Where the Teochew went
Most of the world's Teochew have never lived in China. Their families have been Thai, Cambodian, Singaporean or Vietnamese for a hundred years or more, and many carry a third identity on top of that as Americans, French or Australians. Here's the map, one country at a time.
Figures are estimates except Singapore's census. Tap a country to jump to it.
Teochew associations and temples
Wherever the Teochew landed, they built a hall. These are the ones with a published address or web presence, so far, grouped by country. The North American ones were mostly founded by refugees from Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos after 1975, which is why many are named "Cambodian Chinese" or "Indochinese Chinese" rather than Teochew. They're ours; we've marked them. Know one we're missing? Tell us.
Addresses come from association websites, government registries and the Chinese Wikipedia directory of overseas Teochew halls; a few are listed as closed on review sites. Check before you visit.
Thailand
The single largest Teochew community on earth. Thai Chinese number somewhere around nine to ten million, 11 to 14 percent of the country, and slightly over half of them are of Chaoshan descent. The relationship goes back to King Taksin, whose father was a Teochew tax collector from Chenghai, and to the red-head junks that carried Siamese rice north and Teochew migrants south for two centuries. Bangkok's Chinatown at Yaowarat is a Teochew neighborhood, and the country's biggest business dynasties trace to Chaoshan: Chin Sophonpanich, born in Thonburi to a Chaoyang immigrant, founded Bangkok Bank in 1944; the Chearavanont family's CP Group started as a seed shop opened by two Swatow brothers in 1921. Thai Teochew are so thoroughly Thai that many carry Thai surnames and speak Teochew only with grandparents. The film Dear You is set in this world.
Cambodia
Teochew make up the majority of Chinese Cambodians, around 60 percent by the 1960s and higher today, and roughly 85 percent of them came from Jieyang and Shantou, mostly in the 1920s and 30s. They were the shopkeepers, rice merchants, moneylenders and vegetable growers of every provincial town, and the import-export houses and pharmacies of Phnom Penh. In 1961 there were about 425,000 Chinese in Cambodia. Then came 1975. The Khmer Rouge emptied the cities and the Chinese, as urban "capitalists," died in the countryside in enormous numbers; the community was roughly halved. Survivors fled to Thai border camps and were resettled abroad, especially in Long Beach and Los Angeles, Paris and Montreal. Those who stayed were barred from urban trade until 1990. Today the official census counts only about 15,000 self-identified Chinese, but associations estimate up to 700,000 Cambodians with Chinese ancestry. The Cambodian noodle soup kuy teav is a Teochew word (粿條, kway teow).
Vietnam
The Hoa of Cholon, the Chinese quarter of Saigon, are mostly Cantonese-speaking, but with a large Teochew group, and Teochew were spread across the Mekong Delta towns as rice and fish traders. After the 1978 break between Vietnam and China and the nationalization of commerce, some 450,000 ethnic Chinese left, many as boat people. The 2009 census still counted about 820,000 Hoa. Hủ tiếu, Vietnam's flat rice noodle soup, is another descendant of kway teow, and hủ tiếu Nam Vang means "Phnom Penh noodles."
Singapore
The best-documented Teochew community anywhere. The 2020 census counted 583,963 Teochew, 19.4 percent of Chinese Singaporeans, the second-largest group after Hokkien. Teochew were among the earliest settlers; Seah Eu Chin arrived in 1823 and built the gambier and pepper trade, and the Ngee Ann Kongsi (1845) and Teochew Poit Ip Huay Kuan (1929) are still active with thousands of members. Teochew porridge shops, the peppery Teochew bak kut teh, and Teochew opera troupes are part of daily life. It's also the place where the language decline is easiest to see: after the Speak Mandarin Campaign of 1979, Chinese dialects as the main home language fell from 50 percent of Chinese households in 1990 to under 9 percent in 2020.
Malaysia and Indonesia
Teochew were 12.4 percent of Malaysian Chinese in the 1970 census, the last one to ask, which works out to well over 400,000 then and far more now. They're concentrated in Johor, where they pioneered gambier and pepper planting under the kangchu system, and in Penang and Kedah. In Indonesia the largest Teochew concentration is in Pontianak and West Kalimantan, with communities in Jambi, Riau and Jakarta.
Hong Kong
A large Teochew population (called Chiu Chow here, the Cantonese pronunciation of the same name) arrived in waves through the twentieth century, especially around 1949. Li Ka-shing, born in Chaozhou in 1928 and for decades one of the richest people in Asia, is the most famous. Chiu Chow restaurants, the Hungry Ghost Festival in Kowloon, and the Chiu Chow associations are fixtures of the city.
France
The Quartier Asiatique in Paris's 13th arrondissement, around the Olympiades towers, was built in the late 1970s and 80s by ethnic Chinese refugees from Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. About 50,000 people live there and Teochew is one of its main languages. Its two anchor supermarkets are both Teochew family firms: Tang Frères, founded by a family from Laos, and Paris Store, founded by a family from Cambodia. France has more Cambodian Teochew than anywhere outside the United States.
United States and Canada
Teochew Americans mostly arrived as Cambodian or Vietnamese refugees between 1975 and the early 1990s. Long Beach, California has the largest Cambodian community outside Cambodia, and Chinese Cambodian families cluster there and in the San Gabriel Valley, with more in Houston, the Bay Area, Seattle, Philadelphia and New York. Two of the best-known immigrant food stories in America are Teochew: Ted Ngoy, the Cambodian refugee "Donut King" of Southern California, and David Tran, who founded Huy Fong Foods and put Sriracha in every American kitchen. Canada's Cambodian and Vietnamese Chinese settled mostly in Montreal and Toronto. None of these countries' censuses count Teochew as a category, so nobody knows the real number. The US alone has over 360,000 people of Cambodian ancestry, and a large share of them are Teochew.
Australia
Australia counted 57,000 people of Cambodian ancestry in 2021, concentrated in Springvale in Melbourne and in western Sydney, alongside Vietnamese Chinese communities in Cabramatta and Footscray. The University of New South Wales has had a Teochew student association.