by You Jin
One night, several days after “The Glory Days of the Trishaw” had appeared in the papers, a noisy ruckus was stirred up outside the office. Someone came in and reported that a dozen or more trishaw drivers were at our gate, all demanding to see me. Their reason for wanting to speak to me was that they felt I had exaggerated their income. Furthermore, I exposed some of the drivers featured as unlicensed, and they feared this might bring them trouble.
For the sake of security, I was not allowed to go downstairs and speak to them. Instead, the deputy chief editor, Mr Goh, went to meet them. Mr Goh was very experienced and tactful, and eventually they were persuaded to leave. But they left in their wake much whispering and speculation.
One colleague felt that we had not so much reached a settlement as a “truce”. Anticipating trouble, another colleague pointed out that the angry trishaw drivers might look for a chance to harm me and suggested I be careful. Although they were all expressions of concern, to a person as inexperienced as I was then, these words only added to my burden of anxiety.
I sat at my desk, with no heart to do anything. I did not want to write, and I had no appetite. My colleague, Liang Cheng Ying, who was also a field reporter, came over and said gently, “You unearthed truths about the trishaw drivers that no one knew before. Of course they are angry. But you shouldn’t be down about it. Singapore is a lawful-abiding place. Now, you just need to pay attention to your own safety. I don’t think you should leave the office yet. Wait a few hours and make sure the commotion has really died down, then I’ll give you a lift home.”
After that, I wrote many more feature articles, highlighting numerous personalities and delving deeply into many events. I was introduced to all sorts of occupations and, though my writing was rational, sometimes my words were steeped in tears.
Article after article was printed, creating a whole stack of stories. One day, when I was perusing this body of work, I thought, If this could be published in one volume, it could commemorate my role as a reporter.
When I presented this idea to the editor of Nanyang Siang Pau, Xie Ke, he expressed his willingness to recommend my work to publishers. I selected the nineteen articles I was most satisfied with and, through Mr Xie, sent them to an editor at EPB Publishers Pte Ltd.
After that, there was a long period of restless waiting. On the day news finally arrived, I was in the middle of writing a new feature article. Mr Xie came over to me with a faint smile on his face and said, “EPB has decided to publish your book.”
I dropped my pen and cried out in surprise. Who could have imagined that my book really would be published? I was so happy I was shaking all over, but on the other hand, I was afraid it was all a dream. I was afraid I would take one step and find myself falling into emptiness. It felt like falling in love. I was unsettled, in great ecstasy one moment and plunged into sudden depression the next.
EPB printed the book very quickly. As soon as the proofs were ready, they sent them for me to check over one more time. Under the dim lamplight, I carefully checked every word in the manuscript, finding numerous little errors or unnecessary words. Some were my own mistakes, and others were those of the layout team.
When I had carefully finished going over the first round of corrections, I was so exhausted that a few white hairs had sprouted on my head, but I still had no peace of mind, so I went over the proofs a second time. Oddly, my mind went into a sort of confused state, and I now felt that my earlier careful corrections had only served to unearth yet more errors hidden between the words. They slowly emerged as I reread the manuscript, making this whole process seem even more complicated than before. It was surprising and infuriating, and also quite disheartening. How had I missed such obvious errors on my first reading of the manuscript?
When I had given my arduous attention to the second reading, I was still uneasy. At this point, my now elderly father suggested, “Bring it to me and let me have a look.”
I took it to my father. He was like a scholar of old, reading deeply into a difficult subject. He rejected all meetings and dinner appointments, putting all of his effort into making a careful reading of the manuscript. After a fortnight, he sent it back to me, cheerily proclaiming, “Hey, I’ve unearthed lots of worms for you.”
I looked at it. My god! He wasn’t kidding. There were so many little red worm-like squiggles crawling across the page, infesting the spots where there were errors in the text.
I titled the book Social Fragments. The title had two meanings. The first was that I was a new reporter, so everything I had seen, heard and known was nothing more than a small fragment of all there was to learn. It had natural limitations, and I thought this title reflected that fact. The second meaning was that it reflected small slices of different layers of society.
When I had sent the corrected manuscript back to the publisher, there was again a long period of waiting. The book finally appeared in May 1978. It was the first book I had ever published. The cover was designed by the renowned artist Ms Guan Shanmei. The background was yellowy beige, almost brown, and there was a picture of a pen with wings. The wings were a mixture of orange, dark brown, and white. It was very meaningful and elegant.
The whole day, I held that beautiful book. I did not want to do anything, nor could I. I could only flip through the pages, running my hand over them, oblivious to everything else in the world.
Many years later, I met the famous Taiwanese author Yu Lihua, who was living in the US. She talked to me about her feelings when her new book Trial was completed. “I spent a very long time writing that novel. I transformed into the female protagonist, practically living in the world I was writing. When I finally finished writing it, it was three in the morning. I picked up that thick manuscript and held it over my head, running around the room and shouting like a maniac.”
I could completely sympathise with this sort of feeling.
Once I had completed my first collection of feature pieces, I thought I would publish a second, and a third…but the changes in life’s path are impossible to predict. Even though I loved the unpredictable life of reporting, the unstable work hours made me feel I was neglecting my family responsibilities. Stuck between the fish and the bear’s maw, I left the job that I would continue to think back fondly on for the rest of my life. I took up a different career path, so my writing took a turn away from news reporting too. The dream of publishing more collections of feature articles was one that could never be realised.
Grass in the Crack
During the time I worked as a reporter, I had a polite, respectful relationship with writing. Writing was the tool I worked with, it was the staple of my diet, the thing I spent every moment on. But in spite of our close relationship, we were not in perfect harmony.
News and feature writing are a sort of “hard” writing, not aiming at any higher sort of beauty, or subjective opinions. They are even less concerned with making an emotional impact.
By the time I had established myself as someone who had the skills associated with news writing, when I had come to really know the way to put words together to tell a story, I had also taken a step away from the real art of writing. In fact, I did not dare come too close to it, fearing that, if I did so, I would reveal too much of my own feelings. I was afraid of expressing my own biases, which was anathema in the world of news writing.
I worked day and night, hardly knowing which was which as my pen scratched across the page. At such times, in the depths of my heart, I felt a great emptiness. It made me sad, and a little nervous.
Later, I heard a sort of gentle, silent call. At first, it was very soft, but it grew sharper with time. By the time I knew what this cry was, when I could finally hear it clearly, I put aside my news reporter’s pen and took up another. I started writing fiction.
Usually, when I was writing the news, I tried to detach myself from the subject. Though it was sometimes difficult to do so, I rejected the role of critic, acting instead simply as an observer. But when I started writing fiction
, my own life and the world I was writing about became intermingled. I wrote as the rest of the world slept, breathing as one with the characters on the page, laughing and crying with them. This sort of mutual suffering also brought about mutual joy, and it was very good.
You could say that, during the time I spent as a news reporter, the news was my bread and butter, and literature and art, my vitamins.
Writing fiction was a creative process, requiring a gestation period before the actual creation. In the same way, grapes and water are needed to make wine, but a definite fermentation period is required. So from the literary perspective, the fermentation period is a calm period of pondering. Text unprocessed by thought and imagination can never produce a literary work.
I have never been taken in by cardboard characters, but have always loved characters that breathe, so I loved to look at the world with the eyes of the imagination, and that is how I set about writing. Then I would add in observation from real life, mixed in with some of my own thoughts, deleting sensitive portions, fleshing out the parts with interesting fictional plots, and filling in gaps in the narrative. The last step was to go back and use my writing skills as yeast to create colourful stories that would draw the reader into that world.
When I decided to embark on the creative work of writing fiction, it was like my whole life stepped into a huge empty space. My mind and hand did not have even half a second to rest.
When I walked on the road, my eyes were like blades, cutting through the mundane world I saw around me to uncover a kernel of truth about society. My mind was like a camera, my memory the film, silently snapping shots of human nature. The things others saw as insignificant, or that which they just completely overlooked, were the sort of things perfectly suited for fiction. They could become giants on the page, breaking out of their shells to offer assistance to the writer. We often speak of writers being inspired, as a way of describing the creative process. Actually, though, it’s more true to say that heaven helps those who help themselves. These socalled “inspired” writers are the ones who always take the time to notice the things going around them, taking this as a foundation of all they do.
Besides having a careful eye, I also learned the art of listening. I was an attentive listener with figures of authority or ordinary folk—no matter whom I was speaking with at any given time, I would digest the words as I listened, soaking up everything as my own nutrients. Sometimes, the things another person said were like precious stones, and I gained so much from their words, the value surpassing even ten years of study. Sometimes, the speaker’s mouth seemed filled with sand, making the meaningful utterance slow to emerge. At such times, it was important for the listener to be patient, sifting through the sand until little sparkling gems could be discovered. In fact, the attitude of the listener is the key to benefitting from her listening. She must have an open mind and remain enthusiastic about learning all the while.
I was forever listening, and not only with my ears. I put my whole heart into listening, so every day brought new discoveries. The more I listened, the more my wealth of knowledge accumulated. My mind soon became a knowledge storehouse, expanding boundlessly.
I saw, I heard and I contemplated. Then, when the gestation period was over, I started to create.
As soon as I took up my pen, the thoughts would flow. I wrote without stopping, unable to quit. I wrote wholeheartedly, thinking of nothing else.
But while I was a reporter, finding free time to do as I please was an impossible luxury. My job required me to keep odd hours, so of course there was no set time for me to turn on the creativity. During this time, I was like a stalk of grass in the crack of a rock, struggling to reach the sunlight. What really mattered was the reward of strength that came after being sharpened by the period of hardship.
When it came to time, I was a miser. When I took the bus to the site of an interview, I placed a thick notebook on my lap. While the bus was on its way, I would be absorbed in transferring the characters in my thoughts onto my notebook. The text would be a scrawl of broken characters in uneven lines across the page, but in my mind, it was intoxicating, and I drank deeply of it.
Sometimes an interview would be called out of the office last minute, so I would sit outside that person’s office and use the time to enter into the world of my fiction, writing profusely. While I was lost in my writing, the interviewee might come back to the office, covered in sweat and apologising profusely for being late. But I was not angry, or even irritated. I just smiled and said, “Don’t worry about it.”
When there did not seem to be enough hours in the day, I took away some from sleep. At first, I would just take a little, getting only six hours of sleep instead of the recommended seven. But I cut down on sleep even more, growing bolder over time, reducing it to five hours, then four. I eventually learned that this was my limit. From then on, right up until today, I have made it a habit to sleep only four hours a night.
Many years later, interviewers both at home and overseas, asked me the same question: “You are a full-time schoolteacher, and a professional writer. You are a wife and mother. You travel, and you write. You love to read, and you write numerous reviews. You research recipe books, and love cooking. And outside of your regular teaching, you do many guest lectures. Where do you find the time for it all?”
It’s really quite simple. I tell them, “I use every minute, and I multitask.”
I was able to focus on two completely unrelated things, and to do them flawlessly. For instance, I might have the phone to my ear and letters spread out on the desk, talking to one person while I wrote a letter to a distant friend. I could chat fluidly while my hand wrote furiously, simultaneously addressing two completely different topics. I could give attention to both trains of thought at the same time. Of course, the main success of this endeavour was that neither of the other parties was aware of what I was doing. In fact, it was imperative that neither had any inkling of the other.
Even more impressive was my ability to cook and read at the same time. Fragrance from a pot of stew would flow, the sizzling from the frying fish would spread through the whole house, and Su Dongpo’s poetry would break forth from the braised meat named after him. And all the while I would sit in the kitchen, turning the fish or stirring the Dongpo meat, reading a magazine from China, Hong Kong or Taiwan as it cooked. By the time the soup had boiled, the fish had fried and the pork had braised, I had read a whole magazine. It was a good way to kill two birds with one stone. I was an excellent multi-tasker.
When I was baking cakes, my hands were always occupied, so there was no way for me to attend to anything else. Still, I multitasked by planning articles in my mind. By the time the cakes were out of the oven, the whole article had formulated in my head. While I enjoyed the warm cake, I would quickly commit the article formulated in my mind to paper. It was a very satisfying feeling, one of the greatest joys in life.
It is my regular habit to carry a book with me every time I leave the house, so I can read any time and any place I like. When I go to the doctor, the post office or the bank, I am sure to have a long wait. Rather than allowing that precious time to be wasted, I take my book out wherever I am and read. With a book in hand, I do not mind waiting any length of time. When I go on tour, my luggage is always full of books and magazines to read on the airplane, train, or boat. I use words to decorate big patches of pale and colourless time, like adding a bit of rose syrup to plain water, bringing sweetness to what is bland.
The ability to make the most of my time is something I am quite proud of. If it could be quantified in numbers, adding up all the time the average person spends waiting would be a shocking figure.
When guests come to my home, they often discover a surprising fact. Every room—the living room, washroom, study, or kitchen— has a clock, either on the wall or sitting on a table. It is not uncommon for one of the little alarm clocks to suddenly sound in the middle of the night, piercing the ear. Sometimes I don’t even know which clock it is,
so I will rush upstairs and downstairs, searching the whole house, looking everywhere for the infernal sound. It wakes me up quite thoroughly, so I take that as a sign that I should start writing.
It was in this way, using every possible minute, that I completed my first work of fiction, Patterns, one of the books among the Literature and Art series published by EPB Publishing and the Singapore Writers Association. It was officially published in March 1973.
In Patterns, a collection of five short stories, all the protagonists are female. They come from different backgrounds, lead very different lives, and have very different approaches to life. Having such varying source material was a great creative challenge.
“Blaze” is the story of cherished love consuming the life of a female student. “Shell” is about a vain woman who mistakes material wealth as the source of happiness. “Iron” is the story of a woman who faces disillusionment after marrying young. “Dusk” tells of a naïve woman who unwittingly finds herself on the verge of vice. And “Patterns” is a tale of the suffering a woman endures when she faces financial collapse. Five different women, each with her own story.
After putting all my effort into writing fiction, I felt that my relationship with writing had undergone a gradual change. To me, writing always had a sort of sacredness that would not tolerate desecration, and I worshipped it. Now, besides reverence, a lingering sort of love had slowly developed, something closer and much warmer.