Listen to an
excerpt from Lee Dai Soh's show
By LU LIN REUTENS
New Nation's centrespread on Tuesday about Singapore storyteller, Mr Lee Dai Soh, brought back a flood of memories of post-war, pre-TV childhood days, when we depended on the radio and Rediffusion to fill the hours between school and dinner.
I remember sprawling on the cold tiled floor of the living room to the fabric over the round hollow that was the loud speaker of the radio set.
Each evening, usually after the five o'clock news, Dai Soh would come on to "talk story" and relieve the suspense of the previous day's episode about some great warrior -- inevitably masters of kung fu -- out to perform some equally great feat.
Every kick, every leap into the air was vividly described and in our little minds, became as real as a Bruce Lee karate chop on today's screen.
Dai Soh's tales were always steeped in Chinese customs and tradition. The son were always filial to their parents, respectful towards their kung fu masters and fiercely loyal to their friend.
I remember a story in which a son who, when his mother died spent endless days and nights in a hut he built next to her grave to tend to it. I was most impressed, and felt certain it was the right thing to do.
Parents' deaths were always revenged, and loss of face or bringing disgrace to the family name unforgivable and those responsible spent their life making amends.
In each day's episode, just when the hero was about to catch up with the villain or at some such heart-stopping point of excitement. Dai Soh would say: "And will he ever have the chance to revenge his father's death? (or something appropriate). We will stop here for a short while."
Yes, they had commercial breaks then too!
Besides the historical folk stories in the Chinese readers -- our tutor made us study (remember the story about the fool who ate salt?) Dai Soh's sessions were our other source of traditional tales.
Admittedly they did not always have the same moral lessons or historical flavour. They were to history and traditional folk tales what comics were to novels.
But they fired the imagination of our young minds when probably because of the stories vague claim to historical acts, identified with the heroes, not unlike the way English children romanticise over the Knights of the Round Table.
Lee Dai Soh, in one of his disguisesSadly, as Dai Soh said, storytelling is a dying profession. Besides him, there is a Hokkien storyteller, Ong Toh, and a Teochew one, Ng Shia Keng, both of whom, I am told, are equally popular with their respective dialect groups.
They are probably the last of the dying breed. The younger generation may not consider it much of a loss. And it is difficult to see how storytellers' ramblings will fit into the visual-oriented environment we enjoy today. Certainly, this high-intensity non-stop stimulation leaves little room for the imagination, which is in danger of becoming atrophied.
"But must storytelling die as a profession?" a colleague asked.
Maybe not.
Maybe the Singapore Handicraft Centre, which has breathed life back into many a dying phenomenon, would like to consider engaging storytellers (with translators?) to spin their yarns as part of the centre's programme.
First published in New Nation, May 15, 1978
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