Has Korea lost its soul?

Straits Times columnist Andy Ho’s article “Seoul cool to copy?” caught my eye just as I was leaving to school yesterday. And I couldn’t help but give it a quick read before I zipped out of the house. Ho seems to argue that culture of a country can be created and is not entirely reliant on the donkey-years of tradition or history that a country has. It’s an intriguing read – one that I’m quite sure some of our interviewees won’t agree. Tradition still seems to be that element that roots them back to Singapore, or at least Asia.

I wonder what will be the test of Ho’s argument?

For now, it seems that it is tradition that roots overseas Singaporeans back home. Not culture. Quite frankly, I don’t even know what culture is there is for Singapore to talk about. Five-foot ways, childhood memories, Cathay building, Char Kuay Teow: those are words that Returning Singaporeans bring up. I think that’s tradition, not some newly constructed culture.

Even if culture were to be constructed, surely it needs a starting point. Where does Singapore start? From Tomorrow or from tradition? Even Korea’s drama serials consist of its tradition – think Yi San – King Jeong Jo, The King and I, Da Jang Geum. What it seems to me is that Korea has created a very marketable culture, but surely it has not lost its tradition. I can’t really recall when was it we had a drama about our tradition. Price of Peace? But it’s a serial I remember the very clearly though. I loved it.

I do think we need a culture badly. But what sort needs to be more closely examined. Do we want a culture of coolness like Seoul, as Ho asserts? Or do we want something that roots us home? It is an important factor to consider, I think, to draw Singaporeans back. It builds a sense of, maybe not so much patriotism, but at least one of belonging. I wonder if Korea has lost its soul in trying to propagate this new funky culture it has? With its hundreds of years of history, I think people still embrace tradition. Singapore but only has 40 over years of nation building history, we’ve not even hit mid-life crisis yet, or have we?

Ho’s article can be found here.

Nine-eleven

It’s a date that no one in this generation will forget. Sept. 11. It’s a date that changed the lives of many, including many of those we have been interviewing for this project. It’s hard to believe some Singaporeans were actually so close to the tragedy. It’s been facinating talking to them. Others have been affected by the ripples the attack caused.

If there’s one thing good that came out from that day is that it made many rethink about life, and perhaps just as important, rethink about home. It did drive two of our interviewees back to Singapore. Among them is Amy Hwang, who had been doing summer school in Boston that year. Recalling the incident over coffee today, she told us that she should have been on the flight – United Airlines Flight 175 – from Logan International Airport in Boston to Los Angeles International. She had been planning to visit a good friend in LA after finishing summer school.

For some reason, her seat on that flight scheduled for the 11th of September was cancelled. “My seat just magically got cancelled,” she exclaimed. “I just couldnt find that same flight again. Instead of leaving on the 11th I had to leave on the 10th.”

Scared “chicken shit” for the next couple of weeks, Amy found herself unable to sleep with the lights off.

“It changed my perspective. Everything could have just ended there and then,” she said. “Thats when I came back. After that happened I didn’t think I want to go back. i just wanted to go home.”

She recalls being frightened by the sligtest bit of turbulence on her flight back from LA to Singapore. “I had a really bad reaction when I was flying back… after that you just didn’t want to get on the plane,” she said. “My mum said come back, come back.”

Just to put things into perspective, Amy’s one of those who has tried to relocate back to Singapore three times now. Each time finding herself unable to truly adapt back to the Singapore way of life. She’s tells us that she’s back to pay her dues, to her parents.

Sept. 11, she said, triggered that.

Today – she did return to Australia in 2002 to 2005 to help out in the family business – she’s back in Singapore to complete the family. It’s been a long time since her mum had her four kids together in the same country.

“My dad is in his 60s and I want to be around them. You don’t know what will happen,” she said. Despite being unable to quite settle down, “it doesnt kill me,” she said.

“So I try to get out of Singapore every quarter. Everytime I get out and come back, I find I can stay abit longer.”

Missed the people; hardly the life,the country

What about Singapore do you miss most when you’re overseas?

It’s a question we have asked many of our interviewees while working on this project. I decided to turn the question to fellow project mate Gracia Chiang, who spent 5 months in San Diego, USA for an exchange program under NTU. “I missed my family and friends. So I didn’t really miss the life in Singapore much,” she told me. “But it was mainly the place I used to go, and the company of my friends and family.” Here is a 5-minute podcast of the conversation we had.

Reflecting on it later, I think I share the same sentiments. I truly missed my family and friends when I was on exchange too. It didn’t help that I was the only Singaporean exchange student in Missouri. I’m not sure if I can put a finger to why I didn’t really miss Singapore. I know I’m Singaporean, but I’m not sure what I can hold on to that makes me Singaporean.

It’s a problem 56-year-old Josephine Chia feels very strongly too. She suggested that it’s because we younger Singaporeans have lost our sense of belonging and identity. “I see young people as in between worlds,” she tells me at an interview. “You’re in between the Asian and Western world, you’re not true Asian, but you’re not true Western. That is the problem.”

Her words are not surprising, and I think they correctly reflect the current situation today. What are we?

What’s different between us – the younger generation – and Josephine is that she can say that she’s Singaporean with real conviction. The irony of it all, she is a British citizen. Having left Singapore some 20 years ago to follow her husband back to England, she had to renounce her Singapore citizenship. But all the while in England, she’s never lost her “Singaporea-ness”, the peranakan says. She keeps them locked not only in her mind, but also in the award-winning books that she writes.

“I find that when I write, my life in Singapore comes out,” she says. “And I think your childhood days or even up to the teenage years are the important ones you will remember, no matter where you are in the world.”

I’m not sure if my childhood reminds me that I’m Singapore. I guess for people like her, in that generation, feel more so because they were truly the part of Singapore’s nation-building generation. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that I am part of nation building. No one told me so, and I wasn’t brought up to think so.

Josephine also gives talks about colonial Singapore to Britons in schools and public libraries.
“They love listening to the old traditions which I said I would more than like to talk about because I think they form part of your culture. So if I say to you now, what does it mean to be a Singaporean? Food courts?” she said. “I think that should come from the learning of your own culture whether you are Chinese or Malay, that there are certain cultural things that you should know from young, so it’s part of you, so that even if you live in the United States for the next 100 years, you will still feel that you are Singaporean.”

Is that our fault that we don’t feel Singaporean through and through, I asked.

Josephine caught me on my defense mode and quickly said: “No no, (but) if I return I will have to tell the government we must start something to make Singaporeans feel more Singaporean, then you have an identity, a very strong identity.”

Yes, I think what we lack is an identity. That oneness that we can pin point and say that we’re proud of and we therefore want to contribute to this one thing. For now, it seems, this “thing” seems absent.

Soundtrack

If we could have a song track for our FYP, think these few would make the cut.

Number of Overseas Singaporeans

Again, these numbers are “Guesstimates” as given to us by the Overseas Singaporean Unit.

There aren’t any official numbers apparently, but I’m sure someon, somewhere knows.
Just thought I’d try some simple infographics, not that I’ve a lot of data – complicated ones for the matter – to present. But am trying to add more kick into the posts. Will be trying to put up some more infographics kind of diagrams to show timeline and maps in the next couple of posts. Will try to also upload some audio from the interviews.