| December
1998
Mandarin and the Singapore Identity
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The
"speak Mandarin" debate in Singapore, now more than a decade old, is a
very strange beast. Neither side of the debate is actually against speaking
Mandarin, yet the beast will not lie down. This is because at its heart, the
debate is not really about language skills. The speak Mandarin debate is a
surrogate for the more divisive "preserve Chinese Culture" debate.
On one side are those who argue that Mandarin is a necessary vehicle to transmit Chinese culture to future generations. This is not contentious in itself. Of course, without the language of a culture, it is difficult to transmit that culture. The issue is how much importance we should place on transmitting Chinese culture to future generations. The reasons given by the protagonists are woolly: we need a sense of roots; the rich heritage needs to be preserved; we need to inculcate values in the succeeding generations, values which have so far stood Singapore in good stead; and we'd be looked down upon by other nations if we hollowed out or disowned our culture. These make good soundbites, but these "reasons" are pretty vague and they demand further analysis. Underlying these "reasons" are some interesting assumptions. You can deduce the existence of these assumptions from the fact that the statements would make no sense unless the assumptions were there. The first is that the sense of roots must be very broad, encompassing Chinese culture in its entirety. Why not a narrower sense of roots centred on family history only, and a light appreciation of the culture that preceding generations had, without oneself being of the same culture? Take, for example, a Thai-Chinese, now living in Australia. Must he always remain culturally Thai and culturally Chinese, even at the expense of becoming Australian? His children too? The second assumption is that culture is like a Ming vase, unchanging, and needs to be preserved. More interestingly, there is no realisation that culture mutates through time and after some evolution, may even come to rest upon another language. The third is the conflation of good values with Chinese cultural values. This is a huge debate in itself. I won't go into that now. The fourth assumption is that if we didn't have Chinese culture, we'd have no culture at all. This is ridiculous. Everybody has a culture. We live. We go about our lives. What are our lives but culture? Ah, but what drives their point of view is that Chinese culture is much, much superior to any other culture. If you didn't have Chinese culture, but adopted some other culture, that other culture would be of such lower value, it would be as bad as having no culture at all. That sense of superiority is the great unspoken assumption. To lose Chinese culture would be a serious degrading. Deculturalisation (is this a uniquely Singaporean word?) would be a major tragedy. Some of the efforts made in the attempt to remain Chinese are quite ludicrous. Our state-owned broadcasting station produces period dramas with characters dressed in Song dynasty costumes, and stories based on the Chinese imperial court. But Singapore is not part of China. Never have been. Just because some of us speak Chinese doesn't mean we identify with the dynastic history of China. It would be laughable -- the audience would be in stitches -- if, on the basis that some of us spoke English, we produced period dramas based on the reigns of Queen Anne and King William III, complete with wigs and breeches. I don't think even the Australians do that, though many of them are descended from British stock. There seems to be great difficulty reconciling being Chinese with being Singaporean, a difficulty I would trace to the sense of superiority of Chinese culture. The result is an unwillingness to let go of anything Chinese, even if that might be necessary to become Singaporean. And that's why the "What is the Singaporean Identity?" debate often boils down to two diametrically opposed visions:
Frankly, I wouldn't get too exercised about this issue. In the long run, option 1 is a lost cause. (Maybe that is why that side of the debate tends to be more strident). Why do I say this? It has to do with language again. English has been the principal school language for about 20 years. Mandarin is generally taught only at second-language level. With the passage of time, proficiency in Mandarin will fall and the use of English will grow. This evolution would be so gradual we might not notice it, but the hard fact is that the motor to drive this place as a Chinese-speaking place is simply the weaker of the two motors. Where in the world is there a place whose culture is identified with its second language? Yet, there is no way we can make Chinese the first language, for that would be political suicide for Singapore. Singapore is by nature an open place absorbing ideas and fads from around the world, especially the English-speaking places, though we will also be influenced by the Chinese-speaking and Malay-speaking areas. No longer divided by different languages, members of the various communities here will interact more and more, and the most natural course of events will be a gradual blending. There is no reason to let up on honing language skills. Learn Mandarin by all means. China is a major market and a significant power. Learn Japanese. Learn Spanish. But we don't need to contort the matter into one about cultural values. We should also remember that Chinese culture (in China, that is) is not going to be static. Chinese culture has changed tremendously the last hundred years or so, and will continue to undergo wrenching change ahead. In fact, here's the funny thing: The Chinese culture brought by the immigrants into Singapore was not so much the traditional culture of old China, but was a branch of the revolutionary Chinese thought of the late 19th century and early 20th. The Chinese migrants here were of a generation that believed in republicanism, overthrowing the deadweight of kept concubines, bound feet, corrupt avarice and other sorts of nonsense that was believed to be holding back the Chinese race. Emigrants are seldom unduly sentimental about the country or the culture they leave. Those who came to Singapore were no exception. Singapore was a hotbed of support for Sun Yet-sen when he sought to overthrow the Qing dynasty. (We even have a small museum here dedicated to his stay in Singapore when he was plotting his revolution.) Singapore Chinese cheered on and even financed the Nationalists and the Communists both, in their quest to modernise China. As testimony to their revolutionary spirit in the 30's and 40's, private Singapore schools were quick to adopt Guoyu (Mandarin) as the language of instruction rather than dialect, well before the schools came under government direction. More recently, there was barely a squeak of protest when Singapore jettisoned the old script in favour of the simplified Chinese script. Good riddance to old rubbish. Now however, we're misty-eyed about the passing of the old ways. We want to revive touristy tea ceremonies, effete poetry reading sessions and third-rate street opera. And on our TV screens, we see a made-in-Singapore serial about a wicked empress tormenting innocent princesses in flowing robes, while brave archers gallop in from the Mongolian steppe to their rescue! Even if we try to preserve Chinese culture like a century-egg, China itself will change. Either we then preserve a fossil of an egg, out of touch with a larger Chinese culture powering on its own course, or we remain plugged in to the mainland and be electrified by surge after surge of cultural high voltage, whether relevant to us or not (see footnote 1). Is there any sense in that? Ultimately, Singapore is home, and fellow Singaporeans our compatriots. We will do what we need to do as society. A few habits we may keep for a long time. But gradually we will take on new things, and modify what we have. And one day yet, we may see this rearguard action to "speak Mandarin!", shorthand for "preserve Chinese culture!", as but adolescent angst. Leaving home and wanting mama at the same time. * * * * * end of original essay * * * * * This section added one week later: A week after uploading the above essay onto Yawning Bread, I feel the tone of the article is not combative enough. I am sanguine about the long term, but in the short and medium term, I think the Mandarin proponents are doing considerable damage to Singapore. I need to stress this here. The two deleterious effects of the campaign are:
Too many Chinese Singaporeans use Mandarin among themselves even in the presence of minority races. You see groups of 4 or 5 young people, 1 or 2 of whom may be Malay or Indian, and yet the Chinese among them go on blithely in Mandarin. It's hard to imagine being ruder to one's colleagues or friends. If this is the "gracious society" that our Prime Minister hopes to promote, then we have certainly set our sights very low. We see waiters and sales promoters approaching racially mixed groups of customers and yet speaking only to the Chinese among them, in Mandarin. Whenever this happens, I feel extremely embarrassed towards my minority race friends. Are we unable to imagine what it feels like on the other side? This is the kind of unthinking arrogance of (some of) a racial majority that rubs our ethnic minorities the wrong way every minute of every day. They feel alienated from the "Singapore" that is practiced, as opposed to the "Singapore" that is supposed to be. We risk driving them to look to outside loyalties, which cannot be good for social peace in this place. This wouldn't be a problem if our racial minorities are equally conversant in Mandarin, then they wouldn't be excluded from conversations. But political and social reality does not permit that to be brought about. The campaign is deliberately confined to the Chinese. Being confined to the Chinese, the Mandarin proponents feel free to carry a subtext with them: it's for the Chinese to speak Mandarin, which gets distorted to: Chinese should speak Mandarin. This is related to the cultural objectives which I wrote about above, but it has the serious effect of entrenching race consciousness. People actually say to me, "if you're Chinese, you ought to speak Mandarin". Whenever I hear this, I get angry. Nobody tells me what I ought to do, or not ought to do on the basis of my race. That to me is simply racist. It is disrespectful of my autonomy as an individual person. You are categorising me by the colour of my skin. It is even more frightful when the implications of such a statement are brought to mind: that if I don't do what I am supposed to do on account of my race, it is right and proper for others to discriminate against me, to hold me in contempt. Yet, few people ever challenge the racism inherent in such a statement. It just shows how few dare stand up to the idea that Chinese culture is superior, and that the Chinese as a race must be bound by it, and that we (chosen by the colour of our skin) have a responsibility to protect this "great heritage" from erosion. Racism is horribly damaging to the Singapore
idea. I am totally against it. I can understand the importance of learning as
many languages as one can manage, but I am against prescribing the choice of
language on the basis of race. If we go on like this, we will destroy any hope
of a Singapore identity that we can be proud of. We may even end up destroying
Singapore. © Yawning Bread
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Footnotes
Addenda None
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