Thursday, May 24, 2012

Where did you come from?

Posted by noelbynature

Chances are, if you’re residing in Singapore, your family would have migrated here within the last three or four generations of your family’s history. Have you had a chance to learn how your family came to make Singapore home? Try asking your parents and grandparents for their story; or take a page from Herryanto Siatono, who wrote about his grandparent’s migration from China to Indonesia.


My grandparents migrated from China on a boat in the late 1930s. Grandma said they were still a kid, and they were running away from war.

They landed on a small village, southern east-coast of Sumatra. They got married in their teen, she has 11 children, 9 daughters and 2 sons. I always find it amusing whenever I told anyone about how many children they have, well, enough to form a soccer team.

You can read the rest of Herryanto’s story here, but here’s a challenge for you over the coming holiday season – how about sharing your own family migration stories; about how your parents, grandparents and even great-grandparents came to Singapore? If your families didn’t migrate here that recently, how was life here back then?

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