Ancient China

Two old street scavengers slumped at the corner Starbucks table behind the pillar getting some shut-eye. Almost noon. Beside the palm their trolley mounted high with flattened cardboard, contours of the aluminum cans in the black garbage bags on top. Early seventies the man, fine black coif combed back, spare frame. The woman younger, stouter, abundant thick hair down her back almost to the waist. Being taller she is slumped further in her chair. The hard iron of the Starbucks veranda seating she softens with a piece of cardboard torn to fit, the remainder on the table for her head. Hair tamed behind by a thick elastic band; he has one around a wrist. They use them to tie off the bags. To hold the bags on top of the pile they use dangerous bungee cords. The woman's hair flows out from the band, wide across her back and streaked with grey. Such a mass of hair on an old woman. Years back she must have kept it in a queue. A man's black shirt, black slacks. At a number of points there was some doubt about her gender, but she is a woman alright. Her hair was about the length that she could bring it round to the front under her arm-pit and scissor the ends herself. For all the grey, the black still predominated.
         The man regularly visited a barber. A number of times he stirred from his slumber, on one occasion just in time to catch an office girl attempting to stuff her used tissue between the cardboard sheets on the trolley. The young woman was gruffly told where to get off, dark looks following. The disturbance woke the woman and she looked after her too, without matching annoyance. At no point was there any communication between the pair. When he goes to move the trolley he does so abruptly without a word. The woman rises from her seat looking after him. After a minute or two she resumes her seat; another minute or two he returns. The face the woman shows is almost Amerindian. Nut brown in this case, not red; thick-lipped, a broad brow and long face. Among the office crowd and tourists she presents a startling figure, much the more striking of the pair. Directly in front of them people stop to photograph the windmills and dear installed in the corner of the small square. On the other side there is a mechanically spurting fountain that draws children under the water and other photographers. In the course of waking the woman had revealed the cigarette lighter she had been clutching, its sudden emergence like a magician's trick. Now from the pocket of her shirt a little bundle drawn which she bends to scrutinize. The colour and size suggested money, tightly bound. Likely it wasn't money. A small pink-framed magnifying glass used in her study. The bundle went back where it had come from. Hidden before, in the action she showed the two bangles on her right wrist. Simple plastic bands, one black, one white—ying and yang. Large circular silver ear-rings, larger than fifty cent pieces, swung when she looked after the office lass. The woman was part gypsy, part Amerindian; Chinese of a form that hasn't been seen at Bugis Junction for an eternity.

(An item in the Straits Times gives the price of re-cycled cardboard currently as nine cents per kilogram. S.T. 24 Dec. 2011 p. C10.)

Ancient China was published in a longer sequence in the Hong Kong based Asian Cha Literary Journal, Dec 2013, under the title “Ancient China: Post- (Almost) LKY Singapore”
 

The Pillar

Cost of a pack here was about the same as back home—$10-11 and more at the supermarkets. The chaps in this stretch of town who burn 30-40 a day can't afford that of course, just like elsewhere. Here there was no space for illegal chop-chop, that toxic stuff they fertilise and spray with god knows what. 

         Over the Causeway, about nine hundred metres—30 seconds in a fast boat—same pack costs quart the price. Easy to figure. Even with fines one hundred times the tax evaded, can be got if you know where. Naturally the lads who need to know know.  

         Problem was a big raid last weekend which sent all the dealers to ground. Nothing for goin’ down with the tehs. Toe-tapping all along the pavement tables like a chorus-line pretty much up to Haig Road bus-stop.  

         The author's long walks in the evenings uncovered some hidden corners that even the old crocodiles didn't know about. When they were tried by one or two fellows, returns empty-handed and complaints of frustration. Eventually, when the seekers happened upon the lads in the particular lorongs, wouldn't you know it. Only Marlboro Reds & Greens. Gudang Garangs zilch. They weren't going to pay even five for the other. 

         Last night an act of charity was performed. This was a different locale, needless to say needing to remain nameless. The arrangement had been seen previously in two or three other places. Unlike the elaborate chain of a dozen or more lads in a long row, with the goods themselves kept well outta sight, here was a one-man simple operation.  

         Under a covered walkway beside a pillar, an old cardboard box holding eight or nine packs in the bottom. M.Greens, a Red or two, and a couple of glinting Indon deep, lustrous mauves, blinking and glinting their lights like a semaphore somehow.  

         There may have been an unobtrusive spot trained from a hidden railing. A little shady in the walkways, and uneven floors. You needed to watch where you were planting your feet there. 

         Ah! Brought up sharp and a step back needed.  

         Set-up nicely mounted. The box sat against a pillar and just at that place there seemed to be more than the usual other pillars thick along the pavement. This was an ancient, if not Roman scene.  

         One found oneself in the midst of old, established cultures in Sin’pore. Well practiced.

         From behind one of these extra pillars, man entered. 

         If you ain’t ever seen a rabbit pulled from a hat, you can't properly appreciate.  

         A sea of Chinese faces, like every night along that nameless, long-winding street. Outside of this dark shuttered shop there was none.  

         Then there was. 

         A foreigner wouldn't stand a chance of picking the fellow in a line-up. In that area of Geylang an experienced portrait painter would never be able to differentiate the chap two minutes later. Two seconds later.  

         Generic Chinaman. Raised his chin. Incapable of producing a single English word one would have wagered. Wrongly. 

         — Five. 

         It would have been unseemly to bargain. There was no time; best not linger; cameras and microphones assumed everywhere in Sin'pore. (The purchaser was in deep poo like the seller.) 

         Somehow, without a hand coming to light, without naked flesh uncovered, the five no longer anywhere. 

         Somehow it was clear the fellow wasn't going to stoop to pick up for you either. Usually a customer got first rate service in Sing'pore, white fella especially. Customer is king. Usually. The mainland Chinese were not known for their delicacy.  

         Did he step away in the other direction? Didn’t mind if you took two? 

         Sometimes one can catch the tails of lizards scampering up these pillar.

A Bunch of Bananas

Six bananas whittled away slowly over the course of the afternoon, until by half seven, the first sign of dusk creeping on in the wings, a single solitary remained for the purchaser to quietly consume on the walk home. Thin as the proverbial rake and a picker at the food on his plate, Zainuddin polished off first one, and then most surprisingly followed by a second within little more than an hour. Needless to say, these were not the fourteen inch whoppers one saw hung for display at the prata places. But neither were they the baby cherub little weenies. First Din’s new aid for the proper recitation of the Qur'an had got the man excited. Soon afterward we had moved to the case of Gaddafi's overthrow. Zainuddin had visited Libya in the ruler's heyday and was mightily impressed. During the course of public speeches given by the Colonel men wandered around the room and chatted with their friends. Nothing like the awe and concentration Din was used to for the great man back home. Seems Gaddafi's attempt to have the oil trade conducted in gold bars might have alarmed the Americans (just the same as in the case of Saddam angling for Euros). A fiery combustion in Din needed fuelling. Shortly after dispatching the second pisang the man stepped off with a third for the old fella rapidly fading on his camp-bed beside the Convert's building, where the Chinese cobbler formerly put up shop Sundays. Previously the poor wraith had never been seen at any of the tables. There had been no response to the small generosity; later however we watched the slow chomping with mutual satisfaction. Early evening after Zainuddin had left, a big, beefy former man of the track who went off to the Paya Lebar Post Office late afternoon to watch a race at HK, approached the much diminished bunch, pointed to the author, the vacant chair opposite, and finally to his own pot-belly, before reaching out wordlessly to claim a reasonable third portion. Perhaps he had witnessed the slow decline over the course of the lazy Sunday afternoon. Under the overcast, slow-moving sky no doubt the bunch had glowed on the timber veneer table-top at Labu Labi. One gets a look carting apples and oranges in bare hands in lower Geylang, let alone the native pisang. You need to field half-intelligible ribald comments right the way along the line. Being caught with the short-sized puts one at disadvantage. Naturally one gives as good as gets of course, never-mind the language barrier. And then there are the lasses stealing glances. That alone is worth some little candle. Finally the Sabah, Borneo waiter could hardly be refused when he pulled up short at table to beg with clearly insatiable desire, — One?... A dollar fifty at the favourite Geylang Serai stall soon after lunch. Faint tinges of green had failed to deter any of the diners. During the course—one of the early courses—Zainuddin had cited the reference to the "covered fruit" in the Qur'an. The new electronic device he had purchased offered the enunciation of chosen verses keyed to a particular edition of the Holy Book. For $200 another fine hard-cover to add to Din’s library, with a battery-operated full recording and another short volume for more particular phonetics. One pressed the pen-like tip of the silver stylus on the selected verse, and Viola! there you immediately had the rounded syllables of authentic Riyadh and Mecca. — AAarhh! A keen enthusiast could be fairly sent into a swoon. Witness the case of Mr. Zainuddin! Difficult to get the Arabic right so far removed from the heart-land. Explanations near the end of the ancillary volume highlighted particular vowels that lasted fully six beats—six seconds roughly. It helped explain some of the unusual elongations from the minarets, especially on the Peninsular, where amplification was allowed (unlike in Sin’pore).

The Mysterious Case of the Flat-cap

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The Lair in the white leather flattie passing with the shopping accompanied by his wife: cap, silver studded belt holding up apple-green trousers and pressed pale lavender shirt tucked.  On this view looked a wing-stretched eagle on the black tag stitched on the rear. From a distance a few days ago at the Labu Labi tables the emblem appeared an anchor. Mid-seventies; wife a couple of years younger, traditionally covered Malay, heavily made-up and with an attractive figure. A handsome couple they would have made in their youth even without the present-day throne and plush drapery when bride and groom hold court on their wedding day (often on the concrete ground floor of their parents' HDB tower). Banana leaf padded high-chairs of some kind in their time perhaps, over packing-cases from the wharfs. One thing for sure, the Indon Botticelli Belle sitting close on the Bugis parapet wall the other night this wife has not in her knowledge, the sly old dog. His generation favour the heavy, two-inch diameter watch on a silver band (gold is reserved for the womenfolk in Islam); and almost ringless in his case. There was so much metal the other night shaking Mr. Tengu's hand here at the same place the sensation was of a prosthetic attachment. Many of the men at Labu Labi carry a similar weight, the various stones—jade, ruby, emerald, topaz, moon-stone, sapphire, cat's eye—set in silver or bronze.
         Nor is the fellow concerned the prince of the pack either in this bottom corner of Geylang at the junction of Changi and Joo Chiat Roads. That title would certainly pass to the big-chested Cowboy alternating cigarettes and panadol who haunts the same rear table at L.L. It is the scalloped, twin-pocketed Cowboy shirts with the piping over the shoulders—they number close to a dozen in various colours and prints—that produce the impression of enlarged lungs. Cigarette packs, pain-killers, cards and assorted in open-flapped pockets create the unusual  puffed-out picture of robustness when a pal is approached at a table. Behold the aplomb with which the man crosses from one side of the paving to the other. Only the Sheriffs who have cleaned up the dirtiest towns were permitted swagger of this kind. Young beauties at the great fashion-houses are coached for that particular gait of leading shoulders and wide-swung legs on the cat-walk. Howdy partner. Buy you a teh?.... Standing up exceedingly well in the run-up to eighty. Jewelry as one would expect—numerous rings, bracelets and necklaces. This morning a contrasting pair of gold chain-link and silver plate slipping one over the other on the wrist as he passed. Was there a deft swivel of hand in the passage across the way?
         Neither of these men has ever been sighted without head-cover, and never with the traditional songkok. Such run-of-the-mill millinery is far beneath them. Almost certainly at night for those of his immediate family the Cowboy uncovers a shiny bald pate. The dyed, stringy mullet that falls over his collars strongly suggestive. Even among the youngsters you don’t often come upon that kind of cut. The other is one of the rare ones who disdain dye. (Again, as for the Prophet's urging against the wearing of gold for men, dyeing of hair was reserved only for the projection of virility in battle. Not otherwise.)
         A half hour after the handsome couple passed a casual look round the tables revealed the Cowboy in the usual seat out back. What suddenly struck the eye was the cap. As described, such was the dazzle of the man his own white flattie had never really been noticed before, not as a separate, discrete item. The alternations of appareil in his case obscured the matter further. Suddenly here he was fitted out with this most striking and one had assumed unique topi. Virgin snow-white. In the first instance the slightly lesser sheen could not properly be discerned. There was more than a minor jarring note—the brash old cattle Rancher suddenly confused with the little Cockney miner who was altogether a different kettle of fish. Yet here he sat at the tables of the Saloon bending an ear to his neighbour and gloving a goreng pisang—fried banana from the plate. What was going on here? The author most certainly needed a double-take. From fifteen metres it looked the very same article; one of a pair. One thing was certain: in all this time this couple of lads, these warmly amicable friends, had never once shared that rear L.L. back table looking across at each other bearing the same crowns.
         Up close it was clear this was no leather. The Cowboy's accoutrement showed a crisscrossed patterning on the fabric. Converse brand, the large star logo on the rear and along one side the lettering. Somehow in these tropics, through the monsoon, the cloth was kept spotless. (Naturally leather was far easier to maintain.) Omitted in the portrait have been the sunglasses, rain or shine, soft autumn-leaf tinted Continentals. Somehow these too passed notice.
       Back home the nearest equivalent might be the old Lairs of the racing fraternity that one used to see Sundays on World of Sport. In the great southern land one almost never saw a flat-cap, not even back in the earliest sixties. There of course a longer peak was required. In Singapore, among the Malays especially, they appear quite regularly, though only at Labu Labi the blindingly snow-capped. Back in the day here one would presume various English navies sporting the article on the water-front, sauntering hands-in-pockets around the cheap hotels and in and out of the stores. How the bare-foot sun-burnt lads must have looked on from afar.... How beguiled by the sight…. Third World to First in the space of thirty years thanks to the fore-sight of wise Mr. Lee (ailing in recent time).  An attainment by any measure. Should their own suppliers ever run dry, the author knows where to point these fellows for their Eagle Pills. (See the post of that name from 18/09/2011.)

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Three-day Moon (Tahu Goreng)

Kinda place you gotta love. Just now, right before the author's eyes and no mistake, the  Sabah, Borneo waiter delivering a plate of unshelled kacang—for you non-speakers, plenty of local Chinese among you, despite the fact Bahasa is enshrined in the Constitution as the National language—peanuts. Fellow feels himself quite at liberty to paw one for himself immediately before the assembled table. This is not en route, behind the column or quick-flash while no-one is watching. Plate lands on the table in front of the young boy for whom it must have been ordered; young lad who wants it eyed in a particular way…. Everyone looks like an ape gloving peanuts and chomping. Here it was no different. One of those older, big-chested apes in this case, after the nut was swooped a half-cocked head and cool appraisal of the young chimp on the lower branch. Chomping there and then. Plenty at the tables all-round; plenty with tongues hanging awaiting their tehs. Yet this Sabah waiter takes a mom to size up this little fella, while crunching that favourite food for a try himself. Never lose the taste kid, take it from me. Stand you in good stead the old kacang…. As if you were present dear Reader. If such liberty be not your style you have accidentally stumbled upon this poor blog-log of a voyage of discovery and re-discovery. You want table-cloths, lines of cutlery and curtseys, look away now. Something else is on offer here. True enough the man here may just a moment before have been picking his nose. Certainly he's a smoker. (Nicotine stains fail to show on Malay coffee-colour.) Makes no never-mind. We happily swallow it. Sorry to offend. No offence intended. Labu Labi not in any of the Guide books you can be sure. Don't bring a camera if your interest has been piqued and you want to come see for yourself. Twenty months around the place, not a once seen in this particular quarter, not at these tables. Yes, Singapore I'll still talking, where photography is nothing short of a mental derangement. Per capita they out-do the Japs here. Dreadful to behold the false promise chased with such earnestness. Endless delight. Mid-morning for the Hindi love-songs from the Bai Mansor stand re-interpreting the genre with surprising new rhythms; and then show-stopping dusks like this not long gone. Right now soot-black clouds, low, light and voluminous, slit by pale, vanishingly pale blue like a fabric shredded by a sharp blade. In the jotting a few lines back there had been a thin, exceedingly thin sliver of brilliant moon, Islamic and scimitar sharp, difficult to credit three days old. Early days this new year of the Snake. Buried by the shifting cloud as if it had never been, in a trice while you weren’t looking, not the slightest vestige. Here now, then no more like a proper visitation. A form of beauty, elusive. The Shorty peanut cruncher sits now on a stack of three of the fire-engine red plastic chairs. If you want artificial decor and padded furniture with the tahu goreng, best reserve a table elsewhere. Sin'pore is spoilt for choice. Three dollars at L.L.

NB. The tahu goreng—fried tofu—should be noted briefly. Under Mr. Zainuddin's influence, after this odd dish was sampled it quickly became a favourite evening meal—once weekly. Richly sweet from the sugar, yet garlic and chilly laced to complicate the taste on the palate. Bean shoots, tamarind, cucumber, crushed and roasted peanuts with soy sauce. Make what you may of that little adventure. Javanese origin they tell you. (Recipes online.) One last matter too for those completely ignorant of the region, of large parts outside the First World: fingers rather than cutlery as often as not. And spoons and forks rather than knives otherwise.

The British Phosphate Commissioners

An unfamiliar face at Labu Labi during the afternoon. Seemed as if the mat salleh was likewise unfamiliar to the man. Clearly not a regular. Nevertheless, when the chapatti and dip arrives—mince with peas, the standard and most popular—the invitation could not fail.

— Join me. Smile and hand gesturing toward the plate.

Rarely does one sit at table before food beside one who may be hungry (even perchance a white man). Not in this community.

Complete strangers; never laid eyes on one another. The famous Greek hospitality; the Arab; Montenegrin. It was a broad brotherhood not so long ago.

Another, fuller encounter at the same tables the night before provided even greater surprise. Here was an accent from the great Southern land when least expected, emanating from a face and features, from dress that had certainly never been witnessed previously. 

Ninety-nine point nine-nine percent of the Australian population would have been similarly mystified. 

The last few years the territory had become justly infamous of course; few could have pinned it within a bull's roar of its true location on a map.

Christmas Islander natives of a fashion; born and bred. Muslim Malays!

Sixty the capped man with his scarfed wife: born on the territory. The Chippie, Zaini, still had a living mother fully ninety years of age, who lived on the island where she was born in the nineteen hundred and twenties. 

Christmas Island. British subjects in childhood and early youth the islanders. The year of 1957 the British Foreign Office decreed it Australian territory. 

The phosphate was no doubt assured with that arrangement. Malayan Emergency, Mao, Korea. Safe bet was Australia. Thank god for the early explorers. 

The British Crown outright was unsustainable in the era of decolonisation. (Apparently years later, after Singaporean independence, the first Chief Minister here at the time was blamed for selling Christmas Island to the Australians cheaply, for a song—a couple of million. By that time the earnings from the phosphate was known and also the size of the crabs that were denied the local cuisine.)

Christmas Island another Nauru. Not so rich in the bird droppings and therefore not so utterly devastated by the mining operation. The operation on Chrissy was similar to the arrangement in the northern resource-rich Straits: Indians shipped mainly for the rail-line and conveyors from the heights. Chinese coolies for the labour ("indentured workers.”). Malays filled other labour requirements, housing and allied construction. As on Cocos, there were Ceylonese for policing.

The associated racism and segregation, in this case stretching into much more recent time. It was only in the early 80s that the signage warning Blackies and Yellows not to enter government precincts, municipal offices and the like were removed. (Worth the record: man named Gordon Bennett, one of the union officials who came and settled from the mainland, was instrumental in doing away with all that. No more Anglo snobbery.)

Zaini owned to a little wild-boy rock 'n' rolling in youth, playing guitar in numerous coconut palm bands (precious few garages on the island). Music was half-alright; caught the ear of the White Man's Club—aka the Christmas Island Club. The President or Secretary of the same has a word to Zaini: Hey mate. Whaddya reckon about a show at our place? Flabbergasted reply from the bell-bottomed jeans boy. Fair suck of the sav, Mr Top-of-the-pile. We blackfellas aren't allowed to enter your premises. You wan us to play for you?!...

         Visits to relos in Singapore were an eye-opener for the young islanders from a distant shore, a kind of home-coming. Steerage passage on the cargo ships was provided gratis by the British—the British Phosphate Commissioners—annually. There were still kampungs around Geylang Serai then, atap covered traditional houses, ten kids to a room on the floor. Always flooding. Plenty of coconuts on Christmas Island, but what were these spiky sci-fi durians?

Seventeen hundred kilometers west of Exmouth; two thousand nor-west of Perth. Five hundred south of Indonesia. (Five hundred perilous kilometres in overloaded fishing vessels never intended for sea-faring.)

At the terrible ship-wreck of asylum-seekers on December 2010 Zaini was at work on his PC when he saw a neighbour hurrying by his window. In the roiling waters there were people desperately clinging to pieces of wreckage. Nothing could be done; some tried. One chap clung to a piece of wood while clutching a child in his other hand—defeated finally.

The wife worked as a cleaner at the Detention Centre. Good money.

The guys had heard about the opium fed to the Chinese coolies on the Mainland, back in China. That was a few generations back. Some of the Chrissy Island coolies had lived into the second half of the century. You saw them on the island, often smoking the thick, make-shift bamboo pipes that were held vertically. The brand on the hand was unmistakable, on the webbing between thumb and forefinger. Number faded. (The hand that held the pipe). 

The British Phosphate Commissioners themselves you never saw; their operation was conducted from afar.