Following the post on Hong Kah, Mok Ly Yng, a member of the Singapore Heritage Group contacted me with more info and clarifications. So here goes for all you Hong Kah fans…

1. Downtown Singapore, ‘Hong Kah Koy’(feng4 jiao4 jie1 or New Market Road) is really marked as such in Chinese road signs in the olden days. Currently adopted Chinese translations of road/place names took place in about 1970 or so, after the first edition of the Chinese Street Directory was published. The committee on Chinese place name translations finalised their work in about 1969 or so. This committee made a number of translation or transliteration errors with Chinese place names.

2. The book which mentioned a Chinese Christian community living somewhere in the Jurong area is from a book on Chinese biographies published by the Federation of Chinese Clans Association (in Toa Payoh), in 1995. The book is in Chinese and edited by Kua Buck Lim (Ke1 Mu4 Lin2) with a team of
researchers and writers.

3. For Teochews, Christian churches were called ‘Hong Kah Tng’ (feng4 jiao4 tang2, tang2 (Tng) is ‘hall’ ). Now usually we hear only ‘Kah Tng’ (jiao4 tang2) for Christian churches. The full version was used to differentitate between Christian and Muslim places of worship. For Islamic mosques are (still called ‘Huei Kah Tng’ (hui2 jiao1 tang2), at least in Teochew. This is why Ly Yng is more inclined towards the Teochew calling the then ‘new’ Christian Chinese settlement a ‘Hong Kah Chun’ (literally Christian village). The population in Jurong during the pre-war days was mostly Teochews. There were Hokkiens too (like Chew Boon Lay), which would have used a similar pronunciation (if not mistaken).

4. The word ‘feng4′ (hong) is used to express a belief in religion or obeyance to some teachings, in China. For Buddhists, the equivalent would be ‘feng4 fo2′ (or Hong Hood in Teochew), but this is rarely found in common Singapore Chinese usage. Here, we often hear colloquially ‘bai hood’ (bai4
fo2, pray to Buddha) instead.

5. The words ‘feng4 jiao4′ is not a Teochew nor Singapore Chinese phrase. It was used in official Qing imperial reports on foreign religion. In other words, this phrase (used to refer to Christians) is actually of mainland Imperial Chinese origin, dating back to at least the 19th century. In the Tang dynasty, the exact phrase meant different things altogether. Early missionaries were known to adopt indigenous phrases and words to aid in their work. Thus, ‘feng4 jiao4′ could be one of them.