<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>From Swatow and back to Singapore
</TD></TR><TR><TD><!-- headline one : end --></TD></TR><TR><TD>Like many here, I claim multiple heritages but chose this nation for life </TD></TR><TR><TD><!-- Author --></TD></TR><TR><TD class="padlrt8 georgia11 darkgrey bold" colSpan=2>By Chua Mui Hoong, Senior Writer
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
A ROW of trishaw-riders stood expectantly, watching us. I paused, wondering whose trishaw to take. There were 16 of us from Singapore, and the trishaw ride had been arranged by the tour agency.
One face leapt out at me: a long, narrow face with a high forehead and arched brows. He looked exactly like photographs of my late father in his younger days. I gravitated to his trishaw.
On the short ride through the narrow alleys of Chaozhou town in Guangdong province, I engaged him in conversation in my rudimentary Teochew.
He was 52, and had three children aged 17 to 24. His second daughter had just finished high school among the top of her cohort, winning prizes. She could make it to university, but the family was 'bo ji' - without money - and she was working in a factory. The eldest child had also bypassed university although she too had qualified. The youngest son was still in school.
The trishaw-rider himself had left Chaozhou to make a living somewhere else - my poor Teochew could not grasp where. But without proper household registration papers, he had abandoned his migrant worker's life and had returned to his hometown to earn a living as a trishaw rider.
His story struck home. He looked like my father. His children's story could have been mine and my siblings'.
Except for two accidents - one political, the other personal - our fates might have been similar: The triumph in 1949 of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the Chinese civil war, which forced people like my father, who belonged to the losing side, to flee the mainland; and the serendipity of my father choosing to settle not in Hong Kong or Thailand, where the boats from Shantou also landed, but in Singapore.
This year marks the 60th anniversary of the CCP's victory in China, and the 50th year of the People's Action Party's rule in Singapore. There are similarities between the two parties. Both presided over phenomenal growth in their respective countries; their strong administrations created the conditions for relatively stable societies. And both are grappling with the dilemmas of success: How to continue to grow, and make the transition to a middle- or high-income country without turbulence.
The similarities, however, end there. Whatever its shortcomings, Singapore's PAP Government has resolutely held onto its founding ideals - among them, a rejection of corruption and an insistence on meritocracy. And what a difference the actualisation of those ideals has made.
Like the trishaw-rider, my father had little education and had to eke out a living: as a cobbler, as an itinerant hawker and later as a licensed hawker.
Like the trishaw-rider's, my family had no connections. But in Singapore, you don't need to know the right people to get into a good school, nor do you need to bribe teachers/doctors/officials to get a fair deal.
Unlike the trishaw-rider's two daughters, my sister and I benefited from government-funded scholarships that enabled us to attend top universities.
I sometimes think of the what-might-have-beens: What if my parents had remained in Malaysia, where they lived for several years before heading to Singapore? I might have stopped schooling at 16, and married a vegetable-seller's son.
What if my parents had remained in Chaozhou - or moved to the port city of Shantou, an hour away? In Communist China, the children of a former Nationalist (Kuomintang) soldier would have been outcasts. My elders might have perished during the Cultural Revolution. If we had survived, we might have joined the millions of migrant workers today who roam the countryside looking for jobs.
I ruminated over these possibilities when I was in Shantou last month with a group of Singaporeans, to run a leadership training camp for over 150 Catholic teenagers.
Being in my parents' hometown of Shantou - or Swatow as it is called in Teochew - felt like a homecoming of sorts. The diet soothed my troublesome stomach. I understood the vernacular spoken on the streets. Everywhere I went, I saw old ladies who reminded me of my mother at home, and old men who reminded me of my father.
I had felt quite differently in Beijing during my first trip to China over 10 years ago. Then, I was alienated, indeed repulsed, by the capital's monumental grandiosity. Thus must my peasant ancestors have felt when they made a trip from the periphery to the distant centre of the Empire to plead their cases. The egalitarian Singaporean in me rebelled against the show of imperial power.
Shantou aroused no such resentment, only an appreciation for its faded charm and its still humane pace of life. The young in Chaozhou live amidst a living culture, in the land of their ancestors, speaking a language that had evolved over tens of centuries in the area around Guangdong's Pearl River Delta. A part of me envies their rootedness.
My karma, and that of most Singaporeans, is different. Ours is the heritage of the sojourner - the traveller who uproots himself, goes to a distant land, and builds a new life for himself and his family. We have not one but multiple heritages. We traverse multiple identities.
I am a Singaporean, of ethnic Chinese descent. I am a huaren (Chinese person), with parents who do not speak huayu (Mandarin), only chaozhou. I think and dream in English, but add faster in Teochew.
Amidst the plethora of heritages to which we can justifiably lay claim, amidst the clash of possible identities, we make our own choices as to which identity, which value, which ideal, we should pledge allegiance to. In love, we are first attracted to someone, and then, at some point, we make a choice, a conscious act of volition: I choose you - for a lifetime.
So too for our sense of identity, for our choice of nationhood. I might have been born in China. I might have been brought up in Malaysia. I could have made Britain or America, where I studied, my home. Somewhat to my surprise, I felt a sense of connection in Shantou.
But it was always Singapore that tugged at my heartstrings. At some point, years ago, I knew this was so. I chose you - for a lifetime.
Happy birthday, Singapore.
</TD></TR><TR><TD><!-- headline one : end --></TD></TR><TR><TD>Like many here, I claim multiple heritages but chose this nation for life </TD></TR><TR><TD><!-- Author --></TD></TR><TR><TD class="padlrt8 georgia11 darkgrey bold" colSpan=2>By Chua Mui Hoong, Senior Writer
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
A ROW of trishaw-riders stood expectantly, watching us. I paused, wondering whose trishaw to take. There were 16 of us from Singapore, and the trishaw ride had been arranged by the tour agency.
One face leapt out at me: a long, narrow face with a high forehead and arched brows. He looked exactly like photographs of my late father in his younger days. I gravitated to his trishaw.
On the short ride through the narrow alleys of Chaozhou town in Guangdong province, I engaged him in conversation in my rudimentary Teochew.
He was 52, and had three children aged 17 to 24. His second daughter had just finished high school among the top of her cohort, winning prizes. She could make it to university, but the family was 'bo ji' - without money - and she was working in a factory. The eldest child had also bypassed university although she too had qualified. The youngest son was still in school.
The trishaw-rider himself had left Chaozhou to make a living somewhere else - my poor Teochew could not grasp where. But without proper household registration papers, he had abandoned his migrant worker's life and had returned to his hometown to earn a living as a trishaw rider.
His story struck home. He looked like my father. His children's story could have been mine and my siblings'.
Except for two accidents - one political, the other personal - our fates might have been similar: The triumph in 1949 of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the Chinese civil war, which forced people like my father, who belonged to the losing side, to flee the mainland; and the serendipity of my father choosing to settle not in Hong Kong or Thailand, where the boats from Shantou also landed, but in Singapore.
This year marks the 60th anniversary of the CCP's victory in China, and the 50th year of the People's Action Party's rule in Singapore. There are similarities between the two parties. Both presided over phenomenal growth in their respective countries; their strong administrations created the conditions for relatively stable societies. And both are grappling with the dilemmas of success: How to continue to grow, and make the transition to a middle- or high-income country without turbulence.
The similarities, however, end there. Whatever its shortcomings, Singapore's PAP Government has resolutely held onto its founding ideals - among them, a rejection of corruption and an insistence on meritocracy. And what a difference the actualisation of those ideals has made.
Like the trishaw-rider, my father had little education and had to eke out a living: as a cobbler, as an itinerant hawker and later as a licensed hawker.
Like the trishaw-rider's, my family had no connections. But in Singapore, you don't need to know the right people to get into a good school, nor do you need to bribe teachers/doctors/officials to get a fair deal.
Unlike the trishaw-rider's two daughters, my sister and I benefited from government-funded scholarships that enabled us to attend top universities.
I sometimes think of the what-might-have-beens: What if my parents had remained in Malaysia, where they lived for several years before heading to Singapore? I might have stopped schooling at 16, and married a vegetable-seller's son.
What if my parents had remained in Chaozhou - or moved to the port city of Shantou, an hour away? In Communist China, the children of a former Nationalist (Kuomintang) soldier would have been outcasts. My elders might have perished during the Cultural Revolution. If we had survived, we might have joined the millions of migrant workers today who roam the countryside looking for jobs.
I ruminated over these possibilities when I was in Shantou last month with a group of Singaporeans, to run a leadership training camp for over 150 Catholic teenagers.
Being in my parents' hometown of Shantou - or Swatow as it is called in Teochew - felt like a homecoming of sorts. The diet soothed my troublesome stomach. I understood the vernacular spoken on the streets. Everywhere I went, I saw old ladies who reminded me of my mother at home, and old men who reminded me of my father.
I had felt quite differently in Beijing during my first trip to China over 10 years ago. Then, I was alienated, indeed repulsed, by the capital's monumental grandiosity. Thus must my peasant ancestors have felt when they made a trip from the periphery to the distant centre of the Empire to plead their cases. The egalitarian Singaporean in me rebelled against the show of imperial power.
Shantou aroused no such resentment, only an appreciation for its faded charm and its still humane pace of life. The young in Chaozhou live amidst a living culture, in the land of their ancestors, speaking a language that had evolved over tens of centuries in the area around Guangdong's Pearl River Delta. A part of me envies their rootedness.
My karma, and that of most Singaporeans, is different. Ours is the heritage of the sojourner - the traveller who uproots himself, goes to a distant land, and builds a new life for himself and his family. We have not one but multiple heritages. We traverse multiple identities.
I am a Singaporean, of ethnic Chinese descent. I am a huaren (Chinese person), with parents who do not speak huayu (Mandarin), only chaozhou. I think and dream in English, but add faster in Teochew.
Amidst the plethora of heritages to which we can justifiably lay claim, amidst the clash of possible identities, we make our own choices as to which identity, which value, which ideal, we should pledge allegiance to. In love, we are first attracted to someone, and then, at some point, we make a choice, a conscious act of volition: I choose you - for a lifetime.
So too for our sense of identity, for our choice of nationhood. I might have been born in China. I might have been brought up in Malaysia. I could have made Britain or America, where I studied, my home. Somewhat to my surprise, I felt a sense of connection in Shantou.
But it was always Singapore that tugged at my heartstrings. At some point, years ago, I knew this was so. I chose you - for a lifetime.
Happy birthday, Singapore.
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