What still holds us together

Worshipping the lords: 拜老爺

拜老爺 bai3 lao6 ia5, sounds like "bai lao ya," "worshipping the lords," is the household and village religion of Chaoshan. The lords are local gods: the Earth God, Guan Yu, Mazu the sea goddess, and each village's own patron. Offerings go up on the first and fifteenth of every lunar month, and on every festival. If your grandmother has a red altar with oranges and incense in the kitchen, this is it.

Once a year, usually in the first lunar month, the gods leave the temple. 營老爺 ngia5 lao6 ia5, sounds like "ngia lao ya," is the procession: the deity's statue is carried on a palanquin around the village boundaries with flags, drums, firecrackers and Yingge troupes, so the god can inspect his territory. Every village has its own route and rules. Some run the palanquin at a sprint, some carry it through fire, and footage of these processions has gone viral in China every New Year since 2023, which has done more for Chaoshan's image than any tourism board.

Yingge: 英歌舞

The dance that shows up in every one of those videos. Yingge dates to the Ming dynasty and is first recorded in a Qianlong-era gazetteer. Performers paint their faces as the outlaw heroes of the Water Margin, Wu Song, Li Kui, Lu Zhishen, and march in troupes of 36 or 72 striking short cudgels together to drums and gongs. It's half dance, half martial art, and entirely loud. It was listed as national intangible heritage in 2006, went viral at Chinese New Year 2023 and 2024, and in February 2024 a troupe from Puning performed at London's Chinese New Year celebration. If you want one thing to show a friend who doesn't know what Teochew culture looks like, show them Yingge.

Coming of age at fifteen: 出花園

出花園 cug4 hue1 heng5, sounds like "chook hueh heng," "leaving the garden," is the Teochew coming-of-age ceremony, held when a child is fifteen by traditional count, normally on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month. The child bathes in water steeped with twelve kinds of flowers, puts on red clogs given by a grandmother and new red clothes, and gives thanks to the deity who protected them through childhood. In the morning they drink a soup of pig's organs, because the word for liver sounds like the word for official. At lunch they sit at the head of a twelve-dish table with a whole chicken in front of them, and bite the chicken's head, because from now on they are the head. Clan associations in Singapore and Malaysia now hold group ceremonies for dozens of teenagers at a time. It's one of the easiest traditions for a diaspora family to bring back.

Teochew opera: 潮劇

Teochew opera grew out of the southern drama of the Song dynasty and has scripts surviving from the 1400s, including the Ming-era Lychee Mirror, a love story set in Chaozhou and Quanzhou that is still performed. By the late Qing there were over 200 troupes in the region, and a British merchant described a performance in Swatow in 1856. It has its own music, its own repertoire, a backing chorus, and is sung in Teochew, which makes it one of the few places the language is performed rather than just spoken. It was listed as national intangible heritage in 2006. In Singapore, troupes have been documented since 1887 and two, Lau Sai Thor Guan (founded 1864, revived in 2017) and Nam Hwa Opera, still perform. Bangkok has active troupes and Shantou companies tour there. The audience is old, and getting older.

The music

Two traditions. 潮州弦詩, string music, is chamber music for small ensembles led by the two-stringed erxian, with yehu, pipa, zheng and dulcimer; its most famous piece is "Jackdaws Play in Water." 潮州大鑼鼓, the big gong and drum music, is what you hear at processions and opera: a bass drum leading gongs, cymbals and the piercing suona oboe. Both use an old notation system and modal scales unique to Chaoshan, and both are national intangible heritage.

The ghost month and the festivals

The seventh lunar month is the Hungry Ghost Festival, when the gates of the underworld open. Teochew charitable halls hold rites for the wandering dead, families burn offerings, and white peach kueh go on the altar. In Singapore and Malaysia the month is famous for getai, outdoor variety concerts in Hokkien, Teochew and Cantonese where the front row of seats is always left empty for the spirits. Chinese New Year brings pink peach kueh, the deity processions and Yingge. Qingming brings tomb sweeping and cudweed kueh. The Dragon Boat Festival brings the half-sweet, half-savory Teochew zongzi. The calendar is the same as the rest of China's; the food on the altar is not.

Crafts

Chaozhou woodcarving, multi-layered openwork covered in gold lacquer, decorates temples and ancestral halls across Southeast Asia and was listed as national heritage in 2006. Chaozhou embroidery, with its raised gold-thread work, is one of the four branches of Guangdong embroidery. And the Fengxi district of Chaozhou is one of China's largest ceramics centers; there's a good chance the plain white porcelain in your kitchen came from there.

The associations

Almost every city with a Teochew population has a Teochew association, and some are older than the countries they're in. Singapore's Ngee Ann Kongsi dates to 1845 and the Teochew Poit Ip Huay Kuan to 1929, named for the eight districts of Chaozhou prefecture: Chao'an, Chenghai, Chaoyang, Jieyang, Raoping, Puning, Huilai and Nan'ao. Kuching's is from 1863, Penang's from 1864, Thailand's national association from 1938. They ran schools, hospitals and cemeteries for new arrivals when nobody else would, and today they run language classes, opera troupes, scholarships and the coming-of-age ceremonies. The diaspora's newer associations, in Paris, Montreal, Los Angeles, Boston and Sydney, are mostly run by the 1975 refugee generation, and they're looking for who comes next.

The surnames

You can often spot a Teochew by the spelling. The most common Chaoshan surnames, with their usual Teochew romanizations: 陳 Tan or Chen, 林 Lim, 黃 Ng, 吳 Goh, 鄭 Tay or Teh, 李 Lee, 張 Teo, 王 Heng, 蔡 Chua, 劉 Lau, 楊 Yeo, 許 Koh, 謝 Chia or Seah, 莊 Chng, 方 Png. In Cambodia and Thailand the same names often hide behind Khmer or Thai spellings, or were replaced by Thai surnames entirely, which is one reason it's so hard to count us.