malacca, the epicentre
of baba culture, into a local baba family. His parents were Englishoriented
Chinese Methodists. His cousin, also a Malacca baba, was Tan
Siew Sin, who became Malaysia’s first finance minister.
Goh attended the Anglo-Chinese School and Raffles College in Singapore
– standard schooling for a baba son. He then joined the colonial Civil
Service in Singapore. After the war he decided to study in London and so
it was to the London School of Economics that he went. Goh returned to
Singapore, then returned to the LSE to complete a PhD and then went back
to Singapore to resume a life in public service. He was instrumental in
setting up many of Singapore’s most well-known government bodies: the
Economic Development Board, the Development Bank of Singapore, the
Housing and Development Board (HDB) and the Jurong Industrial Estate.
It was all about development – but development that proceeded along
structured and paternalistic lines.
It was also Goh’s Victorian attitudes on savings and frugal government
spending that has given Singapore the huge external reserves that it has
today. And it was at Goh’s instigation that the Singapore Symphony
Orchestra was established. No noisy, clanging Chinese opera for the
babas. Their musical tastes were far more restrained.
I had the opportunity to meet with Goh at his office at the Singapore
Totaliser Board in 1994. As he entered the room with an outstretched hand,
my immediate impression was that he looked more Malay than Chinese.
He was charming and welcoming, his voice was deep and his accent
English upper class. He wore a pinstripe suit. As a fifth and sixth generation
Australian with little interest in and knowledge of England at the time,
could it be that I was more of the region than him?
We talked about Singapore’s then plans to invest heavily in China. Goh
was not a fan. ‘A lot of Singaporeans will lose their shirts in China’, he’d
said. China was messy, its legal system too poor and the going would be
tough. Singaporeans were not used to operating in such an environment,
Goh had said. Singaporeans might have been descended from China but
the ways and means of China were no longer theirs. The babas had seen
to that.
Another influential baba was Lim Kim San. He was born to a wealthy
local family and as a fourth generation Straits-born Chinese did not speak
Chinese at home but Malay. In 1960, he became chairman of the HDB
where he made a remarkable contribution in a short time. He was appointed
minister for national development in 1963. Later, he headed many other
ministries in successive Peoples Action Party (PAP) governments. He was
appointed executive chairman of Singapore Press Holdings in 1988 and
then became chairman of Singapore’s Presidential Board of Advisors.
Long-term PAP chairman Toh Chin Chye is another of the old guard
with a baba background. His first language was not Hokkien, Teochiu or
Hakka, but English. With Goh, Lee and Sinnathamby Rajaratnam, Toh
formed the inner core that ran Singapore from 1959 until about the mid1970s
when his influence waned.
And so this is the coterie that designed
and ran Singapore – three babas and a Jaffna Tamil.
Current Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Tony Tan is a
prominent second generation politician with a baba background. The other
deputy prime minister is of course Lee Hsien Loong, Lee Kuan Yew’s son.
So both deputy prime ministers have baba backgrounds. Indeed, Hsien
Loong’s baba pedigree is actually stronger than his father’s.
No wonder Singapore is culturely empty now.
Anglo Dog will forever be anglo dog.
Want to kill off dialects somemore, destroy more chinese culture.
Turn us into anglo dogs like them.
“I would say the generation of the ‘50s and ‘60s took the plunge into
politics without ever calculating the costs of the risk and the
benefits to be gained. They were driven by ideology. Today’s generation
has no culture and averse to taking political risk. Really, an interest
in politics is very necessary for the future. But I cannot blame the
present generations, because they see the heavy-handed response by the
government to dissenting views, even though they know that these
matters involve their daily lives.
So the result is that we have
produced a younger generation who are meek and therefore very
calculating. They are less independent-thinking and lack in initiative.
It does not bode well for the emergence of future leaders in politics
and business. Robots and computers can be programmed or if you like,
can be trained. But the trouble, of course, is that computers lack soul
and what we need in Singapore is soul. Because it is soul that makes
society.”
http://singaporegovt.blogspot.com/2006/02
Why the dog don't admit to baba background, want to mislead us that he is only hakka?
Don't worry dog, hakka, hokkien or baba, as long as you are anglo dog, I won't support you.
No need to hide okay harry?
Originally posted by Caitaokue:Extracted from: The Asian Insider: Unconventional Wisdom for Asian Business by Michael Backman
It was the babas who were the framers of Singapore’s rules and institutions.
Many of Singapore’s most prominent Chinese have baba backgrounds.
Lee Kuan Yew, who incidentally became prime minister of Singapore when
aged just 35, is the most obvious example. He claims a
Hakka heritage, although his upbringing was that of a baba. At home, he
spoke English with his parents and Baba Malay to his grandparents.
‘Mandarin was totally alien to me, and unconnected with my life,’ Lee has
said of his childhood.
But then that was true of other Chinese dialects too.
Lee’s paternal great grandfather was a Hakka born in China. He married
a local Hakka girl. His paternal grandfather was locally born. Lee
describes him as an ‘Anglophile’. He married a Semarang-born Chinese.
His maternal grandfather was a Hokkien from Malacca. His maternal
grandmother was a Pontianak-born Chinese who spoke Hakka and Malay.
They were a wealthy Straits family. Their daughter – Lee’s mother – was
married in 1922 at the age of 15. Lee says in his autobiography that part of
her dowry included a little slave girl whose duty it was to help bathe and
dress her.
And when Lee himself married, he chose a local nonya woman,
Kwa Geok Choo, whose father was a Java-born Chinese and mother was a
Straits-born Chinese, ‘like my own mother’, says Lee.
Lee’s mother, Lee Chin Koon, was a highly respected authority on
nonya/baba cuisine. She wrote a book on the subject, Mrs Lee’s Cookbook
first published in 1974.
It was edited by her Hawaiian-born
daughter-in-law Pamelia Lee, who married Lee Kuan Yew’s brother Lee
Suan Yew. The preface was written by Wee Kim Wee, another baba, and
in fact, her cousin. Wee served as the high commissioner to Malaysia
(1973–80) and in 1985 was appointed president of Singapore. Wee’s
wife is a nonya and the two have shown significant interest in baba
history and culture.
Those who doubt Lee Kuan Yew’s baba origins (and some do) should
consider the opening lines of his mother’s cookbook:
"We Straits-born Chinese are known as the Peranakan – the ladies are called
nonyas while the men are called babas. We are the descendants of the early
Chinese in the Straits Settlements of Penang, Malacca and Singapore … Malay
influence, because of mingling and intermarriage, has produced a unique
Peranakan culture and set of customs distinct from those of the Chinese
community who came from China."
Learning to be Chinese
For Lee, Chineseness was something of an acquired skill and later a political
necessity. He was not brought up as a Chinese with a focus on China,
but as a baba who looked to England. His language, food and culture were
not that of a Chinese. And he followed the conventional career path of a
baba. Not for him shopkeeping or trading. He went to London to study
law. And so Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore became Harry Lee of Fitzwilliam
College, Cambridge. His father had given him and two of his brothers
English as well as Chinese names.
Did Lee run Singapore as a piece of Asia mired in Chinese ways? No.
He ran it in a manner to which a British colonial administrator would have
aspired. He ran it as a baba.
Goh Keng Swee, that other great framer of Singapore’s institutions,
who rose to become finance minister and deputy prime minister, was the
epitome of the baba elite. Goh was born in 1918 in Malacca, the epicentre
of baba culture, into a local baba family. His parents were Englishoriented
Chinese Methodists. His cousin, also a Malacca baba, was Tan
Siew Sin, who became Malaysia’s first finance minister.
Goh attended the Anglo-Chinese School and Raffles College in Singapore
– standard schooling for a baba son. He then joined the colonial Civil
Service in Singapore. After the war he decided to study in London and so
it was to the London School of Economics that he went. Goh returned to
Singapore, then returned to the LSE to complete a PhD and then went back
to Singapore to resume a life in public service. He was instrumental in
setting up many of Singapore’s most well-known government bodies: the
Economic Development Board, the Development Bank of Singapore, the
Housing and Development Board (HDB) and the Jurong Industrial Estate.
It was all about development – but development that proceeded along
structured and paternalistic lines.
It was also Goh’s Victorian attitudes on savings and frugal government
spending that has given Singapore the huge external reserves that it has
today. And it was at Goh’s instigation that the Singapore Symphony
Orchestra was established. No noisy, clanging Chinese opera for the
babas. Their musical tastes were far more restrained.
I had the opportunity to meet with Goh at his office at the Singapore
Totaliser Board in 1994. As he entered the room with an outstretched hand,
my immediate impression was that he looked more Malay than Chinese.
He was charming and welcoming, his voice was deep and his accent
English upper class. He wore a pinstripe suit. As a fifth and sixth generation
Australian with little interest in and knowledge of England at the time,
could it be that I was more of the region than him?
We talked about Singapore’s then plans to invest heavily in China. Goh
was not a fan. ‘A lot of Singaporeans will lose their shirts in China’, he’d
said. China was messy, its legal system too poor and the going would be
tough. Singaporeans were not used to operating in such an environment,
Goh had said. Singaporeans might have been descended from China but
the ways and means of China were no longer theirs. The babas had seen
to that.
Another influential baba was Lim Kim San. He was born to a wealthy
local family and as a fourth generation Straits-born Chinese did not speak
Chinese at home but Malay. In 1960, he became chairman of the HDB
where he made a remarkable contribution in a short time. He was appointed
minister for national development in 1963. Later, he headed many other
ministries in successive Peoples Action Party (PAP) governments. He was
appointed executive chairman of Singapore Press Holdings in 1988 and
then became chairman of Singapore’s Presidential Board of Advisors.
Long-term PAP chairman Toh Chin Chye is another of the old guard
with a baba background. His first language was not Hokkien, Teochiu or
Hakka, but English. With Goh, Lee and Sinnathamby Rajaratnam, Toh
formed the inner core that ran Singapore from 1959 until about the mid1970s
when his influence waned.
And so this is the coterie that designed
and ran Singapore – three babas and a Jaffna Tamil.
Current Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Tony Tan is a
prominent second generation politician with a baba background. The other
deputy prime minister is of course Lee Hsien Loong, Lee Kuan Yew’s son.
So both deputy prime ministers have baba backgrounds. Indeed, Hsien
Loong’s baba pedigree is actually stronger than his father’s.
From the post, isn't LKY a Hakka, by virtue of his paternal lineage?
I got confused mid way through... so how many percent is he a baba?
Originally posted by skythewood:From the post, isn't LKY a Hakka, by virtue of his paternal lineage?
I got confused mid way through... so how many percent is he a baba?
We could just go a couple of hundred thousand generations back and just call him a monkey
Originally posted by Stevenson101:
We could just go a couple of hundred thousand generations back and just call him a monkey
A political coward monkey?
Gary: He said to me at the lift lobby 90% of the exact words - ”Mr Tan,if you walk out of here tomorrow,you might get killed.You might meet with a mysterious accident,you might disappear and nobody will know what happened to you! Mr Tan, some things and people in this country you cannot offend! Some people are above all things! You better make sure you know this! Mr Tan,we can arrange for things to happen to you.You understand or not!”
FUCK YOU AND FUCK THEM
Originally posted by Stevenson101:
We could just go a couple of hundred thousand generations back and just call him a monkey
Yah, his face does resembles one.
Originally posted by Stevenson101:
We could just go a couple of hundred thousand generations back and just call him a monkey
That is if you believe men were evolved from monkey.
and you are saying that you are also a monkey.
Originally posted by Ah Chia:No wonder Singapore is culturely empty now.
Anglo Dog will forever be anglo dog.
Want to kill off dialects somemore, destroy more chinese culture.
Turn us into anglo dogs like them.
“I would say the generation of the ‘50s and ‘60s took the plunge into politics without ever calculating the costs of the risk and the benefits to be gained. They were driven by ideology. Today’s generation has no culture and averse to taking political risk. Really, an interest in politics is very necessary for the future. But I cannot blame the present generations, because they see the heavy-handed response by the government to dissenting views, even though they know that these matters involve their daily lives.
So the result is that we have produced a younger generation who are meek and therefore very calculating. They are less independent-thinking and lack in initiative. It does not bode well for the emergence of future leaders in politics and business. Robots and computers can be programmed or if you like, can be trained. But the trouble, of course, is that computers lack soul and what we need in Singapore is soul. Because it is soul that makes society.”http://singaporegovt.blogspot.com/2006/02
Why the dog don't admit to baba background, want to mislead us that he is only hakka?
Don't worry dog, hakka, hokkien or baba, as long as you are anglo dog, I won't support you.
No need to hide okay harry?
your sweeping statement insults all baba.
Originally posted by sgdiehard:
That is if you believe men were evolved from monkey.and you are saying that you are also a monkey.
It's a lot more solid than saying the world were created by God in seven days, at least.
But i made the monkey comment as a joke because somehow it's important whether LKY is a baba or Hakka or not!
Originally posted by Stevenson101:
It's a lot more solid than saying the world were created by God in seven days, at least.But i made the monkey comment as a joke because somehow it's important whether LKY is a baba or Hakka or not!
It is courteous of you saying he is a monkey. Some would goes generations further and he is just a spect of spore.
your sweeping statement insults all baba.
Which statement?
Originally posted by Stevenson101:
It's a lot more solid than saying the world were created by God in seven days, at least.But i made the monkey comment as a joke because somehow it's important whether LKY is a baba or Hakka or not!
is it important if he is a baba or a Hokka? at least he speaks hakka at home, he gives speeches in mandarin, his children were all educated in the then Chinese schools.
which of your monkey relatives do that?
Originally posted by Ah Chia:your sweeping statement insults all baba.
Which statement?
in responding to the thread "LKY is a baba" , your starting statement in your post "No wonder Singapore is culturely empty now."
"No wonder Singapore is culturely empty now."
In what way insults baba?
Wha lau!!! his passport there stated Race: Chinese ok, same goes to LHL, if the strait settlement are all Baba, then Chee Soon Juan also Baba, Francis Seow another Baba siao ar??? luan luan lai, please dun change history lah
Originally posted by sgdiehard:is it important if he is a baba or a Hokka? at least he speaks hakka at home, he gives speeches in mandarin, his children were all educated in the then Chinese schools.
which of your monkey relatives do that?
What's all the heat directed at me for?
I don't really care whether he's a baba or hakka. I'm just using the monkey analogy to be sarcastic, it doesn't really matter to me at all.
I don't really care whether he's a baba or hakka.
You are from which dialect tribal group?
Originally posted by Ah Chia:I don't really care whether he's a baba or hakka.
You are from which dialect tribal group?
Teochew, i don't see how it's relevant here though.
Originally posted by Stevenson101:
Teochew, i don't see how it's relevant here though.
grandma said true teochew backside red color, u red color or not?
Originally posted by angel7030:
grandma said true teochew backside red color, u red color or not?
=.=. Don't tell me your grandma ran around taking off the pants of everyone to check whether it's red color or not.
Teochew, i don't see how it's relevant here though.
The dog is not Teochew.
And your dialect also has no value, according to the dog.
The dog is brought up baba, his ang moh got value, your dialect no value.
He got value, you got no value.
Originally posted by Ah Chia:Teochew, i don't see how it's relevant here though.
The dog is not Teochew.
And your dialect also has no value, according to the dog.
The dog is brought up baba, his ang moh got value, your dialect no value.
He got value, you got no value.
Uncle, why u meant by no value, alots of MPs are teochew too, and most gather at the prestige Teochew building to play mahjong ok, including my daddy.
Originally posted by Stevenson101:
=.=. Don't tell me your grandma ran around taking off the pants of everyone to check whether it's red color or not.
grandma hokkien leh,,,aiya, said only mah, how lian
Originally posted by Ah Chia:Teochew, i don't see how it's relevant here though.
The dog is not Teochew.
And your dialect also has no value, according to the dog.
The dog is brought up baba, his ang moh got value, your dialect no value.
He got value, you got no value.
Why should i care about his opinion? Whether i want to know my dialect and know my ancestors is my own bloody choice, i don't need nor want the government to do anything about it.
English and Mandarin are practical languages to learn, even my grandfather knew that. He made all his children attend Chinese schools in the morning, and English in the afternoon. Singapore wasn't even independent then.
Dog's ang moh got value, hokkien, teochew, cantonese, hainan all don't have any sort of value.
Only the dog's ang moh got value.
The rest all completely totally worthless.