Popagandhi

When I was in primary school, I was very good in Chinese: most of my essays were read to the class, we did “Social Studies” in Chinese (ask me anything about Sang Nila Utama and the Pan Island Expressway, in Chinese). We had a good teacher; but like all the good teachers I’ve ever had, we all hate them while we’re in school then think of them fondly years later. Madam Chua was such a person, and one of the things she never let me forget was — you hate Chinese now (the endless ting xie and exams), but you’ll find it useful in more ways than one when you’re older. She was right about about most things (including how my Chinese was going to suffer if I went to SCGS, ha ha), and she was right about that.

Twelve years after I left her class, I find myself now in a little village in northern Thailand with a colourful history, writing and shooting a story I’ve wanted to do for ages. Every interview, and every conversation I’ve had so far has made me sure only of one thing — that if I could not speak or understand Chinese, there would be no story, and it’d probably read like this. I’m talking to people who speak only Chinese, Yunnanese and a smattering of Thai, people who served in the solitary forces, whose fathers fought under Kuomintang generals, who fled to then out of Burma, got kicked out, the opium stories, and all that (read the piece when it comes out :P). Every little nuance of language matters. I’ve worked with interpreters before on other assignments, but always found it wholly unsatisfying. Perhaps this is why I’m presently working so hard at learning all the languages I need for now. With the hardest one out of the way (Mandarin Chinese), there’s just Thai (decent vocabulary, grammar and basic sentence construction) and Hindi (a lot more work to go on this one) left!

Madam Chua (and Mrs Lee, and Miss Chia) will be pleased, even if the Chinese syllabus in Singapore’s education system was not rigorous enough for me to engage in political discussions and talk about Chinese military history — I’m faring well enough, I think. As of this moment, I am plowing through three volumes of Chinese military history accounts in traditional Chinese. I should have never gone to SCGS; I blame it for destroying any linguistic aspirations I had in Chinese, for years of armpit jokes, and… many more.

In other news: I don’t know when I’ll ever learn. That I hate riding on animals. Any animal. Elephants, camels, horses, and today… ponies. I keep doing it for the photo op, hoping I’ll like it, but I don’t. I like the first hour well enough, but without fail each time, after two hours (four today), all that 400B of pony trekking has given me is a piercing pain on my pantat (ass). Lovely scenery, yes, but lovely scenery at huge cost to my pantat. I had a hungry little pony who couldn’t stop eating as it walked, so while most people complain about motion sickness in coming to the hills, I got a little sick from the pony’s swaying. It couldn’t walk for more than 1 minute without going to the left to eat some lalang, and going to the right to nip at a flower. Ren jia shi yun che… wo shi yun ma! It’s all mum’s fault. I can’t think of any more tropical animals that I will ride on any time soon, so… pardon me I need to go lie down (on my right side, because I can’t sit and I can’t lie down) and read some fascinating bedtime stories in traditional Chinese text about the Kuomintang, Communists, the Miao communists and the Burmese.