Dissecting Us

Singapore stands at the unique centre of a barrage of myriad civilisations, so cosmopolitan that only we have our equally unusual salad dish of "rojak" to match.

We have our largely Moslem neighbors north and south of us, an emerging super Chinese and Inidan powerhouses further north, a largely Chinese populace to its east and an English Oceania south-eastern.

Back in time, Singapore was at first inhabited by indigenous groups, plying their trade near the river mouth living in old villages. It was mostly fishing as their primary occupation.

Then along came the British East India in the company of Sir Stamford Raffles, turning us into a bustling seaport and a colonial tributary system of the British Empire. Seamlessly we assimilated the British working order of rule and governance. Our education system therefore followed suit in the mould of our colonialists.

But with America surging ahead in world supremacy in terms of socio-economic and political assertion, many of its cultural exports were sent to our shores. Cecil D Milles' "Hollywood", the golden arches of McDonalds and the pop culture of Pepsi Cola and Coca Cola all continue to predominate our cultural sphere right up to today.

America has also over-reaching influence in much literature and scientific innovation. Many great thinkers, writers, scientists and politicians have passed out of its corridors since time immemorial.

Within Singapore, we have a blend of Chinese, Malays, Indians and the others. Now this "others" is a potent chemistry of mostly European Asian miscegenation. So we have Portugese Indians, Malayalam and Sikhs, just to name a few. With time, a homogeneous population in the heyday may eventually peter out to a heterogeneous one as more and more new immigrants inter-marry. Not a good experimental ground for genetic studies.

We have our national psyche of our anthem, pledge and culturally Singaporean identity. Our pledge embraces all regardless of race, language or religion. We have our creolised English language of Singlish. Singapore has Americanised to such a large extent that sexual identity also affects our constitution. In fact no individual can claim to be a person not made up of large, sometimes contrasting and even contradictory multitudes.

This is not uncharacteristic of open, porous and welcoming societies such as ours. America, the icon of liberty , has seen many such transmigration. Bruce Lee was Chinese American and Einstein German-born American. Professor Stephen Jay Gould was British American, T.S Eliot American British and Rudyard Kipling India-born British.

In fact religion played such an important role in some of their works too as in the case of Eliot who converted to Anglo-Catholicism. Both Einstein and Stephen Jay Gould are Jews.

These are just many examples of pluralistic manifestation. In Singapore, a Chinese may be a Christian who speaks English. Or an Indian Muslim who speaks English.

In other words, the person has not only to contend with his nationality, his racial (thus perhaps genetic) make-up, his religion but also his education, the language he speaks and learns plus his sexual identity. Do not forget gender and social stratification and you can appreciate the poem which succinctly sums up the complementary and opposable forces within ourselves: Do I contradict myself? Very well then, so I do contradict myself. That is because I am large. I am made up of multitudes.

Thus a person is made up of these and more.

The moment the person is born right up to the school he attends all exact a price on one's identity and constitution.

My parents boast of a cultural blend of Chinese and Peranakan Baba. My father speaks English, having been schooled in colonial ways, and Malay while mother speaks not Mandarin but her native dialect of Teochew and English, again because she was schooled in an English missionary convent. My father does not speak his native tongue of Hakka unfortunately so we never got round to picking up this language.

Racially thus I am part Chinese and part Malay. I am also half Chinese and half Singaporean, expressed in terms of nationality. However my supposed largely Chinese-constitution does not preclude me from embracing a very Anglo-orthodox Roman Catholicism which has its roots in Abrahamic Judaism. If I had been a purist Chinese, then I should have been Confucian or Taoist in outlook or Buddhistic. But I am not.

The school I attend is missionary, highly westernised British English but with a Singaporean twist. I speak, write and read English far better than I do my Mandarin mother tongue. After all Mandarin is my second language and the contact with the language is relegated to just the few lessons we have in school as compared to all the other subjects which are taught in the main English language. I can also speak most of the other Chinese dialects.

Hence I can assimilate most of the Western literature on the humanities, sciences and social sciences much easily than any in Chinese. In fact, there are frankly not that many Chinese thinkers or writers apart from the few we always cite, or at least as far as I am aware of.

Even if it is, being written in the Chinese lingo would be laborious reading in some instances because of the technicalities particularly if it is scientific or humanities-based. Imagine being a linguistician in the English language and having to read Luther's Germanic Ausburg Confessions, Sir Thomas More's Latin Utopia or Galileo's Helio-centros in Italian.

The television programs I watch are Taiwan, Hongkong and Singapore Chinese and American productions. American Hollywood must surely have a pervading hold on me because of its proliferation of movies coming out of its assembly line, highly entertaining and sometimes comical in most respects. We do not have that many British programs on air except for some scientific exploration serials.

Being an Asian male, many stereotypical expectations and prejudices ensue. It is taboo for Asian fathers to be nuturing which is a role the mother must fulfill. However the American way was freedom of expression, free will and individualism. Birth order nor gender gets you any privileges. Everyone is mostly treated on an equal footing, at least in writing.

Familial ties and value systems, together with personal ethos cultivated over time spent at home, at play and at work , make up another order of influential factors.

So the next time someone asks, "Who are you?", can you seriously be able to come up with a sure and steadfast reply? For me, I will probably be unable to put it down to a simplistic one-liner that I am a Singaporean Chinese. It certainly is the sum of all the little parts and more.

I wonder if Mr Homo-erectus or Mr Cro-Magnon wouldn't have a much easier time explaining who he is. After all he is freer of all the encumbrances we have encumbered ourselves today.