Our Society’s 7th Annual General Meeting took place on 24 April 2009 and with this we have now entered into our seventh year of existence. Our membership remains open to all who wish to join and we steadily grew from 55 members at the end of the first term in 2005 to 72 members on last count. This represents a 24 per cent increase over the four-year period. Significantly we continue to attract members from outside of Singapore.

I am pleased that the entire team of committee members stayed on with the addition of one young able member, Ms Chia Wen Syn, who filled the position of Assistant Treasurer. The position has been left vacant for over a year due to the sad loss of our close friend, Mr Chua Tong Hai.

We have many exciting projects in mind and the main one is to organize a conference to commemorate the 605th Anniversary of Zheng He’s Voyages: Zheng He and Afro-Asian World. Our very capable and energetic leader for this important project is Mr C.C. Chin, who is supported by a strong team of committee members. The conference will be jointly organized with the Melaka Cheng Ho Cultural Museum with and other organizations and will be conducted in three languages – English, Bahasa Malaysia and Chinese.

We started a new initiative in the form of our e-newsletter under the leadership of Mr Freddie Tay, chairman of our Membership & Publicity Committee. Our first monthly newsletter was sent out in early January this year and I trust all members and subscribers find them interesting and informative. I feel that this is a good way to stay in touch and to remain connected as well as to reach out to the wider public. Through the newsletter, we have opened new channels of communications with those outside of Singapore.

As part of our effort to gain more attention and to stay relevant, we continue to update and enrich our website, www.chengho.org. We will be uploaded my annual reports for the 5th and 6th terms (2008-2009) in our website to keep you informed of our activities and plans. All issues of our newsletters are also available in our website. However, we still find it hard to include information in Bahasa Malaysia and Chinese and we hope there will be willing volunteers to help us fill this need.

From the start of our previous term of office, we created five subcommittees as follows, namely: Membership & Publicity, Education & Seminars, Research & Publications, Finance, and Social and welfare. This arrangement has proven to be effective and we have seen new energies being applied and clear results in expanding our activities and outreach.

Our Society is committed to undertaking and fostering scholarly research with the aim of propagating the spirit of Zheng He which is to promote peace, good will and mutual understanding. I have been engaged together with Mr Lim How Seng and Prof. Leo Suryadinata in keeping in touch with organisations related to Zheng He and knowledgeable persons in China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and elsewhere. The Conference referred to above is one such activity that falls under our purview. It is my sincere hope and wish that there will be chapters of our Society in other countries in the region being formed in the near future.

Over the last year, I am happy to see the publication of my book on Zheng He and Islamization of Southeast Asia in Chinese has already been published earlier this year by Haiyang Chubanshe in Beijing. The English version published by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) is now available. A Bahasa Malaysia version will also be published in due course. These new publications follow on the production of the Zheng He Epic (in English and Chinese)(2008) and Zheng He and Malacca (2005) by myself and Zheng He and Southeast Asia (2005) edited by Prof. Suryadinata.

During the course of the year, much work and resources have gone into the task of further upgrading the Cheng Ho Cultural Museum in Malacca. New exhibits have been added to the Museum in part to replace the less attractive exhibits to further enrich the Museum for the benefit of visitors. We are pleased to have received many dignitaries from Malaysia, China, South Korea, and elsewhere; many came unannounced and their response has been more than favourable.

The year ahead of us holds many promises of success and challenges. We will need more to join us to share our enjoyment and to help create new activities. I wish you all happiness and peace.

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