Singapore Immigrant History in a Cup of Hainanese Coffee • Nanyang Kopi 南洋咖啡 • 海南咖啡

SingaporeSingapore_Hainanese_Coffee_Nanyang_Kopi_南洋咖啡_海南咖啡

Coffee or kopi as it is known in Malay in Singapore is like our lingua franca - the beverage that binds the diverse ethnic communities of Singapore (and also Malaysia).

Singapore_Hainanese_Coffee_Nanyang_Kopi_南洋咖啡_海南咖啡

Known also as Nanyang or Hainan kopi among the Chinese, it is a dark, hard bitter Robusta brew smoothened and given body with sugar, condensed milk or evaporated milk. Slurped or gulped down semi-consciously by hoi polloi of all races in Singapore, in a mix of pleasure, and daily necessity for a bitter tonic to get that robust caffeine boost to kick start the day.

Once it becomes a part of life, the comfort of its company is badly missed whenever we travel, for example to tea countries like China. Or, even Starbucks countries as they don't give us that caffeine kick which only kopi can.

For Nanyang Chinese, in particular, coffee wasn't originally the preferred beverage - Chinese have been tea drinkers since the time of the Han dynasty (202BC - 220AD). Nanyang Chinese picked up drinking coffee from the British when Hainanese Chinese migrated to British Malaya from the late-1800s to early 1900s.

Let's start with a quick primer on the origins of coffee as a global beverage. No one really knows, but an oft repeated legend attributes it to a goat herder in Ethiopia around 850AD.

The goat herder noticed that his goats became hyperactive after chewing red berries. He tried the berries himself, and enjoyed the stimulating effect too.

The excited goat herder shared his discovery with a monk but the latter rejected the berries, promptly tossing them into a pile of burning wood. The discarded berries were inadvertently roasted into aromatic beans. The monk grounded up the roasted beans, boiled the powder in water, and voila, brewed the world's first cup of coffee.

No one is sure of the veracity of this legend (there are other coffee origin tales) but by the 15th century, the practice of drinking the invigorating dark beverage of roasted coffee beans and water spread north from Ethiopia to across the Middle East.

Coffee drinking became well established throughout the Ottoman Empire and the first coffee shops appeared where men gathered to enjoy the beverage and each others' company.

From the Middle East, coffee drinking spread to Europe in the 16th century. By the 17th century, Europeans too gathered in coffee shops over the dark brew to soberly discuss life, business, politics and anything under the sun.

In Britain, coffee shops became known as "penny universities". The first British coffee shop was founded in.... non other than Oxford.

The Dutch took the beans from the Middle East, and planted them in their tropical colonies in South America, Sri Lanka, and Java (Indonesia). The other European empires such as Britain, Portugal and France likewise sowed their beans in their colonies abroad. And thus, coffee plantations sprouted up around the world across the Coffee Belt which remained the top coffee producers to this day.

Note that India is a major coffee producer.

Sir Stamford Raffles founded the trading post of Singapore on behalf of the British East India Company in 1819. Coffee was quickly imported from British India as the English can't do without their daily cuppa of caffeine.

What about the proverbial English love of tea? At that time, coffee was for the masses, and tea was the preserve of the social elite.

Bengali coffee hawker in the 1900s. Photo is from the National Archives of Singapore but location is unmentioned.

Coffee came to Singapore via the British and Indians (from British India). Indian coffee sellers sold coffee from baskets which they carried across their shoulders.

Kling coffee hawker in 1890. Kling is a term referring to people from India.

British households were drinking coffee, hence the beverage came with the families of colonial officials. They, of course, also drank tea but that's the story for another post.

British households used muslin bag or sock filter to brew coffee, following the instructions from the highly influential Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management published in 1861.

Mrs. Beeton's coffee called for plenty of hot milk. But, as fresh milk was not easily available and don't keep well in the tropics, it was usually substituted by condensed milk or evaporated milk. By turn of the 20th century, condensed milk and evaporated milk with longer shelf life and greater availability became the norm for coffee in British Malaya.

Briefly, evaporated milk is fresh milk with 60% of its water content evaporated. Condensed milk is made by adding 40-50% sugar to evaporated milk. Both evaporated and condensed milk are pasteurised and canned for long shelf life.

Indian coffee seller in Singapore in the 1950s.

It was drank with condensed or evaporated milk.

Those empty milk tins, they were not wasted.

They were and still are recycled, and reused as containers for takeaway coffee.

Making coffee in Singapore in the 1950s. Gratefully the basics of making British inspired milk coffee have not changed much since then.

The coffee sock and long neck pot are still the preferred tools of the trade.

You know something's place in a culture by the number of words it has to describe it. For example, eskimos have at least 50 words to describe snow. Likewise, a whole coffee lexicon sprang up in British Malaya with terms describing the variations and exact nuances of coffee.

Black coffee with sugar is known as kopi O, no sugar added is known as kopi O kosong, less sugar is kopi O siew dai.

Kopi is by default coffee with condensed milk.

Kopi C is coffee with evaporated milk.

For the preservation and propagation of British style milk coffee in Singapore, we have to give credit to the Hainanese.

The Chinese communities that migrated to British Singapore are mostly from China's southern provinces of Guangdong and Fujian. Some communities, like the Teochew were already in Singapore operating several gambir plantations even before Raffles stepped foot on the island in 1819.

The Hainanese were the last of the Chinese communities from Guangdong and Fujian to migrate to British Singapore for work.

Following Qing dynasty's defeat in the Second Opium War in 1858, under the terms of the Treaty of Tientsin, China was compelled to open more ports to trade and to import opium from Britain. (Demand for Chinese oolong tea in Britain was causing an intolerable drain on British coffers that needed balancing. Opium was the British answer to balance China-Britain trade.) The city of Haikou on Hainan Island was one of the ports opened, thus opening the doors for emigration from Hainan.

When the Hainanese arrived in Singapore, they found that their Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese and Hakka compatriots were already well established in the coveted locations and trades.

The number of immigrant outflow from China in 1878. Not only were the Hainanese late, they were also outnumbered by a considerable margin.

Raffles town plan of Singapore 1822.

So instead of finding their niche in the Chinese enclave west of the Singapore River, the Hainanese had to live in the margin between European town and Arab Campung (village).

The Hainanese called the streets Haikou Street (Hainan First Street), Hainan Second Street and Hainan Third Street. Today, they are Purvis Street, Seah Street and Middle Road. All three streets run perpendicular to Beach Road.

Hainanese prayed for journey mercies and blessings at the Tian Hou Gong 天后宫 temple in Haikou - the last thing they did before boarding the boat to the unknown far away.

Once landed in Singapore, the first thing Hainanese did was to give thanks for journey mercies and pray for blessings at Tian Hou Gong temple at Beach Beach (National Archives of Singapore from 1890).

Inside the Tian Hou Gong temple today (2026).

For jobs, many Hainanese men became domestic help (cook boys) in colonial officers' homes, homes of wealthy traders (often Peranakan), British military bases, and on board naval and merchant ships.

That's where the Hainanese got exposed to British as well as Peranakan cuisine, and hence played big roles in their preservation, adaptation, and propagation. Kaya butter toast, Nyonya laksa, etc., just to name a couple. It was the Hainanese that helped preserved and propagated 发扬光大 these dishes beyond colonial officers' and Peranakan homes.

Staying on the topic of coffee, the Hainanese mastered the art of brewing a good British milk coffee with muslin sock, long neck kettle, and condensed or evaporated milk.

The Great Depression years in the 1920s, led some enterprising Hainanese to invest their savings in cheap shoplots. They put the shoplots to the best use they knew - into coffeeshops.

The modus operadi which still operates in most Singapore coffeeshops today is the owner runs the drinks stall, while the tenanted stalls run their independent businesses, for example selling noodles, rice, etc.

With Hainanese control of the drinks stall, naturally Hainanese style of British milk coffee or kopi became more pervasive (edging out pots of oolong tea, for example). Gradually over time, milk coffee or kopi became the unofficial national drink or at least the most pervasive drink of Singapore.

In Singapore, we are still figuring out what is our national drink.

I have an article on Singapore coffeeshops here 👈

Drinking coffee at Clarke Quay in 1985.

It was common to see people pour their hot coffee into the saucer to quicken the cooling, so that they can drink their coffee straight from the saucer. Some people like to drink their coffee lukewarm or their meal break was short and so have to cool their coffee down in a hurry.

Don't see this practice much nowadays, partly because most coffee shops now serve coffee in glass mugs (which in my opinion took away a lot of the old charm of "flower cups").

Following the declaration of the Peoples' Republic of China in 1949, and the policy of welcoming returning emigre 归侨, many Hainanese from Nanyang returned to their ancestral homeland. There is a saying in China that 7 out of 10 who left China for Nanyang returned.

(There is also this romanticised image that returnees come back to their ancestral homeland Anglicised and with a pot of gold.)

The legacy of British Malaya came back full circle to Hainan Island via returnee Hainanese emigres.

Go to any 海南老爸茶 lao ba cha or coffee shop in Hainan today and you will find a sense of deja vu - that old familiar sock filter brewed coffee with condensed milk.

And so in Hainan Island, dim sum type dishes are enjoyed with British Hainanese milk coffee.

Yes, even drinking coffee out of a used condensed milk can - they still do that in Hainan Island today just like we do in Singapore.

Our Nanyang kopi or coffee with condensed / evaporated milk is a British legacy preserved by Hainanese (and Hock Chiew) coffee shop owners, and embraced by all Singapore ethnic communities.

So much love in a cup of coffee.

If not for the Hainanese, many of us could be ordering pots of oolong tea for breakfast today.

Meet me for kopi, there's plenty more of food stories to tell.