Ini Indexs
Chen Wen Hsi (1906–1991) is regarded as one of Singapore’s most significant 20th century modern artists. Born in a small village in Guangdong, China, Chen’s interest in art started early. As a child, he was fascinated by Chinese paintings and calligraphy displayed at home, and enjoyed watching traditional folk-painters decorate the eaves and pillars of buildings. Despite initial objections from his family, he left for Shanghai in the 1920s to study art after completing his secondary school education in Shantou.
While at the Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts and, later, Xinhua Academy of Fine Arts, Chen’s exposure to the Chinese ink painting tradition deepened. This was a period when ink painting underwent much change and debate, against the backdrop of China’s new status as a modern republic in the early 20th century. In the wake of China’s humiliating defeat to a technologically superior West, many Chinese like political reformer Kang Youwei (1858–1927) felt that China’s progress needed to be propelled by science and technology. On the cultural front, the May Fourth Movement in 1919 had ignited the drive to strengthen China through cultural reforms. Many artists regarded ink painting, with its traditional emphasis on copying from old masters, as fossilised and irrelevant to a new China. Ink painting was seen to have fallen behind in the international competition for modernity, and there was intense debate over the building of a new nation and the role of art in the new era. Different schools of painting emerged. There were artists such as Wu Changshuo (1844–1927) of the Shanghai School, whose ink paintings appealed to the city’s rich merchants through the use of rich colours, bold calligraphic strokes, lively compositions, and accessible subject matter such as birds and flowers. At the same time, there were others, like Gao Jianfu (1879–1951) from the Lingnan School, who were inspired by Nihonga (Japanese-style painting) which synthesised Chinese and Western traditions, by incorporating Western realist techniques of shading and linear perspective into ink paintings. During those formative years in Shanghai, Chen gained a sound understanding of these different developments and built a strong foundation in ink painting. Coupled with his keen powers of observation, Chen’s paintings often married the Lingnan School’s naturalistic depictions with the expressive brushwork and dynamic compositions of the Shanghai School.
At the same time, like many artists of his generation, Chen was also exposed to Western art. This was especially so for Chen, who was enrolled in his school’s art education department, and therefore received training in both Western and Chinese painting. The cosmopolitan city of Shanghai also offered many opportunities for him to encounter diverse art forms and ideas. There were frequent exhibitions by artists who worked in different media such as ink, oils, sculpture, architecture, design and photography. Foreign concepts like Impressionism and Surrealism were taught in local art schools and discussed within the wider art circles. In the late 1940s, Chen left his job as an art teacher in China and eventually settled in Singapore. Life in Singapore further consolidated his understanding of and exposure to Western modern art — more than would have been possible in China. In the ensuing decades after the Chinese Communist Party came to power in China in 1949, modern art, with its foreign associations and emphasis on individual subjectivity, was discouraged by the authorities. By contrast, Singapore-based Chen had access to international art books, and opportunities to meet different artists and travel overseas. In his new home, Chen could discuss art with like-minded colleagues and explore different ideas about making art. This led him once to remark: “My foundation in Chinese painting is rooted in China, whereas my training in Western paintings was perfected in Singapore.”1From the 1950s to 1980s, Chen experimented with diverse international movements such as Impressionism, Fauvism, Cubism, Expressionism and Abstraction.2
Chen’s openness to innovation may be attributed to a few factors. His art teacher Pan Tianshou (1897–1971) was an important influence. Pan advocated that both Chinese and Western art traditions should maintain their own uniqueness and originality. He taught his students to apply Western principles of mass, space, movement and balance, and the relationship between lines and the picture plane, to ink paintings. At the same time, Pan promoted the Chinese literati ideal that regarded art as expressing an artist’s ethical values, character, learning and talent.
Chen also much admired the works of earlier ink masters such as Huaisu (725–785), Bada Shanren (1626–1705), Huang Shen (1687–1772) and Xugu (1824–1896). These artists were known for their eccentric personalities and highly individualistic practices that paid scant heed to convention. Hence, over time, Chen came to believe that “an artist would inevitably be influenced by tradition, but following tradition slavishly should not be his goal. He must break away from tradition to create his own style.”3 Chen further held that “(t)he world is evolving in every aspect, not just in politics, but also in the field of painting, where improvement and originality is constantly being sought”.4
Chen’s open attitude towards Western painting styles was also due to his familiarity with Chinese literati traditions. The traditional scholar-artist was focused on capturing the spirit or essence of his subject, rather than physical likeness. Hence, Western modern styles such as Fauvism and Cubism, with their emphases on subjectivity rather than representation, were not inconsistent with literati xieyi principles.5 In the end, Chen always maintained that both Chinese and Western painting had their own strengths, and he aimed to combine and continue in both traditions. The path he took was one of “fusion of the East and West”.6
In the last decade of his life, Chen concentrated almost exclusively on ink painting, which was a less time-consuming medium than oil painting. He sought to use ink painting techniques in innovative ways that incorporated his understanding of Western modern art. Although his paintings were still based on reality, he freely distorted and transformed them. In the process, they became abstract compositions that integrated different traditions.7 From Cubism, he incorporated the notion of fragmenting or distorting the subject into geometric shapes within a space that had no definite light source or horizon. From Fauvism, he used the idea that colours had their own individual characteristics that could be exploited to enhance visual impact. From Expressionism, he realised the affinity between the Western gestural stroke and the feibai (flying white) brushwork associated with Chinese literati artists. And from Abstraction, he saw the value in emphasising pure form and its relevance to contemporary life. These led to his well-regarded body of semi-abstract ink paintings of egrets, herons and ducks where bird forms were deconstructed and then reconstituted into powerful compositions of lines, shapes and colours.
Apart from being an influential art teacher, Chen’s years in Singapore were marked by commercial and critical success. His works were well-collected, and he had major retrospective exhibitions in Singapore, Beijing and Taipei in the 1980s and 1990s. After his demise in 1991, he received posthumous national honours, and his paintings were commemorated on stamps and currencies issued by the Singapore government.
Ini Indexs
Tchang Ju Chi (1904–1942) is one of Singapore’s most important painters from the pre-World War II era. He was also an important advocate of fine art activities for Chinese associations in Singapore.
Born in Chaoan, Guangdong, Tchang (whose father Zhang Yinbo was skilled in the gongbi style of painting) cultivated a love of art from a young age. He studied Western-style painting at the Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts, and upon graduation, furthered his studies at the Marseille Academy of Fine Arts in France. In 1927, he moved to Singapore, where he taught at Tuan Mong School and Yeung Ching School (now Yangzheng Primary School).
In 1929, when Sin Chew Jit Poh was founded, its chief managing editor Tchou Paoyun (birth and death years unknown) invited Tchang to contribute cartoons to the newspaper’s literary section Fanxing (Stars). In July that same year, the newspaper added a pictorial section, Xingguang (Starlight) — with Tchang as its chief editor — to promote fine art and gain the interest of readers. During this period, the mastheads of Sin Chew Jit Poh supplements, such as Fanxing and Yepa (Wild flowers), as well as Tsing Nien (Youth) organised by the Nanyang Chinese Students’ Society through Sin Chew Jit Poh, were all designed by him. He also redesigned the masthead of the literary supplement Yelin (Coconut Grove). In 1930, after a year and two months at the helm, Tchang resigned as editor of Xingguang. That same year, his friend Chen Lien Tsing (1907–1943), who was editor of Lat Pau, added a new illustrated weekend pictorial supplement Yehui (Coconut Splendour) to the newspaper, and put Tchang in charge of it. Due to a lack of funds, however, the supplement ceased publication after half a year.
In late 1929, Tchang resigned from his job as a schoolteacher. He then founded Ju Chi Studio on 11 February 1930. It was apparent, from an advertisement for the studio in Sin Chew Jit Poh on 18 February 1930, that members of the cultural community such as Zhang Shu‘nai (1895–1939), Francis S. Fang (unknown–1942), Chen Lien Tsing, and Fu Wu Mun (1892–1965), held Tchang’s artistic talent in high esteem.
Ju Chi Studio was mainly involved in designing artwork for business advertisements. It also conducted art classes. Many cartoons by Tchang’s students were published in Sin Chew Jit Poh’s pictorial supplement Xingguang. In 1933, Tchang and his brother-in-law Chuang U-Chow (1907–1942) co-founded The United Painters to create advertisements for businesses.
While living in Singapore, Tchang was actively involved in local and overseas exhibitions. Many of his exhibited works were oil paintings, probably closely related to his time in France.
According to existing literature, he was a painter who consciously — and from very early on — integrated Nanyang (Southeast Asian) scenery into his paintings. The masthead he designed for Lat Pau’s supplement Yelin featured a coconut grove, which not only echoed the supplement’s name but highlighted a view, long advocated by Chen Lien Tsing, that “literature should exhibit a sense of place”. In his essay Difang secai yu wenyi (Local colour and the arts), Chen Lien Tsing regarded Nanyang scenery, such as verdant coconut groves, dense rubber trees, lush banana plants, towering old trees, and cooling rains, as good subjects for writers. Chen Lien Tsing mentioned in his writing Zhang Ruqi xiansheng (Mister Tchang Ju Chi) that “the coconut tree, though having slender branches and leaves, and a weak posture, when featured in Mister Tchang Ju Chi’s paintings, shows strength in its slender length and robustness in its weak posture, a symbol of our life in Nanyang.”2
Tchang’s time in Singapore may have been short, but it was a brilliant one, artistically speaking. After living in Singapore for some time, he felt strongly about the development of local art. In 1930, when he was in charge of Lat Pau’s Yehui pictorial supplement, he wrote in the preface of the publication what was undoubtedly a call-to-arms for the art community, as well as a reflection of his strong social mission: “The art scene right now is no different from a desert – bleak, desolate, and extremely dry! Yet here in the desert, we long for the fountain of life … The pace, though very slow, still carries a great mission. Step by step forward, never to tire…” The masthead of Yehui even had the English words “Slow but Sure” on it.
Tchang’s works include Malay daughter, Kachang Puteh Man, Southern Beauty, Still Life, Portrait of a Bengali, Old man from Jining, Attap House, Shadow of a Coconut Tree, and Coolie, all of which expressed the painter’s love of local life. Chen Chong Swee (1910–1985) wrote of Tchang’s works: “The composition is uniquely crafted, the figures are life-like, the lines are perfectly applied, the shades show strong and weak texturing that is precise and concise; and a cool breeze can be felt looking at his landscape painting of madashan [Brastagi, Sumatra], as if he has completely tapped the magical power of nature in his masterful expression.”3
Before World War II, the Society of Chinese Artists and Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts promoted the development of fine art in Singapore in a big way. Tchang served as the founding president of the Society of Chinese Artists in 1936, 1937, 1938, and 1940, making huge contributions to its growth. The society was regarded as the first well-organised art group in Singapore, and many of its members were art teachers in primary and secondary schools. Other members of the club included Chen Chong Swee (who taught at Tuan Mong School), Yeh Chi Wei (1913–1981; Chung Cheng High School), Huang Qingquan (birth and death years unknown; Chinese Industrial and Commercial Continuation School4), Wu Tsai Yen (1911–2001), Yan Zaisheng (birth and death years unknown; Tao Nan School), and others. Tchang Ju Chi also taught at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, doing what he could to nurture the next generation of artists.
Painter Liu Kang (1911–2004) said of Tchang: “He is one of the painters in all of Malaya with the most mature and sophisticated realist techniques comparable to that of [Xu] Beihong and Basuki [Abdullah], and at least as, or even more, charming and elegant in style, with characters so life-like to the point that they enthral the soul.”5
In 1942, during the Japanese Occupation, Tchang was killed in the Sook Ching massacre, bringing an end to his short life.
Ini Indexs
Lee Howe (1915–2009) was born in Changsha in Hunan province, China. After completing her secondary education, she enrolled in the Shanghai National Conservatory of Music (now Shanghai Conservatory of Music). During her time at the conservatory, she was classmates with the renowned Chinese vocalist Zhou Xiaoyan (1917–2016). She studied under several prominent musicians, including Chinese composer Huang Tzu (1904–1938).
Upon graduation, Lee returned to Wuhan, where she soon took up a position as a music teacher at Hankou City No. 1 Girls’ High School, marking the beginning of an extensive career in music education that would span five decades.
When the Sino-Japanese War erupted in 1937, Lee evacuated with the school and made her way from Guilin to Hong Kong. She had originally intended to travel by ship to Italy for further studies, but by a stroke of luck, her plans changed as the ship was passing through Singapore. She was offered a position as a music teacher at the Pay Teck Girls’ School in Malacca (now SJK(C) Pay Teck) and remained in Malacca for some time.
In 1941, Lee relocated to Singapore, where she took up teaching positions at Nanyang Girls’ High School, Chung Cheng High School, The Chinese High School (now Hwa Chong Institution) and Yock Eng High School (now Yuying Secondary School). During this period, she also travelled to various countries, including the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States, to further her studies in vocal music. She had the privilege of learning from renowned musicians, including the British conductor Sir John Barbirolli (1899–1970).
Lee dedicated over five decades of her life to music education in Singapore, nurturing many talented individuals who went on to achieve great success. Some of her proteges included early Singapore vocalists Sng Chin Hock (1939–2005), Soo Ming Cheow (1936–2002), Elena Ng Choy Luan, and Lui Chun Seng (1934–2010).
She established one of the earliest local choirs, the Lee Howe Choral Society (now Song Lovers Choral Society), making significant contributions to the promotion and development of vocal music in Singapore.
Lee also had a rich creative output, where composition techniques and styles were notably influenced by her teacher Huang Tzu, a renowned composer in the 1950s. Her composition styles also share similarities with those of contemporary Chinese composer Liu Xue’an (1905–1985) and the Taiwanese composer Hwang Yau-tai (1912–2010). The songs Lee composed included:
Between 1981 and 1995, Lee was a columnist for the Sifang bamian (From Every Corner) column in the lifestyle section of Lianhe Zaobao. During this period, she also contributed to the coordination and review of music-related articles for the newspaper.
Lee’s influence in the music community extended beyond Singapore. In the early 1980s, even before Singapore had established diplomatic relations with China, Lee made several visits to China. Between 1985 and 1989, she was invited to lead the Lee Howe Choral Society for performances in cities such as Shanghai, Wuhan, Urumqi, Guangzhou, and Xi’an, making significant contributions to cultural exchange between Singapore and China.
Ini Indexs
The Singapore Children’s Playhouse (thereafter referred to as Children’s Playhouse) was an active children’s theatre group in the 1960s and 1970s. It had its roots in radio drama and later became a leader in stage performance, while also engaging in publishing activities to showcase the talents of its members.
Established on 12 June 1965, it was initially affiliated with the Chinese department of the Singapore Broadcasting Corporation. At the end of 1964, due to a shortage of Mandarin-speaking child actors, the radio station decided to conduct training classes. The radio director Fu Helin (1940–1990) was responsible for enrollment, while Thia Mong Teck (1936–2007), who was also a broadcaster and announcer, later took over as the mentor. 1Thia was one of the driving forces behind local radio dramas and youth theatre, and had a profound influence on Mandarin drama, stage performance, and other related fields.2
The original intention of the training classes was to cultivate radio drama actors, but Thia hoped the students could develop and learn in various areas. He thus set a goal for them to eventually perform on stage. The first training session commenced on the same day as the establishment of Children’s Playhouse.
The selection criteria for Children’s Playhouse were strict. Applicants had to have excellent academic performance as well as potential in singing and dancing. The first two training sessions attracted as many as 2,000 applicants, but only around 60 were ultimately selected. They were all students in primary and secondary school, and usually engaged in playhouse activities on weekends, including rehearsals, recordings, Mandarin voice training, and mime performances.
In addition to classes at the radio station, Thia’s father-in-law’s row of old bungalows on Arthur Road in Katong served as the main headquarters for the playhouse’s activities.
Thia adapted many world classics, fables, and folktales into radio dramas, which were performed by the playhouse’s students. Children’s Playhouse’s first radio drama, broadcast on 8 August 1965, was The Hunting Rifle Without Bullets, a piece of work from the former Soviet period. Besides children’s radio dramas, the playhouse also aired its first interview programme titled Yiyuan xinsheng (Art Garden New Voices) on 4 December of the same year, allowing listeners to get to know these young actors. Both weekly programmes gained popularity and gradually attracted a loyal audience for the playhouse, including listeners from across the strait in Malaysia. The success of Children’s Playhouse encouraged the establishment of other drama groups targeting children, such as Rediffusion’s Children’s Drama Group, which was established in 1967 and later renamed the Youth Children’s Drama Group.
A year and a half after its establishment, Children’s Playhouse made its stage debut in December 1966, staging Children’s Playhouse Night at the Victoria Theatre. Tickets for all five nights were sold out. Due to the enthusiastic response from the audience, the three one-act plays performed in the show, Borrowing an Umbrella, Dormitory Turmoil, and Before and After Children’s Day, were later recorded and broadcasted as television programmes, giving those who missed the live performances the opportunity to watch them.
The most iconic performance of the playhouse was the multi-act play The Watch, which was staged seven times at the Victoria Theatre in April 1968 and adapted into a television programme. Later, Children’s Playhouse collaborated with the television station to produce Deep Benevolence and two single-unit dramas, Lost Melody and Rail.
In early 1969, the playhouse established multiple interest groups, including literary arts; fine arts; men’s, women’s, and children’s choruses; dance, piano, accordion, harmonica, and photography groups. As the playhouse developed and matured, they also established brass bands and traditional Chinese orchestras.3
Children’s Playhouse ventured into publishing as well, releasing the first issue of Camel Art Literary Weekly in January 1969. The name Camel came from a supplement page created by Min Bao in 1968, when Thia was invited to serve as its editor-in-chief. Later, The Camel Art Publishing House was formally established in March 1970. At its peak, it had nearly 40 full-time members. However, it dissolved in February 1976 after only a few years of operation.
In 1970, the radio station ceased broadcasting children’s radio dramas and Yiyuan xinsheng. Thia resigned from the radio station, and almost all the members of the playhouse left with him. Following their departure, Children’s Playhouse became an independent organisation and began to professionalise. As its members grew older, The Youth Playhouse was officially established on 3 March 1971.
At its peak, The Singapore Children’s Playhouse and The Youth Playhouse had 500 members. Their performances were often sold out, with a record of up to 31 shows per run. The highest number of audience members they ever witnessed exceeded 30,000. During its 15-year existence, Children’s Playhouse produced a total of 13 stage performances and nurtured a generation of excellent Chinese-speaking performers.
Thia announced the suspension of the playhouse’s activities in 1976, despite it being at the peak of its popularity. That year, many drama workers were arrested due to their involvement in political activities. In a 2005 interview, Thia openly admitted that in light of the social situation at the time, he did not want to see the playhouse’s activities spiral out of control and lead to similar incidents. Therefore, he believed it was necessary for the playhouse to suspend its activities and reconsider its future direction.4
The final performance by Children’s Playhouse was held at the Little World Children’s Arts Evening in 1980. After that, Children’s Playhouse officially became history. However, its influence had deeply penetrated the local Chinese cultural and education community. Even today, many former members still uphold the spirit of the playhouse and actively nurture future generations of successors in the theatrical arts. For example, the Hokkien Huay Kuan Arts and Cultural Troupe, which started its children’s performing arts training classes in 1987, was co-founded by former members of Children’s Playhouse, including Perng Peck Seng, Huang Shuping, Ng Siew Ling, and Shi Manhua.
In the early years of Singapore’s nation-building, while various industries were still emerging, cultural development had yet to be fully realised. It was during this time that Children’s Playhouse emerged, nurturing hundreds of cultural talents. Figures such as Wah Liang (1953–1995), Wu Xueni, Chua Soo Pong, Perng Peck Seng, Wong Lin Tam, Woo Wei Quee, Ho Seo Teck, Chak Chee Yoke, Ng Siew Leng, Lim Jen Erh, Yang Fan, Tan Tiaw Gem, and others who were cultivated by the playhouse later became active members in theatre, broadcasting, television, culture, and the education sectors. Organisations like Children’s Playhouse and Rediffusion Children’s Drama Group played a crucial role in laying the foundation and sowing the seeds for the inheritance of Chinese culture.
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In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Chinese immigrants from various regions brought their traditional entertainment arts to Singapore. As a result, early puppet theatre on the island exhibited distinct regional characteristics. Among them were Teochew Iron-stick Puppet Theatre, Henghua and Hokkien String Puppet Theatre, Hokkien Glove Puppet Theatre, and Hainanese Rod Puppet Theatre. For example, Teochew Iron Rod Puppet Theatre originated from traditional paper shadow play. In performance, it inherited shadow puppet techniques, integrated Teochew-Shantou elements, and drew inspiration from Teochew opera art, thus developing its unique style.1
Traditional puppet theatre is typically performed in dialects and often staged on temporary platforms along streets or inside temples. Sometimes, performances also take place at private celebrations such as weddings or birthday banquets. With the decline of dialects and the rise of other arts such as getai (live stage performances), traditional puppet theatre has gradually lost its prominence since the 1990s. The number of active local puppet theatre troupes in Singapore has decreased as well.
Early Teochew Iron Rod Puppet theatre troupes included Lau Nguang Hua, Lau Sa Jia Shun, Sa Jia Heng, Lau Poh Shun Heng (later renamed Lau Sai Poh Hong in 1938),2 Nguang Jia Hong, Bueh Jia Tiang Hiang, Sin Tor Nguang Chun, and Sin Ee Lye Heng.3
Having inherited the troupe from his father, Wu Ah Rong, the owner of the century-old Sin Sai Poh Hong Troupe held the group’s final puppet show in September 2015 at Chee Chung Temple in the vicinity of MacPherson Road. The Sin Ee Lye Heng troupe, which has been passed down three generations to its current owner, Tina Quek, is currently the only active Teochew Iron Rod Puppet theatre troupe in Singapore.
Early Henghua String Puppet Theatre troupes included Zi Xing Lou (1920–1923), De Yue Lou, He Ping (1930s), Feng Huang Ting (1954), Xingzhou Jutuan, and Xin Qun Fang (1979).4 The precursor of Sin Hoe Ping Puppet Theatre Troupe was Hoe Ping Puppet Theatre Troupe, which was taken over by the third-generation owner, Yeo Lye Hoe, in 1981. It is currently the only surviving puppet theatre troupe that performs in the Henghua dialect.
In 1947, Foo Tiang Soon (1904–1989) and his friends formed San Chun Long, the oldest recorded Hainan Stick Puppet Theatre troupe in Singapore. In 1948, they were invited to perform for 15 nights in Riau, Indonesia. Another active Hainan Stick Puppet Theatre troupe is the Tien Heng Kang Heng Nam Drama Association, established in 1956.5
In 1996, Practice Performing Arts Centre (now Theatre Practice) established The Finger Players with the aim of promoting puppet theatre to the younger generation. In 1999, The Finger Players separated from The Theatre Practice and became an independent troupe. In 2001, The Finger Players premiered its first full-length production, Nezha. The troupe actively engages in exchanges with various international puppet theatre groups, incorporating both Eastern and Western characteristics. Several of its productions have received the President’s Design Award, as well as multiple Straits Times Life Theatre Awards.
The Finger Players’ productions are characterised by puppets performing on stage alongside actors. Some of their major works include Furthest North, Deepest South (2004), Twisted (2005) and First Family (2005), I Am Just a Piano Teacher (2006), Pinocchio’s Complex (2008), Whispers (2009), Turn by Turn We Turn (2011), The Book of Living and Dying (2013), Love is the Last Thing on My Mind (2015), The Collectors and Journey to the West: Treasures from the Dragon Palace (2016), The Spirits Play (2017), Citizen Dog (2018), Peepbird (2020), The Ghost of Yotsuya (2021), Every Brilliant Thing (2022) and Puppet Origin Stories @ ONE-TWO-SIX (2022). Turn by Turn We Turn, directed by Chong Tze Chien, explores the lives of puppet theatre performers over several decades, depicting their pursuit of puppet theatre artistry. The play was restaged in 2014 and re-produced in 2020. It was also released online in the form of an audio drama with the same title.
Tan Beng Tian, the founder and artistic director of The Finger Players, was awarded the Singapore-Japan Business Association Cultural Award in 2005 for his outstanding promotion of puppet theatre art. In 2004, Chong Tze Chien, who was active in English theatre, joined The Finger Players. The theatre group went through an artistic transformation, dedicating itself to developing puppet theatre into an art form suitable for audiences of different ages and demographics. It began to expand its repertoire to include dramas targeted at adults, and presented performances in both Mandarin and English or multiple languages.
Oliver Chong, who became artistic director of The Finger Players in 2023, has been serving as the resident director until 2018 since joining the company in 2004. His self-written, -directed, and -performed monodrama, Roots (2013), won The Straits Times Life Theatre Awards (for Best Production and Best Script).6
Founded by Benjamin Ho Kah Wai in April 2008, Paper Monkey Theatre is a bilingual puppet theatre company dedicated to creating puppet dramas for children. It integrates traditional and modern puppetry techniques and incorporates Asian culture and values into its stories. Some of its productions, both adapted and original, include The Three Bullies (2012), Romance of Mistakes (2013), Looking for Mama (2014), The Journey West: Web of Deceit (2015), The Magic Lantern (2016), The Magic Paintbrush (2017), The True Monkey King and Little Miss Boleh (2018), The Universe According to Niu (2021), The Tiger Hero (2021), Duckie Can’t Swim (2021), The Journey West: Fiery Mountain (2020), The Journey West: White Bone Fiend (2022), and The Journey West: The Crimson Boy (2023).
In addition, the theatre creates productions suitable for students. These include works such as Sadako & The Thousand Cranes, Mercury, My Ah Gong, Hug the Tree, Dragon Dance, and The Wolf of Mr Dong Guo. Besides its public performance programmes, Paper Monkey Theatre also conducts puppet theatre workshops tailored to the requests of schools and communities.
Paper Monkey Theatre incorporates modern elements into puppet theatre, enriching the performance and making puppet theatre more relatable to contemporary audiences. For example, The Magic Paintbrush uses an in-house, newly developed type of puppet that replaces the traditional wooden framework with a paper-based design.
In 2013, to celebrate its fifth anniversary, Paper Monkey Theatre adapted a classic Peking Opera piece and presented Romance of Mistakes, featuring puppets alongside live performers. In 2019, during its 10th anniversary celebration, Paper Monkey Theatre re-adapted the musical puppet theatre performance Romance of Mistakes, customising 40 Pili puppets from Taiwan and creating 19 original songs, with elements of rock, tango, pop, and Chinese music infusing the performance with a modern sensibility.
Paper Monkey Theatre’s founder, Benjamin Ho Kah Wai, was involved in the establishment of TOY Factory in 1990.7 Additionally, in 1996, he collaborated with Tan Beng Tian and others to establish The Finger Players, which was affiliated with Theatre Practice.8 In 2008, he founded Paper Monkey Theatre and has served as its artistic director since. Under his leadership, Paper Monkey Theatre has innovated traditional Teochew iron rod puppets by attaching the rods at the elbows instead of the wrists, making them easier to manipulate. The company is known for its original productions that reinterpret ancient stories in modern ways.
The history of puppet theatre in the local context spans more than a century. Due to various factors such as language, labour, and social development, local traditional Chinese puppet theatre companies underwent a period of prosperity followed by decline throughout the 20th century. The currently active puppet theatre companies not only promote traditional puppet theatre but also continuously experiment and innovate in puppet design, scriptwriting, performance language, thematic depth, and other aspects. They combine Eastern and Western puppet theatre characteristics, integrate diverse art forms, and aim to meet the demands of contemporary audiences.
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After emerging from a slump in the late 1970s, the Singapore Chinese-language theatre scene met with a period of stable economic development in the country and the government’s initiation of cultural and artistic development plans. Local Chinese-language theatre flourished in the 1980s and 1990s, led by prominent figures such as Kuo Pao Kun (1939–2002), with The Theatre Practice being one of the prime examples of this thriving landscape.
Kuo Pao Kun and his establishment of The Theatre Practice not only brought a plethora of locally flavoured plays and performances to the Singapore Chinese-language theatre scene, but also nurtured a new generation of local Chinese-language theatre talent. Among them were Goh Boon Teck, who founded TOY Factory Theatre Ensemble (later renamed TOY Factory Productions) in 1990; and Nelson Chia and Mia Chee, who founded Nine Years Theatre in 2012. These two theatre companies have continued to this day, becoming key players in the local Chinese-language theatre scene.
In July 1990, shortly after concluding the performance of Lao Jiu at the Theatre Practice, Goh Boon Teck and a group of students established the TOY Factory Theatre Ensemble (commonly known as TOY Factory) and staged The Bull over the Rainbow.
As one of Singapore’s major full-time theatre companies, TOY Factory aimed to create a variety of performance art works in both Chinese and English languages. It was dedicated to continuously innovating and reshaping the artistic landscape and boundaries of Singapore.1 In the 30 years since its establishment, by 2023, TOY Factory had created and staged nearly 90 productions spanning various themes and styles.
As one of the few bilingual theatre companies in Singapore, TOY Factory creates and stages original productions in either Mandarin or English year-round, like Prism (2003/2017).2 It also uses Mandarin to adapt and perform acclaimed Mandarin stage masterpieces from both local and international stages, like I Have a Date with Spring (1995/1999) and Mad Phoenix (2003).
These are the main performance features of TOY Factory’s Chinese-language work:
1. Portraying local performing artists
Titoudao is the masterpiece of TOY Factory’s repertoire, written and directed by its artistic director, Goh Boon Teck. It was premiered at Jubilee Hall in the Raffles Hotel in 1994, and was invited to participate in the International Experimental Theatre Arts Festival in Cairo, Egypt that same year.
A multilingual play, it takes inspiration from the playwright’s mother and reflects the tumultuous rise to fame journey of Oom Ah Chiam (“Titoudao”), a renowned artist of the Sin Sai Hong Hokkien opera troupe in the 1960s Singapore.3 The play has been staged multiple times in Singapore (2000/2007/2015) and been invited to perform in cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Hangzhou in China (2002). Titoudao was adapted into a 13-episode English television series in 2020, which was dubbed in Mandarin for broadcast. Due to the positive reception, the local television station launched a second season in 2023.
TOY Factory has produced two other stage plays that explore similar themes. The solo performance White Soliloquy (2010/2015) portrays the hardships faced by the local stage and screen artist, Bai Yan (1929–2019), throughout his career. The other, Big Fool Lee (2007), marked the first time that the artistic image of local Cantonese storytelling master, Lee Dai Soh (1913–1989), was fully depicted on stage.
2. Creative spin on Chinese classics
Over the years, adapting classic works of Chinese literature and giving them innovative interpretations on stage has been another approach taken by TOY Factory to explore new paths. Adapted from the “Crab Feast” episode in the classic Chinese novel, Dream of the Red Chamber, The Crab Flower Club was commissioned for the 2009 Singapore Arts Festival, written and directed by Goh Boon Teck. The play depicts the clashes and conflicts among the five women living in a grand mansion as they prepare for a crab feast to celebrate their father’s 60th birthday.4 The play was restaged in Singapore in 2012 and 2022.
Similarly, 7 Sages of the Bamboo Grove (2020)5 and A Dream Under the Southern Bough also continued this unique approach to playwriting and theatrical experimentation. A Dream Under the Southern Bough (a trilogy consisting of titles including The Beginning (2018), Reverie (2019), and Existence (2020)), was commissioned by the Singapore International Festival of Arts for three consecutive years.6
3. Chinese-language musicals
TOY Factory is also committed to staging Chinese-language musicals. In addition to the musical adaptation of the Taiwanese film, Glass Anatomy (2013/2014), TOY Factory has created and staged Chinese-language musicals reflecting local life in Singapore, such as December Rains (2010/2015) and Innamorati (2014). It also produced the musical, 881 the Musical (2011), adapted from the movie of the same title, showcasing local getai culture, establishing a distinctive style in musical theatre creation and performance.
Nine Years Theatre was founded in 2012. One of its co-founders, Nelson Chia, was previously a full-time actor at The Theatre Practice and associate artistic director at TOY Factory. As a Singapore Chinese-language theatre troupe in a multicultural environment, Nine Years Theatre sees Chinese culture as the foundation of its work rather the centre of its practice, and works hard to establish a theatre troupe that blends diverse cultures.7 Its performances are focused on reinterpreting classic works.
Since its inception, it has presented numerous classic works from the rich treasury of drama, both locally and internationally. Examples include Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (2012), by American playwright Edward Albee (1928–2016), Twelve Angry Men (2013), by Reginald Ross (1920–2002), and Art (2014) by French playwright Yasmina Reza (2014). These three productions were commissioned by Huayi Festival for three consecutive years.
In addition, Nine Years Theatre has consistently introduced representative theatrical masterpieces from different periods and styles around the world. These include An Enemy of the People (2014), by Norwegian playwright, Henri Ibsen (1828–1906), often regarded as the father of modern drama, Tartuffe (2015), by French classical playwright Molière (1673–1817), The Lower Depths (2015), by Russian realism playwright Maxim Gorky (1868–1936), Red Demon (2016), by Japanese playwright Noda Hideki, Red Sky (2016), by Taiwanese playwright Stan Lai, Dear Elena (2019), by Russian playwright Lyudmila Razumovskaya. Nine Years Theatre also performed in Mandarin the Hong Kong adaptation of Love Letters (2019) written by American playwright A.R. Gurney.
Nine Years Theatre’s reinterpretation of world theatrical classics sometimes also reflected its unique but deliberate choice of Chinese translated titles for their productions. For example, they used the element of a play within a play to adapt Shakespeare’s King Lear into Lear is Dead (2018), as the Chinese characters “王” (“king”) and “亡” (“death”) are homophones. Another example is the work of Swedish playwright, August Strindberg’s Miss Julie, adapted into Pissed Julie (2018), as “小姐” (“Miss”) and “小解” (“piss”), are homophones. The theatre also rewrote and subverted the original work of Austrian writer, Franz Kafka (1883–1924), adapting Metamorphosis into Cut Kafka! (2018). It used gender transformation to adapt Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust into Faust/Us (2019), and the Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex into Oedipus (王命) (2020).
In addition to adapting world theatrical classics, Nine Years Theatre has also produced the local Chinese-language drama classics such as No Parking on Odd Days and The Coffin is Too Big for the Hole (Double Bill, 2017), in Cantonese and Teochew respectively. They also staged a Mandarin adaptation of local English-language playwright Haresh Sharma’s Fundamentally Happy (2017). In 2017, for the first time, Nine Years Theatre adapted local writer Yeng Pway Ngon’s (1947–2021) novel Art Studio into a play of the same title, which was staged at the Singapore International Festival of Arts.
Since 2019, Nine Years Theatre has also focused on developing its own original productions, such as the historical event-based adaptations First Fleet (2019) and Electrify My World (2021), as well as original works like Between You and Me (2022), site-specific performance Windward Side of the Mountain (2022), and the dialogue play, See you, Anniversary (2022).
Nine Years Theatre often collaborates with overseas theatre groups and participates in international theatre festivals. In addition to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (24th Macao Arts Festival), it had its joint production of Russian writer Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters with the American SITI Company at the 2021 Singapore International Festival of Arts. In 2023, it collaborated with Taiwan’s Hsing Legend Youth Theatre to create the science fiction allegory play, Immortal Variables.
The artistic characteristics of TOY Factory and Nine Years Theatre are also reflected in their scriptwriting and actor training programmes.
The Wright Stuff is a scriptwriting incubation programme established by TOY Factory in 2017. The artistic directors of TOY Factory provide one-on-one guidance to help participants develop their ideas. The conceptual creations are ultimately presented through the framework of “NOWplaying@17” in the rehearsal space of the theatre company. Building on this success, the theatre company embarked on another edition of The Wright Stuff in 2019, assisting emerging local playwrights in bringing their works to the stage.
Since its inception, Nine Years Theatre has adhered to the ideal of training leading to creation, incorporating the Suzuki Method of Actor Training and the Viewpoints technique as the foundation for actor training and stage creation.8 Between 2014 and 2021, the company also established the Nine Years Theatre Actors Ensemble, showcasing the unique advantage of autonomous creation through the ensemble model. This was a pioneering initiative in the Singapore theatre scene at the time.
TOY Factory and Nine Years Theatre have successively established themselves as innovative, distinctive Chinese-language companies in the local theatre scene.
Ini Indexs
The earliest Chinese Catholic churches in Singapore were established along linguistic or dialectal lines. While sermons were delivered in the vernacular, all masses (services) were celebrated in Latin. The use of Latin in worship continued till the 1960s when all Catholic parishes became tied to districts rather than linguistic affiliation. By this time, all Catholic churches were using English as the main medium of worship while conducting at least one mass in Mandarin. Nevertheless, Chinese dialectal services were still occasionally held in the oldest pioneering Chinese churches as special masses.
The first Chinese Catholics who arrived in Singapore were travellers and sojourners who were among the thousands who made stopovers here throughout the 1820s. There were already many Catholics among the Chinese diaspora in the region, such as in Thailand (Siam) and Penang. These Chinese Christians had formed communities with histories spanning generations. In December 1821, a number of these Chinese and other Christians encountered Father Laurent Imbert (1796–1839), a French missionary of the Société des Missions étrangères de Paris (MEP), who was visiting Singapore on the instruction of Bishop Joseph Florens (1762–1834), the MEP Vicar Apostolic of Siam. It was these few Catholics who requested Fr Imbert to station a resident priest in Singapore. However, the MEP did little more until the next decade.
The first MEP priest to reside in Singapore, Fr Pierre Julien Marc Clémenceau (1806–1864), arrived in August 1832. There was no Catholic place of worship here then. Although he was given a meagre allowance for his own maintenance and mission work, Fr Clémenceau had to rent a room in the house of a Chinese man for his residence and to use as a small chapel. He also set aside a small sum to pay for his Chinese servant from Macau, Jose, who also helped him with his evangelical work with the Chinese.
By October, with the assistance of other MEP missionaries from Penang, and the cooperation of a Spanish priest from the Goa Portuguese Mission, a subscription for a proper chapel was started and a piece of land at Bras Basah Road was secured to establish a Mission Ground on which the new chapel was to be built. With this, proselytisation work among the Chinese also began. In early 1833, Fr Clémenceau was succeeded by Fr Etienne Albrand (1805–1853), who completed the chapel in late May 1833. On 9 June 1833, he blessed and opened the Church of the Good Shepherd. A year later, he added next to the chapel a Mission House, which he used as a place of residence as well as the space he gathered the Chinese for instruction. Fr Albrand engaged a Chinese catechist (religious teacher) who assisted him. Each day, both men went about inviting Chinese men to the Mission House for instruction in the evenings, from eight to ten o’clock. By September 1833, the Chinese Mission had 100 Chinese converts and catechumens (those under instruction). In order to entice them to return for instruction, the catechumens were given tobacco and tea before each session. On occasions, Fr Albrand also provided them with meals out of his own pocket.
The small Chinese Catholic community was made up of both new converts and Christian arrivals from the region and China. They had come from the Nanyang region or from Guangdong province, where the three main linguistic communities were the Hakkas, Teochews, and Cantonese. Hence, they constituted the nucleus of the Chinese Christian community in Singapore in the 1830s. The progress of the Chinese Catholic Mission Station was nevertheless slow in this decade — most Chinese arrivals to the island, including Catholics, were by and large sojourners who were transient.
The Mission Ground became the heart of development for the Chinese Catholic community. A kind of communal centre emerged over a decade. It had their place of worship (chapel), catechumenate (school for converts — House of Doctrine), school (for children), clinic (House for the Sick) and the Mission House, where the head of the community, the MEP missionary, resided. While the MEP could provide free medical care to its members, the Mission Ground also gave the MEP the space and opportunity to provide schooling for the children of the Mission. In 1845, the community raised enough funds to erect its own school house. The Chinese Christian community in Singapore had grown to at least 500 strong in the early 1840s. This was in no small part also due to the arrival of the island’s first Chinese Catholic priest, Fr John Tchu (1783–1848), in 1839. He remained in Singapore till his death on 13 July 1848. It was acknowledged that a great number of Chinese had converted during his time in the Chinese Mission.
After thousands of Chinese gambier and pepper plantations sprung up across Singapore in the late 1830s and early 1840s, hundreds of Chinese Christians also made their way into the interior of the island in search of economic opportunities. In late 1845, Fr Anatole Mauduit (1817–1858), an MEP priest, sought permission from the head of the Singapore Mission, Fr Jean Marie Beurel (1813–1872), to go into the interior to seek out and minister to the Chinese Christians who had ventured there. He found them at the end of Bukit Timah Road, where the road met the Kranji River. He started a mission outpost there in 1846. Together with the Chinese Christians, he erected an attap chapel dedicated to St Joseph. They then built a school and a sick house in July 1847. By 1849, there were more than 500 Chinese Christians at St Joseph’s. The Christians in the interior faced many obstacles besides tropical illnesses, such as the tiger menace across the island, economic uncertainties linked to the cultivation of gambier and pepper, and the wrath of the Chinese secret society members who were taking shelter within the jungles of the interior. The secret societies carried out their first attack against the interior Chinese Christians in 1849. This culminated in an even greater island-wide attack in 1851, when most of the island’s Christian plantations were razed to the ground. It has been said that 500 Chinese Christians were massacred in this outrage. In 1852, St Joseph’s was relocated to its present site along Bukit Timah Road. It was from this site that the Chinese Christians in the interior extended the Mission further north. In early 1862, the resident priest at St Joseph’s, Fr Augustine Perie (1832–1892), started another outpost at Kranji. He erected and opened a new place of worship named Chapel of St Mary on 8 September 1862. Unfortunately, the new outpost prospered only for a few months before an “accidental” fire razed it in early 1863. Thereafter, Fr Perie took his evangelical work across to Johor. He crossed over to Pontian in southwest Johor to establish another Chinese Catholic colony, which thrived till the end of the 1870s. For the rest of the 19th century, the Chinese Catholic village at St Joseph’s remained a small, quiet farming community that came to life only during its annual St Joseph’s feast day, when thousands from across the island made their “pilgrimage” to this far away church.
Meanwhile, in early February 1853, the MEP erected a small attap chapel at the end of Serangoon Road which could accommodate 100 worshippers. Christened St Mary’s Church, it was rebuilt in 1901 and renamed the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This new church could hold up to 1,000 parishioners. Still, this mission station was too small to require a permanent missionary to be stationed there. Real progress at the Serangoon mission had been made only from the 1870s. A regular Chinese Catechism School was established at the station in 1872 and its catechist, Lim Chun Seng, came directly from China. It was from Nativity that MEP priests ventured into Johor Bahru to establish yet another Chinese Mission station. By 1903, the Chinese church at Serangoon had grown to 700 strong while its outpost in Johor Bahru had 350 Chinese Christians.
The evolution of the Chinese Catholic Mission into the Chinese Catholic Church began with relocating the Church of the Good Shepherd diagonally across the road from the old Mission Ground in 1846 to 1847. While all Catholics of the French Mission from thence worshipped in the new church, the Chinese Christians continued their non-worship activities at the old Mission Ground. The original chapel became a school for the Chinese Catholic community. Then, after the Christian Brothers arrived in 1852, half of the old Mission Ground, the portion fronting Bras Basah Road, was given to the Brothers’ School (St Joseph’s Institution) while the rest of the land between Queen Street and Waterloo Street was used exclusively by the Chinese Catholic Mission. It was this delineation in the 1860s that essentially paved the way for the Chinese Christian community to finally erect the Church of Sts Peter and Paul, a place of worship of their own. The missionary given the colossal task of building the Chinese Catholics their own church in town was Fr Pierre Paris (1822–1883). Fr Paris was aided by a wealthy and influential Chinese Christian, Pedro (Peter) Tan No Keah, who provided the necessary funds.
While the construction of Sts Peter and Paul commenced in August 1867, Fr Paris also took care of the Chinese Mission at Serangoon. Every Sunday morning, he would walk the length of Serangoon Road to say mass for his flock there (St Mary’s) before returning to town to minister to the Indian Christians who congregated at the old Mission Ground. It was through the zeal and industry of Fr Paris that saw the Chinese church in town and Serangoon flourish. By 1900, the number of parishioners at Sts Peter and Paul had grown to 2,200 from 795 in 1883.
The Cantonese and Hakka Christians at Sts Peter and Paul had become so numerous in the 1890s that they began clamouring for a church of their own. In 1895, after a short visit by a Cantonese priest from China, they were granted their request, and a separate Cantonese Mission was created in 1895 with its own services, although they remained under the same roof with the others at Sts Peter and Paul. Through the efforts of three prominent members of Sts Peter and Paul — Chan Teck Hee, Low Kiok Chiang, and Chong Quee Thiam — a piece of land at Tank Road was purchased in 1903 to build a new Hakka-Cantonese parish. The foundation stone of the new Sacred Heart church was laid on 14 June 1908, and by 11 September 1910, the edifice was completed, blessed, and opened. By the mid-1920s, there were 1,300 parishioners at the Church of the Sacred Heart.
Evangelical work with the Hokkiens also began after 1900 but saw little progress. Although there were several hundred Hokkien Catholics worshipping at Sts Peter and Paul at this time, the MEP added few converts among them. So, it decided to build the Hokkien Christians their own parish to encourage more conversions. In 1925, Fr EJ Mariette (1863–1928) and Fr Stephen Lee (1896–1956), priests of the Chinese Mission, purchased a piece of land at Bukit Purmei for the endeavour. They then assembled 11 of the wealthiest Chinese Catholics of the island, the most prominent Teochew Christians of Sts Peter and Paul, to form a church building committee to commence fundraising efforts for the new Church of St Teresa. To give this Hokkien parish a better chance of success, the MEP decided to build a new Catholic enclave around the church. In 1934, the Chinese Mission acquired approximately seven acres of land on Bukit Purmei hill to build this Catholic village that was eventually named Bukit Teresa.
The Chinese Mission outside of town also saw significant developments in the pre-war years. In 1906, the MEP added a new outpost at Punggol (17 milestone) when 100 parishioners of the Nativity Church moved closer to the coastline. There, the MEP priest Fr Jean Casimir Saleilles (1852–1916) erected a double story house for them. The ground floor served as a chapel as well as a school for the Chinese in the district. By this time, Serangoon Catholic parish was already touted as the Catholic oasis of the island, where a thriving Chinese Christian enclave had taken root. By 1916, the parish of the Nativity had grown to 1,200. Hundreds of Chinese Catholic families who had farms and bred livestock lived in this enclave. Many of the hired hands at these farms, together with numerous Chinese labourers in the thriving fishing industry at the waterfront, converted to Catholicism and increased the number of Catholic marriages in the district from the 1890s. Such was the success of this Catholic community that the MEP established a minor seminary here in 1925 to train young Chinese Catholic men for the priesthood.
Another Chinese Catholic enclave was created in 1927, when hundreds of Catholic refugees from Swatow arrived. Wee Cheng Soon, a Catholic contractor, initially housed them in workmen’s quarters at his construction site before finding employment for up to 100 of them. By 1928, with the help of Fr Stephen Lee, 49 families from this group were able to secure grants from the British government to clear and cultivate land in Mandai. There, they built new homes and were self-sufficient. A Chinese Catholic village, an outstation of St. Joseph’s, was thus born. In 1935, Fr Lee, with the help of Lee Kheng Seng and Lee Keng Guan, two prominent Chinese Catholics of Sts Peter and Paul, built a small wooden chapel for them in Mandai dedicated to St Anthony of Padua.
By the 1920s to 1930s, most of the major Chinese Catholic parishes of Singapore had been well established and were no longer just mission stations or outposts. There were several salient characteristics of this Chinese church. For one thing, the Chinese church was composed of domiciled families which added to church growth annually through childbirth within the community, and not just through evangelism and conversion. As a case in point, there were 100 to 120 infant baptisms a year at Sts Peter and Paul from 1902 to 1936. By 1903, the population in that parish had grown to 3,000.
Another trend in the pre-war years was the growing number of English-educated Chinese within the Chinese Catholic Church. While this segment of the community had been the minority at first, by the first half of the 20th century, many Chinese Catholics had attended English Mission schools. Of course, this could have posed a real obstacle to Church cohesion, but the fact of the matter was that the Chinese Catholic church was multilingual. While Malay was the lingua franca in Singapore and English Catholic schools may not have instructed in the vernacular, local-born Chinese were naturally born into a dialectal mother tongue which they did not unlearn. Furthermore, from the early 20th century, the Chinese schools of the Mission, for example the Sino-English schools, instructed in both Mandarin and English. Hence, there had been more mixing than separation even when the Church was organised along linguistic and ethnic lines in the pre-war years.
As a case in point, the first local born Chinese to be ordained a priest, Fr Michael Seet (Seet Kiam Juay, 1883–1946), was the son of Seet Twa Tee, the Teochew catechist at Sts Peter and Paul who had served the parish for more than 30 years. After getting an English education from St Joseph’s Institution, Fr Seet entered training at Penang in 1899 and was ordained at Sts Peter and Paul on 2 July 1911. He was effectively bilingual and faced no problem as a priest of the Chinese Mission. In 1925, when the minor seminary was established at Serangoon, a handful of Chinese Catholics started training for the priesthood locally. One of these pioneering local priests was Fr Moses Koh (1903–1971). Before joining the priesthood, he was a teacher at St Joseph’s Institution – English-educated. He was also ordained at Sts Peter and Paul.
As Chinese Catholic parishes in the post-war years became increasingly constituted by local born members instead of immigrant arrivals, the Chinese Catholic churches started to transform fundamentally. By the mid-1950s, the Catholic Church in Singapore stopped planting churches along ethnic or linguistic lines. Part of this change was spurred on by Singapore’s urban renewal initiatives during its early days of nation building; the new townships created did not follow ethnic lines. It was also in this decade that Chinese-dialectal education was no longer popular among many Chinese. Mandarin had also become the mode of instruction for post-primary Chinese education instead of dialects. As such, the Catholic Diocese of Singapore geared church growth from the 1960s by adapting to the social-urban changes of the day. The final impetus for change came in the decade when Vatican reformed the masses for the worldwide Church; no more were Catholic churches required to say masses in Latin and only have sermons in local languages. This allowed the Singapore Diocese to have masses entirely in local languages. It was at this point that the Singapore Church officially made all parishes district based and use English as the main language of masses, while allowing vernacular masses to be said as well. In this context, while the Chinese Catholic churches also reformed, their communities remained intact. At the same time, as new parishes were established in New Towns, Chinese Catholics who resettled in these places were able to continue worshipping in Chinese masses, albeit, not in the Chinese vernacular dialect but in Mandarin. Dialectal services are still occasionally held in the original Chinese churches on special parish feast days.
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Sun Yee (1919–2010) was part of a pioneering generation of artists who contributed to the development of 20th century modern art in Singapore. Born into a wealthy family in Zhejiang, China, Sun Yee studied art and music at the Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts, and later Xinhua Academy of Fine Arts from which she graduated in 1938. She was trained in both Chinese ink painting and Western oil painting, as both art traditions were taught in the art academies then.
After holding successful solo exhibitions in Shanghai, she left for Tokyo in 1949 to further her studies at the Nihon University College of Arts in Tokyo. After graduating in 1952, she went to Paris. For the next two years, she was very productive. Apart from spending time in the studio of the French modern artist Fernand Leger (1881–1955), she took the opportunity to travel extensively within Europe, visiting places such as Italy and Spain. Five of her paintings were accepted by the Salon of the Societie Nationale des Beaux-Arts for exhibition in 1953. The Paris city museum (Musee De La Ville) also acquired one of her paintings. In 1954, she held her first show in Singapore. Buoyed by the positive response to her works, the local warm hospitality and colourful scenery, as well as the presence of friends like Huang Paofang and Liu Kang (former student and teacher respectively from Shanghai), she eventually decided to settle in Singapore, where she led an active life — painting, exhibiting, travelling and teaching.1
In terms of her art practice, Sun Yee shared similar traits with her peers in Singapore. Many had an interest in painting en plein-air (on-site), a practice derived from their earlier art academy training in China which emphasised the importance of close observation, and accurate depiction of the physical world.2 Hence, a number of Sun’s paintings depict familiar local subjects, such as Singapore’s tropical flowers and multi-ethnic population.
Given her foundation in both Chinese and Western painting, Sun worked fluidly across both media, and her exhibitions usually featured both oil and ink works. This was also a common feature among the China-born artists such as Chen Wen Hsi and Cheong Soo Pieng who had settled in Singapore. Sun Yee was also among those who saw no contradiction between Western and Chinese art, and saw value in integrating both traditions. She held that the new “Malaysianised” art should evolve with the times, and synthesise the scientific techniques of Western art and the traditional spirit of Chinese art, in both form and content.3
In her ink paintings, Sun generally maintained the traditional xieyi approach, which emphasised subjective expression over objective depiction. However, for some of her figurative paintings such as Indian Dance, Sun departed from convention by injecting Western realism through a careful attention to physique and facial expressions, suggestion of light and shade, and depiction of the dancer in mid-pose, conveying the candid immediacy of a photograph.
In her oil paintings, Sun’s style was mainly naturalistic, although she was noted for boldness in her early days. In the 1950s, artist Liu Kang (1911–2004) described her style as “Fauvist”, which was reflected in her striking 1965 painting Dances of Paris which showed figures painted in highly unnaturalistic colours like pink, green and blue.4 However, apart from a short period in the 1970s when she experimented with painting on aluminium, she was not known to be as adventurous as her peers such as Cheong Soo Pieng (1917–1983) and Chen Wen Hsi (1906–1991), who often experimented with different Western modern art styles such as Cubism and Abstraction. On the whole, despite her belief in integrating Chinese and Western art, most of her works did not reflect any such synthesis or stylistic distinctiveness.
Nonetheless , Sun is regarded as an important early art educator in Singapore’s art scene. She spent close to three decades heading the Singapore Academy of Arts — a role which no other local female artist had undertaken before. The Academy was initiated by the China Society, a local organisation founded in 1949 with the aim of promoting interest in and appreciation of Chinese culture. Its programmes were wide-ranging including concerts, talks, publications and art exhibitions, including art classes under the name of “Singapore Academy of Arts” in 1957. During her tenure from the mid-1950s to the 1980s, the academy nurtured many students, some of whom furthered their studies overseas and later became well-known artists in their own right.5 The Academy was initially popular, as its evening and weekend classes attracted students who could not afford to study art on a full-time basis. Unfortunately, it later suffered from financial problems and did not succeed in obtaining its own premises. This eventually led to the school’s demise in the 1980s. With its closing, Sun slowly faded out of the art scene in the 1990s. As an art educator, Sun was well-regarded for her humility and generous spirit.6 As a result of her caring attitude towards her students, a few of them, such as Yau Tian Yau, helped to look after their former principal in her old age (as she never married) until she died in 2010.