Singapore Swing Page 2

  But let’s not jump too far ahead but only a bit further north from the centre to Serangoon Road, where people from the subcontinent communicate in Telegu, Punjabi, Hindi, Bengali and Tamil. As befits the geographical location of Singapore, its third official language is Tamil, whose speakers dominate the south of the Indian cone. This language has given us first and foremost ‘curry’, from the Tamil kari meaning ‘sauce for rice’; ‘pariah’ from paraiyan meaning ‘drummer’, the occupation of members of the lowest caste during festivals in south India; ‘cheroot’ from curuttu (roll); and ‘catamaran’ from kattumaran (tied wood). Tamil is a language with three genders (masculine, feminine and non-human) and an ancient script that doesn’t let you write down the spoken idiom in full unless extra, sacred, Grantha characters are employed. As a result, spoken Tamil and written Tamil have been diverging for centuries, and the older, ancient version is of no use for any English loanwords, like hamburger or computer, because it can’t express them in written form.

  Ah, English at last. We have arrived at the fourth and final official language – the instrument of empire, the unifier of unifiers and the ultimate constant in the narrow, loud alleys of the Babel that was Singapore. Now everyone speaks English: not because they’re educated (they are), not because they want to tap the tourist trade (they do), but because – from my humble taxi driver to The Straits Times newspaper editor – speaking English is a question of survival. Singaporean children must leave school proficient in two languages: one is English and the other is the language of their ethnic group. For the children who fail such exams – the ‘gone cases’ – a study in the dreaded ITE, the Institute of Technical Education, beckons. It’s considered so second rate that its initials are colloquially referred to as ‘It’s The End’.

  - 2 -

  I wake up from my jetlag slumber at some indeterminate evening hour, shower and leave to reconnoitre the area. The hotel receptionist takes my key chirpily. ‘What happened to your arm?’ she asks.

  I glance at my left arm which is hanging in a sling from my shoulder. Clad in just a T-shirt, I can hardly hide it under my coat like I could in wintry London.

  ‘I have torn two tendons,’ I mumble and decide not to name them explicitly, although I could. ‘I can’t lift it more than this.’ I try to raise my arm – and true to my word it comes up to just below my nipple and stops. ‘See?’

  ‘How did you do it?’ she goes on.

  Ahem.

  ‘Long story,’ I reply and see myself out.

  Outside the heat isn’t as oppressive as I had feared. Singapore is unchangingly hot and sticky with temperatures steady and ranging between 23°–35°C. What does change is precipitation with not just one but two monsoon seasons. Even during the so-called dry season, however, the average monthly rainfall is twice or three times that of London. The only difference is that the water comes all down in a pelter rather than over a 24/7 shower like we are used to in England.

  I’m hungry, so I’m in the right place: Chinatown, or rather what has been left of it after continuous redevelopment. There are only two great civilisations the world has borne where dining has been elevated to an art beyond mere bodily satiation: the French and the Chinese. Both cultures eat for the sake of eating, the means of sustenance having become ends in themselves. Their art reflects this: the two great foodie films of all time have been the Chinese Eat Drink Man Woman and the French La Grande Bouffe. In fact, I dare you to find me a French film where there is no lunch or dinner sequence – you’ll have to resort to the 1895 experiments of the pioneering Lumière brothers for that. And even they, after filming workers leaving a factory in La Sortie des Usines Lumière, and a train entering a station in L’Arrivée d’un Train en Gare de La Ciotat, what did they film next? Repas de Bébé: I rest my case.

  As befits such a culture, it sometimes seems that all Singapore is about is food. Every hawker stall in the streets offers its own speciality dish: from translucent aromatic marine delicacies at a stall on Mosque Street to the day-glo green of a wheatgrass and aloe vera shake on a Trengganu kiosk. Men and women around me are gobbling up food: sat down, standing up, leaning against a wall, walking rapidly alone, strolling slowly arm in arm. Some are even eating for charity under a banner: ‘Meals for Tidal Waves Asia Victims’. I feel a warm glow when I realise that I can satisfy a pressing bodily function and help the destitute at the same time, but the menu puts a dampener on my appetite: Pig’s tail noodle? Grass jelly with tadpole? Tripe and tendons? I have seen many weird things eaten across the Channel but the Chinese beat the French in devouring disgusting life forms hands down. I decide that boiled pig gut and sliced jellyfish had better be left to the connoisseurs. As for fried carrot cake – it sounds worse that anything the Scots could have concocted.

  I move away from the hawkers and back to the sound and vision show that is every weekend night in central Chinatown. I walk under a sign for the Cantonese Opera The Patriotic Princess performed in aid of a ‘Moral Home for the Disabled’ – and that ‘moral’ has me pondering a lot. This is an old red-light district; the Chinese name for Banda Street means ‘End of the Foreign Brothels’ for here is where the Japanese girls, the Karayuki-sans, were based. I glance at a large hand-painted movie poster opposite that advertises Blue Velvet, warning us that the film has a ‘matured’ theme. (Is this how they fooled the censors? Did they think it was about cheese?) I stroll past closed shops with names out of a Jules Verne literary fantasy: Onn Fat Hong Tea Merchant; Hai Loo Store; Wong Loy Kee Aquarium – do you keep the fish as pets or as victuals?

  I finally stop by the Samsui women’s restaurant on Smith Street which boasts the best ginger chicken in town. The Samsui were Cantonese and Hakka women who lived together around Chin Chew street. Their distinctive red head coverings have become iconic: sloping and flat, they look like upside-down open books. The sole purpose in life of the Samsui was to work and send money to their families on the mainland. Some of them were married but most opted for spinsterhood having assumed the role of breadwinner: not only as housekeepers and wet-nurses, but also as stevedores and construction workers. Theirs was a one-way ticket to the poor quarters in Chinatown; starvation wages killed any hopes of return. As they turned older and infirm, the only luxury they permitted themselves was their traditionally cooked chicken during the Chinese New Year. This was a whole chicken, steamed with ginger for a fixed duration at a specific temperature so that it maintained its fragrance and flavour. It is still the dish of choice in the Smith Street restaurant: it is served already shredded, and you eat it by dipping a piece in ginger sauce and wrapping it in lettuce.

  I walk upstairs and an old, wrinkled, diminutive Chinese waitress moving more slowly and stiffly than a legless man on crutches leads me to a table. I sit on an exquisitely carved low wooden stool in the shape of a bongo drum under the whirl of a ceiling fan and open the menu that resembles a pharmaceutical catalogue. As in every other society – from a medieval witch’s brew to a Jewish mother’s chicken broth – the healing power of female cooking is part of Chinese whimsy. The Samsui women were famous for their herbal, healing soups, so every dish on the menu comes with claims of its medicinal value. Everything is double-boiled: the ling zhi and pork soup, the waisan and ginseng chicken broth, the steamed pork with salted fish. I have no idea what a tien chee is or whether it is vegetable, animal or mineral, but it is supposed to be good for my blood circulation. The ginger chicken itself is associated with the relief of wind; well, I did mention that it was a dish served to old women.

  The waitress looks at my sling and gives me a golden-toothed grin. She points at the double-boiled American ginseng with San-Yu soup and then at my arm. Thinking that, hey, two billion Chinese can’t be wrong, I agree, praying that the dish does not include any reptilian parts. Her choice returns to haunt me in a soup with half an eel in it – at least I hope it’s not a snake – complete with scales and bones. If after this my arm does not improve, I’ll sue the chef.

  A Chinese f
amily of eight that comprises three generations

  – from a grandma to a pre-teen boy – is dining at a round, shiny wooden table opposite me. My gaze lingers on the grandmother, the Great Matriarch, who sits there, immobile and inscrutable. I don’t know how old she is but, like most Chinese grandmothers, she looks as if she knew Confucius in person. Her expression is blank and she appears physically embalmed; I wonder whether those sweat beads on her brow are natural formalin secretions. She is impervious to the activity of the rest of her clan who are flapping animatedly to reach every small dish and sauce plate around the table. The most agile is the father who chopsticks his way assiduously, picking up the optimum amount of spinach and ginger for his rice bowl to balance the yin and the yang of the flavours. Bless.

  There is a non-functioning pendulum clock on the wall surrounded by a number of old sepia photographs. They are all personal: a couple at their wedding; a family of thirteen flanking the gaunt bodies of their barely smiling grandparents; a youth looking forward with that vacant look only teenagers can perfect. They look like snippets out of any household’s empire album but, although the clothes are all Western, the faces are Chinese. The father opposite exchanges glances with me, bows in recognition of our mutual, investigative stare and follows my gaze to the pictures on the wall. He examines the photos, shrugs his shoulders and immediately chokes on his fish. He receives a mighty slap on the back from the embalmed grandmother – who sure moved fast there – but in vain. He never recovers from his cough, still clearing his throat half an hour later, as he pays for the bill. Just before he leaves, he gives me a second, accusing look to make me feel guilty for his predicament.

  The old waitress comes to me and asks: ‘Good?’

  I look at my half-eaten eel and lie: ‘Good’.

  ‘Bill?’

  ‘Erm, no I’m still eating.’ Strange, that. I thought the Chinese were more respectful of other people’s prandial enjoyment.

  Maybe not, for as soon as I finish and put the spoon down, she smiles and asks me ‘Bill?’ again. I look around. I am the only one left. It is probably closing time. The streets outside are heaving, but these old Samsui ladies must need their sleep. ‘OK,’ I reply.

  It is only when she brings me a Tiger beer instead of the tab that I realise what she really meant to say.

  Right. Before I proceed any further: this is first and last time I will allude to oriental rhotacism, that indistinction between the ‘r’ and the ‘l’ on which so many cheap jokes have been based and not just those that play with elections and erections. The liquid ‘r’ sound is an odd one and spans a continuum – from the strangled uvular ‘r’ of the French to the trilling ‘r’ of the Italians, it glides into the wide, open-mouthed ‘l’ of the Brazilians and the dry, lockjaw ‘l’ pronunciation of the English. In fact, European languages do invert up their ‘l’s and ‘r’s. Did you know that our Elisabeth is the Hungarians’ Erszébet? Ever compared Spanish with Portuguese where the colour white is not blanco but branco and silver is not plata but prata? Did you know that African languages invert the ‘r’ to ‘l’ too? In Zulu a ‘teacher’ has been mutated into a utishala and the South African capital Pretoria into iPitoli. As for Malay, no prizes for guessing which nationality is meant by ingris. So we’ve had our fun, that’s it – although if I come across a Chinese who has adopted a name like ‘Rory’, I might be tempted to return to the subject.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE IMMORTAL

  Tung Pin came from a clan of officials; his grandfather had been master of ceremonies at the Emperor’s palace and his father district prefect. But, unlike them, the young man was torn between following the family tradition and the realm of religion and philosophy.

  One night, Tung Pin arrived at an inn in the capital, where an old Taoist priest impressed him with his ability to compose poems without any effort.

  ‘Who are you, Master?’ asked Tung Pin, certain in his belief that the priest was a hsien, a supernatural apparition.

  ‘I am the Master Yün Fang,’ the Taoist revealed himself. ‘I live upon the Crane Ridge and hold the secret of Immortality.’

  Tung Pin’s blood raced in his veins.

  ‘Will you show me the Way, Master?’ he asked.

  ‘Why would you want to know the Way?’ asked Yün Fang.

  ‘So that I can help others,’ Tung Pin replied without hesitation.

  The priest smiled. ‘Follow me,’ he said and beckoned with his finger. Tung Pin accompanied him to his room where the priest brought a pot of millet to the boil. Tired as he was, Tung Pin fell asleep on a cushion leaning on the wall.

  When he woke up, it was next morning and Yün Fang had gone. Dispirited by the apparent rejection, Tung Pin decided to listen to his father’s advice and follow in his footsteps. He studied for two years and passed the triennial Mandarins’ examination, coming top of the list. He started his career as a junior civil servant but rapidly gained promotion to the Censorate and eventually reached the position of privy counsellor in a dizzying upward advancement. He married a wife born into a family of wealth and authority. She bore him two sons who became important scions of society themselves. Eventually, Tung Pin became prime minister and wielded unqualified power. Unfortunately, such power corrupted him and he began to ask – nay, demand – bribes and commissions from everyone and for everything. It was only a matter of time before he was accused and tried for corruption. The outcome was dire: his home and all his possessions were confiscated, he was separated from his wife and children and was banished beyond ten thousand li. As he was crossing a snowy mountain range to reach a desolate corner of the empire, his horse refused to gallop on, and he was left stranded, a sad, solitary outcast on an untrodden path.

  Someone touched him.

  Tung Pin opened his eyes. He was still in the inn next to the Taoist Master, leaning on the cushion against the wall.

  ‘One lifetime passes, and the millet simmers still uncooked,’ laughed Yün Fang. ‘Do you still want to become Immortal?’

  Tung Pin swallowed hard. ‘More than ever, Master,’ he replied and looked at the pot. ‘Is that it?’ he asked.

  ‘No my boy,’ replied the Master. ‘There is no magic potion. You only become Immortal through your deeds.’

  - 3 -

  There are some cities in the world that are the creation of a single man with singular vision: Alexandria, Constantinople, St Petersburg. But Alexander, St Constantine and Peter the Great were powerful potentates whose word was law and whose will was limitless. That Singapore is the brainchild of a thirty-year-old company administrator named Raffles begs comparison; that it was established against the will and sometimes open hostility of the board of the East India Company, the British government and the Dutch Crown defies logic – or rather says a lot about Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles himself. I mean, the guy has been able to wipe out from posterity the memory of his other middle name – Bingley.

  As befits someone with such an international reputation, Raffles was born a few days out of Jamaica on board a four-gunner ship escorting a convoy bound for England. It was 1781: the year of the British army surrender in Yorktown that sealed the fate of the American colonies in their War of Independence; the symbolic year when Britain turned her gaze away from the west and started focusing east.

  Raffles entered the offices of the East India Company in Leadenhall Street at the age of 14 as a general dogsbody. For the next ten years he worked assiduously and educated himself at home. An admiring biographer compared his time as a clerk with that of the legendary Chinese sage Che Yuan who worked hard all day and studied at night under the glint of the fireflies. A more apt comparison would be with a moth attracted by the torch of success: Raffles networked like a bee, latching on to his boss through whom he met people well above his station in life. It was not long before Raffles attracted the amorous attentions of a surgeon’s widow, Mrs Olivia Fancourt, ten years older than him, but well-connected. After gaining so much social capital, it was hardly surpri
sing that Raffles was chosen in 1805 to accompany the governor of the new settlement of Penang as his assistant. He married Olivia a month before they embarked on the trip that kick-started his dizzying career. He was just 24 years old.

  In Penang, Raffles was both diligent and lucky: he learned Malay and made a very important friend, Dr John Leyden, a medic and orientalist who fell for the charms of Olivia. There is little doubt that Raffles cultivated Leyden’s passion: there exist numerous romantic letters between Leyden and Olivia that can not have escaped the attention of such a clever operator like young Raffles. The reason for such encouragement is clear. Leyden was a close friend of the most powerful man outside the British Isles: Governor General of India, Lord Minto. If there is a moral there, I fail to find it.

  Leyden had translated the Malay Annals, a compendium of the legendary history of the Malay people. One of the earliest such fables involved Sang Nila Utama, the young Raja of Palembang. He was sailing from the island of Bintan to hunt on the forested outcrops that dot the archipelago when he landed on the island of Temasek. There, he came momentarily face to face with a majestic, wild animal he hadn’t seen before in his maritime kingdom and guessed that it must be that famed lion of the songs and the myths and the epic poems. Believing the encounter to have supernatural significance, he founded a city which he called Lion (Singa) City (Pura) and built a palace up on a hill by the river. His harem used to bathe by the spring at the bottom which is why he prohibited access to the area; the locals called it the Forbidden Hill. This taboo was entrenched further when Nila Utama himself died and was buried at the top.