A tiny country bursting with diverse cultures, Singapore is home to more than 1,000 Taoist and Buddhist temples mainly dedicated to its large Chinese community, with one of the earliest built not long after the British established a port here in the early 1800s.
The Fuk Tak Chi temple, for example, was built in the 1820s by a group of Cantonese and Hakka-speaking Chinese settlers in the middle of what is now Singapore's business district. The temple's signature architectural style, which includes floral roof motifs, is reminiscent of temples in Fujian, China, and stands out among the row of shophouses along Telok Ayer Street near Chinatown.
Taken together, the city's tapestry of Chinese temples are easily mistaken for a mismatched and motley collection of competing styles. But look deeper and find they speak to the identities of those who made Singapore home, bringing their architecture and preferences with them to be shaped by a common community sometimes at odds with itself. We talked to a temple guru about their history, why they differ architecturally, how they came to be, and where to find them today.
Beyond being places of worship, these elaborately decorated monuments are also places for people to socialize within the different Chinese groups and clans. Singapore is predominantly made up of Chinese, whose predecessors came from families that spoke different dialects, with Hokkien being the most common, followed by Teochew, Cantonese, Hakka, and many others. Different dialects have different tones and pitches, with Mandarin having four tone levels, while Hokkien and Teochew have eight, Hakka six, and Cantonese nine.
These days, Chinese Singaporeans have largely homogenized to speak Mandarin, with other dialects obliterated from television and radio programs. Back in China, the different dialect groups do not integrate as much as they do in Singapore, with the Hokkien Chinese mostly based out of Fujian, and the Teochew Chinese from Guangdong province.
The mingling between different dialect groups is why many of Singapore's traditional Chinese temples do not strictly follow the styles of the different provinces and often incorporate designs from parts of China. The Fuk Tak Chi temple itself was designed with an exterior that followed Hokkien temples in Fujian, even though it was not built by that community.
"There are subtle differences and aesthetic preferences within the Chinese and they are not as homogenous," a local academic who spent a decade studying architectural conservation in Singapore told Coconuts recently. Professor Yeo Kang Shua from the Singapore University of Technology and Design was also involved in the restoration of the Teochew-style Yueh Hai Ching several meters from Fuk Tak Chi and the Hokkien-style Hong San See temple in River Valley.
"There are varied preferences for each dialect group," Yeo added. "But at the same time, we are also rojak (mixed). Most of the buildings we have are influenced by more than one culture, subculture and regional differences."
The different dialect groups also had to work together to sustain the rising economy of the 19th century, which meant that the Hokkien Chinese sometimes had to rely on non-Hokkien temple builders, or the Cantonese Chinese having to expand its temple-making business to other groups for more revenue.
"In Singapore, we are so small. If we are temple builders, it's economically difficult to only serve one particular dialect group. You want a wider customer base, unlike in China when they engage only Hokkien builders for Hokkien temples, for example," Yeo said.
Singapore's oldest temples were also built amid tumultuous times, with violent clashes regularly breaking out between business rivals, mostly among the two biggest groups here – the Hokkiens and Teochews. A rivalry between spice merchants led to a massive riot in the 1850s that killed hundreds of people and damaged homes. The Fuk Tak Chi temple, for example, is said to have adopted Hokkien architecture to avoid unnecessary tension.
But that's a nearly forgotten past and clashes are no longer part of Singapore's re...

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