::ChengZhichen
06.’2025
KEHOAN BEER
Across the restless monsoon seas, “Kehoan” was the quiet vow whispered before boarding a south-bound steamer. It meant turning one’s back on the red-tiled rooftops of home to chase an uncertain wage in the humid ports of Nanyang—today’s Singapore, Batam, Jakarta. It also meant carrying the ache of distance long after land slipped below the horizon.
Generations later, the word still hums with salt, sweat and ink. It recalls the fanke—young migrants who counted coins by lantern-light, penned fragile letters on rice paper, and folded their longing into every remittance sent northward. Their stories are not museum relics; they are unfinished sentences that still echo in our own searches for opportunity and belonging.