Singapore Swing (2 page)

Those nine faiths and four official languages notwithstanding, the social texture, the look-and-feel, or better the heart and soul of the state, are Chinese. Languages such as Hokkien, Cantonese, Hakka and Hainanese were spoken widely by the emigrants who left the southern provinces of China in pursuit of the British dream; yes, there was one, once, that of the self-made trader, half a century before the American version fired the imagination of the world's ambitious underprivileged.

In place of all these dialects we now have Mandarin, a compulsory subject for Singapore's Chinese schoolchildren, where ‘z' is considered a vowel and words mean different things depending on whether your voice is high, high and rising higher, falling, or falling and then rising. British administrators who were sent to South East Asia were forced to learn a local language – yes, I was surprised, too, when I read this – but in order to be considered for Mandarin, they had to pass a musical test: you can't learn this language, if you are tone deaf. It is the idiom of the old, centralising Beijing civil servants and it is its unifying grace that kept the Chinese community in Singapore ultimately cohesive.

Such cohesion is relative since the Peranakan, the Chinese/ Malays, speak Malay, the second official language that has given us such words as ‘amok', ‘gong', ‘rattan', ‘orang-utan' and, believe it or not, the word ‘compound' (as in ‘enclosed space') from the original
kampong
(village) in one of the great imperial mishearings. More markedly, it has defined three major words in the West, all three via the Portuguese. Firstly it provided us with the name of Nippon, the Land of the Rising Sun, as ‘Japan', it comes from the Malay
Japang
itself stemming from the Chinese
jih pun,
meaning ‘sunrise'. The second major word is ‘Mandarin' itself, from the Malay
mantri
which means ‘a minister of state'. The Portuguese confused it with their own
mandar
– as in ‘mandate' – and bequeathed us a word for the most popular language on the planet – plus the name of a small fruit whose colour reminded them of the Chinese officials' robes. Finally, the Malays with their
teh
, gave as ‘tea'. Europeans who imported their tea from South East Asia call it tea (the English),
tee
(the Germans),
té
(the Spaniards) or
thé
(the French). Those nations who acquired it via the land route from China use the Mandarin form
ch'a
: the Turks say
çay
, the Greeks
tsai
, the Russians
chai
. The Portuguese call it
cha
, too, so you may correctly deduct that they traded directly from the Chinese – which they did, in Macau. Tea was arguably
the
major item of trade in the late eighteenth century and the struggle for the monopoly of this commodity effectively created Singapore.

But let's not jump too far ahead but only a bit further north from the centre to Serangoon Road, where people from the subcontinent communicate in Telegu, Punjabi, Hindi, Bengali and Tamil. As befits the geographical location of Singapore, its third official language is Tamil, whose speakers dominate the south of the Indian cone. This language has given us first and foremost ‘curry', from the Tamil
kari
meaning ‘sauce for rice'; ‘pariah' from
paraiyan
meaning ‘drummer', the occupation of members of the lowest caste during festivals in south India; ‘cheroot' from
curuttu
(roll); and ‘catamaran' from
kattumaran
(tied wood). Tamil is a language with three genders (masculine, feminine and non-human) and an ancient script that doesn't let you write down the spoken idiom in full unless extra, sacred, Grantha characters are employed. As a result, spoken Tamil and written Tamil have been diverging for centuries, and the older, ancient version is of no use for any English loanwords, like
hamburger
or
computer,
because it can't express them in written form.

Ah, English at last. We have arrived at the fourth and final official language – the instrument of empire, the unifier of unifiers and the ultimate constant in the narrow, loud alleys of the Babel that was Singapore. Now everyone speaks English: not because they're educated (they are), not because they want to tap the tourist trade (they do), but because – from my humble taxi driver to
The Straits Times
newspaper editor – speaking English is a question of survival. Singaporean children must leave school proficient in two languages: one is English and the other is the language of their ethnic group. For the children who fail such exams – the ‘gone cases' – a study in the dreaded ITE, the Institute of Technical Education, beckons. It's considered so second rate that its initials are colloquially referred to as ‘It's The End'.

- 2 -

I wake up from my jetlag slumber at some indeterminate evening hour, shower and leave to reconnoitre the area. The hotel receptionist takes my key chirpily. ‘What happened to your arm?' she asks.

I glance at my left arm which is hanging in a sling from my shoulder. Clad in just a T-shirt, I can hardly hide it under my coat like I could in wintry London.

‘I have torn two tendons,' I mumble and decide not to name them explicitly, although I could. ‘I can't lift it more than this.' I try to raise my arm – and true to my word it comes up to just below my nipple and stops. ‘See?'

‘How did you do it?' she goes on.

Ahem.

‘Long story,' I reply and see myself out.

Outside the heat isn't as oppressive as I had feared. Singapore is unchangingly hot and sticky with temperatures steady and ranging between 23°–35°C. What
does
change is precipitation with not just one but two monsoon seasons. Even during the so-called dry season, however, the average monthly rainfall is twice or three times that of London. The only difference is that the water comes all down in a pelter rather than over a 24/7 shower like we are used to in England.

I'm hungry, so I'm in the right place: Chinatown, or rather what has been left of it after continuous redevelopment. There are only two great civilisations the world has borne where dining has been elevated to an art beyond mere bodily satiation: the French and the Chinese. Both cultures eat for the sake of eating, the means of sustenance having become ends in themselves. Their art reflects this: the two great foodie films of all time have been the Chinese
Eat Drink Man Woman
and the French
La Grande Bouffe
. In fact, I dare you to find me a French film where there is no lunch or dinner sequence – you'll have to resort to the 1895 experiments of the pioneering Lumière brothers for that. And even they, after filming workers leaving a factory in
La Sortie des Usines Lumière
, and a train entering a station in
L'Arrivée d'un Train en Gare de La Ciotat
, what did they film next?
Repas de Bébé
: I rest my case.

As befits such a culture, it sometimes seems that all Singapore is about is food. Every hawker stall in the streets offers its own speciality dish: from translucent aromatic marine delicacies at a stall on Mosque Street to the day-glo green of a wheatgrass and aloe vera shake on a Trengganu kiosk. Men and women around me are gobbling up food: sat down, standing up, leaning against a wall, walking rapidly alone, strolling slowly arm in arm. Some are even eating for charity under a banner: ‘Meals for Tidal Waves Asia Victims'. I feel a warm glow when I realise that I can satisfy a pressing bodily function and help the destitute at the same time, but the menu puts a dampener on my appetite: Pig's tail noodle? Grass jelly with tadpole? Tripe and tendons? I have seen many weird things eaten across the Channel but the Chinese beat the French in devouring disgusting life forms hands down. I decide that boiled pig gut and sliced jellyfish had better be left to the connoisseurs. As for fried carrot cake – it sounds worse that anything the Scots could have concocted.

I move away from the hawkers and back to the sound and vision show that is every weekend night in central Chinatown. I walk under a sign for the Cantonese Opera
The Patriotic Princess
performed in aid of a ‘Moral Home for the Disabled' – and that ‘moral' has me pondering a lot. This is an old red-light district; the Chinese name for Banda Street means ‘End of the Foreign Brothels' for here is where the Japanese girls, the Karayuki-sans, were based. I glance at a large hand-painted movie poster opposite that advertises
Blue Velvet
, warning us that the film has a ‘matured' theme. (Is this how they fooled the censors? Did they think it was about cheese?) I stroll past closed shops with names out of a Jules Verne literary fantasy: Onn Fat Hong Tea Merchant; Hai Loo Store; Wong Loy Kee Aquarium – do you keep the fish as pets or as victuals?

I finally stop by the Samsui women's restaurant on Smith Street which boasts the best ginger chicken in town. The Samsui were Cantonese and Hakka women who lived together around Chin Chew street. Their distinctive red head coverings have become iconic: sloping and flat, they look like upside-down open books. The sole purpose in life of the Samsui was to work and send money to their families on the mainland. Some of them were married but most opted for spinsterhood having assumed the role of breadwinner: not only as housekeepers and wet-nurses, but also as stevedores and construction workers. Theirs was a one-way ticket to the poor quarters in Chinatown; starvation wages killed any hopes of return. As they turned older and infirm, the only luxury they permitted themselves was their traditionally cooked chicken during the Chinese New Year. This was a whole chicken, steamed with ginger for a fixed duration at a specific temperature so that it maintained its fragrance and flavour. It is still the dish of choice in the Smith Street restaurant: it is served already shredded, and you eat it by dipping a piece in ginger sauce and wrapping it in lettuce.

I walk upstairs and an old, wrinkled, diminutive Chinese waitress moving more slowly and stiffly than a legless man on crutches leads me to a table. I sit on an exquisitely carved low wooden stool in the shape of a bongo drum under the whirl of a ceiling fan and open the menu that resembles a pharmaceutical catalogue. As in every other society – from a medieval witch's brew to a Jewish mother's chicken broth – the healing power of female cooking is part of Chinese whimsy. The Samsui women were famous for their herbal, healing soups, so every dish on the menu comes with claims of its medicinal value. Everything is double-boiled: the
ling zhi
and pork soup, the
waisan
and ginseng chicken broth, the steamed pork with salted fish. I have no idea what a
tien chee
is or whether it is vegetable, animal or mineral, but it is supposed to be good for my blood circulation. The ginger chicken itself is associated with the relief of wind; well, I did mention that it was a dish served to old women.

The waitress looks at my sling and gives me a golden-toothed grin. She points at the double-boiled American ginseng with San-Yu soup and then at my arm. Thinking that, hey, two billion Chinese can't be wrong, I agree, praying that the dish does not include any reptilian parts. Her choice returns to haunt me in a soup with half an eel in it – at least I hope it's not a snake – complete with scales and bones. If after this my arm does not improve, I'll sue the chef.

A Chinese family of eight that comprises three generations

– from a grandma to a pre-teen boy – is dining at a round, shiny wooden table opposite me. My gaze lingers on the grandmother, the Great Matriarch, who sits there, immobile and inscrutable. I don't know how old she is but, like most Chinese grandmothers, she looks as if she knew Confucius in person. Her expression is blank and she appears physically embalmed; I wonder whether those sweat beads on her brow are natural formalin secretions. She is impervious to the activity of the rest of her clan who are flapping animatedly to reach every small dish and sauce plate around the table. The most agile is the father who chopsticks his way assiduously, picking up the optimum amount of spinach and ginger for his rice bowl to balance the yin and the yang of the flavours. Bless.

There is a non-functioning pendulum clock on the wall surrounded by a number of old sepia photographs. They are all personal: a couple at their wedding; a family of thirteen flanking the gaunt bodies of their barely smiling grandparents; a youth looking forward with that vacant look only teenagers can perfect. They look like snippets out of any household's empire album but, although the clothes are all Western, the faces are Chinese. The father opposite exchanges glances with me, bows in recognition of our mutual, investigative stare and follows my gaze to the pictures on the wall. He examines the photos, shrugs his shoulders and immediately chokes on his fish. He receives a mighty slap on the back from the embalmed grandmother – who sure moved fast there – but in vain. He never recovers from his cough, still clearing his throat half an hour later, as he pays for the bill. Just before he leaves, he gives me a second, accusing look to make me feel guilty for his predicament.

The old waitress comes to me and asks: ‘Good?'

I look at my half-eaten eel and lie: ‘Good'.

‘Bill?'

‘Erm, no I'm still eating.' Strange, that. I thought the Chinese were more respectful of other people's prandial enjoyment.

Maybe not, for as soon as I finish and put the spoon down, she smiles and asks me ‘
Bill
?' again. I look around. I am the only one left. It is probably closing time. The streets outside are heaving, but these old Samsui ladies must need their sleep. ‘OK,' I reply.

It is only when she brings me a Tiger beer instead of the tab that I realise what she
really
meant to say.