#386/ #71
This also qualifies as a 20 Seconds Of Your Life You Will Not Be Getting Back Conversation…
Taxi driver bringing us to church: (Cantonese) What people are you?
Me: Malaysians.
Taxi driver: Oh right! You really do look like those people smuggled over in pig baskets to be coolies.
Me: ??
Taxi driver: Koo-lee. Pig basket.
Me: <slowly> You mean, our ancestors sold pigs and were coolies in Malaysia?
Taxi driver: <cheerfully> Not only that, I mean your ancestors were taken against their will from China to Malaysia to be coolies – you know, doing manual labour – and people historically used pig baskets to do this. You look like those people…
Me: *blinks* (Can’t tell whether he’s serious, whether it’s my Cantonese… he’s polite and friendly, but… definitely caught the words “coolie”, “pig basket” and most of his “bringing people over involuntarily from China” description)
Taxi driver: You went to school right?
Me: Hmm? Yes, but –
Taxi driver: <enthusiastically> So you know what I’m talking about! It’s history!
Me: “—” <thinking: OMG, I am in a car with a fruitcake going down the highway at more than 100km/h and the children are with me. The sea is to our left. Who knows if those road barriers’ll hold? Ok ok don’t make any sudden movements…>
Rockstar: What’s he saying, Mum?
Me: <slowly, watching taxi driver’s face through rear view mirror> He… appears to be saying we look like our ancestors were smuggled involuntarily from China in pig baskets to do hard labour in Malaysia… he seems to think that’s how Malaysian Chinese came about.
(Taxi driver flinches but doesn’t correct me. It’s entirely possible it has only just occurred to him that what he is saying might be a bit offensive.)
Rockstar: What the heck -?
(I have Malaysian mummy friends who feel very strongly about this phrase and only allow their boys, a couple years older than Rockstar, “What the -?” This day however, I don’t feel able to improve on his statement.)
Me: I. Know. No, actually I don’t know. What he’s talking about.
Rockstar: <snorts>
Taxi driver: Erm…… D’you think… maybe those were Indonesian Chinese who were smuggled in pig cages?
Me: <quietly, to the kids> Don’t say anything to encourage him. He might also have Imaginary Friends.
Miss: <perks up> I have imaginary friends! Mine are aliens!
(Mostly she has animal friends though. The Miss is yet to meet an animal she doesn’t like… Rockstar was the one who famously had imaginary friends with elaborate lives on different planets, when he was at that age…)
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The Miss has one too…
Indoors in the Cyberport offices area (yes, where Microsoft and some of the other big tech companies as well as a score of little ones have their offices) are some of the best scooting paths of well, anywhere, and I don’t just mean for the kids. It’s not that uncommon to see techie employees whizzing about on various wheeled contraptions, ranging from little robot things to your classic skateboard, along those tantalisingly smooth and shiny walkways.
This appears to annoy certain Cyberport building management staff a bit more than others; some staff close an eye because the kids hop off wheels really quickly when we spy someone from the Corridor Police, but some get upset and will follow you the entire way to make sure your kids don’t get back on their wheels.
So one day with the Miss…
Me: Ok you need to give me your scooter, please. (Code for I Spy Someone Who’s Going To Tell You To Get Off)
Miss: Well, there’s a Grouchy Uncle. Look, Mummy, there he is.
Me: <willing her to get distracted by a bumblebee>
Miss: Wow. He looks soo grouchy… What, Mum? Why shush…?
Speedster going to class…
Miss Rockstar has really taken to her scooter now. I still remember when you wrote of the time it was bought, she was still too young to use it.
As for the being forcefully taken and sold to Nan Yang, I did hear my grandfather’s generation talking about it. I think maybe some unfortunate people were really kidnapped and sold to SEA from China in the olden days so this taxi guy must be from the really old generation or he must have heard about it from someone that old. Anyway it is really offensive to hear from someone that they can tell from looking at people faces that they looked like some one from the past who could have been kidnapped and sold. As if he can really tell. Hhhmmmpppffff!
Wow I’ve never heard of this, I thought he was making a big generalisation because conceivably in the olden days kidnapping and enslaving probably did happen, not just specifically to Malaysian Chinese… I have one grandma from Guangdong who came on a boat by herself in her teens dressed as a boy, after her family was persecuted in China during a labour uprising, but certainly she came willingly… my other grandparents are all nyonya and were already assimilated in Malaysia so again, never heard of this…
The taxi driver who was saying all this btw is not really old at all so I guess he either heard it from someone of the much older generation or else he was making a generalisation that ended up hitting closer to home than expected…