Teong Hwa School still stands on 183 Lamadaw Street, Yangon, today.
Educationist HuangPY In reported in 1919, about different dialects used in overseas Chinese Schools.
The Beginning of Xiayang Primary School
In 1904 in Xiayang, China, at the age of twenty-six, Yeo Cheow Kaw (1878-1926) used his own financial resources to establish the “Xiayang Anglo-Chinese School,” one of the foremost reformed schools before the fall of the Qing Dynasty. He personally served as the school’s patron, superintendent, and principal. Initially, only two rooms of a family farmhouse were allocated as classrooms. He spared no expense in hiring excellent teachers from across the country to teach both languages and practical subjects such as mathematics, aiming to equip village children with the skills to make a living abroad. Within three years, the number of students grew to over one hundred, prompting the school to move to an old residential block owned by his father, Yeo Poon Meah. This institution eventually became known as Xiayang Primary School.
Teong Hwa School in Rangoon & The Chinese Education Syndicate
In 1907 in Rangoon, Burma, Yeo Cheow Kaw took over the management of Teong Hwa School, which had been established earlier as the first free Chinese school funded by the local Chinese community. School reports from later years highlighted his dedication: he visited the school every afternoon to inspect and converse with the teachers, and frequently invited them to his villa to discuss school affairs and host dinners. By the age of 35 (in 1913), he had become the president of the Burmese Chinese Education Syndicate. Recognizing that overseas Chinese schools were often divided by dialect clans, with different dialects used as the medium of instruction (e.g., Cantonese in Cantonese-run schools, Hokkien in Hokkien-run schools), he led efforts to mediate these factional schools and standardize Mandarin as the language of instruction. He utilized his villa garden to host inter-school sports events, organize student work exhibitions, reward outstanding students, and promote the holistic development of students. He also placed great emphasis on physical training and initiated police-cadet training for schoolboys.
The Chinese High School
Yeo Cheow Kaw established contact with the Ministry of Education of the new Republic of China government through the Chinese Education Syndicate to promote the new national education system. This included obtaining standard teaching materials for Chinese schools in Burma, as well as recruiting and training teachers. Consequently, a normal school for teacher training was set up in Rangoon in 1918. Additionally, a research and education conference for representatives of Chinese schools and an exhibition of educational achievements was held separately in 1920 and 1921. In 1921, Cheow Kaw became a director of the first Chinese-medium high school, the Chinese High. The previous year, he had written a letter on behalf of the Education Syndicate to request Mr. Cai Yuanpei, then the Minister of Education of China and Vice Chancellor of Peking University, to hire high school teachers. Peking University responded within two months, recommending several educational professionals to teach in Burma. Subsequently, Dr. Shang Zhong, who had studied in Europe, and seven outstanding teachers arrived at the Chinese High, becoming the first batch of school leaders in Rangoon. For many decades, the Chinese High School remained the most esteemed Chinese school in Burma.
Address of the Chinese Education Syndicate headed by Yeo Cheow Kaw was printed together with the appeal to Cai Yuanpei to help with teacher recruitment for the Chinese High School in Rangoon, in 1917.
The Chinese High School in Rangoon, was formally opened in February 1921, with the land donated by Chan Mah Phee, a contemporary philanthropist, and funding support from many other overseas Chinese Yeo Cheow Kaw was on the board of directors for several years. The school was closed down after Myanmar’s independence. The building has since been different government offices through the years.
Boy cadets in Xiayang Primary School
Boy cadets in Teong Hwa School
Winning Admirations
Yeo Cheow Kaw was also deeply concerned about the education of young family members in traditional Chinese culture and organized separate classes for Chinese classical studies. He also mandated that the younger generation speak only Hokkien and Mandarin at home. During his travels between Rangoon and Xiayang, he closely monitored the parallel development and mutual learning between Xiayang Primary School and Teo Hwa Primary School. As previously noted, police cadet training and sports activities were conducted in both schools.
Xiayang Primary School
Huang Yanpei, a well-known educationist, was appointed as the official chief school inspector to visit overseas Chinese schools from January 25 to April 24, 1919. He was in Burma from February 23 to March 25. He witnessed the re-election of the School Syndicate, and the solemnising of Yeo Cheow Kaw continuing as an incumbent president. He immediately inscribed a couplet with these words and presented it to Cheow Kaw.
“Motherland at heart is with this Southerner gentleman,
nurturing young bloods among his industrialist’s goals“
A Lineage School for young children from the Xiayang Yeo’s Clan
The original copy of this couplet has been lost. Huang’s calligraphy was imitated by Mr Yang Yao Ming from Xiayang, in 2024. Xiayang Primary School now keeps it. Huang’s account appears in Huang’s Diary, Volume 2, published by Beijing Chinese Publishing House [Page 46 & 47].
Bonding with the Clan
Sit Teik Tong in Yangon after its latest renovation in 2016.
A couplet in the hall of Sit Teik Tong, Yangon, reads,
“Plant seeds of beauty and quality to carve the future mainstay of China,
and praise the virtues in writings to keep in family books for generations.“
Plaques and couplets spread over the walls and pillars of Rangoon SST
Another couplet from the Rangoon SST, reads,
“Love the country by starting to love one’s hometown.
Seek the harmony in communities by first seeking the harmony in one’s ancestral clan.“
Looking back a hundred years from now, old China was poor and backward. Nevertheless, many overseas Chinese worked hard, lived frugally, to save to donate money and materials to benefit their village people. They built “big red brick houses” for their parents and relatives; they worked together to pave “cement roads” for the community; they spent huge sums of money to purchase river stones and build the river port that generations have relied on for survival. In the era of hardship, relatives brought back life essentials, like rice and matches back from Rangoon. Today, the elders often look back on that happy time of “eating Rangoon rice and burning foreign matchsticks.” Yeo Cheow Kaw, a leader of a generation of overseas Chinese, practiced his philanthropic deeds of promoting education and benefiting his hometown, inspiring generations of his clan members at home and abroad to participate in the cause, jointly created the beauty and prosperity of his hometown Xiayang. This is a popular portrait of overseas Chinese in that tumultuous period in the 19th and 20th turn of the centuries.
[The original article, in Chinese, was written by 楊大立、楊光注 and 楊宜瑾 to mark the celebration of 120th Anniversary of Xiayang Primary School in November 2024.]