ABSTRACT
The changing political and moral order has brought about a renewed search for individual identity, be it ethnic or cultural. In Singapore, the search for cultural identity has pushed the Chinese to re-evaluate their cultural and religious practices to maintain their sense of cultural continuity. The history of the Chinese who immigrated from the two southern provinces of Guangdong and Fujian to Southeast Asia from the nineteenth through the second half of the twentieth century has been well documented. Chinese intending to reside permanently in Singapore have been confronted with a variety of rapidly changing political structures and experiences. Chinese social structures, which permitted the Chinese to become self-sufficient within their self-created world, assisted greatly in the development of family business firms. As the Chinese became economically and socially established in Singapore, they gradually came to regard Singapore as their home.
