Launch of Culturepaedia

Speech by Mr Edwin Tong, Minister for Culture, Community and Youth & Second Minister for Law, at the Launch of Culturepaedia, at the Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre on 25 July 2024

1. 今晚，很高兴和大家共同见证《新加坡华族文化百科》网站的启用仪式。
2. 衷心感谢大家为网站，提供了宝贵的意见和资料。
3. 这个网站，可说是由新加坡华社，为新加坡华社而制作的，用英语说，就是：for the Singapore Chinese community, by the Singapore Chinese community. And I think you will agree with me that this community is a very special one.
4. 新加坡华族文化，是独特的。立足在东、西方文化的交汇点，新加坡华族文化，丰富而多元。只有在新加坡，才可以吃到 叻沙意大利面，or laksa spaghetti,这里面有马来族、印度族、土生华人、和西方的文化。
5. 新加坡华族文化，是包容的。只有在新加坡，我们会说 “你不要 suka-suka ”，这是华语加马来语。也可以加上一个“你不要 suka-suka lah”! 这是华语，加马来语，加Singlish.
6. 我们生活中有许许多多精彩的例子！
7. 我们的华族文化，因为多元、包容，而丰富、独特！所以，我们一定要好好发扬、传承新加坡华族文化。
8. 这个网站的启用，只是一个开始。我希望所有的新加坡华族，都来为这个网站提供资料。让我们大家一起来，打造属于我们自己的独特华族文化。这个leh, 我就很 suka!
9. 接下来，让我用英语说几句话。
10. I am very happy to be here today at the launch of Culturepaedia. 
    • Two years ago, at SCCC’s 5th anniversary, I announced that a dedicated research team would be set up to strengthen scholarship, deepen learning and enrich our understanding of our unique Singapore Chinese culture. 
    • Since then, the team has worked very hard to document our Singapore Chinese culture. It has partnered academics, researchers, cultural and heritage experts, and arts practitioners to produce a rich body of content on Singapore Chinese culture.
    • This content is now made available through the Culturepaedia, a bilingual online repository that is a convenient one-stop portal for information on our Singapore Chinese culture. 

     

    Importance of our unique Singapore Chinese culture

11. Our cultures, our heritage and our traditions are what unites us as a nation and provides us with a sense of unity and our identity. 
    • Singapore, despite being 60 years next year, is still a very young  nation. 
    • Our forefathers brought the diverse cultures and traditions of their homelands when they came to Singapore. 
    • They sunk their roots here as they sought to build their lives in Singapore. They were travellers, they were sojourners, but they became settlers. 
    • Over time, these diverse cultures and traditions intermixed and evolved, developing into unique Singapore cultures with very distinct local characteristics. These are all shaped by us, they belong to us, molded carefully, contextualised and nuanced over the different generations.
    •  Collectively, they form the diverse multicultural tapestry that is Singapore. 
    • This diversity and multiculturalism are at the core of our Singaporean identity, and it is highly cherished, and something that we have to preserve and protect. 
12. Our Singapore Chinese culture is one such unique strand in the Singapore tapestry.
    • Our ancestors came from different part of China –from Fujian, Guangdong, Hainan – and our Singapore Chinese culture has evolved over the years. When then-Prime Minister Lee opened SCCC, he said that all of these cultures come together, and it is never about a subtraction, instead how it adds to our identity. That’s what we have strived to do. 
    • This therefore makes it unique and distinct from the cultures of other ethnically Chinese populations elsewhere. 
    • It is something that we can truly call our own – it reflects our way of life in Singapore, mirrors the bonds that we share with one another, and represents the values that all of us hold dear as fellow Singaporeans.
    • It is reflected in the dialects we speak – whether it is Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, Hakka, Hainanese and many more – and how we campur campur, which is mix up everything into a language that no one else can understand, except us. 
    • It is reflected in our cuisines as well – what we eat, who likes soup more than others; from our heritage restaurants of the various dialect groups to our hawker centres selling local delicacies. These culinary traditions are as much a part of us as our language. They are our proud intangible culture heritage. 
    • It is also reflected in our customs, rituals and celebrations.
    • For example, we celebrate Chinese New Year in a way that is actually quite different and unique from other Chinese societies in the region. 
    • We bring a pair of mandarin oranges to 拜年when we go visiting, we eat bak kwa when we catch up with our families, and when we want to get good results and strike lottery, we lohei – that is very traditional and common to all of us.
13. It is therefore important that we continue to retain as much of this as possible. We must continue to proactively do so. We cannot just leave it to someone, or leave it to chance. We have to do three things. 
    • We have to safeguard actively this unique culture and what makes it distinct, articulate what is special, and steward it for the next generation.  
    • We must constantly in our daily lives reflect on our own culture and heritage, as part of knowing who we are as a people, and how we have come to be Singaporean Chinese. 
    • We must continue to take pride and show that pride everyday in our identity as part of a multicultural whole. Our work must ceaselessly be to deepen mutual understanding between different groups, and contribute to strengthening the cohesiveness of our society. If we can do all these, we can continue to retain our proud heritage, and steward it for other generations to come. 
14. One more key factor for us, in my view, is our young generation. It is especially important to ensure that our young generation of youths continue to be aware, and are interested and invested in our Singapore Chinese culture. 
    • To do so, we must actively engage them to share information and knowledge about our unique Singapore Chinese culture, and ultimately inspire them to take up an interest and want to also learn about it, and pass on to their next generation too.
    • Our rich Singapore Chinese culture belongs to all of us, and to our future generations.

    Thought leadership through Culturepaedia

15. For all these reasons, this is why Culturepaedia was created. 
    • It is part of SCCC’s efforts in providing thought leadership in the promotion of our Singapore Chinese culture. 
    • A key step to celebrating any culture is to first document it where people can access, learn about, study and appreciate it.
    • Culturepaedia is intended to fill that role, as an easy-to-access, informative, and yet it is an academically rigorous and accurate repository of information.
    • Featuring articles by scholars and experts, this bilingual repository offers an accessible introduction to that unique Singapore Chinese culture.
    • As an online resource, with bite-sized chunks of information, the Culturepaedia will also appeal to youths and the general public. 
    • It also contains many interesting and relatable topics that we will remember when we access this portal. It is organised under eight main categories: Communities, Language and Education, Popular Culture and Media, Social Practices, Literature, Art, Music and Stage Performances. They are put into very accessible, easy-to-understand, and want-to-understand topics.
    • For example, there are a few articles within the Language and Education category which detail the evolution of Chinese textbooks used in Singapore. 
    • Some of us might remember that during the older colonial days, we mostly used textbooks imported from China – this meant that the context, examples, names and situations that they found themselves in were Chinese-centric. 
    • Since the early 1950s, Chinese textbooks in the region underwent the process called “Malayanisation” so that the textbooks became more reflective of our local situation and day-to-day lives.
    • This was a ground-up initiative by the local publishers at that point in time. 
    • This showed that there was a conscious effort, despite the fact that we are learning the same language, to localise the context of textbooks. The factual learning points remained the same, but the situations which were teaching were contextualised. 
    • There are more of such interesting facts and information in Culturepaedia. It is intended to be a living resource, dynamic and evolving, that will continue to be updated and expanded over time. In fact, the more people contribute to it, the richer, stronger and the more inclusive it can be.
16. Such work is really important so that all Singaporeans can better understand who we are, our cultural heritage and achievements, and a strong sense of how we relate to one another. We might be same-same but different – all sharing different traits, appreciating our foods and celebrating our rituals in different ways – all special. 
    • I want to commend and thank the research team for their unstinting efforts. They spent a lot of time, and they want to make sure that this truly represents the different strands of Singapore culture accurately. I want to thank all the article contributors as well for their strong support. 
    • I hope that Culturepaedia will inspire, inform, educate, and allow Singaporeans to appreciate and celebrate our very unique Singapore Chinese culture, and to keep it alive for generations to come. The work is urgent, and it must start with us now. If we don’t, and assume somebody else will look after it, it will mean that nobody will look after it.
17. On that note, welcome to Culturepaedia, and I thank all of you for being here.