Jason Heng

In 1950 a Singapore Chinese publisher Phua Chye Long (潘醒农） compiled a set of Teochew oral account relating to the settlement of a group of Teochew gambier planters in Singapore, before the arrival of Sir Stamford Raffles in 1819. Through a broad base of evidences,  this research confirms the factuality and accuracy of this previously little-known oral account.

Social media has redefined the way people communicate and socialise. Social networking sites like Facebook have achieved what other communication technologies failed, which is to imitate the social environment of the tribal village. This materialises the global village Marshall McLuhan predicted half a century ago.  The globalised world is often assumed as the actualisation of global village, but this view is problematic as a village by its defining characteristics cannot be global. It also overlooks McLuhan’s key emphasis that technologies promoting instantaneous oral communication replicate social conditions in a village that favour the “retribalization” of man.

On the basis that social media will increasingly encourage non-literate communication and social relationship will become the determining factor of inter-personal connections on the Internet, this study proposes that more and more people will gravitate towards communities online defined by unique and exclusive vernacular cultures. These “globalised villages” will be in the image of the tribal villages from which they derive cultural identity, except that they will not be not confined to a physical location but prosper in the global village ecology.

Using a multi-disciplinary approach and netnography (also known as online ethnography) as the method of research, this study examined im Teochew, a Facebook group linked to an overseas Chinese vernacular culture, and positively demonstrated its status as a globalised village and highlighted the ways its members use social media to preserve and promote their tribal identity. By reconciling the im Teochew Facebook group with its online environment and the collective consciousness of its members, it provided clarification into how the opposing concepts of global and village juxtapose in the context of social media.

Key words: Global Village, Facebook, Collective Consciousness, Overseas Chinese, Teochew

Everyone knows Singapore as the Lion City and the story behind of a Palembang prince, Sang Nila Utama, sighting a lion on this island that was first published 200 years ago in John Leyden's translation of the Malay classic Sejarah Melayu. But few people have actually read the Sejarah Melayu to realise the fairytale-like claims of Singapore's supposed medieval founder as a descendant of Alexander the Great, and the son of an Indian king who tried to conquer China and a princess from underwater; or that the creature he purportedly saw was not described as a lion, but a chimera with a red body, black head, white breast, and was a little larger than a he-goat. And barely anyone remembers the days when respectable residents of Singapore scoffed at suggestions that Singapore's name has anything to do with the Felis Leo.


Decoding Sejarah Melayu daringly challenges the assumption that the Sejarah Melayu records Singapore's pre-modern past, which has been held since Sir Stamford Raffles arrived in 1819 and declared himself at the "ancient Capital of the Malay kings". It seeks to grasp what is the Sejarah Melayu and how its accounts of Singapore as Temasek and Singapura were written, critically re-examines key historical text such as the Malay epic Hikayat Hang Tuah, Tomé Pires' Suma Oriental and 14th century Chinese travelogue Daoyi Zhilue, and makes an expansive study into other sources in Malay, Javanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Siamese, Arabic, Portuguese, Dutch, French, and the English language to discover clues to ancient Singapore's long hidden past. This is a book that will profoundly change understandings of Singapore's history and identity.