Loss of Memory

After 10 years I came to Parkway Parade in 2012. It was so different to what I remembered a decade ago — but what was in my memory? I could not remember so clearly. In fact, Parkway Parade in my memory had been so blurry that I doubted whether it was me who had been here at least twice a week during the period 1998 – 2002.

The sense of loss came to me as well as I visited the district in Swatou in 2010, the district where I lived from 1987 to 1998. I knew it had changed dramatically but I could not figure out how it was like in my blurry memory. It was like everything had been redefined, and my memory had been erased completely.

This happens not only to places but to people too. Sometimes I wonder where the person in front of me has come from and why I get to know him or her because that person has changed through the years and yet I cannot remember how he or she was like when we first met. Is it a punk played by life, or a cognitive phenomenon that is natural to common people?

No doubt I am very nostalgic but my memory keeps failing me.

I cannot remember clearly how Singapore looked like when I first came here fifteen years ago. I can only remember that the MRT system was still a new thing then, and people were generally happier. What has made Singapore so different now, I cannot tell, but she is different.

I cannot remember clearly the life in Chung Cheng High School (Main), but when I went back as an East Zone teacher I could sense the fall of my alma mater. Not that she was at a very high status when I was a student there, but she did fall, as far as my sense told me.

I do not know what has ruined Singaporeans’ happiness, nor can I come to understand why my alma mater has slipped through the years. My memory is not capable of recalling the past and obviously of comprehending the cause of changes. What it is capable of is just a deep feeling of loss.

The world changes fast, no matter how my inner self refuses to accept that. The world changes so fast that my memory cannot absorb the recent events before it needs to face new changes. People say that change is the only constant. I fully appreciate it, and do make myself adapt to new changes. But it is still something lost that I cannot retrieve any more, that saddens me much, that makes my past a worthless mess.

Why I am here is due to my many selves in the flow of river of passing currents, and those selves are all gone.

The Meaning of Photographs

One of my pupils, who graduated from our school 3 years ago and is going to Secondary 4 in the coming year, is now very sad because her iPhone cannot get recovered from iTunes backup and therefore has lost her 4355 photos — she does not have the habit of synchronizing her photos to either iCloud or other cloud storage but solely depends on her backups on a PC.

Of course no one wants to lose anything, or the storage service providers, either online or offline, would not exist. But we do not need to grieve so much that our precious sleep has to be sacrificed in mourning. As I told that pupil, nothing is eternal, and starting anew is actually easier than imagined.

‘Those photos are my memories! They capture those precious fun moments!’ She said.

No, they are photos, not memories. True memories exist not in photos but in hearts and minds. Photos capture those moments, yes, and help to remind you those moments. But if you need photos to remind you those moments, are those moments really precious? Are precious moments not preserved in your fond memory?

Fun moments normally will become sour and bitter in future. They are bad evidence of the past because, in future, either your life is no longer fun or your friends are no longer there to share your joy. Either way it is, is seeing those photos of the fun past not a torment?

I take photography as a form of visual arts. I take photos not because I want to preserve the moments, as I cannot do so by clicking the shutter button. I take photos because the sight is beautiful and it somehow expresses myself through colours and shadows. Beauty is temporary; everything decays. If the world remembers it, then it gains some kind of immortality in the collective memory of mankind, and I do not need a copy for myself. If the world does not, why should my own pride bring the photos to my grave?

Some of my colleagues see me as ‘full of negativities’ because I seem to see only weaknesses, stupidity, inhumanity and irrationality in the bureaucracy. That might be true, but only at work. In life, I can see beauty in every corner and find humour in every speech and action. My cameras, including my smart phones, are deployed to capture the beauty and humour in life, not because they are precious moments and ought to be preserved but the lifespan of photos are much longer than that brevity of bliss. The extra length of this lifespan enables the sight to be exposed to a larger audience with a hint of my personality. That is all.

Never attach too many ‘meanings’ to the photos. Photos are just a media, a platform, and will be gone, sooner or later, together with those ‘meanings’.

In fact, you have lost your childhood friends, your cuteness in kindergarten, your primary school works, the clean air, cheap food, youthful vigour, purity of innocence, ignorant optimism, and many other things when you grow up (and old). Losing some photos is no big deal.

Lunar New Year

When I was very young, living in the village, I liked Lunar New Year more than any other festival. My mother made new clothes for me, using all new materials. My father came back from work in the Town and bought us nice food. They gave me a hongbao (red packet) containing 50 cents each year till we moved to the County.

Poverty could be seen all around the village, but the villagers were happy, as we didn’t see many floods or droughts, and the field usually provided us enough crops. We also had pork and poultry, which were scarce because we all raised our own pigs and chickens, and they were only meant for offering to ancestors, gods and fairies during festivals. Every family had at least two strings of firecrackers to burn. I can still vividly recall the sound and the smell when the whole village was immersed in the smoke and flying red paper strips.

On the new year’s eve, I bathed early, put on the new clothes my mother made for me, and waited for the most important dinner of the year to begin. My grandmother sat at the chief seat. My uncles, aunts and cousins sat freely around the huge table. Different from Northern China, we did not emphasise on the presence of fish dishes or dumplings. We did have fish, but the main item was the hotpot. The traditional hotpot we used was aesthetically beautiful and scientifically unhealthy: we used charcoal as fuel, the smoke after which combustion raised up and went through the short chimney at the centre of the hotpot, while soup and food were boiling in the pot around the hot chimney. The small windows of our old houses were all high up, leaving the room dangerous of carbon monoxide concentration. Yet no one ever died of that, and therefore no one ever thought of that.

I moved to the County when I was 4, and still went back the village during Lunar New Year, till I entered primary school.

Firecrackers were illegal in the County due to the density of buildings, but we could still hear them scattering around the neighbourhood. Pork and poultry were now very common in daily life, and the traditional hotpot had been replaced by a mini gas oven with a stainless steel pot.

There was more and more money in the hongbaos given by my parents, justifiable by inflation and the increment of my age, but I often paid the school fees with it. But I no longer longed for the new year to come.

I started to hate the crowd and noise during the festival. I hated the smell of cigarets when my relatives and my parents’ friends came to my house. I hated the faked smiles and insincere flatteries of the guests.

I started to spend the Lunar New Year week in the bookshops. I knew every single bookshop in the County. I knew their locations, specialties, rare items, discounted items, speed of restocking books, service attitudes and business hours. I would buy one or two books if I had enough money left after deducting the school fee from my hongbao, otherwise I would just read books in the bookshops.

The number of bookshops shrank dramatically with the widespread of the Internet. In 2003, I was at home during Lunar New Year, and I could only find two bookshops remaining.

I spent my Lunar New Year in Singapore from 1999 to 2002, went back to China in 2003 because I was waiting for my A Level results and there was no schooling. Then from 2004 till now I did not go back any more. I spent 14 Lunar New Years in Singapore. The number is overwhelming. But it is true that Lunar New Year means less and less to me. Most of time it is just an excuse to have a good rest and friend gatherings. Sometimes I cannot even have them.