Visit to the Yeo Khee Lim Teochew Culture Research Centre

A few days ago I paid a visit to the Yeo Khee Lim Teochew Culture Research Centre, located in the premises of the Nam Hwa Opera at the Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre in downtown Singapore.

The centre opened in 2019 with funding from two brothers, Mr Yeo Eng Koon and Mr Yeo Eng Huat, and is named in honour of their late father, Mr Yeo Khee Lim. It has a multimedia collection, including books on Teochew history and culture, vinyl recordings of Teochew music and opera, posters, pamphlets, and much more, donated by members of the community.

Entrance to Yeo Khee Lim Teochew Culture Research Centre

The centre itself occupies a single room, with a great view of the Tanjong Pagar port terminal to the South. On the day of my visit it was raining but after the showers cleared I could see the port with the hills of Sentosa in the background.

Premises of Yeo Khee Lim TCRC; large table in the middle, bookshelves on the sides, and a large window at the end of the room.

View from the window, Tanjong Pagar port terminal with cranes and containers and forested hills in the background.

Don’t be fooled by the size: there are many treasures packed into this one room. Some of the collection is listed on their website, but there is much more that is not yet online. Anyone with interest in Teochew culture and language can easily spend the whole day browsing the shelves.

One special focus is the collection of vinyl recordings of Teochew music and opera. These are being digitized by the Centre and can be listened to on-site. Many album sleeves, which usually have the lyrics to the songs in the recordings, have been scanned and can be viewed on their website.

Bookshelf with Teochew books and vinyl records

Thread-bound Teochew dictionary on table, one volume opened

I visited the Centre to look for commemorative booklets of Teochew opera movie productions from the 1950s and 1960s, to do more research for my Learn Teochew Opera website. These movies were produced in Hong Kong and exported to Teochew communities around the world. Commemorative booklets contained pictures and writeups of the actors, as well as transcripts of the lyrics and dialogue, and were widely published and sold to fans. However because they were commercial material, they were rarely collected by libraries and are not easy to find today.

When I arrived at the Centre, I asked ther intern, Meixin, to help me look for such booklets. Some time later, the President of Nam Hwa Opera, Mr Toh Lim Mok, dropped in to say hello. When I mentioned what I was looking for, he opened a cabinet and started taking out stacks of these booklets: I nearly fell out of my chair! The picture below shows just a small part of what they have.

Commemorative booklets with scripts of movie productions of Teochew operas, colorful covers, some with pictures of the opera stars

This was a very pleasant and productive visit: I not only found what I was looking for, but had to stop myself from being sidetracked by all the other material there.

Many thanks to Mr Toh for the kind welcome, Meixin for her help, and Ms Janet Chong for making the arrangements for me to visit!

For researchers: Contact the Centre by email to make an appointment. The premises are usually not open to the public, so you should contact them in advance. The Centre is located in the Nam Hwa Opera offices on the 11th floor of the Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre, 1 Straits Boulevard, Singapore. Closest MRT stations are: Shenton Way, Downtown, or Marina Bay.

Posted on 2023-06-17 00:00:00 +0000