Samsui women
The term Samsui Women broadly refers to a group of Chinese immigrants who came to Singapore between the 1920s and the 1940s in search of construction and industrial jobs. Their hard work contributed to Singapore's development, both as a colony and as a nation. Samsui Women are also similar to coolies.
History
About 200,000 Samsui women were believed to have come to Singapore from China between 1934 and 1938, and this continued until 1949 when emigration from China was declared to be illegal.
Name
The Samsui women came from Sanshui of Guangdong (Canton) Province in China, in addition to Shunde and Dongguan. Most Samsui women are Cantonese (90%) but there are Hakka (10%) as well.
In Chinese, these women are referred to as 紅頭巾 (红头巾 in Simplified Chinese), which translates as "red bandana", a reference to the trademark red cloth hats that they wore.
Jobs
Coming to Singapore as cheap labourers, Samsui women worked mainly in the construction industry and other industries that required hard labour. They also worked as domestic servants. They had a reputation of rejecting jobs involving drug (particularly opium) peddling, prostitution, or other vices, even if that meant they sometimes had to live in poverty. They made a lot of contribution to Singapore's early development mostly by building houses and some of them worked at hawker centres manning the stalls there too.
Social interactions
Before arriving in Singapore, most Samsui women took vows never to marry, although there have been known exceptions. They lived in cramped conditions with other Samsui women, helping out each other and forming tightly united cliques.
Samsui women also remained in touch with their relatives back home in China, communicating with them frequently through letters. Occasionally, they would send money to them.
Current status
There are fewer than a hundred Samsui women left in Singapore today, all of them in their 80s and 90s. Organizations exist to raise awareness of these women's achievements and contributions to Singapore's development, and their current state. Some of these organizations also strive to provide free travel for the women back to China to visit their relatives before they die. One such organization was the Sam Shui Wai Kuan Association that took care of the needs of the Samsui Women
Portrayal in media
The travails of the Samsui women were portrayed in Samsui Women, a TV drama series produced by Singapore Broadcasting Corporation in 1986, which has widely been considered as one of the best dramas Singapore has produced over the years. There was also a Theatre play by "The Finger Players" about "Samsui Women: One Brick at a Time" at Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay.[1]
References
- ^ "Samsui Women: One Brick at a time". Retrieved 4 August 2015.
- Thulaja, Naidu Ratnala (1999-04-17). "Samsui women". Singapore Infopedia, National Library Board. Retrieved 2008-04-07.
- Koh, Jaime (2013-11-28). "Majie". Singapore Infopedia, National Library Board. Retrieved 2015-06-19.