Oct 17, 2010
A quiet library with a vibrant history
The 100-year-old centre helped Sun Yat Sen gain support for his 1911 revolution
Associate Professor Wong Sin Kiong, head of the Chinese Studies Department in NUS, has been giving public talks on Dr Sun Yat Sen and his links with Singapore and the 1911 Chinese Revolution. As the centenary of the revolution approaches, interest in centres like the United Chinese Library has increased. -- ST PHOTO: TERENCE TAN
Along a row of double-storey, pre-war houses in Cantonment Road leading to the Pinnacle@ Duxton is house No. 53, the premises of the century-old United Chinese Library, known as tong de shu bao she in Chinese, meaning a book and periodical club for the like-minded.
But few people today, including many older Chinese- educated Singaporeans, know about the place; it was never really a library or a book club.
The clue to its past perhaps lies in the wooden plaque above the main entrance that bears its name in Chinese characters. It was penned by none other than Dr Sun Yat Sen, the father of modern China who ended 267 years of Qing rule following his successful 1911 Chinese Revolution.
With the centenary celebrations of the revolution just around the corner, interest in this long-forgotten centre, founded by Dr Sun in Singapore in 1910, was recently renewed.
The centre celebrated its 100th anniversary and launched a commemorative book to mark the occasion two months ago.
More notably, it has been the subject of talks and lectures which Associate Professor Wong Sin Kiong, head of the Chinese Studies Department at the National University Singapore, gave in Singapore and Malaysia recently.
At a seminar in Penang in March, he spoke about it as a propaganda centre which Dr Sun used to drum up support for his revolution, especially among the illiterate Chinese population.
In August, as part of the 100th anniversary celebrations, he spoke at the Sun Yat Sen Nanyang Memorial Hall about the relationship between Dr Sun and the centre.
Last month, he touched on the subject again when the Taiwan Alumni Association in Johor Baru invited him there to speak.
And at the International Conference On Sun Yat Sen, Nanyang And The 1911 Chinese Revolution, to be held on Oct 25 and Oct 26, he will point out the role of centres such as this one in Dr Sun's strategies to win support for his revolution.
Speakers from several countries including the United States, Australia, China, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, as well as Singapore, are taking part in the conference, which will be held at the Orchard Hotel.
In an interview with The Sunday Times last week, Prof Wong, 50, said that at the height of the revolution early last century, there were close to 200 of these Chinese 'libraries' in South-east Asia, which were really propaganda centres for Dr Sun to promote his cause.
'I have a feeling that they were called libraries or shu bao she in Chinese as a cover to prevent persecution by the British colonial government and the Qing dynasty's secret agents, though they also actually functioned as libraries, stocked with books and periodicals,' he pointed out.
At these centres, like the one in Singapore which Dr Sun founded with the support of local Chinese community leaders such as Lim Nee Soon, Tan Chor Nam and Teo Eng Hock, nightly reading sessions on current events reported in newspapers and magazines were conducted for those who were illiterate. Most of those who attended were labourers, hawkers and traders.
Classes on Chinese language, history and culture were also conducted for them.
Most of these sessions and classes were in the dialects - mainly Hokkien, Teochew and Cantonese - which were spoken by the majority of the Chinese population here at the time.
In fact, three dialect libraries or book clubs - in Hokkien, Teochew and Cantonese - were set up in Singapore in the early 1900s. They were later merged to become the United Chinese Library in 1910, when it found its first premises in Armenian Street. It remained there till 1987 when it moved to its present address in Cantonment Road.
The existence of these centres showed how critically Dr Sun needed the support of the overseas Chinese.
Aside from them, Dr Sun's strategies to reach the Chinese in the Nanyang, or South Seas, included opening branches of his Tong Meng Hui, or Chinese Revolutionary Alliance, a political organisation dedicated to the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty, and the setting up of Chinese-language newspapers in South-east Asia.
Today, 100 years later, only a few of the centres are still around. They include the one here and the Philomathic Union of Penang in Malaysia.
The Chinese daily Dr Sun set up in Singapore in 1907, Chong Shing Yit Pao, lasted only three years, but the one in Penang, Guang Hua Daily, is still around and will be celebrating its centenary next month.
Leaving its chequered past behind, the United Chinese Library in Singapore is now more of a Chinese cultural centre and memorial centre to remember Dr Sun, said its management committee member, Dr Chan Soon Heng, 69, a retired academic. The centre's chairman is Mr Tan Yu Tein, 67, a businessman.
The centre has about 150 members, most of them elderly, who are loyal to Dr Sun's legacy.
'I am currently conducting classes on the Chinese sage Mo Zi to members and the public at the library now,' Dr Chan said.
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