I chose to write this in English, so I could be as objective as possible."The emotional distance of not using your mother tongue can make you more rational', which is hot I need to be whenever I think about this. I just want to lay out what has happened during my two years here, not to be accusing, not to be complaining. A mere recount. A mere reflection.
Every secondary student in Singapore must join a Co-Corricular Activity(CCA) as part of the requirements of the Ministry of Education. This includes sports like basketball, clubs and societies like Debate&Advocacy, performing arts like choir, etc (By the way, CCS falls in between ‘clubs and societies’ and ‘performing arts’. It could be both; it could be neither. A truly awkward position). I had chosen to join the Chinese Cultural Society (CCS) largely out of my own will. Chinese drama is something that has always fascinated me yet I have never had a chance to dabble in. At that time, CCS was a poorly-known CCA due to the generally neglected state of Chinese education not only in our school, but around Singapore as well. With a heart thumping with passion for Chinese in my chest, I had secretly urged myself to give my best for this place, to leave something for it.
I did. A horribly mutilated script. And a consolation prize.
Let me just tell you what was going on then. Maybe you could have a clearer view of this place, of the people here, of the things people are doing here.
It was the annual story-telling competition. Our instructor had told us to read some short stories and share them during training session. We were given two weeks at least. In the end, only two or three of us(me included) presented, and that was the time when it still appeared surprising to me that no one else bothered to find anything. I not only read the story, but wrote out the script as well. Because my promise came back to me and I thought this was the time for me to do something for CCS. Mine was used as a temporary script to select participants.
I didn’t know that life could be as dramatic as that. Towards the end, the instructor was to choose from me and my best friend. Neither of us had got the chance to play the main role during our last public performance. This time, anyone chosen would be the main character. Obviously we both wanted the role very badly.
We read the last paragraph of the script one by one. As I was reading, I saw our senior nodding to our instructor and whispering ‘She’s better’.
I got chosen. But somehow, I felt so bad that I said my dance class clashed with the training. I couldn’t go. Give the chance to her.
I have no idea why I did that. Was it even fair for her? She cried. At that moment, all that’s in my mind was ‘I would be out of this’ ‘ I’ll try the next time’.
And our instructor said, and I clearly remember what she said: “It’s okay. X (my name) could still write the script for us.”
And I did. Several rounds of editing and refining and the final version did not include even a trace of my name.
“Giving all the difficult work of writing script to you and not letting you play a role in it, ” My best friend said to me, somber-faced, “I wouldn’t be too happy about that.”
So I got back my role. She concurred. She said, “ It belongs to you in the first place.”
After all this saga, I received with horror the ‘refined’ version of the script, polished by another teacher. The story line was changed to a ‘I felt so tired training but I became so strong after talking to my teacher for half a minute and we succeeded yah’ cliche. The script was pumped with hollow slogan-shouting and meaningless big words.
My friends had said the heart-wrenching element of the original script had been its highlight on the realistic internal struggle of the protagonist that would be sure to strike a chord with the audience. But in the new version, all that was gone. All that was replaced ‘We are proud of you, Singapore!’
It wasn’t even a story about Singapore. It was about a schoolgirl trying to make her country proud. We are proud of a country not for the country itself, but for the people that make up Singapore.
But our instructor wouldn’t listen. She pumped the performance even further with grand-looking hand gestures. She explained to us: “What is important in this competition is not the story, but the performance. I know you are very concerned, but I have more experience than you do.”
On the day of our competition, other teams’ stories that made us as audience cry ended up being the top three. We delivered our performance as expected by our instructor. Someone laughed during out performance.
We got the consolation prize. I have always found the name of this prize even more humiliating than not getting anything at all, which is to be completely forgotten; ‘consolation prize’ means you are the loser but you are pulled to the front stage and given a lollipop in public with words like ‘Don’t cry. You have certainly tried.’
I could not bring myself to blaming anyone. Not our instructor. During our training, she was the mother-like figure. Maybe because she was from China, too, I often felt a distant kinship towards her. She was the one that understood my homesickness and comforted me. She was the one that saw my effort at making this story-telling competition thing perfect and pacified my anxieties. She was the one that trained with us till late night and encouraged us. She didn’t ignore my advice, but explained to me over and over again why it wouldn’t work. It is just, hers didn’t work ,either.
Not the teacher who almost wrote a new script for us. She had always been the teacher-in-charge for CCS and I’m sure she had no less experience than our instructor. The script, perhaps, was just her familiar style. I have no doubt that she wanted the best for us too.
Not my teammates. We trained hard. We finished packs after packs of lozenges. Truthfully, our vocal quality was among the best during the competition. We managed the stage very well. We mastered the second round of ‘creativity challenge’ perfectly.
So it is myself? The original story was not grand enough because it did not involve someone dying like the other teams’. That was the only feasible explanation I could give.
So I end up blaming myself. And I felt like howling now thinking about this: one of the very few persons who had genuinely cared for this whole thing turned out to be the villain that ruined it.
So shall I also stand by the next time, waiting for someone else to labour and only jump in when the harvest is done?
Like many people here.
Like what they had done again this year. Our instructor asked: “So about the script for the Singapore Youth Festival, does anyone have any ideas?”
Only two or three persons talked. And if I was not wrong, they were the same two or three persons last year.
I don’t know whether there is a casual relationship here, but this competition ended up being a fiasco, too.
I don’t know what has made the majority of CCS members give up hope. I just understand that hardly anyone seemed to care for this place. Coming late, not wearing the required attire intentionally, mentioning CCS with a smirk, if not hiding their position in CCS like an infamy: I saw them with confusion and, inexplicably, dim empathy.
It was a vicious cycle. I couldn’t bring myself to fully dedicating to this place when I saw people looking at me with listless eyes. And no one else could, too.
So CCS continued to function in its sluggish way. We are like, in Chinese saying, a plate of loose sand. We are like discreet matchsticks tied together, yet we could never become one.
A team divided beneath would invariably appear divided on the surface. And we did.
How could it be? When did this start? Until I stepped down as seniors in secondary four, these questions were still baffling me.
But I am tired of investigating. I am tired of knowing. I am now fearful of giving it all that I could and end up being the ‘officious’ one.
But now I am truly out of this.
It was a relief. Not because a self-inflicted responsibility is off my shoulder now, but because looking back, I know I have given this place all that I could. I still have the edited scripts over the two years in my laptop. I have never regretted treating this place as I expected myself to.
But I could not bring myself to looking at them anymore.
Let me go. I know I would not forget, would not be able to forget about the two years here, the two years that I could never make sense of.
So just let it be. As long as II know that I have left no regrets, I would have everything.
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