Weaving through Tiong Bahru wet market with my mum, I suddenly felt like I was rudely awakened to the fact that all along the 19 years of my life I’ve been an outsider. It’s not like I’ve never walked through wet markets before – multiple school trips on Singapore’s heritage guaranteed that – but this time the presence of my mum confronted me with the realisation that both of us had no idea what some items being sold were for, not privy to the local practices and ingredients. There is something intensely local and intimate about wet markets, displaying the necessities and hustle and bustle of Singapore’s day-to-day. That is why not being able to name or identify things that I saw felt so intensely alienating. I thought about how on our annual trips back to China, wet market visits were familiar and everything had a name, or even if it did not my mum would navigate it with ease and, between finding the appropriate folded bills, would explain to me what delicacy this thing was for, or some snippet of her childhood related to that thing.
My family had always lived on the fringes of Singapore’s lifestyle. We ate mostly home-cooked food – Chinese dishes that my mum brought over from home – never participated in community events, talked mostly to their friend’s families who were also immigrants, and up till a point in my life spoke completely in Chinese such that my brother’s and my English was horrifyingly subpar. Up till when I was 17, and despite the best efforts of our education system, I would always freeze up when someone says the name of a Singaporean dish and I have no idea what they’re talking about (Kway Chap, Chee Cheong Fan etc.) If Singapore was large enough to have suburbs, I’m sure that the way I’m so foreign to local traditions and language would make people think I’m some countryside bumpkin. There was a natural difficulty to reach out to the community and take root.
Beyond just lifestyle differences, this prompted me to consider how exactly I’ve been brought up in relation to all my other friends. I’ve always lived my life with a motivation to excel and had no choice but to strive to do well. Failure or slacking was never an option. In hindsight, this pressure came from the fact that my family didn’t have the complacency of being happy with our position in life that other Singaporean families possess after residing in the same familiar place for generations. My parents left their homeland for Singapore in pursuit of a better future, and too much was at stake for them to take it easy. There is a natural caution when the soil beneath their feet has not been trodden, and the fear of being uprooted is compounded by the fact that they have left home long enough to be a stranger even there. Subconsciously that pressure has been transferred to me and I viewed my success as one faucet of their idea of success. The charm of meritocracy was also impressed upon me because my parents made it out with their own strengths, and hence I grew up learning to only count on myself and the standards I can uphold.
There is also the growing isolation from their homeland as time passes and the difficulty in reconciling what their childhood looked like with how things are now. My mother kept in touch with her old classmates, albeit at arm’s length, and the disappointment in the kind of people and the increasing politicisation, are hard to hide. There is a certain disapproval with the way things are done, but she is now an outsider and has little ways of affecting any change. Perhaps because she is an outsider, she is able to clearly see how things are changing, made to feel helpless. I think that immigrant families only have two options regarding how to deal with their emotional attachments to their homeland. First is to stay in touch and observe as my mother does, to hope that things will go well for the sake of your people, while the second is to completely break away from the past and remove that distraction since your worrying wouldn’t change the reality. Both are alienating, and something I wouldn’t know or hope to experience.
Immigration also meant a lot of brush in with injustices and discrimination that I’ve been too young to understand. When you immigrate to a foreign country, you only have yourself to defend against others – not even your family could comprehend and back you up because the basis of their identity is fundamentally different. I grew up complacently, thinking no one will ever challenge or doubt my identity as a Singaporean, hence I could not understand my mother’s anger at people not recognising her citizenship and by extension all the sacrifices she had to make. It is incredibly isolating. My mother had experienced workplace bullying because she sounded like a foreigner despite being a citizen for almost two decades. She is also someone with pride, and will not sit still and allow it to happen – she wielded her anger and her heavy-tongued English to retaliate and it scared a lot of people. While I don’t know the details, I could see the daily battles taking a toll on the person sitting before me at breakfast.
One instance I do remember very clearly was during our trip to Morocco as part of a Singapore tour group. We were at a mosque and the tour guide reminded us to not make offensive gestures while taking photos. This Singaporean uncle commented that it was the Chinese tourists who were ill-mannered, then turned to my brother and I and asked, “Aren’t you all Chinese?” Mind you he was Chinese himself, and the implication of his question was obvious. My mother immediately confronted him and even went up to the tour guide and tour coordinator with the issue. My brother and I couldn’t comprehend her rage and had felt embarrassed, shuffling as far away as possible from the scene of conflict, thinking: come on just let it go. She told us: no there are some things that you cannot let it slide and those are fundamental things you will have to defend no matter what. To me, my mother’s seething silence after she demanded people apologise to us for the inappropriate comment seemed childish. She didn’t have allies, not even from us.
Only upon reflection now, did I realise that the comment had offended the dignity with which we lived our lives. It’s something that is difficult to explain, but it has to do sticking up for their own identity and not playing the victim card when we accept these passing insults. Instead of thinking everyone is discriminatory, do something about it to prove that you are a citizen because of your experiences, contribution and sacrifices. The moment we lose that confidence to defend our identity, is the moment we start struggling with who we are and our sense of belonging. That confidence is necessary for us to strive for success, otherwise how would we dare to reach out and demand for something that we believe we don’t have a right to?
Immigration is difficult, and the way I’m brought up and the values I hold close are linked with my family’s experience with being first generation Singaporean. I don’t believe that makes me less of a Singapore citizen, and I sure hope that people don’t see it as less. Beyond just my personal reflection, there’s no message to be derived from here, except maybe there might be people who relate to this too.
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