A Life in Words Read online

  Reading was my greatest source of contentment. Books took me away from real life and into an unknown world full of wonders. Some books had a profound, lasting influence on me. For instance, reading Around the World in Eighty Days, I was overwhelmed by delight as I came to realise that there were so many worlds outside my own narrow existence. The various countries the author presents and the wonders discovered were really eye-opening for me. Perhaps the reason I so ardently came to love travel as an adult was that the idea had been so firmly planted inside me at that time.

  Land Mine

  During the time my father was operating his newspaper, our lives were filled with inexpressible tension. On the surface, it seemed our living circumstances had improved, but buried in our house was one small, yet dangerous, landmine.

  One night when our family came home after an outing, we found the lights on, and my mother cried out in surprise. Our house, which had been spotless and tidy when we left, was now in complete disarray. The wardrobe had been rummaged through. Our things were scattered all over the floor. Clearly, a thief had been in the house.

  Because the door was intact and there was no evidence of forced entry, we could only conclude that it was an inside job. When my mother discovered that her well-hidden stash of two hundred ringgit was gone, her face filled with fury and panic. In a time when thirty sen was enough to buy a bowl of braised meat noodles, for a family that struggled so hard just to make ends meet, two hundred ringgit was a huge amount of money.

  My mother plopped onto the bed, tears streaming from her eyes. My father stood beside her, patting her shoulder and saying, “The money’s gone; there’s no use crying. Anyway, it’s not a huge amount. Don’t dwell on it.”

  The landlord’s entire family was out. My father decided to bide his time.

  The landlord and his wife came home around eleven that night. My parents explained the situation in great detail. When the landlord had heard all, he asked my parents not to report it immediately, but to give him a chance to look into it before deciding what to do. But, judging by the uncontrollable rage on the faces of the landlord and his wife, it seemed likely they already had a pretty good idea of how things stood.

  Their only son, Ah Choy, was out all night. In the morning he came in looking pale and haggard, with an exaggerated yawn. When he was in secondary school, he had been expelled because he constantly broke the school rules. After he left school, he loitered around, engaging in gambling activities in back alleys all over town.

  As soon as he walked in, his father shouted, “Kneel, you bastard! Kneel here in front of me.”

  When Ah Choy saw his father’s steely expression, he knew that the situation had come to light. Not daring to disobey, he knelt, looking crestfallen. The landlord flew at him, tied his hands behind his back with a rope, and, without a word, mercilessly rained blows on his back with a rattan cane. We closed and locked our own door, but could still hear Ah Choy’s desperate screaming and weeping. As the sounds came through the locked door, my mother scrunched her brows tightly together, and my whole body trembled with fear. It was a harrowing feeling.

  Ah Choy was beaten severely, but because he had already spent everything he had stolen from us, he had no way to repay us. What surprised me most, though, was his attitude. The day after he had been beaten, when the cane marks were still clearly visible on his arms and legs and even his face was covered with bruises, he still smiled nonchalantly, waving to me and calling, “Hey, little sister!” He even offered me a peanut pancake, asking, “You want to try it?”

  The bright smile on his face and the bruises on his body formed a contrast. The landlord had beaten him, but had not taught him anything. It seemed Ah Choy thought he could do something wrong, endure his punishment, then relax again as soon as the penalty had been paid.

  After a couple of months, the same thing happened again. Several months after that, the cycle was repeated. Every time it happened, Ah Choy would be beaten. One time, when he was hit really severely, his cries were like the howling of a wolf. In the end, though, it was my father who intervened and finally stopped the landlord from hitting his son.

  During this period in their lives, my parents felt like they were mired in quicksand. With their upper bodies barely exposed above the quicksand and faced with three young children, my parents remained calm on the surface, but beneath the quicksand, their feet were struggling desperately, toiling until they were exhausted. My father’s newspaper did not command a high readership, so the earnings were low. He was not willing to switch to a more kitschy style, and the readership continued to plunge.

  Before Xun Bao had been running for even a year, my father made the heart-rending decision to close it down. Then in 1958, he decided to open a small pub where he sold all sorts of wine and spirits. Agate, coral, and amber coloured wines filled the glass shelf in the pub. The little tavern had an endless stream of customers. Of course, they did not really come to talk about wine, or to drink it. They came to talk about culture, politics and ideals, holding lively discussions and debates. As he sat at the tables chatting, my father, being a good host, would open bottle after bottle of red wine. When they left, he would send each one home with a bottle from the glass case. With such a generous spirit, is it any wonder that he made no profits?

  It was at this time that my father’s second brother, who had narrowly escaped death at the hands of Japanese soldiers, opened a construction company in Singapore. Knowing of my father’s struggles, he called and asked if we could go to Singapore so my father could work with him.

  It was just like the lines from the familiar old poem by Lu You: “When the mountains crowd around and the streams double back, I doubt there is a road to take. As the willows cluster darkly round, the blossoms are bright, and I see another village ahead.”

  The Train Whistled

  When we headed south to start our new life in Singapore, my brother Kok Fun was just three months old. My mother had a very resolute temperament, working with determination at every task she set her mind to. As soon as my father made the decision to go, she started packing our bags. We discarded more than we kept and, before long, everything was ready. In my mother’s mind, there was nothing much to miss about this place, so the more she threw away, the less wistfulness we would carry with us.

  I was eight years old at the time. Having spent all of my life so far in Ipoh, it would be dishonest for me to say I did not feel some affection for it, but honestly, the pain of leaving was not that great since my heart was filled with a youthful longing for the adventure that lay ahead.

  Singapore seemed to lie so far beyond the horizon; was it flat or hilly, round or square, or some shape I had not yet even imagined? I did not have the faintest idea, but our whole family was about to go there to seek a new life. This change brought new hope, and I was filled with an anxious enthusiasm. Though I did not voice it at the time, one expectation prevailed over every other feeling. I would get to ride the train!

  To me, the train was a very enticing prospect. The sleek, bright carriages were packed with countless hidden stories, mysteriously rushing into the unknown future. I used to stand by the railway tracks, looking at the passing trains, and they seemed like one fairy tale after another moving past me. Now, I would finally get to sit in one of those carriages, roaring towards Singapore. That desire became clearer and stronger as days went by.

  Finally, that day arrived. We got up early and went to the train station, our friends and relatives accompanying us to see us off. What had promised to be a day on which we got a fresh start turned into a sad affair when I saw the tears on our loved ones’ faces.

  When my mother started crying, my grandmother’s weeping grew more intense. My grandmother did not like to wear much makeup, aside from a type of powder that came in small pearls. Every morning after she washed her face, she would take a pearl of powder from its glass bottle, add a bit of water, then apply it to her face with her thumb, spreading it slowly. The powder was cool and soothing to t
he skin when applied. Every time my grandmother hugged me, I could smell its pure fragrance. Now, seated on the wooden bench at the train station, some of the powder on my grandmother’s face had been washed away by her tears, leaving patches of white all over her face. She did not hug us tightly, as she usually did, nor did she have much to say to anyone. She just sat there alone, crying silently.

  I had never seen my grandmother cry before. I was afraid, and so sorrowful that I didn’t know what to do.

  The train whistled shrilly and long. With our relatives crowding around us, we boarded in a hurry. My grandmother did not move. She continued to sit on that bench, face dark as she wept bitterly.

  Once aboard, I pressed my face against the window, looking out at the city where I had lived for eight years. When I saw my grandmother sitting on the bench weeping, I felt my own heart swelling, so full I thought it would burst.

  My connection to Ipoh should have grown dimmer as time passed. I had never imagined that I would develop a new sort of connection with my hometown, a bond that would last all my life. In the years to come, I took that train between Singapore and Ipoh countless times.

  CHAPTER 3 Life in Fire City

  A Home in Fire City

  MY FAMILY, SIX of us in all, spent a whole day on the train, travelling from Ipoh to Singapore, then a hot spot for the Chinese community. My youngest brother, Kok Fun, only three months old at the time, knew nothing beyond feeding, laughing, crying and dirtying his nappies. My oldest sister was only ten years old. I was eight, and Kok Peng was seven, at an age where we were completely ignorant, but pretending to know everything. We followed our older sister around the whole day, sometimes the most loving of siblings, and other times constantly at each other’s throats.

  We stayed in a place called Fire City, situated in Kallang. It was the giant smokestack there that gave the area its nickname. This smokestack became a well-known landmark of the area, recognised far and wide. (It was torn down in the 1990s.)

  We lived in an old-fashioned four-storey building. Its outer wall was originally painted beige, but after prolonged exposure to dust that gathered in a thick layer over time, the whole building had turned a sooty grey colour, like an old woman who had worked her whole life in a coal room.

  We rented a room in the building. There were eight rooms on our floor in varying sizes, all connected and completely without privacy. A tenant only needed to pull back the curtain from his or her door to join in the endless conversation among the neighbours. The kitchen, shower room and toilet were all common areas.

  The room we rented was one of the larger corner ones on the highest level. We enjoyed only a meagre amount of privacy, partly because my mother almost never set foot outside the house.

  Our window faced a very busy road. Before the sun came up each day, the street was wide awake and bustling. The traffic and the din from passersby mingled together with the shouts of hawkers and loud broadcasts from radio stations, all of it making its way down the long road to our window. The noise coming from inside the building did not give way at all to that entering from outside. Children cried and howled, adults scolded and quarrelled, the elderly coughed up phlegm; there was water running, teeth brushed, fires lit and meals cooked—all the activities creating a cacophony in the ears.

  Noise continued through the day in an endless stream. The especially boisterous women would gather in the corridor gossiping about all the other households. The unemployed men lay shirtless on their beds, radios blaring. Hungry children, who never had quite enough to eat, cried endlessly. The elderly, afraid of being forgotten by the world, would announce their existence by hacking up inexhaustible supplies of thick phlegm. This was the real “symphony of life”, without any romantic element; it was solid and tangible.

  We woke up to this stream of noise, and every night we fell asleep to it too. I never felt that I needed a quiet space, nor that I liked silence. I had no idea what silence felt like.

  If you think of noise as a stream, then our building was like a pond where that stream flowed to. The kitchen was large, and catered to eight families, all with different origins. Whenever it was time to cook, the smells of various kinds of food would clash in a lively manner in that room. After everyone had eaten, the smell of smoke lingered through the place, like the ghost of one unjustly killed who refuses to leave the scene of the crime.

  Mrs Hu, who lived in a room at the back, kept a large vat of preserved vegetables when she was expecting. Every morning, she ate porridge with pickled vegetables, their flavour so sour it would set your teeth on edge. The smell of the pickles wafted through the entire building every day. The room in front was occupied by the elderly Mr Han, who was plagued by all sorts of illnesses, and permanently bent over at the waist. He always carried a clay pot in his right hand and a bag of Chinese medicine in his left, making his way at an agonising pace to the kitchen, where he would boil the medicine. When a little boiling water was added, the medicines in his clay pot created such a bitter smell it would make everyone’s lips pucker just to smell it. Another room was home to a family who was only happy when food was spicy. They pounded so much chilli day and night that the floor was constantly shaking beneath us, filling our noses and throats with the spicy aroma that muddied the unclean air further. Those who weren’t used to chilli would cough and cough but, although everyone was angry, no one dared to speak up, because the family’s temper was as hot as their palate, a heat expressed in both words and actions. If anyone dared say a word to them, they fired back ten of the spiciest terms for the hearer to digest as he slunk away. But across the corridor from this family was Mrs Ma, who was the most likeable. Her face was so round it looked like it had been drawn with a compass, and her voice was sweeter than cotton candy. Every morning without fail, she prepared a delicious breakfast of ham, bacon, luncheon meat, sausage—it changed every day—to go along with two golden-eyed eggs, sunny side up, for her husband. It was a sight to make anyone drool enviously. Every Sunday morning, the couple would walk hand in hand to the vegetable market, filling their basket not only with all sorts of meat and vegetables, but also with marital bliss.

  Communal living allowed me to see that the relationships of the people living there were certainly a little messy. A careless word commonly led to blows. All these people lived in a pressure-filled situation that would be set off for some reason or another—it was often something quite insignificant—and tempers could really flare then.

  There was only one washroom for eight families to share, and each family consisted of several members. Early each day, there would be a long, winding queue outside the washroom, pushing everyone to finish washing up in the shortest time possible. Occasionally, one person might spend a little too long locked inside, exhausting the patience of those in the queue, who would then start shouting at the offender. When the object of the heated comments flushed the toilet and came out, he too would be up in arms. Sometimes, children were the cause of the conflicts. The quarrelling parties would face off, arms akimbo as abusive words were traded back and forth. Sometimes the parents would employ eloquent arguments in colourful language that shocked me then, so sheltered had my life been up to that point.

  The person who made the greatest impression on me was a girl my own age. Her body often bore the marks of the rattan cane, her face traces of tears. She had been adopted by an unbalanced woman with big frosty eyes, and a fierce tongue with which she scolded without regard for right or wrong. It was rumoured that the woman had spent many years living a dodgy life, and when she had saved enough to retire from the world, she adopted a little girl. Sometimes when she was playing mahjong and lost a fair amount of money, she would come home and let out her frustrations on her daughter, scolding, caning and beating the poor girl. Often the noises coming from that apartment made one’s hair stand on end, cries that brought to mind a person being pursued by a demon. The girl almost never left the flat, and ate in the room. On the occasions she came out to go to the washroom, her body and fac
e were covered with patches of green and purple. Everyone felt great pity for her, but no one was brave enough to interfere in domestic affairs because the mother, a former dancing girl, had a wide circle of influence, with several huge, tattooed men coming to visit her from time to time. Everyone feared that interference could end up doing more harm than good and so, opting to play it safe, we went along with the status quo.

  I remember once going to get some hot water and chancing upon the girl as she cooked porridge in the kitchen. I walked closer to her and whispered, “Hi. What’s your name?”

  She looked up at me, her expression one of frightened surprise. Her tiny body shrank away like a startled bird. That expression seared into my young mind. In her, I saw hell on earth. I had lived in this communal residence for just over a year and we had never spoken a word to each other, but she seemed to understand my friendly intentions toward her. Sometimes when we brushed past each other, that frail, ancient-looking face would show the faintest thread of a smile, which I felt more than saw. This poor girl was a constant shadow throughout my early years, teaching me that there are much worse hardships in life than mere poverty, and exposing me to the bitter feeling of being powerless to help someone.

  In the communal residence, Uncle He was the most repugnant figure to my siblings and me. His hair was slightly curly, and he had such large, protruding eyes, we wondered if he might have been a pop-eyed goldfish in a previous life. His speech was loud and coarse. Each morning, when my siblings and I stood in the queue outside the washroom, toothbrushes and toothpaste in hand, he was always there too, laughing and talking loudly in the crudest terms as he stuck his cigarette-stained index finger into his nose and dug ferociously, then rolled his findings into balls and threw them away. Sometimes when he saw us, he would pat us on the heads with a false friendliness. We always rushed to get away, but sometimes we weren’t fast enough and wished our heads would suddenly sprout spikes that would pierce large holes in his dirty hands.