ARIscope

Bringing Women to the Fore in the Mapping of Chinese Female Religious Heritage in Singapore

Author: Show Ying Ruo, Postdoctoral Fellow, ARI.

Publication Date: 3 September, 2020

Publisher: ARIscope

Keywords: vegetarian halls, religion, female temples, Singapore, vegetarian nuns, Chinese diaspora, Southeast Asia

Vegetarian nuns conducting religious rituals and reciting Buddhist scriptures in Singapore, from the post-World War II period. Source: Haiyin gusi bianji zu, Haiyin gusi jiushi zhounian teji 海印古寺90周年特輯. Singapore: Hai Inn Temple, 2018.

When the late Marjorie Topley (1927-2010) was encouraged to study Singapore vegetarian halls in the 1950s by Alan Elliot, who was then working on a doctoral thesis on Chinese spirit medium cults, she was told that the topic was best studied by a woman as it would be challenging for a man (Topley and DeBernardi 2011, 5).

Although there were a few halls inhabited by men, these were greatly outnumbered by female vegetarian halls. There were at least two reasons for this phenomenon: rather than being more superstitious, women were in a much higher degree subjected to suppression, exploitation and ill-treatment and had to carry a much heavier burden than men (Franke 1989:405). This prompted them to seek refuge in religious establishments. In addition, establishing religious temples was a way for women with ability to generate economic income when there was little else they could do to establish themselves in a new land (Wong and Leong, 193-194).

Eventually, with her proficiency in Cantonese and her temporary position as curator at Raffles Museum, Marjorie Topley got to know many women living in vegetarian halls, and became the first scholar to conduct ethnographical fieldwork on these unique female temples in Singapore in the post-war period of 1951-1955.

Since then, several decades has passed, and the topic has remained shrouded in mystery and is largely understudied. Questions inevitably arise: What have become of these temples? Do they still house a mixture of Buddhist nuns and vegetarian residents? Do the majority of unmarried women who join such halls still prefer not to become fully ordained nuns, and retain their status as “free and easy” vegetarian nuns? (Topley and DeBernardi 2011, 113)? Does the community of vegetarian women still address each other as “brother”, in order to be guaranteed rebirth in paradise as men according to Buddhist’s Pure Land Teaching (Topley and DeBernardi 2011, 113)?

This short article presents preliminary background information of a new research project that aims to answer the above questions, which are as valid today as during Topley’s time. It does this through documenting the contemporary evolution of Chinese female temples in Singapore. 

Vegetarian halls are merely one of the types of Chinese female temples in Singapore. In the diverse local religious landscape, one would perhaps be surprised to know that there are still 80 to 100 Chinese temples established and maintained by women since the late 19th century till today. These temples, some over a century old, are scattered across the island and are usually unnoticed by the public.

Studies of the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia paid little attention to these unconventionally structured female temples which tend to be small in scale, as opposed to the often institutional, larger-scale and male-dominated Chinese temples, many of which were linked to clan and lineage associations.

Vegetarian nuns conducting religious rituals and reciting Buddhist scriptures in Singapore in the past – believed to date from the 1970s to 80s.

Source: Shi Shansen, Bainian shihuang tekan, 1919-2019 百年時光特刊. Singapore: Shan Fook Tong, 2019.

“Mapping Chinese Female Religious Heritage in Singapore” project

“Mapping Chinese Female Religious Heritage in Singapore” is a project that brings these women and their temples to the fore to fill in a research gap in the study of female history and heritage in Singapore.

Many of these religious women, albeit being lay practitioners, tend to live a secluded life for the benefit of “pure religious cultivation” (qingxiu 清修). Moreover, the majority of them are vegetarian to maintain the purity required in their religious trainings. Often situated within the sphere of Buddhism, their temples have long been organically integrated with Buddhism in Southeast Asia.

In adopting a gender lens to study the role of Chinese religious women in Singapore’s pre-colonial and postcolonial history and their unconventional socio-religious organizations, the project asks the following research questions which lead to a broader concern about the preservation of Chinese female religious heritage and their legacy in Singapore:

1. What is the cultural significance of Chinese female temples in Singapore, and why should they be preserved?
2. Who are the women behind these temples, and how do their life experiences reveal the agency of women and provide a gender dynamic in the understanding of tangible and intangible cultural heritage in Singapore?
3. What role did these women play in the cross-regional, transnational religious movement of people and their negotiation of globalized modernity in Asia? How did female leadership of these temples link to the expansion of their associated religious networks?

Map Showing Location of Female Temples in Singapore

The Many Roles of Religious Women and Their Alliance Across the South China Sea

Assuming diverse roles as temple founders, sponsors, trustees, Buddhist mentors, boat traders, domestic servants (“amah”), spirit-mediums etc., the women who established temples in Singapore were often Chinese migrants from Southeastern China who migrated to Southeast Asia from the late 19th century.

Their migration to Malaya peaked in the 1930s when the Aliens Ordinance Act was passed, limiting the number of Chinese males entering Singapore but giving Chinese females unrestricted entry (Ee 1961, 43-44). The establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 led to an abrupt stop to bi-directional movements of people, prompting more women to consider living in Singapore for the long term. More temples were built, and more scriptures were printed locally rather than relying on imports from China, a sign of the indigenisation of Chinese religion in Singapore.

In the 1980s, after China’s implementation of the Open Door Policy in 1979, there were many examples of overseas religious women assisting in the reconstruction of abandoned Buddhist monasteries or their ancestral vegetarian halls in China. By then, the Chinese diaspora was again able to visit to China and assumed indispensable roles in the rebuilding of Chinese temples in China (Dean 1993), as seen from abundant evidence in the donation plaques displayed in southeastern Chinese temples.

Many transnational connection and religious alliances of these religious women across the South China Sea continue to be sustained today, albeit largely unnoticed by temple devotees, scholars or policy-makers. Private records, oral histories, and the material cultures of these temples weave a subtle picture of a fascinating networks of female mobility and their religious leadership in Singapore.

The Fragrant Lotus Temple in Koon Seng Road, Singapore, a temple managed by Southern Fujian vegetarian nuns, and a plaque with details of their donation displayed in the Temple of the Snow-Capped Mountain in Nan’an county, Fujian province, China (photo by author, 2019)

A “Women-Only” Chinese Kinship

In the field of Chinese history, scholars have written about “religious sisterhoods” which persisted in the early 20th century in mainland China until the Mao era (Sankar 1978, Honig 1985, Prazniak 1986). Little is known however about the traditions brought by women migrants to Southeast Asia.

There are different patterns and structures in the organisation of Chinese female temples in Singapore.  Some are organized according to their Chinese dialect-group orientations (Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, Hakka and Hainan being the five significant Chinese dialect group), i.e. women from the same dialect group or ancestral village are clustered together in running the temples. As reiterated by Maurice Freedman, dialect grouping in Southeast Asia is a basis of alignment and framework for Chinese social organization, for it was a “natural” way of differentiating immigrants into units which defined and protected rights (Freedman 1960, 43).

Dialect-group oriented female temples maintained strong kinship ties with their ancestral homes in China and often worshiped dialect-group based deities. In some cases, many of these kinship ties are still sustained today in Singapore although the temple keepers are born Singaporean and grew up here. 

The Temple of Golden Flower in Mounbatten Road, built and maintained by Cantonese women, is the only one temple in Singapore that worships the Lady of the Golden Flower as its patron deity. The Lady of the Golden Flower is a protector of females and children. She is assisted by 12 Nannies (shi’er nainiang 十二奶娘) who protect newborns. One of the 12 Nannies in the temple has an identity which is conflated with that of Miss Pollen (huafen niangniang 花粉娘娘) (dressed in pink robe), a popular Cantonese deity to whom women pray to retain their youthful looks and power of attraction (Stevens 1997, 121). This temple was very popular with female entertainment workers, many of whom were Cantonese in early Singapore.  (Photo by author 2018).

There are also “mixed” Chinese female temples in Singapore which housed women from various dialects groups. Local-born women and peranakans (Strait Chinese) are among the residents of these temples. Such female temples are organised according to their religious lineages and are open to women from all dialect groups.

The “women-only” Chinese kinship is an example of the re-modification and re-arrangement of the Chinese kinship system in Singapore. Women from the same temple, with or without real kinship ties are bound together as a family unit and maintained allegiances to their religious sisterhood. These non-normative family units revealed an organically formed gender dynamic that speaks to the making of Chinese female religious heritage in Singapore.

Dr Show Ying Ruo, a Postdoctoral Fellow at ARI, has recently been awarded a Heritage Research Grant by the National Heritage Board, Singapore. She is the Principal Investigator of a two-year research project titled “Mapping Female Religious Heritage in Singapore: Chinese Female Temples as Sites of Regional Socio-Cultural Linkage (19th Century to the Present)”. The Co-Investigator of this project is Prof. Kenneth Dean, the Cluster Leader of the Religion and Globalisation cluster at ARI.