Blessing Upon Blessing · Chapter 1

Born Between Altars

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart” Jeremiah 1:5

About 15 minutes to read

The acrid sweetness of burning incense filled our living room every morning, carrying whispered prayers to ancestors who watched over us from their mahogany tablets. As Singapore's youngest of eleven children in the mid-1960s, I learned to navigate between worlds before I could fully understand what either one meant—the ancient traditions of my Chinese immigrant family and the rapidly modernizing nation taking shape around us.

Our two-story shophouse in the heart of Singapore bore the sacred geography of traditional Chinese religious life. The ancestral altar dominated our living room, where tablets bearing the names of departed grandparents and great-grandparents stood in hierarchical order, flanked by offerings of oranges, rice, and tea that my mother refreshed daily. Before school each morning, I would watch her light three joss sticks, their smoke rising toward the ceiling as she murmured prayers in Hokkien dialect—entreaties for protection, prosperity, and the continued blessing of those who had crossed to the other side.

This was Singapore in the 1960s: a young nation where 75.9 percent of residents were ethnic Chinese, most carrying forward the religious practices of their homeland even as they adapted to their new maritime home. Our family embodied this complexity perfectly. We practiced the syncretic blend of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism common among overseas Chinese, where spiritual beliefs combined traditional ancestor worship with deities like Mazu, the goddess of the sea, and Guanyin, the goddess of mercy.

Yet beneath these visible devotions lay a mystery that would not reveal its significance until decades later.

The Religious Landscape of 1960s Singapore

The Singapore of my childhood was a spiritual crossroads where ancient beliefs met modern uncertainties. According to the 1957 census, the religious landscape reflected our immigrant heritage: 58.8% practiced various forms of Chinese traditional religion (Buddhism, Taoism, ancestor worship), 22.8% were Muslim, 8.6% Christian, 5.4% Hindu, with the remainder following other faiths or claiming no religion.

For Chinese families like ours, religion was not a matter of choosing between competing systems but of participating in a rich tapestry of spiritual practices that had evolved over centuries. Our morning incense honored ancestors according to Confucian filial piety. Our annual temple visits combined Buddhist prayers for merit with Taoist rituals for prosperity. During times of crisis, we might consult mediums who channeled spirits, or seek blessings from various deities depending on our specific needs.

The temples that dotted Singapore's landscape served as community centers as much as places of worship. The Thian Hock Keng Temple, built by Hokkien immigrants like my father, provided not just spiritual services but social networks, cultural education, and mutual aid societies that helped newcomers establish themselves in their adopted homeland. The elaborate festivals—Chinese New Year, Hungry Ghost Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival—created rhythms of celebration and remembrance that connected scattered immigrant communities to their shared heritage.

Christianity, while present, remained largely foreign to most Chinese families. The 8.6% Christian population was concentrated among certain ethnic groups and educational backgrounds, with Presbyterian and Methodist churches serving primarily English-educated Chinese and Eurasian communities. For traditional families like ours, Christianity was associated with Western missionaries and colonial influences—respected perhaps, but not relevant to our daily spiritual needs.

The government's policy of religious harmony, even in these early independence years, meant that spiritual diversity was tolerated and even encouraged as part of Singapore's multicultural identity. Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew's administration understood that religious stability was essential for social cohesion in our diverse society, but this tolerance also meant that traditional practices continued largely unchallenged by modern alternatives.

The Secret Baptism

My third sister, closest to me in age and affection, would sometimes tell me stories about our father that seemed too strange to believe. "Ah Pa was baptized in the sea," she would say matter-of-factly, as if discussing what we had eaten for dinner. "Before you were born, when he first came from Fujian."

In those days, many Chinese immigrants from Fujian Province carried complex relationships with both traditional beliefs and Christian influences. Protestant missionaries had been active in coastal China since the early 1800s, with Presbyterian and Methodist churches establishing significant presence in Fujian's port cities. The London Missionary Society, American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and Reformed Church in America had all worked extensively among Fujian's Min-speaking population since the 1840s.

By the time my father migrated to Singapore in the 1920s, it was not uncommon for young Chinese men to have encountered Christian teaching, even if they hadn't formally converted. Missionary schools provided education that was often superior to traditional options, and Christian hospitals offered medical care that traditional medicine couldn't match. Some immigrants carried baptismal certificates not from deep conviction but as helpful documentation for accessing Christian social services in their new homelands.

But a sea baptism suggested something more significant than mere convenience. In Chinese Christian tradition, full immersion baptism often marked genuine conversion rather than social accommodation. The symbolism was powerful: just as my father had crossed dangerous waters to reach Singapore, so he had crossed spiritual waters to reach new faith. The sea that had carried him from old life to new life had also carried him from old beliefs to new hope. Yet this spiritual transformation, if it was genuine, remained largely hidden during his life in our household. Perhaps the demands of supporting eleven children in a Chinese community made open Christianity impractical. Perhaps his wife's strong commitment to ancestral traditions created domestic tensions that silence could avoid. Perhaps he maintained both systems simultaneously, as many Chinese Christians did—honoring ancestors as cultural duty while trusting Jesus for spiritual salvation.

The mystery of his sea baptism would remain unsolved throughout my childhood, surfacing only in my sister's occasional comments and my own wondering about the spiritual currents that had shaped our family's religious waters long before I learned to navigate them myself.

A House of Eleven

Our household buzzed with the controlled chaos that characterizes large Chinese families. Seven sisters, three brothers, and me—the youngest, born when my mother was already weary from years of childrearing. In 1960s Singapore, families of this size were becoming less common as government family planning campaigns began influencing reproductive choices, but they remained normal among Chinese immigrant families who saw children as both blessing and security.

The dynamics of an eleven-child household shaped my earliest understanding of hierarchy, responsibility, and survival. By the time I was old enough to remember family life clearly, most of my older siblings had married and established their own households, following the traditional pattern where children married in their early twenties and moved out to start independent families. This meant that I grew up primarily with the siblings closest to my age, while maintaining relationships with married siblings who visited regularly with their own growing families.

The economic pressure of supporting eleven children in 1960s Singapore was immense. My father rose at 4 AM each day to pursue the manual labor that provided our family's income—dock work, construction, and various jobs that demanded physical strength and long hours. The Singapore of the 1960s was rapidly industrializing, creating demand for workers willing to do the hard physical labor that built our nation's infrastructure, but wages remained modest and job security was minimal.

Our shophouse reflected both the constraints and the dignity of working-class Chinese life. The ground floor served multiple functions: living area, dining space, and shrine room where our ancestral altar held place of honor. The upper floor contained bedrooms that had been subdivided and rearranged numerous times to accommodate our changing household composition. Privacy was scarce, personal space was minimal, but family connection was constant and unavoidable.

Meals were communal affairs where conversation flowed in Hokkien dialect, stories were shared, and family business was conducted. The dining table accommodated whoever happened to be present—a number that fluctuated as married children visited with their spouses and children, creating a revolving community of relatives who maintained connection across multiple households.

The older siblings served as surrogate parents for younger ones, with clearly understood responsibilities for supervision, education, and discipline. My immediate older sister, in particular, played a crucial role in my early development, providing the day-to-day guidance and emotional support that our parents couldn't offer while managing the practical demands of such a large household.

First Among Equals

At ten years old, something unexpected happened that would shadow the rest of my educational journey: I topped my primary class.

Singapore's education system in the 1960s was still evolving from its colonial legacy while adapting to the needs of an independent, multilingual society. The government's commitment to education as the pathway to economic development meant that even working-class families like ours could access quality schooling, but the system itself was undergoing rapid transformation that created opportunities and challenges in equal measure.

Schools operated in four main language streams—English, Chinese, Malay, and Tamil—with parents choosing based on their aspirations for their children's futures and their own linguistic capabilities. Our family, like most Chinese immigrant families, enrolled me in a Chinese-medium school where instruction occurred in Mandarin, though students also learned basic English as a required second language.

The decision to use Chinese-medium education reflected both practical and cultural considerations. My parents were most comfortable communicating in Hokkien dialect, which was closer to the Min languages that Chinese-medium schools accommodated than to the English that dominated colonial institutions. Chinese schools also provided cultural continuity, teaching Chinese history, literature, and values alongside modern academic subjects. However, by the 1960s, perceptive parents were already recognizing that English-medium education offered better pathways to economic advancement in Singapore's developing economy. Government jobs, professional careers, and business opportunities increasingly required English fluency, making Chinese-medium education a potential limitation despite its cultural benefits.

I remember little about the mechanics of achieving first place in my class. There were no tutors—such services were beyond our family's means and not yet common in Singapore's educational culture. There was no intensive preparation, no family pressure for academic excellence, no strategic planning about educational achievement. Many Chinese families in the 1960s focused more on basic literacy and respect for teachers than on competitive academic performance.

Yet somehow, in that class of thirty-plus children, I managed to excel across subjects that ranged from Chinese literature to basic mathematics, from moral education to simple science. Perhaps it was natural curiosity, perhaps the advantage of having older siblings who could help with homework, perhaps simply the blessing of intellectual capacity that hadn't yet been tested by serious academic challenges.

The achievement felt both significant and fragile. There was pride, certainly, but also awareness that maintaining such performance would require continued effort and favorable circumstances. Even at ten years old, I sensed that academic success was not automatic but needed to be earned repeatedly through sustained work and good fortune.

More importantly, being first in class created expectations—from teachers, from family members, and from myself—that academic excellence would continue throughout my educational journey. These expectations would prove both motivating and burdensome as circumstances beyond my control began to disrupt the stable foundation that early success required.

A Nation Finding Its Soul

The Singapore of my childhood was a country in the midst of profound transformation. The 1960s marked our transition from British colonial rule to self-government (1959) and finally to full independence (1965), with our brief and traumatic separation from Malaysia creating the conditions that would forge our distinctive national identity.

For families like ours, this political evolution created both opportunities and uncertainties. Independence meant that local rather than colonial priorities would shape government policies, potentially creating more opportunities for Chinese immigrants and their children. But it also meant economic uncertainty as Singapore sought to establish its place in the world without the guaranteed markets that British colonial status had provided.

The government's response to these challenges would profoundly influence my generation's life trajectories. Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew's administration pursued rapid industrialization, universal education, public housing development, and social modernization policies that transformed Singapore from a colonial trading post into a modern nation-state within a single generation.

The public housing program, launched in 1960, was already beginning to reshape Singapore's physical and social landscape. Traditional kampongs and crowded shophouses like ours were gradually being replaced by planned HDB (public housing) estates that provided better living conditions while breaking up traditional ethnic enclaves. By the late 1960s, over 100,000 people had moved into public housing, creating new forms of multiracial community that would become characteristic of modern Singapore.

The education system was expanding rapidly to provide the skilled workforce that industrialization required. Primary school enrollment increased from 83% in 1960 to nearly universal levels by the late 1960s, while secondary and technical education options multiplied to serve students with different aptitudes and career goals. The Bilingual Education Policy, implemented gradually throughout the 1960s, aimed to give all students competency in both English and their mother tongue, preparing them for Singapore's multicultural economy. Economic development proceeded at breathtaking pace. The Economic Development Board, established in 1961, successfully attracted foreign investment in manufacturing industries that provided jobs for workers like my father while creating opportunities for educated workers in technical and professional fields. GDP grew at double-digit rates throughout the 1960s, creating optimism about Singapore's economic future even during periods of political uncertainty. For Chinese families, these changes created both continuity and disruption. Traditional cultural practices could be maintained within the broader framework of multicultural Singapore, but economic advancement increasingly required adaptation to English-language institutions and Western business practices. The tension between preserving cultural identity and achieving economic mobility would influence family decisions about education, career choices, and social relationships for decades to come.

The Weight of Expectations

Success, even modest success, creates its own pressures. Being first in my primary class generated expectations from family members who began to speak of my academic achievement with the particular pride that Chinese parents reserve for educational accomplishment. There were subtle suggestions that I might be the sibling who would advance furthest in school, perhaps even reaching secondary education or beyond.

In 1960s Singapore, completing secondary education was still a significant achievement for working-class families. Many students left school after primary education to begin working and contributing to family income. For the youngest child of eleven to show academic promise suggested possibilities that seemed almost too wonderful to contemplate.

My mother would sometimes pause in her morning prayers to cast hopeful glances in my direction. My older siblings, occupied with their own work and family responsibilities, nevertheless took pride in having a brother who excelled in school. There was talk, vague but persistent, about futures that might involve office work rather than manual labor, monthly salaries rather than daily wages.

These expectations felt both encouraging and burdensome. At ten years old, I lacked the emotional vocabulary to articulate the pressure I felt to maintain performance levels that had emerged somewhat mysteriously. The confidence that felt natural during my successful primary year might prove more elusive as academic demands increased and competition intensified. More troubling, I began to sense that my family's pride in my achievement carried assumptions about my character and capabilities that might not withstand closer scrutiny. What if my academic success was more accident than aptitude? What if the skills that served me well in primary school failed to transfer to more advanced education? What if the expectations I was generating proved impossible to fulfill?

These anxieties remained mostly subconscious, surfacing only as vague unease when adults spoke too confidently about my educational future. But they would prove prophetic when circumstances beyond my control transformed me from a successful student into a struggling survivor.

Between Worlds

Looking back from the perspective of decades, I can see that my childhood was spent navigating between multiple worlds that seemed to overlap but never quite aligned. There was the world of ancestral tablets and morning incense, where Chinese tradition provided structure and meaning for daily life. There was the world of Singapore's modernizing society, where English proficiency and technical skills opened doors to prosperity. And there was the world of family expectations, where my academic success carried hopes that extended far beyond my individual achievement.

These tensions were common among overseas Chinese families, who struggled to maintain cultural identity while adapting to new national contexts. The challenge was particularly acute for children, who had to learn to function effectively in modern educational and economic systems while preserving connection to ancestral traditions and family values.

Our daily routines embodied these multiple allegiances. We honored ancestors each morning but studied curricula designed to prepare us for Singapore's economic future. We spoke Hokkien at home but learned Mandarin and English at school. We participated in traditional festivals and temple visits but also absorbed the Western cultural influences that accompanied British colonial institutions and American media.

The mystery of my father's sea baptism added another layer to this complexity. If the story was true, it suggested that Christian influences had already touched our family history, even as we maintained traditional Chinese religious practices. Perhaps the ancestral altar and the whispered prayers represented not pure tradition but already-syncretic faith—the kind of blended spirituality that develops when ancient beliefs encounter new circumstances. I was too young to recognize these tensions intellectually, but I felt them emotionally as a kind of restlessness, a sense that the categories available to me didn't quite capture the fullness of my experience. The boy who excelled in Chinese-medium education while living in an increasingly English-dominated society, who honored ancestors while absorbing modern values, who carried his family's hopes while feeling uncertain about his own capabilities.

The Gathering Storm

The tranquil rhythm of morning incense and academic success could not last forever. Even as I enjoyed my brief moment at the top of my class, forces were gathering that would soon disrupt everything I thought I understood about myself and my place in the world.

Singapore itself was changing rapidly. The late 1960s and early 1970s would bring major educational reforms, economic restructuring, and social changes that would reshape the landscape of opportunity for families like ours. The comfortable world of Chinese-medium education was already under pressure from policies that favored English-language instruction and technical skills.

More immediately threatening were the personal tragedies that would soon shatter my family's stability and my own confidence. Death was coming to visit our household—not once, but twice—in ways that would expose me to trauma that 1960s Singapore had no framework for understanding or addressing.

The Chinese funeral traditions that had sustained families for generations would soon become my reality rather than my observation. The elaborate rituals designed to honor the dead and comfort the living would instead become sources of additional trauma for a young boy already struggling to understand loss.

But in those final months of innocence, I remained the youngest son who had topped his class, the family's academic hope, the boy who breathed incense-scented air each morning while dreaming of futures that seemed both traditional and modern, both Chinese and Singaporean, both grounded in the past and open to possibility.

The ancestral tablets watched over our living room with the patient attention of those who had seen generations come and go. They had witnessed immigration and adaptation, tradition and transformation, hope and heartbreak. Soon they would witness tragedy that would test whether the spiritual framework that had sustained my family for generations could also sustain a traumatized child who was just beginning to understand the fragility of everything he had taken for granted.

The morning incense would continue to rise toward the ceiling, carrying prayers that would grow more desperate and more essential as the storm clouds gathered. The boy who had been first in his class would soon discover what it meant to be lost in ways that no curriculum had prepared him to navigate.

But even in tragedy, even in trauma, even in the collapse of everything that had seemed certain, God was already at work—planting seeds in ground that seemed too broken to sustain growth, preparing foundations for blessings that would not be visible for decades to come. The journey from chronos to kairos was about to begin.

Dr. Elias Kairos Chen would later understand that his childhood between ancestral altars had been preparation for a life lived between worlds—between East and West, tradition and modernity, human limitation and divine possibility. The boy who honored ancestors while harboring questions about a father's mysterious baptism was already being prepared for a calling that would require him to bridge ancient wisdom and contemporary revelation.

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