THE RELATIVELY UNFAMILIAR Penang San Kiang Association deserves an introduction. San Kiang (三江, lit., “three rivers”) initially included communities with roots in China’s Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Jiangxi provinces, although the majority of its members today do not actually have roots there! There are only six San Kiang Associations in Southeast Asia: five in Malaysia and one in Singapore. The Penang Association was not limited to its founding purpose of providing contacts and mutual assistance to early migrants. Its social functions also changed with time. These included raising funds for disaster relief in China as well as engaging in local political, economic, cultural and educational concerns to support the next generation and cultural transmission.
THE EXPANSIVE “THREE RIVERS”
Unlike Hokkien, Cantonese or Foochow migrants, for example, who have historically formed distinct settlement patterns in Malaysia, the “San Kiang” peoples—a category that has become geographically expansive—have not adopted a similar pattern. No state has a significantly large number of San Kiang settlers, nor do they live in San Kiang-majority villages. Indeed, the number of Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Jiangxi migrants to Southeast Asia was relatively small.
In 1897, the first San Kiang Association in Southeast Asia was established in George Town; branches were later founded in Singapore, Ipoh, Selangor, Kuching and Kota Kinabalu. The Penang branch is the only one in Peninsular Malaysia’s northern region. It was meant to provide contacts and mutual assistance to Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Jiangxi migrants, in a period when Chinese migrants typically organised themselves into bang (帮), that is, by taking a “group-based” approach to recruiting members.
