Lee Kwan Yew’s racial views fully explored. Lee, the elder statesmen of Singapore and formerly Harry Lee, is of “Baba Chinese” extraction [Some further digging by me indicates his mother is part Baba, while his father’s family came too late to the Straits to be considered Baba and is as Jason pointed out more properly identified as Hakka]-descendents of early Chinese settlers on the Straits of Malacca who often married Malay women, spoke Malay and fancied their cuisine.
Update: Jason Soon points out that Lee is of Hakka origin. But, the article above indicates that his mother was partially Malay and I have read that Lee spoke English growing up. The latter tendencies are typical of Babbas. As Babbas are a settler community, I suspect they would have varied regional origins in China (though if I recall correctly, most regions of Southeast Asia were settled disproportionately from specific Chinese provinces).
Also, check out the nifty stats site put out by the cheerfully soft-authoritarian government of Singapore. One fact I gleaned from it: Taoism is a dying faith in the city, while Buddhism has grown at its expense greatly in the past 20 years (Christianity has also grown, but less than Buddhism as the latter had swallowed a whole generation of children that might have given Taoism as their religion). Perhaps this has something to do with the nature of the two faiths-Taoism being more rustic, localized and animistic, Buddhism more urbane, universal and metaphysical (the last part just indicates that it is more verbose & systematic in its incoherent babble).
Comments are closed.