The Lineage Relationship

On February 15 in 1884, Yeo Poon Miah and four other descendants from the Xiayang Yeo Clan, founded the following businesses:
YeoHengMoh in Singapore,
ChipMoh in Rangoon,
and YeoHengCheang separately in Mandalay and Myingyan.

After seven years, a declaration of partnership dissolution was published in a Chinese newspaper whereby one of the five partners sought to withdraw his shares in all the four companies to pursue a different business. Two impartial witnessers were present to conduct a thorough settlement of the final accounts. Upon completion, the departing partner would have no further involvement in the profits or losses of the four companies. The other four partners would continue as the business successors. The declaration was made to prevent any future disputes.

Names of these five partners, namely Yeo Poon Miah, Yeo Cheow Toe, Yeo Cheow Thoe, Yeo Joo Moo, and Yeo Oo Kaw, before the breakup can all be found on the genealogy book of the Xiayang Yeo clan, published in 2022. In the genealogical records, there are various factions such as branches (房), communities (社), houses (厝), and corners (角). The first branching took place around 1470’s. Since then some seventeen to eighteen generations have evolved. Only the first branch, or 房, was numerically ordered. The rests like 社 厝 角 had names and there was no clear count of how many of them existed. The exact number of generations apart were also not clearly specified.

Despite the outcome, the breakup declaration also acquiesces to the partnership of seven years. One would wonder how, after several hundred years and meeting overseas, these individuals sharing the same lineage could still trace their ancestors, addressed each other as brothers and uncles/cousins, and not only cooperate in business ventures but also work together for the welfare of their ancestral community. Their own names and their descendants’ names are contemporarily recorded in clan associations, in temples and shrines in Rangoon, Singapore and Xiamen precinct covering Xiayang, the hometown.

Yeo Oo Kaw died on August 2, 1895. In May of the following year, YeoHengMoh published an advertisement to inform the public that the company run by Yeo Oo Kaw had ceased operation and all business would be taken over by YeoHengMoh. The advertisement also disclosed that the original directors of the YeoHengMoh had been changed. Yeo Poon Miah and Yeo Cheow Toe remained but Yeo Cheow Thoo was replaced by Yeo Cheng Thwan in Burma and Yeo Cheow Hock and Yeo Cheng Hai were added in Singapore. Among them, Yeo Cheng Hai took the helm of YeoChipMoh
and turned it into the most famous Xiayang Yeo clan business in Singapore for the next twenty over years.

That happened some 130 years ago. After four, five generations since then, the following modern Hokkien saying is closer to the reality in lineage relationship.

“一代親，二代表，三代煞了了”, says, roughly in English, 

First generation is Family, closely connected (親).
Second generations are Superficial Ties (表).
Third generations are As good as Strangers (煞了了).