To Dan: What Does My Country Mean to Me?

History and pretty costumes and hairdoes in ancient drama productions (Mainland and Taiwanese, not HK). Chairman Mao and economic progress. Japanese flag-burning. The language. Smokey-rainy Jiangnan (southern bank of Yangtze River. Rain drops are so fine in springtime that they are vapoury). Stories of love and parting. Travelling in a rainy night. Anything, anyone. Mostly fictional and abstract. For I did not stay there long.

Or intellectual complaints and condescension. Unknowing adaptation and tense preservation of pride. Convenience for patriotic yearnings, because homeland stays abstract and poetic. Apart from these, I guess I can throw in standard answers which enjoy popularity with OSIs (Overseas Singaporean Intellectuals): food and Singlish. Simple, straightforward and all about the senses. And if there's a day that I stop staring dumbly at the mention of these sensations, I can perhaps think of non-intellectual reasons of what Singapore means to me.

And I suppose I can't talk of what US means to me since it's not my country. It's a terrible pity because that's the place which made me understand what the phrase "means to me" means to me. China is a faded backdrop. I wish I can recall those moments when reading passages in Chinese novels lights up my imagination and makes me pace around the room in dizzy circles. I wish I still felt immense interest in any stories of Chinese history. Instead, I know that I will understand, compare and judge those stories in order to salvage some superiority over the sentiments from which I've been estranged. The more I hide from the Chinese people the more I frown at their rudeness, loudness and selfishness. The more I frown the more I hide. There are sentiments that rear their heads in my life so far (for which I'm ashamed of writing like a young person), such that I was reminded they originated from the anxieties and happiness of my childhood days. For example, the love and fear of travelling in a rainy night is preserved and magnified by the American experience of owning a car and convenient highway system. Should I blame the fact that this experience of learning and self-discovery was conducted in English? Was I beginning to be like this, losing the grip of my mother tongue, even before I went to the States? I only knew I was running away from home then.

Home in Singapore is the most familiar place. I mean it in a sense that I only watched 6 movies in my 8.5 years of teenagehood there. Now, even if I were in such a fit of self-hurting frustration, I can find no other place to hide than my room. I'd never ventured out of home after I come back from daily routine interactions with the outside. So Singapore at large's a big scary place. Or a small scary place. For the price I paid for the estrangement of Chinese after my college years in US, I gained the ability to look at Singapore straight ("straight" is British English, which I'm picking up once again). Not as straight as I imagine, maybe, since I talk to foreigners mostly in my company. Oh well, good enough for now. I dare say I will find genuine sentimental merit of a more sublime nature in Singapore if I live here long enough.

Before starting that life as a working adult, though, I'm going back the States for grad sch. All's under the arrangement of the sponsor for my studies, for whom my service in Singapore after graduation is required. When I'm back, I'd have spent equal number of years in China, Singapore and America. Well China wins by some 3-4 years but childhood days are condensed. I should rather think I'd have gotten used to a life broken into pieces by then. Where should I go next?

Maybe it's just the result of reading too much Sebald combined with it being midnight and I being sleepy. Sebald says that immigration is traumatic. But traumatic experiences are not supposed to be babbled. So I guess I'm fine.