SINGAPORE / CHAO’AN, China — More than a century ago, an 11-year-old Teochew boy walked away from his village in southern China and began a journey that would eventually reshape the lives of generations he would never meet.
He never came home.
But in 2026, one of his descendants did.
Singaporean creative practitioner and educator Jariel Ann Tan travelled with her parents to Sha Long village in Chao’an, Guangdong, searching for the birthplace of her great-grandfather, Tan Siak Kiang (陈锡乾).
What began with fading Chinese characters on an old gravestone in Indonesia eventually led the family to an ancestral hall, a centuries-old genealogy book and an unexpected confirmation: after generations of migration through Indonesia and Singapore, they had finally found where their branch of the family began.
A Gravestone Became the First Clue
Tan wrote that she grew up immersed in Teochew culture without seriously questioning where it came from.
Her paternal grandmother spoke Teochew, prepared familiar dishes and passed down traditions that became part of everyday family life. Only as Tan grew older did she begin asking deeper questions about her grandparents, their childhoods and the family’s origins.
The breakthrough came through her great-grandfather’s grave in Tanjung Balai Karimun, part of Indonesia’s Riau Islands, southwest of Singapore.
A relative photographed the badly weathered inscription. Tan’s family used an artificial-intelligence tool to help interpret the faded characters, which pointed them toward Chao’an district in Guangdong province, then to Caitang town, and eventually to Sha Long village.
It was far from proof.
Singapore Teochew associations were unable to locate records linking the family to the village, and when Tan and her parents finally travelled there, they still did not know whether they were following the correct trail.
Then they entered the ancestral hall.
The Book That Changed Everything
At the village ancestral hall, Tan and her family met two elderly men responsible for looking after the building.
After Tan explained, in what she described as her imperfect Teochew, why the family had come, the men retrieved an old zupu (族谱) — a traditional Chinese genealogy or clan record.
Within minutes, the elders were able to connect names across generations.
Among those names was Tan’s great-grandfather.
The search was over.
The family had reached the place where Tan Siak Kiang had been born before leaving China as a child more than a century earlier.
For Tan, the discovery changed how she viewed him.
He was no longer simply an ancestor represented by a Chinese name and migration story. He became, in her telling, an 11-year-old child who had been asked to leave the only home he knew and travel toward an uncertain future in Southeast Asia.
Why So Many Teochews Left Southern China
Tan’s family story fits into a much larger history of migration from the Chaoshan region of eastern Guangdong, the traditional homeland of many Teochew people.
During the 19th and early 20th centuries, large numbers of migrants from Chaozhou, Chao’an, Raoping and surrounding districts moved south to what Chinese migrants commonly called Nanyang, or the “Southern Seas” — broadly referring to Southeast Asia.
Economic hardship, instability and employment opportunities pushed generations of Chinese migrants toward Singapore, Malaya, Indonesia, Thailand and other parts of the region.
Singapore itself became one of the most important centres of the Teochew diaspora.
Historical material from Singapore’s National Library Board notes that Teochews originated largely from the Chaozhou area of Guangdong and became heavily involved in agriculture, particularly the cultivation and trading of gambier and pepper.
Evidence cited by Singapore heritage researchers indicates that Teochew farmers were already present on the island before Stamford Raffles arrived in 1819, with some migrants apparently reaching Singapore through the Riau Islands.
By 1848, prominent merchant Seah Eu Chin reported that Teochews numbered about 19,000 among approximately 40,000 Chinese residents in Singapore at the time — an indication of how deeply the community had already become embedded in the settlement’s development.
From China to Indonesia, Then Singapore
Tan’s great-grandfather did not travel directly to Singapore.
He left China for what is now Indonesia, where he eventually married and had six children.
He died at just 35, according to Tan, leaving behind his young family. The precise cause of his death remains unknown.
Then migration repeated itself.
Tan’s grandfather, Tan Kwan Lok, was only nine years old when he left Indonesia and travelled to Singapore through the Riau Strait.
In just two generations, the family’s path had stretched from southern China to Indonesia and then to Singapore.
Tan herself would later make another international move, relocating from Singapore to the United Kingdom in 2015.
But she draws an important distinction between her journey and those of her ancestors.
She travelled by choice, with a passport, modern communications and the possibility of returning home. Earlier migrants often left because economic survival demanded it, with no guarantee that they would ever see their families or villages again.
A New Generation Is Trying to Reconnect
Tan’s search is not an isolated case.
Across Singapore and Malaysia, interest in tracing ancestral roots in southern China appears to be growing.
CNA reported on August 6, 2026 that a volunteer network based in China had seen a surge in requests from Singaporeans and Malaysians of Teochew descent seeking long-lost relatives and ancestral villages.
The network, which includes more than 3,000 volunteers, said it had recorded 1,097 successful family-reconnection cases since its founding in 2016, including 83 involving Malaysian families and 22 involving Singaporean families.
Organisers told CNA that inquiries increased dramatically following the regional release of the Chinese film Dear You, which explores the history of qiaopi — letters and remittances exchanged between overseas Chinese migrants and their relatives back home.
Another Singapore family recently followed a similar trail.
In May 2026, Jasmine Goh-Chew travelled to Chaozhou carrying a faded letter written in 1993. With help from local volunteers, her family eventually reconnected with relatives across several branches of their family tree, according to reporting carried by AsiaOne and other regional publications.
These searches often depend on fragments that survived by chance: gravestones, old letters, ancestral halls, village names, genealogical books and memories preserved by elderly relatives.
For descendants who wait too long, those clues can disappear.
The Real Story Wasn’t Just Finding a Village
When Tan finally stood in Sha Long village, there was no dramatic discovery of a house preserved exactly as her great-grandfather had known it.
What remained was something simpler: an ancestral hall, a genealogy book and a documented chain of names proving that her family had once belonged there.
But that was enough.
The discovery brought her back to a moment more than 100 years earlier, when her great-great-grandmother watched her only son leave the village, apparently believing he would eventually return.
He never did.
His descendants eventually built lives across Indonesia, Singapore and beyond.
More than a century later, however, the family line finally made the journey in reverse.
Tan and her father stood in the village their ancestor had departed as a child, beside the records that still carried his name.
The boy never returned home.
But his family did.
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