Chinese, but Singaporean

Chinese, but Singaporean - Price contentary

http://www.straitstimes.com/Prime%2BNews/Story/STIStory_271053.html

Olympics brought out the 'Singaporean' in 'Chinese Singaporean'
By Janadas Devan, Review Editor
Aug 23, 2008

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THE world changed on Aug 8. The Beijing Olympics' opening ceremony was not quite a man-on-the-moon moment, but it came close.

It marked China's re-emergence as a great power, some said. It was a Sputnik moment for the West, especially the United States, others said. It made Chinese proud to be Chinese, the Chinese said.

The last was a perfectly understandable reaction. But did Chinese here mean Chinese nationals or ethnic Chinese everywhere? How were Chinese Singaporeans to react to Aug 8? The world changed that day, certainly. Did Chinese Singaporeans change along with it?

The Sunday Times ran an interesting series of articles last week on the subject, all written by Chinese Singaporean journalists. Two were from Lianhe Zaobao: Mr Chong Wing Hong, an alumnus of Nanyang Univerity, and Ms Yew Lun Tian, a graduate from a Special Assistance Plan (SAP) school. Three were from The Straits Times: Mr Teo Cheng Wee and Ms Hong Xinyi from SAP schools, and Ms Goh Sui Noi from an English school.

The articles ran under the collective headline: So Proudly Chinese. A better title would have been: So Confusingly Chinese Singaporean - And Proud Of It.

As it so happens, it was a Straits Times journalist, Mr Teo, who seems to have felt proudest to be Chinese on Aug 8. 'I don't think I have ever felt more proud to be Chinese than when I was watching the opening ceremony that night,' he wrote.

The Zaobao journalists were a tad cooler. 'There is no denying that cultural pride welled up in me as I took in the show,' Mr Chong admitted. 'But I was also a detached viewer, with questions popping up in my mind during the proceedings.' And he could be detached because he was 'no true-blue Chinese', he remarked. 'Singapore, where I have grown up, is my home.'

The other Zaobao journalist, the younger Ms Yew, was similarly taken with the display of Chinese culture. 'I swooned with pride as China presented its cultural heritage icons in splendid glory,' she reported. But she was, simultaneously, as detached as Mr Chong.

'By the fourth or fifth item, I contemplated surrender,' she wrote, not altogether tongue-in-cheek. 'Okay, okay, you win, you're the best, let's just get on with the show.'

SAP schools' alumni have been accused by the purely English-educated as being culturally monochrome. If the culturally monochrome can encompass so peculiarly a Singaporean turn of irony, I say let us have more SAP schools.

And that was what was most interesting about all the articles: They were all, to one degree or another, ironical - irony being, by definition, the conjoining of two or more irreconcilable ideas or thoughts: I am Chinese; no I am not. I identified with Chinese culture; I am different. I felt moved by the display; enough already. It was an altogether productive confusion.

And revealing too, for 50 years ago there would have been very little of such confusion. Cultural nationalism preceded political nationalism in Singapore. It could not have been otherwise, for this place was not a nation then. To be a nationalist was to be a cultural nationalist.

Thus, when Mao Zedong said on the steps of Tiananmen: 'China has stood up', Chinese here felt it had stood up for them too. Similarly, Malays and Indians here were inspired by the Indonesian revolution and the Indian national movement, respectively. The very idea of a Malayan nationalism - there was no such thing as a Singaporean nationalism then - had its origins in the exogenous cultural nationalisms of Singapore's component races.

A grand-uncle of mine is illustrative. He was born here, never visited India in his life. And yet, in 1946, when Jawaharlal Nehru visited Singapore, he skipped work to go greet him. When asked by his boss why he had absented himself without leave, he replied: 'I went to pay homage to the uncrowned king of India.'

His employer, the British Naval Base at Sembawang, sacked him. Today, his children and grandchildren, my cousins, would not bother going to greet Nehru's successor, with or without leave.

Another illustration: The Straits Times newsroom virtually stopped work last week to watch the table tennis semi-finals and finals. Former Chinese nationals, now Singaporeans, beat South Koreans - deliriously happy faces all round. Our Chinese lost to their Chinese - glum (especially Chinese) faces all around.

On Aug 8: 'so proudly Chinese', 'I felt one with them'. Barely a week later: 'I'm most certainly not one of them. Four years from now, we'll beat them - with the help of their Chinese, if necessary.'

For better or worse - and it is mostly for the better - we are culturally Chinese, Malay or Indian.

As China and India become great powers, they will in all probability instigate a degree of cultural pride among overseas Chinese and Indians everywhere, including Singapore. We would have had little to do with their becoming great powers but we would feel a little reflected glory.

That 5,000 years of civilisation, that is mine too, as Mr Teo said, and it continues to do admirable things that one can identify with. And he would not be wrong to feel that way. Zhang Yimou produced the Olympics' opening ceremony. Our cultural impressarios produced the Merlion. You do not have to be Chinese to recognise that there is no contest - culturally.

But politically, there is - or rather, was - a contest, and the 'Singaporean' in 'Chinese Singaporean' has won.

Every one of the journalists who wrote last Sunday proved that point, almost unconsciously. They belonged to different generations, pre- as well as post-65ers. Some were effortlessly bilingual, some so-so. Yet all said, in varying ways, that their identities were not based solely on race and culture. Yes, I am Chinese - or Malay or Indian; no, I am definitely not.

That actually was as good a show as the one Zhang Yimou put on - better, perhaps, for there was no lip-synching and everyone spoke in his or her own voice.