In memory of Mr. George Weys: 02 (London)

Being old school, Mr. Weys had impeccable manners.

Even when he was walking on the pavement with his students, it was always Mr. Weys the gentleman first, not Mr. Weys the teacher.  (See also The swing doors.)

One day, Laura and I were walking with Mr. Weys from SOAS at Russell Square to Chinatown in Soho for a meal.  The route entailed a lot of turning left/right around corners when one road joined another.  Mr. Weys would dart to the outside on every single occasion, making sure that each time he was on the outside of the two ladies, even though he was the teacher.

(London, 1978–1981)

In memory of Mr. George Weys: 01 (London)

 

I first met Mr. Weys when I turned up at the interview for getting into SOAS to do my first degree.

There were two interviewers: Dr. David Pollard and Mr. George Weys.  They looked like a “good cop / bad cop” team, with Pollard’s malleable face and mouth in a perpetual smile, whilst Mr. Weys wore a stern near-frown, yet non-committal, look.  

(I learned some five years later that he was “diffident” — his own word — when he told me why he wouldn’t join the list of 96 consultants for the coffee table book that went with the Channel Four TV documentary series on China, The Heart of The Dragon.  Among other reasons.) 

The interview was conducted in Mr. Weys’s office.

Dr. Pollard did all the asking, “Why have you applied to SOAS?”, “Why for this course?”, etc., and smiled or even laughed at my answers.  

Mr. Weys sat there, looking at me intently — and sternly, not saying a word.

When Dr. Pollard had worked his way through his list, he asked Mr. Weys if he had any questions to put to me.

Mr. Weys said, “I know you don’t need to do your Special Subject until Year 3, but do you know now what you’d like to do for your Special Subject?”

I said without hesitation, “Oh yes!  Japanese!!”  His eyes lit up, and he broke into a smile.  

I then noticed that the bookshelves behind him were filled with Japanese books.  

I’d said the right thing!  I’d won this stern man over.

(London, 1978)

Tontine fall-out (Singapore)

 

My friend Valerio calls tontines “mafia arrangements”, saying someone is bound to take advantage, which could turn “fatal if somebody tries to cheat”.

There was, indeed, a case of the treasurer of a tontine group in Singapore being challenged by one of the members about some missing funds.  They were sisters-in-law as well.  

The treasurer was a butcher, so when they had a fierce argument at the treasurer’s house (the challenger went to see her), the butcher treasurer killed the challenger and chopped up her body, bagged the parts up and threw them in different places.  One of the bags was thrown into the Singapore River, where it got caught in a low overhanging branch of a tree when the tide went down.  That was how the gruesome discovery was made.  It was all in the papers.

What made it worse for me was the fact that I actually knew the victim’s daughter — she was a girl in my secretarial course class.

Poor girl:  she went from being a bubbly, ever-ready-to-smile girl to being very subdued.  

It could’ve been from the shock of having one’s mother being killed (which is bad enough) and having her body treated that way (hacked up and strewn all over Singapore).  

It could’ve been the shame of having such a relative.  

It could’ve been having one’s dirty linens so publicly aired.  

Probably a combination of all three.  Poor girl.

(Singapore, 1973)

Improvised toilet space (Singapore, USA)

 My private-midwife mother had three staff nurses within her zone who’d check regularly on her work.  They’d come to my house, hop into my mother’s car, and go with her on her post-natal-care rounds.

One of them was a big British white woman whom we called Aunty Smith. 

Aunty Smith always carried a huge black umbrella with her, one of those western ones with a hook/crook handle.  The tropical sun is very harsh, especially on white skin.  The rain, especially during the monsoon season, can feel like needles from the sky.

I then found out that Aunty Smith carried that huge black umbrella for another reason.

One day she needed to go to the loo but they were in a rubber plantation, so she found a place among the trees, opened her huge brolly and squatted down behind it. 

I’ll never forget that story for the useful tip!

My friend Valerio said:  That’s funny... [wife] Natalie uses the two car doors in an emergency on the highway... opens both front and back doors so they provide a sort of enclosure for her to squat down by the side of the car 

Of course on the opposite side of the traffic ....

(Singapore, 1960s; USA)

Tontine: peer-to-peer lending/borrowing/saving (Singapore)

In Radio 4’s seven-day serialisation of (the abridged version) of Karachi Vice, I hear “savings group” mentioned.

This reminds me of a similar community-based arrangement set up on my grandma’s coconut plantation in Singapore.  It’s called a huì (會 / 会 huì / a gathering).

Wikipedia says (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotating_savings_and_credit_association): 

QUOTE 

A rotating savings and credit association (ROSCA) is a group of individuals who agree to meet for a defined period in order to save and borrow together, a form of combined peer-to-peer banking andpeer-to-peer lending. 

UNQUOTE

My understanding of why the people in my grandma's village had done it this way is that they were mainly, if not all, illiterate people who didn’t want to deal with official bodies like banks, as they wouldn’t be able to fill in forms, for example.  (That’s also the reason people in 1950s and 1960s Singapore got a private midwife like my mother: they were illiterate people living on coconut and rubber plantations who didn’t want to have their babies in the hospital for their lack of English to deal with the bureaucracy.)

As it was illegal, it was always very hush-hush.  My mother would whisper, “I’m off to grandma’s for a meeting of the ‘gathering’.”

At these meetings, people who needed to borrow money (for a son’s wedding, say — Chinese wedding banquets, paid for by the man’s side, would have at least ten tables [of ten people each] to give the family enough “face”) would bid for the sum with a high interest rate of repayment.  That’s how the rest of the group earned some income from their spare cash.

The term I knew for it in the 1960s was “tontine”, which nobody in my British circles had heard of.

(Singapore, 1960s)

Wikipedia says: 

QUOTE A tontine (/ˈtɒntaɪn, -iːn, ˌtɒnˈtiːn/) is an investment plan for raising capital, devised in the 17th century and relatively widespread in the 18th and 19th centuries. It enables subscribers to share the risk of living a long life by combining features of a group annuity with a kind of mortality lottery. UNQUOTE

https://www.kitces.com/blog/tontine-agreement-instead-of-annuity-lifetime-income-mortality-credits-and-book-review-of-milevsky-king-williams-tontine/

QUOTE A tontine agreement is a form of pooled investment fund to which the investors contribute a lump sum and in exchange receive ongoing payments (or “dividends”) as a return on their investment. Similar to a single premium immediate annuity, the payments from a tontine are typically made “for life” and end only at death. UNQUOTE

Distraction therapy: 01 (London)

I was examiner for ‘O’ level Mandarin Chinese, University of London Board, for four years in the 1980s.

There’d be two lots:  a really big one in the summer when I’d be given 200 scripts, and a re-sit in January.

The paper comprised a number of questions/tasks: translate into Chinese, translate into English, essay.

In spite of the fact that it was meant to be for non-native speakers of Chinese, it was clear from all the names that they were Chinese speakers, mostly — if not all — Cantonese speakers, from the language usage.

It was excruciating to read the English.

At first, I’d go for distraction, just to get away from the agony.  After a paragraph, I’d go and wash the dishes.  After another paragraph, I’d go and clean the floor.  After one more paragraph, I’d go and wash some clothes.  Scrub the walls.  Clean the windows.  Do some dusting.  Until I had nothing left to clean.  I was quite tempted to ring up my friends and ask them if they’d like to send round their laundry.

After a while, I came up with a half-full approach.

I decided that the bad English can be treated as hilarious rather than painful, perhaps to be published one day as a collection for a laugh.  So, I started to have a notepad and pen by the side, and jot down all the howlers as I went along.  After a while, I switched to typing them up, using my manual typewriter, set up on the table or a spare chair beside me.  This held up my marking just as much, but at least I wasn’t tearing my hair out.

When I later mentioned this to my SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) classical Chinese teacher, Mr. George Weys (d. 2019) (featured in blogs Skiving off skiing and The swing doors ), he said he’d also done some marking in earlier years.  

He said he was sometimes so exasperated that he was quite tempted to take the whole pile, go to the top of his staircase, and throw them down the steps.  

Whichever landed on the top step, he’d give a distinction.  Whichever landed on the bottom, he’d fail them.

(London, early–mid 1980s)

Skiving off skiing:  https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2011/07/skiving-off-skiing.html 

The swing doors:  https://piccola-chinita.blogspot.com/2011/07/swing-doors.html 

Chinese stereotypes: 02 (Singapore)

This example was given by my third sister, who’s only 14 months older than I.  In her younger days, she was the one in the family of five children to be the most timid.

She told me this story herself when she was aged 21.

In the 60s and 70s, Singapore bus fares were paid according to the length of the journey, collected by the conductor going up and down the bus.  At peak hours, the poor man (there were no female bus conductors in those days) had to squeeze past all these tightly-packed passengers, so he was bound to miss some.

On one of these journeys, when the bus was less crowded and the conductor went past my sister, she held out her money.  He remembered her face, and started to shout at her, “Why have you waited all this time?  I’ve walked past you many times, yet you’ve waited until now!  Were you trying to evade payment?”  My sister said although she’d been wrongly accused, she was only 20 at the time — and single.  The significance of this will become clear further down.

My sister went on with her story.

Another journey, on the same bus route, same circumstances (jam-packed with passengers, conductor missing my sister more than once, then seeing her when there were fewer people on the bus), but when he started to shout at her again this time, she answered back, “I’ve been holding my money all this time, ready to pay.  I did try to attract your attention but you just didn’t look at me.  It’s not my fault that you didn’t ask me.  YOU are the one who’s not been doing your job properly.”

My sister finished her story with, “I don’t know where I got the courage from, answering back in front of all those people.  It must be because I’m now a married woman.”

She was only a year older than when she was shouted at by the conductor the last time, but her role had changed: she’d gone from being a maiden to being a married woman.

(Singapore, early 1970s)