TIME
MAY 27, 2002/VOL. 159 NO. 20Arts
Ginger Tale
Yet another Chinese heroine faces political adversity - will they ever stop?
Ever since Jung Chang's Wild Swans became a global publishing sensation, booksellers have decided that the Beautiful Chinese Literary Heroine is a golden goose. I don't know if there's an official literary term for this genre yet, but let's call it Chinese Chick Lit. If you look at books like Adeline Yen Mah's Falling Leaves and Anhua Gao's To the Edge of the Sky, you'll find a basic formula: a feisty, exotically gorgeous woman suffers hell. Hell comes in the form of an oppressive regime (usually the Cultural Revolution) or through abuse inflicted by male power figures (heartless fathers or cruel husbands).
Anchee Min, author of the critically acclaimed historical novel Becoming Madame Mao, blatantly inserts all these elements in her latest offering, Wild Ginger (Houghton Mifflin; 217 pages). Min suffered a tumultuous childhood in China, finally escaping to the U.S., where she wrote a best-selling memoir. Novels like Wild Ginger are celebrated for their gripping historical accounts, but one suspects their success in the West is due in larger part to the authors' own sensational life stories. The book-jacket bios themselves play at the American immigrant fantasy: an attractive woman warrior babe escapes tyrannical regime, washes up in the New World and ends up making lots of little Uncle Sams.
Wild Ginger, Min's protagonist, has been marked out as a potential subversive since birth. She has exotic yellow-green eyes, a reflection of her mixed parentage (European father, Chinese mother). She starts off as a spunky little rebel, bravely rescuing the narrator, Maple, from the beatings of the schoolyard bully, Red Pepper. However, her need for acceptance makes her susceptible to brainwashing, andWild Ginger becomes a Maoist hero (for foiling a burglary at a factory) and later develops into a communist demagogue. Her loyalty to the Red Machine requires her to repress her sexual yearnings for the resident Red Guard hunk, Evergreen. Unable to squelch her love, she dies - of a broken heart as much as anything else.
I suppose I was asked to review this book because I am a Chinese novelist. But the Chinese women in Wild Ginger and all the other books in the Chinese Chick genre strike me as completely removed from the experience of the contemporary Asian woman. In the novel, Wild Ginger is regularly beaten with belt buckles and has to wrestle with big issues like the struggle for political liberty and the freedom to love. Quite honestly, the major issues I've had to struggle with the past month were a) how to lose weight, b) how to remember where I've parked my car in the labyrinthine car park and c) what shade of highlights I should get for my hair. To tell you the truth - and this may disappoint Western readers who love the mythical figure of the Chinese Chick - most Asian women I know are more like Bridget Jones than Madame Mao.
Prepublication reviews have lavished praised on Wild Ginger for being "true-to-life." Too often, however, this true-to-life Asian woman found the characters speaking not in realistic dialogue but in political diatribe. Take Wild Ginger's argument with her mother, in which she lambastes her father: "He was a spy. Spying was his job. He was sent by the Western imperialists. Helping China thrive was his disguise. It was false. Helping the Western imperialists to exploit China was the truth."
Wild Ginger is in elementary school when she delivers this speech. One marvels over a schoolgirl's concern about Western imperialism, but the novel has scene after scene where Chinese teenagers talk like characters reading from scripts written by the Committee for Right Speeches.
The publishers have promoted Wild Ginger as a great literary novel. One prerequisite of such a novel should be originality. Unfortunately, if you're familiar with the basic elements of Chinese Chick Lit, you already know these characters and have seen these plot twists before. On the rare occasion where Min tries to be innovative - such as a sex scene where the characters make love while reciting Maoist quotations - it just comes off seeming weird. If you like cliched Chinese heroines and a hackneyed love story, all set against the now-too-familiar backdrop of the Cultural Revolution, this is a book for you. For me, I think I'll be reading Helen Fielding while getting my hair dyed at Le Salon Bis.
TIME JULY 29, 2002 / VOL. 160 NO. 3 Letter from Singapore
A War of Words Over 'Singlish'
Singapore's government wants its citizens to speak good English, but they would much rather be 'talking cock'
A couple of months ago, Singaporean officials unintentionally made cinematic history. They slapped an NC-17 rating on a film - which means children under 17 cannot see it - not because of sex or violence or profanity, but because of bad grammar. Despite its apparently naughty title, Talking Cock: The Movie is actually an innocuous comedy comprising four skits about the lives of ordinary Singaporeans. The censors also banned a 15-second TV spot promoting the flick. All this because of what the authorities deemed "excessive use of Singlish." Given the tough crackdown, you would expect Singlish to be a harmful substance that might corrupt our youth, like heroin or pornography. But it's one of Singapore's best-loved quirks, used daily by everyone from cabbies to CEOs. Singlish is simply Singaporean slang, whereby English follows Chinese grammar and is liberally sprinkled with words from the local Chinese, Malay and Indian dialects. Take jiat gentang, which combines the Hokkien word for "eat" (jiat), with the Malay word for "potato" (gentang). Jiat gentang describes someone who speaks with a pretentious Western accent (since potatoes are considered a European food), as in "He went to Oxford to study, now he come back to Singapore, only know how to jiat gentang." As for "talking cock," the phrase means to spout nonsense. I like to talk cock, and I like to speak Singlish. It's inventive, witty and colorful. If a Singaporean gets frustrated at your stupidity, he can scold you for being blur as sotong (clueless as a squid). At work, I've often been reprimanded for having an "itchy backside," meaning I enjoy disrupting things when I'm bored. When I don't understand what's going on, I say, "Sorry, but I catch no ball, man," which stems from the Hokkien liah boh kiew. There's an exhaustive lexicon of such Singlish gems at talkingcock.com, a hugely popular, satirical website that inspired the movie. Its director, Colin Goh, has also published the Coxford Singlish Dictionary, which lovingly chronicles all the comic eccentricities of Singapore's argot. Since its April release, the book has sold over 20,000 copies - an extraordinary feat given that just 1,000 copies will get you on Singapore's Top 10 list. Singlish is especially fashionable these days among Generation Y, in part because it gives uptight Singapore a chance to laugh - at itself. But the government is not amused. It doesn't like Singlish because it thinks it is bad language and bad for Singapore's sober image as a commercial and financial center. For more than two years now, it has been waging a war of words spearheaded by the Speak Good English Movement (SGEM), which organizes everything from creative writing to Scrabble contests in order to encourage standard English. "Poor English reflects badly on us," said Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong at sgem's launch, "and makes us seem less intelligent or competent." In the past, the government would impose strict rules and hefty fines to shape social behavior - don't spit, don't litter, don't sell gum. But this time, because it knows Singlish is trendy, it's using the soft sell. Naturally, much of this has to do with semantics. Says SGEM head David Wong: "SGEM is not a campaign, it's a movement. In Singapore, you associate campaigns with the message that if you trespass, we're going to punish you. A movement is different. We want to adopt a more lighthearted approach." This lighthearted approach spawned the recent SGEM Festival, a hapless exercise in unintended comic surrealism. Driving home from work, I would hear 'NSync-style pop jingles on the radio telling me to "speak clearly." On the cartoonish http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/article/www.sgem.com website, I took a test to "Have Fun with Good English." I didn't - I failed the test because I wasn't sure whether it was more proper to say: (a) "Please come with me, I will take you to the airport" or (b) "Please come with me, I will send you to the airport." (According to the website, the right answer is a.) Blur as sotong responses like mine won't dampen Wong's zeal for promoting good English. He dislikes Singlish because he thinks it's crude. "If my son came back from school and told my wife that she was talking cock," he says, "I would slap him." He would have to. Otherwise, how would Cambridge-educated Wong's son learn to jiat gentang? Singlish is crude precisely because it's rooted in Singapore's unglamorous past. This is a nation built from the sweat of uncultured immigrants who arrived 100 years ago to bust their asses in the boisterous port. Our language grew out of the hardships of these ancestors. And Singlish is a key ingredient in the unique melting pot that is Singapore. This is a city where skyscraping banks tower over junk boats; a city where vendors hawk steaming pig intestines next to bistros that serve haute cuisine. The SGEM's brand of good English is as bland as boiled potatoes. If the government has its way, Singapore will become a dish devoid of flavor. And I'm not talking cock.
TIME OCTOBER 14, 2002 / VOL. 160 NO. 14 Letter from Singapore
Cultural Capital? Singapore's government has decided that citizens must be creative - at all costs
Rarely have the cultural aspirations of a city been as neatly represented by one edifice as Singapore's are with Esplanade, the new arts coliseum the city-state hopes will become the local version of New York's Lincoln Center, London's Barbican or, considering its harbor-side perch, the Sydney Opera House. Never mind the debate over what these animalized structures most resemble - hedgehog or scarab? Porcupine or mollusk? - the real issue is whether Singapore can remake itself as the "Renaissance City" the government hopes will flower on the banks of the Malacca Straits. The ambitious plan, including the buildings that have become the boldest manifestations of that vision, has plenty of critics. The $338 million structures themselves, arguably over-designed and potentially underutilized, have about them the whiff of an architect trying too hard to be clever and a government straining to reinvigorate a slumping economy. The walls of the Vikas M. Gore-led project are lined with silk and hung with tapestries made from human hair, our guide explained, before helpfully adding that a Concorde jetliner could fit in Esplanade's 2,000 seat theater. All this is an eager government's way of saying it cares about art. But the best and brightest who manage Singapore have run that appreciation through a spreadsheet and come up with an economic justification for their patronage. "For every dollar spent on cultural activities, another $1.80 is spent on related activities such as food and hospitality," notes the Ministry of Information, Communications and The Arts (MITA) in a paper promoting the "new paradigm" of art as cultural capital. After years of favoring maths and sciences over cultural education, it seems the only way the government can view the arts is through that same quantitative prism: in Singapore, art apparently sounds like a cash register's ka-ching. "Singapore views culture as having economic value," says MITA's permanent secretary, Tan Chin Nam. MITA's paper reads like a prospectus intent on wooing tech in-vestors. It details how earlier plans to make Singapore a Renaissance City have been upgraded; the new plan is called "Renaissance City 2.0", and apparently a "SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) Analysis" shows that "cultural capital" working in "creative clusters" will turn Singapore into a "creative economy". In May, the government actually revealed a mathematical formula for creating cultural capital: A+B+T = CC (Translation: Art + Business + Technology = Creative + Connected Singapore) The government is poised to pour money into making that formula work, with MITA's paper touting ambitious proposals like the construction of a new Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art modeled after the Bilbao Guggenheim. After years of being financially neglected by the government, however, artists are skeptical. The National Arts Council only spent $840,000 on artist training grants last year. "The government spends a lot of money on hardware and very little on software," says actor Glen Goei. But is it possible for creativity to be cultivatedin a country not known for its freedom of _expression? A few months ago, theatre group Spell#7 was told performers wouldn't be allowed to interact with bystanders in public spaces. More recently, a bar named after the Hollywood film Coyote Ugly opened up. The movie featured supermodel Tyra Banks dancing on top of a bar; when some local girls tried emulating Tyra Banks they were told to knock it off. In Singapore, it's illegal to dance on bars. Then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong said the government might consider allowing people to dance on bar tops. It might, he suggested, encourage creativity. With the government this eager to generate cultural capital, it seems there's never been a better time to be an artist in Singapore. Maybe I'm young and naive. I love the idea of more money coming to artists like myself. People might stop looking at me like some Enron stock and treat me like a blue chip investment. That thought makes me really happy. I think I'll go dance on a bar top.
BUSINESS TIMES AUGUST 3, 2001 Executive Lifestyle
Turning on the heat
It was a night of underwear flinging at Coldplay and Travis' concert, reports Hwee Hwee Tan
After watching Coldplay in concert last Sunday, one marvels how four nondescript men can inspire so much underwear flinging. Judging from the screaming hordes that leapt off their hundred dollar seats to throw bras at Chris Martin, you would expect the frontman to have the pin-up looks of a Robbie Williams, but Martin looks merely like the kind of plain bloke you'd bump into at a college hall of residence, a muso whose life revolves around Radiohead, Aristotle and instant noodles. With his shaven head and crumpled shirt, Martin probably doesn't look too different from what he was five years ago - an earnest Ancient History student at University College, London. It's surprising that the band dismissed by Alan McGee (ex-Creation Records honcho and Oasis star-maker) as a 'bunch of bedwetters who care more about passing their exams' are in Singapore stirring girls into a storm of sexual frenzy. Coldplay started the concert with the wistful Shiver, where Martin lamented that 'I look in your direction/but you pay me no attention'. It's typical New Miserabilist stuff, and the guitar band strummed out their angst anthems with minimal showmanship. There were no costume changes and no dancing. Buckland, Champion and Berryman just stood there playing their instruments, still and stoic, like students waiting in line to buy tickets for the Arsenal-Spurs derby at Highbury. Martin seemed determined to make up for the po-faced performance of his colleagues by bouncing across the stage like it was made from spongy floorboards. The British band eschewed all the conventional niceties of a pop show. It's customary, one supposes, to tell the audience how great they've been and Martin gave this rock concert convention a cheeky twist by telling the 6,000 fans at the Singapore Indoor Stadium that - 'we've had a very good time in Singapore even though it's as hot as f----'. That was typically Coldplay. They weren't interested in prancing around in fancy costumes or making pleasant chit-chat with their groupies. Like true musos, they believed that only the Music matters and that was all they were here to do - just get on stage and play the Music. Spellbinding aura And their Music was utterly entrancing. From the desolate piano hook of Trouble to the rippling riffs of Don't Panic, Coldplay wove a spellbinding aura of melancholia. Martin's cherubic voice was a revelation, rising like a celestial chime, especially in Yellow, where his falsetto soared heavenwards, telling you to 'look at the stars, see how they shine for you/And everything you do/Yeah, they were all yellow'. After Coldplay's exit, Travis came on stage and were greeted with even more enthusiastic bouts of undie throwing. Like Martin, the gangly Fran Healy didn't look like your typical sex symbol, but charmed the crowd with the sensitive earnestness that he's probably had since the days he was a student at the Glasgow School of Art. Starting their gig with Sing, the shiny-faced quartet swirled out a sugary set, complete with folksy strings, orchestral swells and the occasional banjo. Fran Healy chatted merrily with the crowd between each song, charming with his lilting Scottish brogue. Before playing The Cage, he explained that he wrote this song after he was chucked by his girlfriend and feeling 'utterly devastated' when his mother told him that love was like a bird - 'if you let it go, it will come back to you. But if it doesn't, it was never yours in the first place'. Oh dear. A rock-and-roll riffster who takes love advice from his Ma? Sounds dangerously Forrest Gump-ish, but Healy himself admits that Travis' appeal comes from the 'Stupid Factor' and it's this dose of self-conscious irony that saves boozy howlers like All I Want To Do is Rock ('I'm a foot without a sock without you'). But still, with the international success of books like Nick Hornby's High Fidelity, there's evidence that the new sex icon for the millennium will be the SNAG (Sensitive New Age Guy), the rock geek who charms with his naive naffness. Though Coldplay and Travis' core fan base may mainly be made up of tertiary students on Prozac, judging from the enthusiastic crowd at the Singapore Indoor Stadium - an eclectic mix of teenagers, young expatriates and forty-something executives - these Brit-poppers have managed to come up with catchy, hypnotic sets that appeal even to people who think that Plato is Mickey Mouse's dog.
BUSINESS TIMES AUGUST 4, 2001 Executive Lifestyle
Krall's feat Grammy-winning Diana Krall sings like a chanteuse but talks like a cowgirl. Beneath the sexy image lies a jazz singer serious about her music. Tan Hwee Hwee discovers what keeps the world enthralled
With a Grammy on her
mantelpiece and an album that's shifted nearly two million copies, Diana Krall
is the undisputed Queen of Jazz. The multi-platinum success of When I Look Into
Your Eyes is all the more amazing if you consider that most jazz musicians
struggle to make a living, playing to small crowds in smoky bars and hotel
lobbies. Krall's one of those rare jazz artists who's managed to cross-over to
the mainstream, breaking into the Billboard Hot 100 and performing to 17,000
screaming fans in mega arenas like the Hollywood Bowl. With her sultry voice
and blonde bombshell looks, Krall is every record executive's dream - a sex
siren who sounds like Ella but looks like Monroe. 'They're not marketing me as
a sex symbol,' said Krall in exasperation, bristling at the suggestion that the
suits at Verve are trying to turn her into the poster girl for jazz. Speaking
from her hotel room in Concord, California, Krall dismisses allegations that
she's nothing more than a marketing gimmick, an artist who owes her success
more to the glamorous shots on her CD cover than for her interpretations of
Cole Porter. 'I got criticised for that cover which I didn't think was overtly
sex-symbolly,' said Krall, referring to the shots that celebrity photographer
Bruce Weber took for her No 1 album, When I Look Into Your Eyes. Krall felt
that they were going for a 'very outdoorsy' look. Growing up in the west
coast of Canada, Krall grew up loving outdoor sports, especially skiing, hiking
and horse-back riding. 'We shot the album cover in Carmel, where I keep my
horse. I did the shoot in pouring rain and 45 degree weather. It was very cold,
very challenging. Somebody without my outdoors experience might not have been
able to deal with that. I felt very inspired by the elements.' Krall's vocals
are slinky - even a little kinky - but when you hear her speak, her voice is
full of spunk, bright with feisty energy. She's a diva who sings like a
chanteuse but talks like a cowgirl. Glam slam A self-proclaimed jock, Krall is baffled by the media's portrayal of
her as a hip hottie. 'I sang the Canadian National Anthem recently and I was
wearing a baseball jersey and a pair of jeans - not very glamorous at all - and
I came off the stage and people still said 'that's the sexiest version of the
national anthem!' ' After that incident, Krall decided that 'if I'm going to
get a hard time even about that, I might as well just do what I want to do. I
think it's very important as a woman, that if you're putting in the blood,
sweat and tears - if you're putting your art first, your music first - that you
should be able to wear whatever the heck you want. I think it's sexist to
criticise a woman for what she wears.' Obviously, the questions struck a
sensitive chord. 'I know I've been criticised for my imaging, which I think is
ridiculous,' she added. 'You have critics saying 'oh she's just a marketing
product' but it's really important for people to know that I'm in control of my
career.' Krall is no producer's pawn. She manages all aspects of her career,
from choosing her songs to picking the photographer for her album shoot. So
why IS the world in thrall of Krall? The Canadian crooner feels she owes her
success to the fact that she's 'honest. I really love what I do and there's no
angle of trying to sell. I just go out there and be myself. As a woman, I think
you should be able to do whatever you want to do as long as you have integrity
- that's the most important thing.' Krall thinks that the media's portrayal
of her as a jazz zinger is out of synch with who she really is. 'I used to be
so freaked out in having to be grand, and be this kind of person who had to say
'Hello, good evening ladies and gentleman'. I've always been kind of a jock.
I'm very athletic and very awkward.' A former member of her high school
swimming team, it seems this Girl is more Sporty than Posh. After watching her
perform at the JVC Jazz Festival at Carnegie Hall, a reviewer from the New York
Times commented on her 'awkward' gait. 'The critic obviously wasn't wearing
Jimmy Choo shoes!' she said. 'It's hard. You're trying to do music and they
comment on how you walk.' Like any woman, she's sensitive to comments about
her looks. 'Gosh, I have the same insecurities as anyone else - mine are just a
little more public. I will admit that I, like any other woman, am concerned
about my weight. I've never considered myself to be on a model level.'
Singaporeans will get a chance to see Krall 'live' in action when she appears
in a solo concert at the Raffles Hotel's Jubilee Theatre on Sept 2. Krall
performed in Singapore two years ago and has fond memories of her visit. 'I
love Singapore! I bought a whole bunch of furniture when I was there.' But
wasn't she only on our tiny island for a day or so? 'I'm a fast shopper. I know
what I want. I just went into the shop, chose this and that and had them ship
it.' Krall's concert will feature an exclusive world premiere of songs from
her new album, The Look of Love, which will be released that weekend. This new
album re-unites her with Grammy-winning producer Tommy LiPuma and features the
London Symphony Orchestra with arrangements conducted by the legendary Claus
Ogerman. Krall lights up when she talks about working on her new album. 'It's
the best process. One of my favourite parts of making the record is that
embryonic stage of picking songs. I work really well in the fall so I went to
Tommy LiPuma, and he has a house in the country, so we just sat around
listening to records.' They chose 30 tunes, about half of which made the
final cut. 'It's a wonderful process, because it's doing what I love to do,
which is sit around listening to records. I listened to Frank Sinatra and Nat
King Cole. It's what inspires me and what moves me to do what I want to do. I
think about what stories I can find and how can I can interpret it my way. It's
a fantastic process.' Speaking with intelligence and earnest passion, Krall
comes across as a savvy, dedicated professional. And looking at her gruelling
tour schedule for 2001, which sees her travelling across America, Europe and
Asia, it's clear that Krall's an unstoppable workhorse. Diana Krall might look
like a babe, but she's no bossa nova bimbo. As a graduate of the acclaimed
Berklee College of Music in Boston, Diana Krall would much rather talk about
music than marketing. 'Jazz is a serious art form and I'm very serious about
it,' she said. But whether she likes it or not, Krall's commercial success
means that she is a celebrity, and fair game for the scandal sheets. With the
Daily Mail recently trumpeting rumours of an affair between herself and Clint
Eastwood, how does she manage to stay calm within the media maelstrom? 'My
mother's been battling cancer for five years,' she said. Having to deal with
the potential death of a loved one helps Krall keep things in perspective. 'You
feel so helpless. My mother is an amazing woman, so we've had a lot of time to
think about what's important in life and what's not.' And ultimately, what's
important is her music. Even at the nadir of her career, when she was
twinkling the ivories at tourist traps like the Happy Piano Bar in Switzerland,
her passion for performing pulled her through. 'It's hard to always be
travelling, to not have my things around, to not be home. Like tonight I have
to sleep in a bed that I've never slept in before . . . but it's worth it -
just to have that hour when you're on the stage and playing your music.' Diana
Krall will appear 'live & unplugged' on Sept 2 at Raffles Hotel, Jubilee
Theatre in an exclusive world premiere of songs from her new album 'The Look of
Love' out the same month. The evening is a 'gala dinner and performance' by
invitation only. Enquiries from media, corporate, sponsors to corporate@M2us.com
