Little Nyonya

I was surprised when a colleague told me that he wanted to go home in time to catch the last episode of the series. Little Nyonya fever has spread over Singaporean households, many of whom have not seen a period drama from Mediacorp in a long time. Sure, the marketing blitz probably had something to do with this. Plus the fact that mediacorp has not showed period drama serials ever for a long time hint that there might be budgetary restraints, or else it is difficult to find people who lived in the old days, and are still young enough to be writing scripts for you.

These days drama serials are divided into 2 categories. The first category revolves around yuppies – probably mediacorp executives and their 5Cs dealing with the banal trivialities of their banal trivial lives. The second category revolve around HDB folk who are not very bright, probably even retarded dealing with the banal trivialities of their banal trivial lives.

So it is quite refreshing to see period dramas of life before 1965, when Singapore was a genuine 3rd world country, even though in the late 80s they were churning this out on a more regular basis.

This series has been a favourite of my father’s for a few reasons. One is that he and his siblings, like Juxiang and Yueniang were at the wrong end of polygamic politics in their childhood. So it was like seeing the getting pushed around by the other side of the family all over again. The formula is very simple: Xiang Yun = my grandmother. Jeanette Aw (both the dumb one and the speaking one) = my father and his siblings. Not all the siblings, actually, since I had 2 aunts who were given away because my grandmother couldn't afford to raise them.

The other thing is that his fairy godmother was a peranakan. His father’s mother was sympathetic to the family of the third wife (this third wife is my grandmother who is still living with me today). So we carried over some of the traditions – mainly culinary. Yes, belachan was pounded in my house until quite recently. No, there's none of that stupid sewing beads or women gelek-ing around the house in strange costumes. No, nobody in my house speaks Malay (except my grandmother) - as opposed to some other Peranakans I've met at work. Yes if you are Peranakan (or Hainanese, for that matter) you have a higher than average chance of being an Ang Mor Pai (although I prefer to be called "Ang Mor Buay Pai"). Yes I ate dinner while watching the last episode and suitably one of the things I ate was ayam buah keluak.

So there would be some of those comments – “that’s slow. I could draw water from the well faster than that in those days.” Or “yah – those beaded stuff. People used to do those things. Very tedious and boliao”. Or he would call the maid to pay a little more attention to the parts that dealt with the cooking.

It was less dramatic in those days, of course. There was no big family fortune. My grandfather had a middle class salary but it wasn’t so middle class when you had to divide it between 3 families. There were no servants, no attempted murders, no getting impregnated by Japanese, no rapes, no pimping of wives, no bribing angmohs (actually not sure about that). But there were stuff like getting shit from people from "the other family", feeding the chickens before you went to school, loansharks hammering at the doors, etc etc. I actually went to the house they lived in before it got torn down and converted into HDB flats. I was 6 years old and couldn't remember much. It looked a lot like Liu Yidao's shack.

The younger generation like me have more serious things to think about, for example how compilers work.

Update: The corporate ethos, actually the Temasek ethos in particular demands that if there is something to be milked at all, you have to milk it for all it's worth.