by Gwee Li Sui
In any case, we were in a somewhat debauched and colourful area with many passers-by, and it was no hardship to pause a while in such a bustling area. The few of us chatted away, watching the world go by, and time passed swiftly.
About twenty minutes later, our friend reappeared from “upstairs” and finally revealed the secret behind his temporary disappearance, by frankly announcing to us that he had just been whoring. Whoring? He was certainly a fast worker. Even after we left the Great Southern Hotel, he was still describing the process to us in detail. Smilingly, he told us that, when he walked in the door, the woman saw that he was not taking action immediately and said, “How about it?” That was when he began undressing. From his expression, he seemed satisfied with that exchange. And we all understood how the need for sex could arise in someone’s solitary middle age. But the puzzle remained: why so urgent?
Although we often visited him at his dwelling, all we knew about him were his present circumstances. His smart appearance gave the impression of both neatness and austerity. Besides that, he spoke Mandarin with great precision and expressiveness, and, among our group, all of whom were ten or more years younger than him, the role he played was usually that of elder brother. When we took a taxi, he would always insist on paying. And, when we left him to go somewhere else, he would first lean in the window and press the fare into the driver’s hand, before saying goodbye to us.
He never mentioned which province of China he was from, and we never dared to ask. He treated his own past as if it was some kind of enormous secret. We could sense that there was some great difficulty behind him and that he felt resentment towards many things in his present situation. How could we know this? A slip of paper lay pressed beneath the glass top of his desk, on which were the words “I have the right to take my own life.” Wasn’t this a threat of suicide aimed against himself? I’ve never seen anyone else do this. Clearly, his days were not happy ones. Yet, we all felt unable to do anything, and so we just worried that he might find it too much one day, and we would lose a good friend.
I’ve known many talented individuals, and he is certainly among that number. I could also describe him as multi-talented. To start with, he could write in Chinese, producing many elegant essays and stories. He was also very interested in photography. For a while, two young ladies and I served as his models. When I graduated from university, he came to the ceremony especially to take some pictures that he developed himself so that I could keep them as remembrance – and he refused to accept a cent for it. He was skilled at drawing, could sketch an extremely lifelike self-portrait, and was a first-rate calligrapher. When writing letters, he insisted on using a special pen on carefully folded translucent paper. Every picture and letter that he ever gave me has turned into a treasure to be kept for my whole lifetime. His English was good to start with, and, after he had worked hard to improve it, he could translate classical Chinese poems into English and even published some of his translations in book form. He had worked as an editor for a newspaper’s film supplement, showing that he had a deep understanding of this branch of artistry too. I lost touch with him for many years but am sure he had contributions and achievements in other areas too. For instance, when the internet age arrived, I heard that he took to this new medium with ease, gaining many fans online too.
The bizarre thing is: a man who, when young, seemed impatient with life, managed to reach a greater age than most people ever do. This last point is something neither he nor anyone else could have dreamt up.
3. Little Shanghai
In secondary school, the vast majority of my classmates were Teochew. Only one was Shanghainese, a boy who had come south to Singapore with his parents.
I had heard that the Shanghainese made good tailors, and, sure enough, that classmate’s father had a clothes shop on a side street off Orchard Road. Sometimes, we would follow our Shanghainese friend to the shop after school.
I thought: So let’s call this guy Little Shanghai.
I believe that even in friendships between classmates, destiny has a part to play. In a class of thirty-odd students, I was especially close to Little Shanghai not because we had much in common – unlike me, he loved basketball and spent all his time outside class on the court until his skin was tanned as dark as charcoal. I was happy to regard him as my confidant essentially because he was honest and loyal. Little Shanghai knew that some of the brightest people in our class thought that he was stupid and looked down on him, even making fun of him or sending cruel words his way. I never once treated him this way, and so he began spending more and more time with me.
Just before the Cultural Revolution in China, many students from Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and such places left their homes and headed north in order to put their ideals into practice and to contribute something to the nation they regarded as their motherland. Little Shanghai was a passionate drop of water in that mighty wave. We lost touch after that. I have no idea what his days were like during this period of unprecedented turmoil. All I know is that he left the raging sea, fleeing his battle post for Hong Kong. By that time, Little Shanghai was a married man with two sons. He still had my home address with him, and so we got in contact again.
I know that, when Little Shanghai was in Hong Kong, he made his living as a company accountant. A kind person like him who kept his head down was never going to enjoy meteoric career success. Then again, to live a life free of cold and hunger, with a clear conscience, is better than anything else in the world.
During that period, Little Shanghai and I met twice: once when I went on a trip to Beijing and other places with a literary organisation, passing through Hong Kong on my way back. He had just bought a little car and drove me round sightseeing. The other occasion was when I participated in a poetry conference in Hong Kong and took the opportunity to stay with him in his home at Ho Man Tin so that we could spend more time together.
Little Shanghai was hardworking and frugal and had managed to buy a private detached house, albeit an unimaginably tiny one. I went with the flow, but my wife could not resist shedding tears at the sight. Still, she was moved by Little Shanghai’s warm treatment of us. Not only did he cook us dinner personally – an authentic Shanghainese meal of tatsoi, soybeans, and ham – but he also took us to a little restaurant for soup dumplings.
At that time, it was no easy matter to get a book published in Singapore partly because printing costs were so high and partly because it would be hard to sell. I suddenly had a thought: Why not send the manuscript to Hong Kong, and Little Shanghai could help with these two tasks? When I mentioned it to him, he was happy to agree, and so that book of mine was printed, and I made back my investment in it. I can imagine how much time and effort Little Shanghai must have sacrificed for the sake of that book.
When Little Shanghai was in Hong Kong, I frequently wrote to ask him, “Why not find an opportunity to visit Singapore, to see your relatives and old classmates?” He always replied that he would have to put his own life in order first. The years passed by, and he never managed to make it happen. In the end, we just exchanged greeting cards as a way of telling each other we were still alive and well. Some years ago though, I sent Little Shanghai a card and never got one back. Even worse, I’ve searched everywhere for it but can’t find his address anywhere. And so the two of us, former classmates who were devoted to each other, lost touch just like that, drifting away from each other in the vast sea of humanity. By now, we’re both in our seventies, and I keep wondering as I write these nostalgic words whether he remains full of vigour in his old age, whether he too thinks of his old classmate from time to time somewhere else beneath the same sky.
About the Authors
BANI HAYKAL [Young Artist Award, 2013]
Writer and musician Bani Haykal has participated in various festivals, including the World Event Young Artists, the da:ns Festival, and the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival. He has also toured – both as a solo musician and with the Singapore band The Observatory – in Franc
e, Italy, and Norway. A vocalist and songwriter for B-Quartet, he has collaborated with the music collective Mux and audio-visual performance group Offcuff. As a solo musician, he has released three records: “Ergophobia”, “How I Got Lost and Died Trying”, and “Sketches of Syllables”, which explore structured improvisation and spoken word.
CHONG TZE CHIEN [Young Artist Award, 2006]
Published playwright and director Chong Tze Chien has won numerous awards, including the Singapore Dramatist Award and The Straits Times Life! Theatre Awards. He also writes frequently for local television channels as well as local films, including Gurushetram, Singapore’s first Tamil feature film, which has been sold to India and neighbouring countries. He received the Young Artist Award in 2006. He is currently the Company Director of The Finger Players, one of Singapore’s leading theatre companies.
CYRIL WONG [Young Artist Award, 2005]
Cyril Wong is the Singapore Literature Prize-winning author of several poetry collections, including Unmarked Treasure, Tilting Our Plates to Catch the Light, and The Dictator’s Eyebrow. He has also published a collection of stories, Let Me Tell You Something About That Night, and a novel, The Last Lesson of Mrs De Souza. He completed his doctoral degree in literary studies at the National University of Singapore in 2012 and received the Young Artist Award in 2005.
DAREN SHIAU [Young Artist Award, 2002]
Daren Shiau is a fiction writer, poet, and lawyer in private practice. He has been described by The Arts Magazine as “among the most exciting of the post-1965 generation of writers”. Heartland (1999), which was cited by Lonely Planet as the “definitive Singapore novel”, received the Singapore Literature Prize Commendation Award in 1998. An author of four books including Peninsular: Archipelagos and Other Islands (2000) and Velouria (2007), his stories and poems have been translated into several languages and anthologised in Italy, Germany, and Australia. A Young Artist Award recipient in 2002, Shiau has been invited to read in New York, Boston, London, and Sydney.
GABRIEL WU YEOW CHONG 吴耀宗 [Young Artist Award, 1998]
Gabriel Wu Yeow Chong is an academic, poet, and fiction writer. He has a doctorate in Chinese literature from the University of Washington in Seattle. Wu taught for a few years in the National University of Singapore before joining the City University of Hong Kong in 2006 as an Assistant Professor. In creative writing, he has published four collections of poems: 心軟 [Tender Heart; 1988], 孤獨自成風暴 [When Loneliness Becomes a Storm; 1995], 半存在 [A Half-Existence; 2008], and 逐想像而居 [Live Where the Imagination Is; 2015]. He has two collections of short stories and micro-fiction, 人間秀氣 [Delicacy; 1990] and 火般冷 [Cold as Fire; 2002]. Wu has received various awards, including First Prize in the 1994 ASEAN Youth Literary Award, the 1998 Young Artist Award, and the 2010 Singapore Literature Prize. He served several times as the judge of Singapore’s Golden Point Award.
ANN JONG JUAN 韩永元 (HAN LAO DA 韩劳达) [Cultural Medallion, 1990]
A veteran playwright and director, Han Lao Da has been active in Singapore’s Chinese theatre and crosstalk scene for more than forty years. He has staged a total of more than twenty long and short plays and over forty original crosstalk scripts. Awarded the Cultural Medallion in 1990, he has been an active force in promoting the cultural exchange between China and Singapore by introducing crosstalk and theatre groups from China to Singapore. In 2013, he created a play with crosstalk elements entitled Unsolved Mysteries of Lion City.
HARESH SHARMA [Young Artist Award, 1997]
Resident playwright of The Necessary Stage, Haresh Sharma has written more than a hundred plays which have been staged in fifteen cities. His play Off Centre was selected by the Ministry of Education as a literature text for N and O-Levels in 2006. In 2008, Ethos Books published Interlogue: Studies in Singapore Literature, Volume 6, an extensive investigation of his work over the past twenty years. Sharma was awarded “Best Original Script” for Fundamentally Happy, Good People, and Gemuk Girls at The Straits Times Life! Theatre Awards in 2007, 2008, and 2009 respectively. In 2011, he was named the Goldberg Master Playwright by New York University.
HENRY LOW SWEE KIM 刘瑞金 [Young Artist Award, 1999]
Henry Low Swee Kim is currently teaching Chinese language and literature at Tampines Junior College. He has a Master’s degree in Chinese studies from the National University of Singapore. His first volume of poetry, 若是有情 [Love Hypothesis; 1994], was followed by 用一种回忆拼凑叫神话 [Myths Recollected from Memoir Fragments; 1996]. In 1999, he received the Young Artist Award. 众山围绕 [Surrounded by the Mountains], his first collection of essays, was published in 2001. Low is the Vice-President of the Singapore Association of Writers and the editor of a number of publications, including 新华文学 [Singaporean Chinese Literature], a half-yearly literary periodical.
HO MINFONG [Cultural Medallion, 1997]
Born in Myanmar, raised in Thailand, and now dividing her time between Singapore and New York, Ho Minfong published her first book, Sing to the Dawn, over thirty years ago. Awarded First Prize by the Council of Interracial Books for Children in New York in 1975, this much-loved story was adapted into an extremely popular musical in 1996 and a full-length feature animation in 2008. Since then, Minfong has written several notable novels for young adults such as Rice Without Rain, The Clay Marble, and The Stone Goddess and numerous short stories to critical acclaim.
ISA KAMARI [Cultural Medallion, 2007]
A graduate of the National University of Singapore and the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Isa Kamari has written nine novels in Malay: Satu Bumi [One Earth], Kiswah, Tawassul [Intercession], Menara, Atas Nama Cinta [Nadra], Memeluk Gerhana, Rawa, Duka Tuan Bertakhta, and Selendang Sukma. He has also published two collections of poems, Sumur Usia and Munajat Sukma; a collection of short stories, Sketsa Minda; and a collection of theatre scripts, Pintu. He was conferred the Southeast Asian Writers Award in 2006, the Cultural Medallion in 2007, and the Anugerah Tun Seri Lanang in 2009.
J. M. SALI ஜே.எம்.சாலி [Cultural Medallion, 2012]
J. M. Sali is an award-winning poet, novelist, short-story writer, children’s writer, dramaturge, and translator with over fifty-five books to his name. From 1987 to 1990, he was an advisor to the Tamil section of the literary journal, Singa. He has served on the editorial committee of Majlis Ugama Islam Singapura’s Tamil-language publication Nadi since 2004. Nonbu [Fasting; 1994], a collection of twenty-two short stories, received the National Book Development Council of Singapore Book Award in 1996. Several of his short stories have been translated into English, Hindi, Urdu, and Sinhalese. He received the Cultural Medallion in 2012.
JASON WEE [Young Artist Award, 2008]
Both a contemporary artist and a writer, Jason Wee looks at the complexities of modern culture, its spaces, disappearances, and in-betweenness. An editor of the poetry website Softblow, he has published a non-fiction volume on clothes called My Suit (2011) and co-authored the performance script Tongues with Sean Tobin for the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival in 2012. He was the 2013 Artist-in-Residence at Gyeonggi Creation Centre and the 2014-2015 Writer-in-Residence at National University of Singapore. Active internationally, Jason spends a lot of time in New York and Berlin. He recently curated “Singapur Unheimlich”, which is travelling through Berlin and Stuttgart.
K. T. M. IQBAL க.து.மு.இக்பால் [Cultural Medallion, 2014]
K. T. M. Iqbal has authored seven collections of poetry and written over two hundred children’s songs for the Singapore radio programme “பாடிப் பழகுவோம்” [“Let Us Sing”] in the 1970s and 1980s. He has contributed poems, essays, and short stories to the region’s leading newspapers and magazines. His poem “தண்ணீர்” [“Water”] was selected by the National Arts Council for display in MRT trains in 1995 and for exhibition at Expo 2000 in Hanover, Germany. English translations of his poems by R. Balachandran can be found in The Evening Number and Other Poems
(2008). He was an Associate Editor of the anthologies Rhythms (2000) and Fifty on 50 (2009).
LIANG WERN FOOK 梁文福 [Young Artist Award, 1992]
Liang Wern Fook is a writer, musician, educator, and researcher in Chinese literature and pedagogy. He obtained a doctorate in Chinese studies from Nanyang Technological University in 1999. He was voted “Most Popular Writer” by Singapore students in a 1990 poll organised by Lianhe Zaobao. He has written over two hundred musical compositions and songs, some of which were sung by Mandopop stars, and published over fifteen books. Titles such as 最后的牛车水 [The Last Years of Kreta Ayer; 1988], 其实我是在和时光恋爱 [In Fact I am in Love with Time; 1989], and 梁文福的21个梦 [The 21 Dreams of Liang Wern Fook; 1992] chronicle the changes in feeling and expression brought about by peer pressure and the added complexity of life in a postmodern society. Liang received the Young Artist Award in 1992 and the Cultural Medallion in 2010. He is currently an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Division of Chinese, Nanyang Technological University, and the Language Director for Xue Er You Language Centre.
LIM HUNG CHANG 林汉精 (LIN GAO 林高) [Cultural Medallion, 2015]
Lin Gao is a writer and a junior college teacher. From 1992 to 1998, he served on the Executive Committee of the Singapore Association of Writers before becoming its Vice-President until 2000. During that time, he co-edited a quarterly short story publication and served as chief editor for two children’s literature magazines, Firefly and Lark. He also initiated Afterwards with a group of local writers. Lin Gao currently has a total of ten publications under his name, including The Fate of the Feline (1991), Journeying into the Mountains (1992), The Caged Heart (1997), Reflections of One Sought After (2000), Life in Numbers (2003), and Lin Gao: A Selection of Works (2009).