“Good morning,” Pansy greets the astonished taxi driver when he winds down his window to speak to her. “Have you eaten?”
“Eat already, eat already,” he replies, not used to being greeted so politely.
“Please take me to the seaside, just somewhere where I can sit and watch the waves…”
“Where would you like to go? Which part?”
“On the coast, anywhere…”
“We’re already in the East so better for me to take you to the East Coast near the Lagoon Hawker Centre, so if you want to come back, it’s easier to take a taxi. There’s a Bougainvillea Garden there…”
Pansy is delighted that the middle-aged Chinese taxi driver switched to Teochew.
“Oh yes, please. I love flowers,” she says in their dialect as she gets into the taxi. “You know, since my return from England, this is the first time I am hearing someone speak Teochew. Not many people speak the language these days.”
“Ah yes, I thought you’ve been abroad. The way you pronounce your English is very masterful, not the same as people here. And no fake accent. I can’t stand it when youngsters use American slang.” He continues, “The government says and the government does. Got no choice, right? Must speak Mandarin, they say. It will unify the Chinese. It’s like most of the campaigns, sound good but have no heart! Mandarin is a language for academics and bureaucrats. Our musical language is gone forever…”
“I think it’s good that people of Chinese origin should learn some Mandarin,” Pansy says. “But they shouldn’t have stopped us from speaking our dialects…”
“Correct! Why destroy our culture? Our dialect comes together with our culture. What culture does Mandarin have?”
“Do you remember the outdoor Chinese wayang, and the Teochew opera…?”
“Ya lah! I loved the getai shows! But from the 80s, all gone. Today, many young people don’t know any dialect or their own customs or code of behaviour! The government was not so far-sighted. It’s like ‘Stop at Two’ campaign. So what happened? Our population is now zero growth. And today they are begging young people to have children! They even recruit foreigners to be citizens if they provide the country with children, or are good at sports! Then we had that ‘Speak Mandarin’ campaign. They forced all the Chinese kids to learn Mandarin and guess what? Today, some of those youngsters can’t even communicate with their grandparents! My old mother does not speak any English and Mandarin, so my children can’t talk to her. How ridiculous is that? Without your own dialect group, your own clan, who are you?”
Once a taxi driver starts, he never stops, bursting to speak his mind.
“Yes, that’s really sad. Same for me. I’m Teochew Baba. My grandchildren can neither speak Teochew nor Malay nor my Peranakan patois. And as I’ve been away, I don’t speak Mandarin. So we have to communicate in English! Not that I see much of them…”
“What a waste! What a waste!” the taxi driver says. “All that heritage gone! If our children and grandchildren do not know our traditions, our culture has died. Without culture, without identity, how can we have national identity? What does it mean to be Singaporean? You think all these foreigners they give the citizenship to will really treat this place as home? Fat chance! Once they have made enough money and got what they want they run back to their own country. Most of them profit from selling their HDB!
“Luckily the government suddenly woke up five years ago and set up a museum for your Peranakan culture. The Peranakan culture is so unique to Southeast Asia, shame to lose it. Luckily your people are good at maintaining your culture—you wear your traditional outfits, you do musicals and stage shows in your language, you open restaurants serving your cuisine. You practise your customs and keep them alive.
“Aiyah! Things are definitely not the same as they were. Now young people all so Westernised. They’ve become ‘yellow bananas’! Yellow outside but white inside. These days, Chinese youngsters are the worst. At least the Malays, Peranakans, and Indians wear their baju kurong, sarong kebaya, salwar kameez and saris. Cheong sams appear only at Chinese New Year. Worse still, they like wearing black, like Westerners. Even at weddings and Chinese New Year. Our parents would have whipped us if we wore even a trace of black for auspicious days. So selfish! Black brings bad luck to the wedding couple and the occasion! It appears that the fairer their skin is, the more they love to wear black, as if black enhances their milky whiteness! Young people say that we old folk are superstitious and old- fashioned. But even if they speak Mandarin, they are without Chinese culture! No manners.
“Children had more respect in the old days. All working children gave their parents monthly pocket money. Not now! You look around and see how many old folks have to go out to work, selling pocket tissues or cleaning tables at hawker centres, and rummaging through refuse bins to pick up aluminium cans and cardboard to sell! Some of these young people earn more than ten thousand dollars a month and they don’t even give their parents one single dollar! In the past, we believe it was our duty to take care of our parents when they grew old. Automatic, what! They gave us life and raised us, so when they’re old, we look after them. It’s a natural cycle. But these days…”
“I heard that someone has bought Rediffusion and will air the old type of programmes?” Pansy interrupts him gently, trying to
