Memorandum

By Quah Sy Ren and Hee Wai Siam

Featuring new translations of previously untranslated Chinese short stories, Memorandum maps out seven decades of Sinophone Singaporean Literature. From bargirls to student activists, from trishaw men to tea merchants, this collection provides a glimpse into a world that has been previously invisible to Anglophone readers. Paired with critical essays, these stories showcase the richness and diversity of Singapore’s Chinese community, but also its inherent interconnectedness with other cultures within Singapore.

“Memorandum is a pathbreaking anthology that refracts over half a century of Singapore’s history through its lens. The translated stories do much more than simply bridge Sinophone and Anglophone worlds: they actively cross geographical, cultural, linguistic and class boundaries, causing us to think more deeply about the nature of social power, and the transformative interventions literary texts can make.”
-Philip Holden, scholar of Singapore &Southeast Asian literatures

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ethos Books
• Release date: Mar 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9789811449185

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

A MEMORANDUM OF SINOPHONE SINGAPORE

Quah Sy Ren, Hee Wai Siam

THERE HAS NEVER been a lack of Chinese-language literary anthologies from Singapore (Sinophone Singaporean literature). Since 1965, more than 90 collections of Chinese short stories from the island have been published locally and abroad. They include themed anthologies, compendia, and compilations based on criteria such as the native origin, generation, or gender of the authors, as well as collections of award-winning works. An average of two anthologies have been published annually since Singapore achieved independence.¹ Considering that Singapore possesses a land area of less than 800 square kilometers, a population of under six million, and a history as a nation-state of just over fifty years, this not insignificant volume points to the richness of the island’s literary output and the availability of funding for Chinese-language publishing.

This was especially apparent in the period following the 1990s, which saw the publication of 71 anthologies, comprising about three-quarters of all such publications. Paradoxically, this was also the era that saw the rise of Anglophone literature and the decline of Sinophone writing on the island. It was in the early 1990s that readership for works in the Chinese language began to decline. With the larger changes happening in society, the interrelationship between anthology publishing, literary output, and quality of writing also evolved.

Few of these anthologies included analyses or commentaries of the selected works. This volume differs from them in this and several other respects.

First, this introduction forms an integral part of the book. It provides an overview, while laying out the principles and considerations underlying the selection of the works included. Second, younger scholars were invited to pen a critical analysis of each short story, with the goal of encouraging more creative understanding and deeper appreciation of the pieces chosen. An outstanding work of fiction should lend itself to diverse interpretations and discussion. As such, the analyses that follow the different pieces are not necessarily consistent with the viewpoints presented in this introduction.

We believe that the author’s interpretation is just one of many possible ways to read the work. While it can be a valuable source of reference, it should not be the sole standard by which the text is to be understood.

Sinophone writing as minor literature

Sinophone Singaporean literature forms one component of the national literature of Singapore, together with writings in the three other official languages: English, Malay, and Tamil. In theory, all have equal official status. However, the exigencies of post-colonial state construction and the transnational nature of globalization have resulted in English becoming seen as the common language bridging the different ethnic communities on the island. English is also seen as the language connecting Singapore to the political and economic power of the West, granting it a privileged status over and above the other official languages. English is now the main language of Singapore society; Chinese, Malay, and Tamil, the languages of the three major ethnic groups, are essentially limited to being used within their own communities.

Yow Cheun Hoe has observed that the Chinese language in

Singapore has in reality, become almost a foreign language ... In the 1980s, following the unification of the four language streams in the national education system, the Chinese school system ceased to exist, and the Chinese language could only be studied as a second language. This marginalization of the Chinese language accentuated its ethnic element, as well as the need to defend it from further encroachment. This ethnic discourse later manifested itself in Sinophone Singaporean literature.²

In mainstream discourse, Singapore is often depicted as a multiracial society whose citizens are bilingual and bicultural. However, the dissymmetry between the languages and cultures that make up this bilingualism and biculturalism has led certain scholars to postulate that the Sinophone sphere and Sinophone literature in Singapore have been constrained by the country’s pluralism.³

This pluralism has been shaped primarily by the policy of multiracialism implemented by the state over many years. From the perspective of social control, this policy has indeed played a part in mitigating potential conflicts among the different ethnic communities. Social stability has helped spur the island’s economic development, bringing affluence to the nation.⁴ While the multiracialism policy has delivered in these respects, it has also pushed race out of the front line of politics.⁵ This policy can be viewed as a continuation of the divide and rule approach introduced during the British colonial era, which rigidly compartmentalizes the different ethnic groups of the island into four distinct racial classifications. It disregards the subtle cultural differences within and between the various ethnic groups,⁶ the consequence being a new form of colonialism which is absent a post-colonial consciousness.⁷ Jumping on the bandwagon of the brand of global multiculturalism exported by Britain and America, this new form of colonialism has resulted in a state of affairs where each ethnic minority community in the metropole constitutes one reified culture in an official multiculturalism.⁸

Anglophone culture dominates in this version of global multiculturalism. Coupled with Singapore’s policy of privileging English as the common language of its citizens, the mother tongues of Singapore’s various ethnic groups have been corralled in their respective communities, removing any possibility of Sinophone governance of the island.⁹

Written Chinese and the various Chinese topolects (especially Hokkien/Minnan) possessed important political and social functions in the daily lives of Singaporeans prior to the 1980s.¹⁰ Today, the Chinese language in Singapore retains only the symbolic role of passing on Chinese cultural traditions. This stands in stark contrast to English, the privileged and neutral language that bridges the island’s different ethnic communities.

The values of modernity and universalism embedded in globalization have found deep resonance in Singapore society. The function of Anglophone culture as the carrier of these values, coupled with its cross-ethnic governance role, have left the Chinese language floundering and forlorn in its solitary function as a symbol of Chinese tradition.

As we look at the history and current state of the Chinese language and culture in Singapore, it is worth examining the concept of the Sinophone, which is defined as a field of multi-lingual, multi-dialectal articulations that constantly challenge and re-define the boundaries of groups, ethnicities, and national affiliations.¹¹

It should be made clear here that the -phone in this case does not refer to language family. The term/concept Sinophone was coined by scholars in the context of postcolonialism and transcolonialism to better describe the pan-Chinese cultural ecosystem and its historical circumstances, to facilitate comparisons to the Anglophone, Francophone and other related concepts. In addition, the concept does not ascribe a privileged status to standard Chinese (Mandarin), which is seen as just one language within the Sinophone, with equal status to the other languages/topolects.

The Sinophone is not colored by ethnic or linguistic chauvinism, for it does not exclude non-Chinese languages. In Singapore, Malaysia, and the former Malaya (of which Singapore was part), the Sinophone includes the various languages spoken by the Chinese settlers, which have evolved to incorporate some common vocabulary of English, Malay, and the languages used by the other local ethnic communities. As comparative literature scholar Sheldon Lu notes: "Shijie or tianxia is not a monologic world speaking one universal language."¹²

Under such consensus, there is no delusion among Sinophone scholars that the shijie (world) or tianxia (land under heaven) should be dominated or unified by a single language, whether this be English or Chinese. Sinophone scholars do not see advocating the Sinophone as a means of displacing English from its dominant position, nor do they believe that not doing so will lead to the undermining of the status of the Chinese han languages.

In Singapore, the Chinese characters for Sinophone (华语语系, huayu yuxi) may trigger sensitivities and elicit disproportionate responses. This often stems from a superficial and literal understanding of the Chinese character 华 (hua). Prior to Singapore’s independence, any endeavor that carried the label hua had to be monitored and regulated, whether during British colonial rule or the Japanese Occupation.

Post-war Sinophone Singaporean writer Zhao Rong (赵戎) shares this account: "They (the colonizers) detested the Chinese, and presumptuously interpreted the word ‘hua’ as a synonym for ‘China’, viewing anything associated with it as a terrible monster ... they assumed that anything with the word ‘hua’ implied a lack of loyalty to local authority."¹³

For Singaporeans of Zhao’s generation who were born and bred on the island, their response to such accusations was to advocate for a localized Chinese literary culture while insisting that the word hua is not a reproduction of China.¹⁴ In different light, the concept of the Sinophone echoes the concerns of Zhao, with both focusing on the localized nature and distinctiveness of Sinophone literature. China may be a vestige of the past, but this does not mean it must necessarily possess a referential function. While the contexts may have changed following Singapore’s independence, one cannot help but feel a sense of déjà vu when one looks back at Zhao Rong’s attempts to differentiate himself from writers from China by focusing on a localized form of literature. With shifts in the global power structure and regional networks, the Sinophone in Singapore has also evolved in how it positions itself and identifies with the colonialisms and nationalisms of this new age. There is certainly a need to re-examine and reflect on what the Sinophone means in Singapore.

Sinophone studies scholar Jing Tsu feels that rather than questioning whether Singapore fits the criteria of Sinophone literature, as some have done, it may be more pertinent to ask whether the concept of Sinophone literature fits Singapore.¹⁵ To some degree, the notion of Sinophone literature fits the context of Chinese-language writing in Singapore. In terms of the use of the language and its role in shaping identity, the Chinese language may have been politically marginalized prior to the 1980s, but its use in society and the education system remained widespread; the majority of the island’s population continued to use the language in their daily lives. Among these Chinese language users, most retained a strong connection to China, though their degree of identification with Chinese culture may vary. The number of Chinese language users declined with the unification of the national education system in the 1980s, with English becoming the main medium of instruction. Many of the writers who grew up under the vernacular education system more than three decades ago continue to write today. Meanwhile, with the emergence of China as a major global power and shifts in the regional and international orders, a younger generation of Chinese language writers educated in English-medium schools have injected new vitality into the literary scene.

In this new stage of development, Sinophone Singaporean literature cannot help but respond to both the China factor and its collateral impacts on local ethnic composition and inter-ethnic relations. In this context, the Sinophone in Singapore has continued its cycle of diminishing and reappearing, revealing a complex internal tension between the positive effects of stronger ties with China and the necessity for adjustments to the construction of the Singapore self-identity. From this perspective, Sinophone Singaporean literature goes beyond being merely one component of the state-constructed national literature (which is based on the four official languages). It can be regarded as minor literature written in a Sinitic language—a memorandum for all Singaporeans. This is especially so for the types of writings that lie beyond the field of vision of those in power, but that remain vibrant on the ground. Sinophone Singaporean literature can be seen as a literature arising from a desire to forget, or a literature that is in constant struggle with being forgotten. Indeed, most Sinophone Singaporean works falls in between the two.

As its name suggests, a memorandum is a piece of text that is meant to jog one’s memory, whether it be a brief note or an informal or semi-formal document (such as a memorandum of understanding or a joint memorandum). In Singapore, the common features of memoranda are the lack of legal enforceability and the absence of a contractual or directive function in the administrative sense. With the minoritization of the Sinophone community in Singapore, Sinophone Singaporean literature possesses a function not unlike that of a memorandum. It constantly struggles between remembrance and oblivion. As such, its historical, political, and symbolic significance may surpass its actual functional significance to the nation.

The early 1980s was a critical period that marked the beginning of the decline of Sinophone Singaporean literature. The mid- to older generation of Sinophone writers who are active today matured and received their education during or before the 1970s. As such, their mother tongues are not the officially designated Mandarin or English, but a variety of Chinese topolects, mainly Hokkien/Minnan, Teochew/Chaozhou, Cantonese/Guangdong, Hakka/Kejia, and Hainanese/Hainan. The introduction of the Speak Mandarin Campaign in 1979 and the unified English-medium education system in the 1980s resulted in a shift in the mother tongues of the Chinese in Singapore from their native Chinese topolects to English and Mandarin, with the former gaining more ground. Some Sinophone Singaporean writers describe the literature of this period as scar literature (伤痕文学).¹⁶ A ban on the use of Chinese topolects in the mass media resulted in a sharp decline in the number of younger Singaporeans who could understand them. At the same time, the efficacy of the Chinese language in society was also curtailed significantly with the growing domination of English.

This shift in the common language used in the social space, coupled with the national system of prioritizing the use of English in the promotion of literature and the arts in the 1990s, meant that Anglophone writing gradually became the staple of Singapore’s national literature. In comparison, younger Sinophone Singaporean writers appear to inhabit a niche space, whether in terms of the community of writers or readers.

What the mid- to older generation of Sinophone Singaporean writers experienced was in fact a continuing deterritorialization of the Sinophone. Unable to stop writing, but equally unable (or unwilling) to adopt the China-centered standard Chinese (汉语, hanyu) in their literary works, the surface structure of their language is imbued with the grammar and vocabulary of their native topolects, English, or Malay, and the influence of local acculturation. They have little choice but to continue writing in a language whose appropriation has been gradually occurring since the early 20th century and that already has symbolic significance to their own identity. This is because they feel an irreducible distance from both the increasingly Anglicized society of Singapore and the increasingly Sinicized society of China. What literature is this then?

One of the important theoretical resources in the emerging field of Sinophone studies is the theory of minor literature proposed by Deleuze and Guattari in their analysis of the works of Kafka.¹⁷ When Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari put forward the concept of minor literature,¹⁸ they raised a crucial question: How many people today live in a language that is not their own?¹⁹

The predicament of the Sinophone in Singapore has resulted in the materialization of three main characteristics of minor literature in Sinophone Singaporean literature: (a) the deterritorialization of language; (b) everything in the literature is political; and (c) everything has a collective value.²⁰ The following paragraphs describe these characteristics in more detail.

According to Deleuze and Guattari, a minor literature does not come from a minor language; it is rather that which a minority constructs within a major language.²¹ In other words, the minor literature of the Chinese in Singapore need not be created in the native languages of the disadvantaged topolect-speaking communities, but can be in the main languages of these same communities (i.e., Mandarin or English). Therefore, examining the Chinese-language literature of Singapore from the perspective of the Sinophone allows us to re-formulate its historical position and confront its present predicament to seek opportunities for breakthroughs.

Broadly speaking, the germination of vernacular Chinese literature in Singapore can be traced to the May Fourth New Literature Movement in China in 1919.²² Over an extended period, Sinophone Singaporean literature developed under the common nomenclature of Mahua literature (Malayan Chinese literature, 马华文学) before gradually manifesting itself in the narrative logic of literary history and literary anthologies. Before Singapore’s separation from Malaysia, many of the early Sinophone Malayan writers lived in Singapore and wrote works that had Singapore as the backdrop. This constituted a large part of the early Mahua literature, continuing even after Singapore achieved independence in 1965. It was only in 1970 that the description Singapore Chinese literature (新加坡华文文学) first appeared in the title of a literary anthology edited by Meng Yi (孟毅)(Wong Meng Voon, 黄孟文), Selected Works of Singapore Chinese Literature (《新加坡华文文学作品选集》).²³

Wong, who was assistant secretary and head of publications in the Ministry of Culture at the time, laid out the main criterion for selection in his editor’s postscript, namely that the author must be a resident of Singapore. This indicated the growing adoption of nationality (as determined by politics) as the primary criterion in defining what constitutes Singapore Chinese literature.²⁴ It is worth noting that when Singapore achieved independence in 1965, Singapore Chinese writers did not immediately relinquish their cultural identity as members of the Mahua literary circle. This implies that the political and literary spheres did not share the same starting point in adopting nationality as the criterion in defining identity. In the literary sphere, the gradual adoption of nationality as the defining principle was a bottom-up process involving the relative degree of the writer’s own identification with the local/national culture, compared to the political sphere, where the process was a top-down designation of the local/national cultural identity of the Sinophone writers.

Distinguishing between the two has helped us in selecting the works to be included in this Reader, ensuring that we do not take the political boundaries created after Singapore’s separation from Malaysia as the sole criterion in determining the local/national consciousness of the literary works. Instead, there is a need to deterritorialize the nationality criterion. The inclusion of several pieces written prior to 1965 in this book is an attempt to break the confines imposed on the literary sphere by the political sphere.

Deterritorialization: Rewriting standard language, representing the oppressed underclass

Singapore writers who write in the Chinese language have always had to deal with conflicted personal identities and collective social negotiations stemming from the marginality and fluidity of their mother tongues and the Chinese language over the island’s history. This was the case whether during the British colonial period, the transition period of the anti-colonial movement, or the era of post-independence nation-building. Even though standard Chinese (Mandarin) began to replace topolects in Singapore from the early 20th century, quickly becoming the standard language of the Chinese education system, topolects continued to be the language most Singapore writers used in their daily lives, allowing them to communicate with different social classes and in various social spaces, where they remained the lingua franca.

They experienced the struggle between topolects and Mandarin during their school education, which also denoted shifting social, political, and class identities. After graduation, they once again had to face language change and a new round of negotiation, this time with the increasing dominance of English, a symbol of the ruling elite. This was how they were socialized, especially in the post-Independence era of social transformation and nation-building. Repeatedly, they had to adapt to new and unfamiliar language environments. As a result, they were constantly reminded of the underclass and its members with whom they formed a community of memories in their shared mother tongues of Chinese topolects. The deterritorialization of language in their writing also implied a deterritorialization of social awareness and national imagination. The language(s) of their memories intersected and collided with the standard language(s) they subsequently acquired, challenging and reconstructing the structures of the latter. At the same time, the social landscapes and inhabitants in their memories entered their writing. All these resulted in the subversion of standard orthodox language and the original high-brow nature of the narrative object, bringing vitality and a refreshing diversity to Sinophone Singaporean literature, showing that the literary world is not an exclusive playground for intellectuals, nor are mortals passive entities for intellectuals to sketch from lofty positions.

The earliest published piece in this Reader is Old Stone Mountain by Zhao Rong, which was written in July 1948. Zhao was born in Singapore in 1920. He claims to have been deprived of an education as a youth, relying solely on self-study. Together with a few others, he founded the poetry society Hou She (吼社) in the pre-war years.²⁵ After World War II, writing under the pseudonym Xi Qiao (西樵), he joined Miao Xiu (苗秀) (writing under the pseudonym Wen Ren Jun [闻人俊]) in the debate on having a distinctive Mahua literature, with the two of them advocating for a localized literary form unique to Malaya. Valuable written records were left of this debate, which had a deep and wide-ranging impact. In their own respective works, Zhao and Miao had long put into practice what they advocated and had already demonstrated how a distinctive Mahua art form was possible.

Old Stone Mountain was written following this controversy and after the Malayan Emergency was declared by the British colonial government. The topolects used by the Chinese in Singapore and Malaya feature prominently in this piece, whether in the title, the dialogue, or the narrative language. Interspersed are terms transliterated from Malay, revealing the vibrant Sinophone ecosystem that existed in the years before independence. The localization that was occurring at this spatio-temporal juncture clearly provided support for the hybridization of these languages, which stood in stark contrast to the textual elegance of scholarly Chinese literary language. Whether in terms of lexicon, semantics, lexemes, phraseology, or morphology, these Singaporean and Malayan terms drawn from Chinese topolects break down the structures and conventions of elegant Chinese (hanyu), constituting the deterritorialization of the latter. Viewed through the prism of orthodox hanyu, these Sinophone words and semantic rules seem to possess an uncouth character.

The strong deterritorialization of language in Sinophone Singaporean literature can already be discerned in the post-war works of Zhao Rong, providing a hint that some characteristics of minor literature may have already begun to manifest themselves in the works of this period. In his later years, Zhao Rong edited the Dictionary of Singaporean and Malaysian Chinese Literature (《新马华文文艺词典》), which included a section on words and phrases influenced by the non-Chinese languages and topolects in the region. According to this dictionary, Old Stone Mountain is a Cantonese term that means rigid and antiquated.²⁶

In this story, rigid and antiquated describes the members of the lumpenproletariat, the underclass of society who have problems getting three meals a day and a roof over their heads. In Marxist theory, the lumpenproletariat refers to a class of outcasts who cannot find lawful employment in a capitalist society and is therefore lost to socially useful production. They become thieves, swindlers, chronic unemployed, prostitutes, beggars, or vagabonds.

Marx and Engels believed that the lumpenproletariat is unlikely to ever achieve class consciousness and is therefore of no use to the revolution, deeming it as the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.²⁷ Taking a different view from Marx and Engels, Mao Zedong, in his 1926 essay Analysis of Classes in Chinese Society, expressed hope that the lumpenproletariat can become brave fighters and a revolutionary force if given proper guidance.²⁸

In this story, Zhao Rong does not take the easy path of either criticizing or placing hope on the lumpenproletariat. Rather, he calmly and objectively depicts the perspectives of several individuals and how they change over time. They include a teahouse owner, tram car passengers, a member of the Japanese Kempeitai, and several members of the lumpenproletariat. It is clear that the author has chosen to neither criticize nor affirm the reprobate lives of the lumpenproletariat from a straightforward moral or political standpoint. Rather, he simply lifts the veil from the mechanisms of ideological control that give rise to unlawful activities.

Also written in 1948 is Wei Bei Hua’s Hands. The protagonist, the jobless Wui Ah Min, makes the decision to give up being a poet to become a coolie in order to make a living. To improve his chances of being hired, he lies to the boss that he is a high school graduate, but this only draws a patronizing response. He later meets with a work accident and loses the use of his right hand. The story deals with the development of his mindset up to that point.

In the historical context of the post-war years, Wui Ah Min cannot be strictly considered a member of the lumpenproletariat. He possesses junior high school qualifications and has already achieved some recognition for his poetry. Yet he cannot find suitable employment. In the end, he decides to work as a coolie, but this results in him becoming disabled. Though he can make a change and continue to write poetry with his left hand, no longer will he be able to lob grenades at an imperialist invader as he did during the Japanese Occupation, nor can his hands sew another national flag.

At the end of the piece, the author writes: Outside, the night was as dark as the waters of the Singapore River at low tide. This not only hints that the protagonist will once again become unemployed and face problems supporting himself, but also intimates an early disillusionment with anti-imperialist and anti-colonial ideals in Singapore.

Viewed through the lens of modernism, Ah Min is merely a proxy of the labor class in the Malayan Chinese realist narrative, existing between art for life’s sake and art for art’s sake. Fate pushes him towards the former, but the author rejects the modernist approach of viewing an individual’s physical and mental desires as literary functions to be explored. However, the narrator reminds us that even if one chooses art for life’s sake, the body and its organs are equally important in the working-class narrative. This piece concentrates on the hands, the main instruments through which the world was forged. It brings to mind the well-known Marxist saying—labor creates the world—and reminds us that Wei Bei Hua wrote this piece at a time when The Internationale was sung around the world. This left-wing anthem contains the line Who is it that created the world of humankind? It is us, the laboring masses. This is echoed in Ah Min’s poem: Labor / created the world. Ironically, it is also Ah Min’s decision to engage in labor that causes him to lose the use of his right hand. Not only does he fail in his attempt to improve his life by getting a job, he is also dispossessed of his imagination that his hands could be used to build the future nation together with the working class. His disillusionment with the ideal that labor creates the world recalls the painful history of the working class, of how the irresistible tide of transnational capitalism has rewritten the ideals of socialist societies over half a century.

If male members of the lumpenproletariat are the protagonists of these first two stories, their female counterparts, in this case, sex workers, are the protagonists of the next four stories: Miao Xiu’s (苗秀) Before Sunrise, Yao Zi’s (姚紫) The Long Dark Night, Zhang Hui’s (张辉) Pak Siew and Ah Siong, and Lin Kang’s (林康) Encounter with a Black Dog.

In Before Sunrise, sex worker Hak Fong openly flirts with Malays and Indians, with whom she also engages in commercial sex, but refuses to become an army prostitute for the Japanese occupiers. The physical body, in this piece, develops a curious resistance; imperialist lust and capital are no match for a woman’s will. Superficially, it appears that the source of this resistance comes from the calamities that have befallen the protagonist’s family and nation: Hak Fong’s family in Guangzhou was killed and her home destroyed when Japan invaded China, resulting in her escaping to the Malay archipelago, before once again fleeing from Kluang to Singapore, her physical flights repeatedly cutting through the political borders on the maps. It is the travails of the nation that has led to the tribulations of her body. Body and nation need not possess a dualistic relationship as in the modernist narrative. Instead, there can be a relationship of coexistence and codependence, with both sharing a similar destiny.

Miao Xiu vividly depicts the sense of patriotism felt by the protagonist (in this case, for China). However, he eschews the precepts of conventional Chinese nationalism, leaving a deep impression on the reader the hospitableness the protagonist shows to her Singapore and Malaya compatriots.

In the 1970s, together with Zhao Rong and Meng Yi, Miao Xiu co-edited the A Comprehensive Anthology of Singapore and Malaysia Chinese Literature (《新马华文文学大系》). Meng Yi made the following observation about Miao Xiu’s fiction in the Introduction: In Singapore and Malaysia, there are many colloquialisms (drawn from languages that include Hokkien/Minnan, Cantonese/Guangdong, Hakka/Kejia, Malay, and English), which have erased the boundaries between different ethnicities or Chinese of different ancestral origins, becoming a common language that everyone can understand.²⁹ In Before Sunrise, Hak Fong’s dialogue is interspersed with Cantonese and transliterated Malay terms. However, compared to Zhao Rong, Miao is more sparing in the use of topolect words in his works of this period, using them more in the dialogue than in the narrative.³⁰

Yao Zi’s The Long Dark Night was written in 1951 while Zhang Hui’s Pak Siew and Ah Siong was written between 1991 and 1992. Both stories feature relationships between sex workers and trishaw men in Singapore’s Keong Saik Road, which provides a valuable opportunity for intertextual comparison.

Miss Fung, the protagonist in The Long Dark Night is a popular prostitute who was sold by her parents at the age of seven. She became a pei pa chai (singsong girl) at sixteen but was reduced to working as a prostitute in her twenties. Ah Han, a trishaw man secretly in love with her, cannot afford to hire the services of such a popular girl. Instead, he contracts syphilis from a low-class prostitute and is roundly told off by Miss Fung. Miss Fung later realizes his true feelings for her, but it is already too late; she has already contracted a venereal disease. In the end, she tips him handsomely and kills herself by drinking bleach.

This Singapore version of the traditional courtesan tale involving a prostitute and her patron could easily have ended with the melodramatic deaths of the two lovers, but Yao Zi concludes the story in an almost matter-of-fact tone. In traditional Chinese stories of gifted scholars and beautiful maidens, there are often declarations of eternal love by the courtesan and the scholar to highlight how both have transgressed the boundaries of social class. In many cases, one is eventually resurrected from death at the end, with their reunion becoming a celebration of the beauty of love. In the post-war years, Singapore’s red-light district was the haunt of rich businessmen and trishaw men. The pei pa chai ostensibly entertain their clients without selling their bodies. However, most eventually become sexual playthings of the rich and powerful. In this story, the prostitute replaces the pei pa chai, while the trishaw man takes on the traditional role of the scholar.

Under the backdrop of the anti-yellow movement in Singapore in the 1950s, Yao Zi’s short story was criticized in the literary world as pornographic and an offence to public decency. This caused the author much anguish and distress.³¹ However, what Yao Zi did was merely to sketch meticulously the lives of the underclass, in this case, a prostitute and a trishaw man, constructing subjectivity under the backdrop of the anti-colonial movement. This is not unlike what other authors such as Zhao Rong, Miao Xiu, and Wei Bei Hua did in the same period, which is to provide a larger historical narrative beyond the rational and resonant tellings of the stories of independence fighters and nationalists, through writings that detail the lives and emotions of the subaltern.

Pak Siew and Ah Siong, written four decades later, is almost a retelling of the romance depicted in The Long Dark Night. Other than describing the relationship between a prostitute and a trishaw man, the piece also resurrects from the repressed collective memory the weighty history of the struggle to safeguard Chinese education.

Like many writings of the 1980s and 1990s that bemoan the decline of the Chinese language in Singapore, this work is a tale of the self-redemptive efforts of an ethnic community. The history of the founding of the now-demised Nanyang University forms the backdrop of this love story. Though they also belong to the underclass of society, the circumstances of the two protagonists in this story are not as dire as that of the protagonists in The Long Dark Night. They take part in the many yita (义踏, charity trishaw rides), yiwu (义舞, charity dances), and yiyan (义演, charity stage performances) organized by the local Chinese community to raise funds for a people’s university, representing the community’s collective aspiration to upgrade itself.

The writer does not place the historical weight of Nanyang University directly on the shoulders of these ordinary citizens. Rather, he deftly uses the yearning of the elderly Ah Siong for Pak Siew in the moments before his death to mourn the very real yet distant dream of the Chinese of that generation.

For the cabaret girl Pak Siew, her greatest dream was for her five-year-old son to eventually get into Nanyang University. To her, this would mean that her suffering and the smiles she forces herself to give her customers would not have been for nothing. As for the trishaw rider Ah Siong, his desire lay in the fragrance of Pak Siew and the sound of her voice. Because of the many charity events to raise funds for Nanyang University, they had a common topic to talk about and her smile, her scent, and her voice soon became etched in his heart.

The great irony of this piece lies in the fact that Pak Siew’s dream may not have gone the way she expected. Even had her son eventually graduated from Nanyang University, he would, at best, have been labelled as Chinese-educated in the mainstream discourse of Singapore. With English holding sway in society, one wonders if his fate would have been similar to that of his mother, trapped in a nightmare of suffering and forced smiles.

Lin Kang’s Encounter with a Black Dog also involves a female protagonist who makes a living entertaining men. Here, the features of the bar girl working in post-independence Singapore are more indistinct. As sketched by the writer, this popular mature bar girl morphs into someone with a Malay name and a number: Abdullah 37. The patrilineal Malay name may hint at her ethnic origin, but the author does not highlight the ethnicity or gender of the protagonist. She is given this nomenclature by the bar she works at, implying that the women who work there are mere commodities in the eyes of the male patrons.

The first-person narrator, I is bewildered: I never liked referring to a person by a number. Though I eventually becomes intimate partners with Abdullah 37, her real name is never revealed. It is possible she does not want any part of her real name to be known. Even at the end, after she has left her seedy profession and settled down, she is resolute in severing her ties with I so as not to run the risk that her son, returning from his studies overseas, will find out about her unsavory past. Like a stray dog, I exists in a state of anxiety from the beginning to the end. The description of an old black dog barking at I on the street at the beginning of the story foreshadows the frustration and panic felt by I at having no home to return to.

This work uses the perspective of the elderly protagonist to reflect on the act of giving and taking in human relationships. Whether in the unconditional support I provides the bar girl, the physical yearning I still feels for his late wife, or the heartfelt connection I shares with his old classmates and buddies (who later become his business partners) with whom he has weathered many ups and downs, such ties of love, friendship, or kinship have, in today’s society where transnational capitalism has usurped human values, become akin to a relationship between a human and an animal. The tie is one that is severed when the transactional relationship ends.

How has transnational capitalism resulted in the Chinese in Singapore celebrating Christmas as a traditional festival and not as an invention of Singapore’s modernity? This is portrayed vividly in Chia Joo Ming’s (谢裕民) Squat to Face Tradition or Sit to See Modernity. The story uses the traditional squat toilet and the modern Western toilet as its proposition to interrogate the concepts of home, tradition, and natural instinct with humor and profundity.

The two protagonists of the story live together but are not married. Though they have acquired a heritage house in their joint names, they experience problems adapting in their quest for a sense of home. One problem is the squat toilet in the house. The female protagonist is unable to do her business on the traditional toilet, while the male protagonist takes to it easily. Ultimately, this affects their sex life. The female protagonist would rather use the toilet in a hotel than the squat toilet at home. Ironically, it is the female protagonist who says from time to time, Ultimately, we all have to turn back to tradition, hinting to the male protagonist that he needs to eventually think about marrying her and setting up a family.

The male protagonist avoids confronting this tradition for his understanding of what a home is differs from others. Drawing from the Singapore socioeconomic context, the writer re-interprets and deconstructs the pictophonetic characters for home. In modern Singapore, home is no longer seen as the rearing of pigs (豕) under a traditional roof. Instead, a home is now supplied with water and power by the Public Utilities Board (PUB) and funded by the Central Provident Fund (CPF). Thus, the male and female protagonists dismantle the Chinese characters for home, replacing the character pig with the characters for electricity, water and English acronyms (PUB, CPF). By ingeniously using these created words to subvert traditional Chinese characters, the writer deterritorializes elegant Chinese (hanzi) even as he vividly shows how many Singaporeans view tradition and modernity.

Chen Shi’s (陈石) Li Yin’s Search for Self depicts the nomadic lifestyle and fractured thinking of a new generation of urban dwellers in Singapore in the late 20th century. In a deterritorialized time and space, the protagonist, Li Yin, wander[s] aimlessly before boarding a bus. She [does] not know where to go and realize[s] there [are] road works everywhere … She [finds] everywhere the same. The author’s own ancestry can be traced to Kinmen (Jinmen), Fujian, and the story mentions how Li Yin and her mother attempt to question the father on how he could so unhesitatingly decide that the family’s identity is Kinmenese. Li’s angst does not come from an inability to identify with either Singapore or Kinmen but originates from her being from the generation raised under Singapore’s bilingual education policy. As a product of this policy, she has long abandoned the search for a single pure language to which she could bind her identity. Instead, she makes the choice to remain a multilingual nomad.

The story features many unconventional sentences in which English and Singlish (Singapore English) terms are interspersed with the original Chinese text, revealing the creolized linguistic ecosystem that the younger generation of Chinese in Singapore exist in. These topolects and colloquialisms, pronounced and spelled in different ways, meet, cross, and collide, creating a variety of mismatched terms and phrases, not unlike Kafka’s description: Almost every word I write jars up against the next.³² These unconventional words disrupt the structure and grammar of elegant Chinese and orthodox English. In other words, Li Yin’s search for identity is an act of deterritorialization of the Chinese and English languages; the jumbling of the morphologies and structures of both languages without any logical pattern or standards is an attempt by Li Yin and others of her generation to reconstruct their multiple identities.

The most recent work in this Reader is the story No More Than Her and Him/At the End(s) of the Day which won the top prize in the Singapore Golden Point Awards 2011. The author, Tor Kok Choon, writing under the pseudonym Tong Nuan (佟暖), was born in 1950 in Singapore. In this short story, the babel of languages is used as a device to sketch the unjust reality experienced by nine elderly Chinese Singaporeans from the lower-income group who undergo vocational retraining (in truth, merely an introductory English class).

It weaves the life stories of the nine senior citizens into a people’s version of the Singapore Story. At the start of their class, their English teacher gestures to the words We are Singapore on the board and gives the nine students Western names, each starting with one letter of SINGAPORE. We are Singapore happens to be the title of the official theme song of Singapore’s National Day in 1987, which was also the year that the national education system became completely Anglicized. A line in the English lyrics (drawn from the Singapore National Pledge) goes: To build a democratic society, based on justice and equality. Indeed, that was the promise given that year as the justification for the shift of the national education system to the English medium.

In the story, Selina, a social worker, is the only trainee who knows some English. A Christian, her purpose in joining the class is to proselytize to the other students. She feels vexed by the many errors in the Chinese text printed on the bilingual course materials and begins to feel that the English class exists merely to dupe these seniors. The English teacher explains that the Chinese text is translated by machine and should not be taken seriously. Selina finds enjoyment evangelizing to Raymond,