One of the most interesting things I have learnt in my Teochew lessons is that Teochew has a written form. I have always thought that Teochew (and the other dialects) have the same written form but due to regional and geographical distances, are spoken differently. I was wrong apparently.

A friend sent me the passages below earlier this week. It is a rather amusing monologue of an irate schoolgirl ranting about her teacher. The monologue is in Classical Chinese (wenyanwen), Mandarin (putonghua), Cantonese (Yueyu) and Southern Min (Minnan). While Teochew belongs to the Minan school, the interesting thing is that I actually find that the words used in Classical Chinese version more familiar, because I have come across them in my Teochew classes. Of course, I understand the Mandarin version - had to struggle with it for at least 10 years of my life!

( A Schoolgirl's Rant  )

If anyone is interested, drop me a note, we can go down together :-)

I admit, I am not a great fan of poetry - my first experience was with Shakespeare's sonnets, and my response was to run far far away. Occasionally though, dragged kicking and screaming, I find myself enjoying some poetry - Seamus Heaney, John Milton, heck, even some of the metaphysical poets like John Donne were fun - always to my surprise.

I never heard of Elizabeth Alexander until recently, when news emerged that she has been selected as the Inaugural Poet for Obama's inauguration. And I did what every net-savy person do nowadays, I Googled her. 

Turns out that her poems are online (big surprise) and they are, surprisingly (for a person who always fliched from poetry that is) good, the couple that I read at any rate. A Huffington Post article quoted The Times Book Review describing her work as "intellectual magic". It sounds about right. The poem I have reproduced below is apparently one of her most well-known poem - and I liked it because it takes something that actually occured in history - something that in modern times is outrageous - and turns it into something beautiful - horrifying but not angry.

I also found a recording of an interview she had with Poetry Foundation, and one statement she made me think that perhaps there is not that great a difference between lawyers and poets after all:

"We think what we do is important because we struggle to be precise and that is how human beings communicate across divides, communciates across differences. We take that work dead seriously and that is the work we want our leaders to be engaged in with equal care."

Amen.

( The Venus Hottentot (1825) )

Reminisicing

2008 was a year of many endings.

Many Deaths...
2008 stood out for the sheer number of deaths that impacted me - Arthur C Clarke, Samuel Huntington, J.B. Jeyaretnam, Loh Hwei Yen

Arthur C Clarke(16 December 1917–19 March 2008)
Arthur C Clarke was the favourite author of my childhood - I spent hours in the library reading his books, and when my secondary school cleared out its library in preparation for the move to the new campus, I picked my way through the garbage centre in the school compound, picking up ragged copies of his books, many missing their covers or with pages dangling. These books accompanied me through many years, many of them finally disintegrating with so much use. Arthur C Clarke  introduced me to the mysteries and wonders of science and, in particular astronomy, and opened my mind to the sheer possibilities and potential (and limitations) of mankind. He was also probably single-handedly responsible for my dreams of being an astronomer, and even though I have since walked down a vastly different path, I still retain my childhood love and respect of science and most importantly, my appreciation of just how wonderful and amazing the real world can be in itself, without the need for the leavening of the super-natural, in no small part thanks to this man.

Samuel Huntington (18 April 1927–December 24, 2008)
Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order was a significant part of my A Levels education - History was my joy and passion during those years, and Samuel Huntington brought to mind the happy days spent sitting in class discussing the use and purpose of history, whether it can ever reach the kind of acceptance that economics and other social sciences seems to have achieved etc etc. He opened my eyes to the importance of culture, and lit in me a desire that still exists today to understand more about different countries, different cultures and how these influence how people think, how they make decisions, and ultimately how the world ticks.

The ideas of these two men have a significant role in who I am today - a person who strives to be a rationalist, and with an appreciation of culture and the arts. A lawyer who volunteers at the Asian Civilisation Museum, an atheist who is interested in religion, a person who likes to ask "why", a person who strives to understand the world - politically, culturally, scientifically.

Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam (5 January 1926 - 30 September 2008)
Closer to home, the death of JBJ was unexpected. He was my introduction to Singapore opposition politics, which was sparked when my parents return from an opposition rally being conducted at the car park just below our block of flats - I remembered looking up wide-eyed when my dad entered our flat, while in the middle of a conversation with mum, saying - "he will be sued, for sure." "He" is of course JBJ, who was indeed sued by the then Prime Minister (now Minister Mentor) for making allegedly defamatory remarks. I remembered watching him hawk books in Raffles Place, and observing people discreetly pressing money into his hands that far exceed the cost of each book. At first I wondered, why would anyone help a man like that? As I grew older, I understand that it is precisely men like that who we should respect - men who lived for their principles, and not for a multi-million dollar salary. I remembered meeting his son, then President of the Law Society during a seminar by Michael Caplan QC on the Pinochet affair, and wondering, just what does the son think of his father's politics. I may not like his "angry" brand of politics but I respect him as a man of principles and a man who had sacrificed his material comfort in pursuit of these principles. I am not sure that I will ever have that ability to do so.

Loh Hwei Yen (1980 - 27 November 2008) 
Hwei Yen - I still do not know how to respond to her death. I don't know her but her death hit way too close to home. One year my junior in law school, married to the brother of one of my hall mates, worked in the same two law firms I have worked in and am currently working in, gunned down in a terrorist attack on a hotel that almost every Singaporean lawyer will stay in if they are in Mumbai for a business trip. Our paths must have crossed numerous times - during school days, at office functions, at weddings and parties. I remembered the shock that went through my office when news of her death came out - almost all of us know her or someone who is connected to her - she is one of us - the illusion that most of us had been under - that we are relatively safe being but a insignificant little red dot with little political or economic clout in the world, and personally as non-combat professionals who are as far from the frontline as it can be - shattered with her death.

( Other Endings ... )

2008 was a year of many endings but every ending is a new beginning ...

Finally got round to developing my B&W photos taken on my Holga for the Borobudor trip. Enjoy!

( Warning - Image Heavy! )

STRAITS TIMES
Aug 11, 2007


Big Fool Lee made its points well


BIG IMPACT: Jeffrey Low plays iconic Cantonese radio storyteller Lee Dai Soh. -- PHOTO: TOY FACTORY


I WATCHED Toy Factory's Big Fool Lee the same day I read Hong Xinyi's review of the play (Big Fool Was No Fool, Life!, Aug 4).
I came out of the Drama Centre pondering how a play with a fairly straightforward delivery could garner a rather contentious review.

Hong pondered the logic of having Justice Bao and the Monkey God as the alter-egos of Lee.

Perhaps she could not identify with the fact that the imagination of Lee, coupled with his gift of gab, captivated thousands of audiences.

By portraying his inner mental state with such dramatic manifestations, the play showed the audience what made the man tick.

Needless to say, by pulling two characters from his stories to demonstrate his thoughts, the play closes the theatrical device loop pretty well too.

The reviewer also dismissed the play's portrayal of the Speak Mandarin Campaign as heavy-handed. She lamented that the comparison of the campaign with the Cultural Revolution in China was somewhat ridiculous.

I think she had missed the point by looking for such a simplistic link. It was plain that the play was trying to draw comparisons between the campaign and the revolution.

Both came about from political directives, both disgorged entire generations of people, and both left an indelible mark on the citizens of the countries.

To Lee, the campaign took away his livelihood and his passion in life. That he refused to use Mandarin to tell his stories speaks volumes of how the campaign must have alienated people in his generation.

Ridiculous or not, what we know for a fact is that families in Singapore grew stratified, with an entire generation of grandparents not understanding their grandchildren.

The reviewer ends by stating her estrangement from the play as she was born after the Speak Mandarin Campaign. I think this is salient as it explains why she could not relate to the ideas in it.


Steve Tan Peng Hoe

Coincidence ...

By sheer coincidence, it was exactly 364 days since I last stepped into the Drama Centre. On 9 August 2006, I went with my friends and colleagues to watch The Campaign to Confer the Public Service Award on JBJ. On 8 August 2007, I went alone to watch Big Fool Lee. Given that I had no idea where Drama Centre was prior to the day of the play itself, and given that I had no idea that Big Fool Lee was a social commentary (I can't really miss that point with The Campaign), I have to conclude that it was sheer coincidence that saw me spending the evening of National Day in 2006, and the eve thereof in 2007, in the Drama Centre watching plays that are actually social commentaries.

Memories ...

A child of the 80s, I had heard the voice of Big Fool Lee on Rediffusion. My maternal grandmother, and my next door neighbours had subscriptions, and his melodious voice, rolling out words I don't understand, formed the background of many memories - be it noisily trading dinosaur stickers with my neighbours in their flat, or idling, half-dozing on my mother's lap at my grandmother's house. But I never knew the name of the speaker, or who he was. I just knew that the older generation had their own radio channel, that communicates in a language that we kids do not understand - the Speak Mandarin Campaign in those days was to encourage Singaporeans to speak Mandarin, instead of dialect. My parents actively discouraged me from speaking Teochew, the language of my elders.

I remembered in my secondary school days, I picked up a book by Chee Soon Juan (then infamous for his hunger strike) - I believe it is Dare to Change. I read the first couple of chapters and dismissed him as not worthy of my time (a conclusion that I still retained by the way) - one of the things he wrote was that Singapore of old had, in the wild fusion of Chinese dialects, Malay dialects etc, all the necessary ingredients of a unique and rich culture, but the Singapore (PAP) government had obliterated that by embarking on the Speak Mandarin Campaign and the imposition of English as the working language of the races. I pointed out that passage to my friend who was at MPH (Parkway) with me at that time, and we mocked his crazy sentimentalism - if the Singapore government had not taken steps to ensure that all Chinese Singaporeans speak Mandarin, how on earth is Singapore as a society going to function with so much fragmentation? The brashness of youth - looking only to the future and oblivious to the price that is paid for that future...

Last Evening ....

Last evening at the Drama Centre - these half-forgotten memories revived in my mind. Before this, I never thought that the Speak Mandarin Campaign was in anyway equivalent to the Cultural Revolution. Thinking back though, were the dialect speakers not forced to put on metaphorical dunce caps during the Speak Mandarin Campaigns of the 1980s? If I am honest with myself, is it not true that a part of me that believes that Hokkien, Cantonese, Teochew etc are bastardisation of Mandarin? That only the uneducated speak dialects? When the young manager fired Big Fool Lee from his job at the radio station, his language and mannerisms were uncomfortably real - did I not use such language, such mannerisms when I speak to my Teochew and Mandarin-speaking parents and relatives from time to time?

An Uncomfortable Disconnect ...

During the play, I was unable to pay full attention to the stage as I had to keep looking at the written English translations on both side of the stages since a large part of the dialogue was in Cantonese and the other dialects. It resulted in a perculiar disconnect - when I watch plays, I usually immerse myself into the world created on stage. This time round, I was curiously unable to do so. And it is not just me - the audience around me were similarly torn between the translations and the stage actions. Is this disconnect part of the message the play is trying to transmit? It was a powerful demonstration of the generation gap - we literally cannot communicate anymore.

And yet, this is more serious than what we usually consider to be the generation gap - it is a complete break in the transmission of cultural values and heritage. My grandparents spoke Teochew, and my father told me a long time ago when I was still a child, that had my grandfather been alive, he would have told me stories from Hong Lou Meng, Shui Hu Chuan, San Guo Yan Yi, all in Teochew of course. My father told me bedtime stories in Mandarin of the Three Little Pigs, Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella. He did so in the belief that an English education, Western culture is the route to success in Singapore. Events have proved him right (thus far) but what was the price that was paid for that sucess? A family living in two distinct worlds, each generation looking on as the play of the other generation goes on - unable to understand or comprehend what is happening without the aid of clumsy translations by the side. Can a nation exist or even start to form where there is no transmission of memory, no common language to reach across generations?

A Singapore Culture...

A foreign director from China came to Singapore, with dreams of directing a masterpiece of a play about the great poet Li Bai. Mocking Singapore arts scene, Singapore talent, Singapore history, derisively asking if all that Singapore can present is this Big Fool Lee. A Westernised marketing manager, who pours scorn on the idea that a play about an almost forgotten Singapore icon can be commercially successful, using statistics and numbers to back up her claims. We have our history, we have our heritage, stretching beyond 1965 or even 1918 - but do we remember this history, do we respect this heritage? Do we care enough to discuss the impact of our break-neck pursuit of economic success, to debate different versions or different viewpoints of historical events? Or do we, in typical pragmatic style, ruthlessly discard everything that has become irrelevant, deemed unimportant, economically no longer viable, irregardless of their earlier contribution, whether economically, socially or culturally? Do we just look forward, and forget that the past holds the keys to our present and our future? Until we manage to achieve a balance between a historical consciousness and the pursuit of progress, can an authentic Singapore culture, one that every succeeding generation of Singaporeans will inherit from their precedessor and build on and pass on to their successor, ever really crystallise?

I actually missed this article on the Business Times - luckily some kind soul posted it on the Singapore Heritage mailing list, so I managed to read it tonight. Posted below for your reading pleasure too.

I don't blame Singaporeans for not knowing who Dr. Goh Keng Swee is - it is so rare to hear of our pioneer politicans and leaders in the press nowadays (other than Lee Kuan Yew of course), that is it any surprise that we don't know who they are anymore? I myself only learnt of Dr. Goh when he wrote a few books on economic development back in the days when I was in secondary school, and the newspapers spoke about how he is the genius behind our miraculous economic development (those were the days before the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis). But to actually think that China had only one emperor in its history - seriously ... sigh.

................................

I just completed my Econs exam today, and I am fairly certain I failed. I am just too tired now to think about the repercussions right now, and I need to focus on the Management Accounting paper next Saturday rather than crying over split milk. Sigh ... Was sorting through the accumulated e-mails and found this really interesting article, taken from The Straits Times. Don't get your hopes up - this is an article by a Sydney-based writer, ST probably syndicated it or something. Very interesting, though I am still having post-paper headache, so will do a commentary sometime in future. 

More stuff - this time from The Economist