The story of an immigrant, the nation's lifeblood
By Chua Mui HoongMost of us have seen them around, these elderly, dialect-speaking women who have slaved a lifetime for family and children, and now sit on stone chairs and at tables in void decks, keeping an indulgent eye on young grandchildren milling around.
These women are always addressed as Ah Soh, Ah Sim or Ah Hmm, depending on the dialect. They are a ubiquitous feature of the heartscape of an average Housing Board estate.
Madam Lou was one of them, often sitting there at dusk while her grandson played with other children.
Like the others, she had a story to tell. And through her tale pulsed the lifeblood of this young immigrant nation.
IT WAS 40 years ago that Madam Lou boarded a boat from her hometown in Shantou to embark on a one-week voyage to Nanyang, as Malaya was called then by the Chinese.
It was 1955, and she was 28. She was joining her husband, whom she had married eight years before and been separated from, when he left to make a home for them in faraway Nanyang.
Her husband was what the villagers called a returned sojourner, a voyager who had ventured to the glamorous Nanyang and returned. These were the men with derring-do and drive, who might one day make their fortunes.
Madam Lou spent two years in Kuala Lumpur, before settling in Singapore with her husband, a carpenter by trade.
As an immigrant wife, she learnt to do many things her sheltered childhood in a well-to-do family had never prepared her for.
She hauled bricks for two months to help pay the rent of their first room.
There was no time to do the beautiful embroidery she had enjoyed in Shantou.
Here, every stitch of the needle had to be prosaic, aimed at a specific utilitarian purpose.
With her trusty steel scissors that had survived the voyage to Nanyang, she cut and sewed, and clothed her husband, herself and later the three children they would have.
The young immigrant couple's first break came when Madam Lou won $50 in a lottery. They bought a trishaw, and with it became roving hawkers.
Over the years, they would sell many different food products.
Together with her husband, she learnt how to make popiah, fry chestnuts, prepare pineapple cordial, cook rice dishes and noodles, and negotiate the best prices in the market for her wares. These culinary skills were not leisurely pursuits, but their means of livelihood.
They pushed their trishaw where there were crowds: around the Esplanade and the City Hall areas, the backdrop to so many important national events, the Serangoon Road area on racing days, and the Catholic church at Novena on Saturdays.
On Aug 9, 1965, Singapore's independence was declared at the Padang, where Madam Lou often pushed her trishaw to sell her wares. She became a citizen shortly after.
Through the years, she had been sending money and clothes to her relatives in China. But letters became less frequent.
The Cultural Revolution from 1966-76 threw China into upheaval. Several relatives committed suicide. After her sister died, the last emotional tie to her homeland was severed.
Through it all, she made her living in Singapore, kept house and raised three children. Later, she sent them to English-speaking schools where they learnt about the flag of her adopted country and soon internalised its values.
I ASKED Madam Lou if she would return to China, one day.
What for, she replied. Her family was here. She had only very distant relatives in her hometown.
As we spoke, she was cutting up old bath towels to be used as floor rags, with the very pair of scissors she had brought with her on her voyage 40 years ago. I held it almost in awe.
As she spoke, her four-year-old grandson ran up to her in agitation.
He gestured towards the red-and-white flag that hung from the balustrade outside their flat. He was almost in tears. Something was very wrong in his childish world.
I went out into the corridor. One end of the string which held up the state flag hung out for the National Day celebration had snapped. The flag now fluttered limply in the wind. I consoled him and set the flag right.
Madam Lou, my immigrant mother, had sunk roots in this tiny island state that was now her home, and mine, and would remain her grandson's.
Copyright © 1998 Singapore Press Holdings. All Rights Reserved.
