The China drama was playing again when I arrived at my father’s place, and there he was in his usual spot… leaning slightly forward in his chair, remote in one hand, eyes fixed on the screen. The characters wore long robes and shouted about loyalty and honour as the music swelled in the background.
I don’t know what made me ask. Maybe it was turning 40. Maybe it was that moment on the screen. But I sat down beside him and said something I’d never said before.
“Pa… where was Grandpa born?”
He didn’t look at me at first. “1888,” he said, almost absentmindedly. “Back in the Qing Dynasty. That was still emperor time.” Then he turned and looked at me, like he was surprised I was finally asking.
That afternoon, he told me the story I had never heard.
How Grandpa cut off his queue in Shanghai in 1912, the year the dynasty collapsed, and boarded a ship for Nanyang. How he eventually made his home in South East Asia in the 1920s. Lived through two world wars. And during the Japanese invasion, made a financial contribution to support the Chinese resistance. The Guo Ming Dang sent him a letter of appreciation. My father still keeps it.
If my grandfather were alive today, he would be 137 years old. That number alone made me pause. It reminded me just how recent , and yet how far this story really is.
“We’re Hakka,” my father added, with quiet pride. “We learn to survive wherever we go.”
He said it like it explained everything. And in some ways, it did.
I realised then… I had never asked about my family history before. And I wasn’t alone in that.
In those early years after Singapore's independence, unity was survival. Our founding father’s vision was clear. One people, One identity, One future. And it worked. It gave people like my parents a real shot at building a new life.
But maybe that’s also why so many of us never learned to ask where we came from. Maybe that’s why it felt safer not to feel too much about the past as we were building something new.
But that visit, something changed.
My father told me how he was born in 1946, the youngest son from my grandfather’s second marriage. There had been a first marriage back in China, long before he settled here. By the time my father was born, my grandfather was already 60. How my grandmother came from a business family in Indonesia… but they moved around Southeast Asia, never quite settled. Then came to Singapore in 1975. Newly married. With no connections. He worked as a chicken farmer, did construction, anything to get by. Eventually, he built a small subcontracting business and made this country his home.
Most Chinese families in Singapore go back four or five generations. I have only three. Maybe that’s why the migrant story has always felt close. Not textbook close… heart close.
And maybe that’s why I still feel such a strong pull to my Chinese roots. Not because I studied them, but because I finally asked.
There’s no family fortune waiting in China, sadly :P But there is something else.... A deeper appreciation that the choices made by those before me brought me to where I am today.
After that afternoon, I shared a little with some friends. And they, in turn, began wondering… "Where did our great-grandfathers come from? What were they like? "
It got me thinking.
Most of us don’t really bother to find out what happened in the generations before us. And a couple of generations from now, our great-grandchildren might not care much about what we’ve done either.
I used to think legacy was what we left behind. Now I think it’s the lasting impact we have on others... the values we share, the support we give, and the stories we pass on.
The achievements. The houses. The BMWs. They fade. The job title won’t speak for you. The house won’t speak for you. The car won’t speak for you.
It’s the people you’ve shaped who will tell your story... and only if you gave them something worth telling.
So maybe this week, take a moment to ask someone older, “What was life like in your time?”
You might be surprised by what they say, it could make them feel remembered and it could make you feel more rooted.
And one day, someone might ask you the same thing. Let’s live in a way that gives them something worth remembering and retelling.
🧘
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