Lee Kuan Yew, then Prime Minister of Singapore, went on an official visit to Beijing in May 1976. When I read about it in The China Post, Taiwan’s English language newspaper, I was green with envy, because it said his daughter, who was my year at RI (Raffles Institution), had gone along.
I went off to tell Mary, my colleague at Conoco Taiwan. We were the youngest (aged 21) members of staff, with our birthdays three weeks apart, so we had a sort of special bond between us.
I said, “Look, Wei Ling gets to go to mainland China, when the rest of us can’t.”
Singapore had no official diplomatic ties with mainland China at the time, so it was not easy, if well nigh impossible, for Singaporeans to go there. I’d been intrigued, especially since I love travelling, by films and documentaries made by and about mainland China: the ones where they speed-skated on frozen rivers, where smiling young women picked apples the same colour as their rosy cheeks — all quite different from my tropical childhood.
“And,” I continued, “she got to go to New Zealand last year when her father went on an official visit. She’s so lucky!”
Mary Fu’s face was like thunder, “I thought we were chums, yet here you are, envying her for being able to go over to the other side. Don’t you know they are our arch-enemy? How could you!!??”
I was taken aback, “But what’s that got to do with our friendship? I’m only envious that as the prime minister’s daughter, she gets to go to places the rest of us mere mortals can’t. Didn’t I also say I was jealous of her for going to New Zealand as well?”
Mary refused to speak to me for three weeks.
Then, she rang my extension one day, “I’ve thought about it, and I can see that I shouldn’t have put our friendship and politics in the same category. Can we be friends again?”
My reply, “So you’re ready to be friends again, are you? Well, I’m not.” And I left it for another three weeks.
Years later, she’d recount this incident as one of the biggest eye-openers for her.
(Taiwan, 1976)
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