The young woman was a Mainlander. Easy to tell straight off. Frilly dress, hair-band with the pink ribbon, keenness most of all. Stringing out an impossible conversation she recalled one of the show-girls in the Saloons from the old Westerns, attempting to cadge something from an unlikely looking, weather-beaten old cow-hand.
Australie was simple in Bahasa. Anywhere in Jakarta and even the far flung islands you would be instantly understood. Anywhere in Singapore you would have thought, where a local Chinese was concerned.
The girl was one thing; but how could a Hokkien, born and raised in Singapore, even one in his sixties, not have a clue about "Australia"? Remarkable.
The Drink-waiter's help had been enlisted.
Nada.
You gotta be kidding man!...
Many of the Chinese could sing-along with the old anthem: God save our gracious Queen, long live our... no problem at all. Old McDonald and the other school-room favourites they often knew pat. Most of them adored all things British in this outpost of the former Empire. Pictures of Big Ben, old red double-decker buses and Westminster sold tea-towels, t-shirts, shopping bags, condos, you name it.
This guy attempting to help out the Mainland lass with her difficulty, blinking behind his glasses.
Australia. Australie. Au-Stra-Lia. ORS-tralia.
Shook his head. Shook again. Reminded of slow school-kids in class bullied by dragon-breathing monsters at the blackboard back in the day. Back in the day of morning assembly, flag monitors, anthems. Oddly shared memories in Singapore. Not this fellow. Missed out somehow. Didn't think to draw him an outline.
The girl one could completely understand. Sydney. Melbourne. An upright hand bounding over the table-top Hop-Hop-Hop.
Nothing, sorry.
What was left? Kevin Rudd? Not likely.
Where she was from impossible to get either. Not Shandong, no. (Many of the Mainland gals were from the back-woods of course) Wuhan no. Beijing? Xi'an? (This was pointless. First rank cities was not where these girls hailed from.) Flustered, Shanghai was forgotten.
We had to give it away. Couldn't be helped. The girl herself admitting defeat. It was not even that she wanted to score. Some of her compatriots, the majority, put up with the slave-rates and long hours rather than turning to the game. A little afternoon exchange here was all.
Like the foreign construction workers, the working girls were part of a large industry. Likely the two industries closely allied in a carefully planned polis like this, same syndicates operating. Plenty of hardship and desperation in the region available to mine for entrepreneurs lacking scruple. In the back lorongs at night at this Chinese end of Geylang the girls stood together in their native groups: dark Thais, short Indos, pencil-thin Viets. There were laws now, regulations, raids every so often. Innumerable girls in their mid if not early teens all the same, as the regular prosecutions demonstrated.
Audio on Google Translate later indicated the gulf. Close, yet so far. A mouthful of pins possibly the best recourse.
Originally penned 2012, a re-draft was published on the ABC RN Earshot website Oct 2015.
No comments:
Post a Comment