Importance of freeing the imagination

I am a dreamer.I free my imagination from the cage of conventions and let it escape.My imagination can only run wild in a make believe world of movies and to me reel life is richer than real life for it opens up our inner world to new possibilities.If Man had not dreamed to fly like birds or swim like fish,would the aeroplane and the submarine be even invented?

So let the world laugh at your crazy ideas,who knows one of them could become reality one day!


I viewed The movie The KIng Of Mask by Wu Tian Ming (thank you for your boldness as I was totally impressed by an underdog Xian film studio producing such brilliant directors compared to Beijing or Shanghai studios) ,it is the film nurturing talent of individuals by the studio that encourages art for art's sake  not profit sake).Such a simple story focuses on the need to preserve traditional art forms like changing of the mask and challenging the conservative mindset that it could not be taught to outsiders.But with digital media being used to preserve the technique ,it could be studied one day and revived again.Then again a similar dilemma of preservation of traditional art form is seen in Bhutanese director Jamyang Kyentse Norbu's latest movie in which a troop of traditional masked dancers undergo transformation hidden by their masked selves.I've spent time viewing director's Jia Zhang Ke's movie making process and the creative process of  Akira Kurosawa's scriptwriting to directing and I'm amazed by how they bring so many different disparate elements from writing to music to lighting ,from technology to age old acting skills to weave  the tapestry into a 2 hour magic on screen.

I'm now incubating on a story that I hope to finish by 2017.It would mesh together the past and the present,use a range of techniques from real life actors merged with animation.It would use animation and be drawn in the style of a batik painting,incorporate wayang kulit but in the modern figures and use Teochew puppets and real life actors.It would show the process of how actors are trained and transformed through face painting into Chinese opera heroes and heroines. That would enable young audience to understand the difficulties of mastering the intricacies of traditional art form like opera.
I would use Chinese paper cutting of figurines to show the part of the Chinese operas,for the wayang kulit I would use traditional music of the dikir barat combined with Indian classical music on sitar.


Outline

Scene 1
This is a traditional story teller,the troop master of a Teochew puppet troop that is struggling to survive in Penang.Its only income is from performing at the Hungry ghost festival when stage performances of classical opera tales like Liao Zhai or the Journey to the West are performed for ghostly visitors .The stage on the other side  has a big paper statue of the black faced God of Hell.
Times are bad and earnings are dwindling as the temple committee preferred to hire pole dancers and strip artistes to lure the younger crowd of ghosts and the salivating drooling  old Ah Paks unwavering devotion to such titillaing performanes that will surely wake up the dead from their grave and make them hunger for something more than just the pink fatt go,the red ang koo kuih or the paper money. folded into ingots.
    Ahh ,people have to keep up with the times.Even the traditional paper mansions and boy and girl paper figures or hell notes are so outdated.Now the in things to burn are smart phones,credit cards  and i Pad.
    So the Yuen Ching puppet troop is facing stiff competition.

Scene 2

Mr Koo the puppet owner is having problem paying the puppeeters their wages on time .The youngest 5 year old son of illiterate pupputeer Mrs Li secretly smuggles under the offering table and when it's 3 am ,he swipes the steamed pork buns,the ang koo kuih and gulps a few bottle of F and N orange before sneaking out and dumping them into the trash can far away.Let's see who is more hungry-the real person or the ghost?

Scene 3

Mr Koo's wife is a shy and hardworking person.She works as a babysitter to supplement the family's income.The eldest son  Ah Chun hardly helps out at the theatre ,preferring to master the skill of auto repair.He spends his time doing drag racing on highways.The only other son An Fatt has a deformed leg .He was abandoned outside and found by the temple caretaker.Mrs Koo was the one who was paid by the caretaker to look after him and adopted him as one of her own.It was An Fatt who was a keen observer and learned the art of Teochew puppet shows. Ah Chun hated An Fatt as he was favoured by his father so he went out of his way to bully the "Lame leg boy"and make his life miserable.

Scene 4

In the temple of the Sleeping Buddha,they held the performance the whole night.Meanwhile the wayang kulit troop master has also lost his audience as no one is interested in Ramayna,Sita or Ravana.The young are glued to their satellite tv and chasing Pokemon Go.He has to resort making wayang kulit figures to sell to tourists as souvenirs.
Kassim his teenage 19 year old son organizes a group to hunt for rare sightings of Pokemon near the temple site .(the scene would be in animated form of wayang kulit as they climbed up coconut trees and dived into the padi fields to catch the Pokemon Go and parallel scenes of Wayang Kulit of Rama chasing to hunt and kill Ravana. controlled by the dalang his father.

Scene 5

The bad blood between the two brothers worsens when An Fatt begs Ah Chun to deliver some equipment to the Rasa temple.When he went back to his beloved car,Ah Chun got a shock.Vandals had removed all four spanking new high performance tyres and replaced them with four stacks of bricks.Macam macam pun boleh,May your whole family be killed ,a string of expletives fly out. From then on ,the rift between the brothers widened.

Scene 6

After their puppet show at 1 pm was the pole dancer's performance which saw a packed to full house
of old Ah Peks on an ogling.Wah that new dancer manyak shiok,you throw some ringgit notes at her er everything also you can see,they leered.An Fatt was secretly admiring the new dancer ,a young 19 year old from a small town in Perlis.She was working to pay off the debts her father owned to the Ah Long.But An Fatt knew he wouldnt stand a chance with his disability.
 SCENE 7

An Fatt knew his foster father kept all his cash and wife's jewellery in an old safe deposit box hidden in a huge

 metal cabinet used to store the stage props.They often moved from small towns to cities to perform.It was more

 convenient this way.

"But how to get everyone out,,mmmn this might work,I could use that to pay off the girl's debt and the rest we

 could set up a small laksa stall to make a living."

sCENE 8

At the corner of the makeshift stage was a small altar of the God of the Earth"The members prayed and burned 

notes before every performance.An Fatt bought some kerosene ,hid it near the perimeters and when his foster

 father treated the whole troop to a celebratory dinner at the restaurant ,he would make his move.

  The fire gutted the makeshift theatre.The villagers nearby came to help douse the fiery blaze,even Tok Dalang 

and his son Kassim pitched in to help.Mr Koo came rushing back with his workers .He rushed in to save his life

 savings but never made it out alive.

sCENE 9

Scene of a Teochew puppet show with An Fatt as the puppetmaster.Scene enacted of the filial son who goes to

 Hell to plead with the God Of Hades to free his mother from being a hungry ghost.He descends through a part 

where souls are boiled in burning vats of oil by the guards with cow heads and horse faces.His mother who was

 a lifelong vegetarian had been punished when she inadvertently drank a bowl of pork soup. and lied about it.

Moved by his filial piety,the God of Hades promised that on the seventh day of the seventh Lunar Month,the

 gates of Hell would open and the roaming spirits would be freed to eat as much offering as they wanted.When

 the angry ghosts or roaming spirits are appeased,they would not disturb the living and the seen and unseen 

coexist the rest of the year in harmony.

     Ah Chun the mechanic turns into a responsible son and takes care of his widowed mother.

sCENE 10

       An Fatt is heartbroken when the pole dancer turns down his proposal.She marries the elderly

 62 year old bachelor ( a Getai fan )from Pasir Panjang who owns three shophouses and sells off one of it 

to pay off her father's debts to the loan shark.Now she is the towkay so of two jewellery shops.The troupe

 is disbanded and some of the puppets end up being sold at the flea market as "antiques".An Fatt moved to the

 big city and starts a small business in a digital mall selling computer games.The Zombies or the undead is the

 latest craze .and that's how he happened to meet by chance the "old flame" of his youth who came to the city

 with her little boy who wanted to buy "The Zombie."She then takes her son to the interactive science museum 

where a group of eager children  plays with a high tech Japanese designed system which consists of a head 

mounted display HMD that shows the performer a live video feed from the puppet's viewpoint,a microphone 

for voice capture and photoreflectors for detecing the mouth movement of the human performer.In conventional

 puppetry,practising manipulation of the puppet is also required to perform well.The telepresence system 

addresses these issues by enabling the human performer to manipulate the puppet through their own body

 and facial movements.This would contribute to a new application of puppetry and expand the interactivity

 of puppetry and the scope of entertainment.There is also the optical marionette in which the 3D hologram 

would reduce the real human figure onto a projected puppet that will imitate the real person's movement and

 synthesize his voice. A male could become a female and a human into an animal.The lines between what is

 real and not real are blurred.

sCENE 11

Scenes from a Chinese opera-how an ordinary person can be changed into a hero when the real face is masked 

by heavy  make up and the general's costumes and how a person can be transformed into an animal-a fox or

 snake in the next life.How the white snake transforms into a human due to the pursuit of love.(An Fatt learns to

 be a Chinese opera star-a romantic scholar,a prince or a general)

sCENE 12

Scene of a modern day cybercafe that captures the souls of humans and makes them into zombies.

Eyes are bloodshot ,face is pale as a ghost in the darkness as the soul zapping machines cast a green eerie glow.

They are caught up in MMPROG of avatars when in real life they are escaping from reality of drudgery of work 

and being stuck in dead end jobs)Another shot of trader glued to his computer screen and the scrolling of stock

s run on the screen as the picture of the God of wealth is placed on the side of computer.Modern day zombies walk

 into lamp post or car crashes as zombies are glued to the attention zapper.

Scene 13

The wayang kulit is performed by Tok Dalang who has been invited to stage it as a tourist promotional attraction

 at the Frankfurt city .The foreigners give it an outstanding applause whereas at his own homeland,he played fo

r a few elderly fans who were fast dying off.The story tells how PuteriDewi Sita was abandoned by her father 

Maharajah Sri Rawana at birth because the fortune teller predict that she brings bad omen to the family.

He dumps her in a box at the edge of the sea where she is found and brought up by an old fisherman and his wife.

She grows up as a beauty and marries Dewa Rama who will be the arch enemy of Rawana.

Scene 14

The story also tells the adopted brother of Rama ,Laksamana who is entrusted to protect Rama .Endowed with

 special strength and intelligence by the wise old man who lives in a wat with seven golden tiers.He is loyal and

 faithful .He is calm and rational,and even gives up his life in the end to defend Rama. against his enemies

To be continued

Slowing down in Luang Prabang

Life in Luang prabang is like life in Bhutan-both landlocked countries relying on hydro electricity generation for national income.But their natural conservation is sustainable when the air is refreshingly unpolluted,the forests green and the cultural authenticity preserved in its daily lives and not commercialized into tourist attractions where live exhibits are hill tribes and not animals .
           A big thank you to the European young female tourist who picked up my wallet that fell from my unzipped waistpouch while I was eating dinner at the vegetarian buffet in  the alley of the night market.
        My holiday would have been ruined otherwise.I forgot to thank her as I was exhausted after walking to the waterfalls the whole afternoon.She wears a pair of cool round rimmed sun glasses which fell also while picking up my wallet.Kudos for your kindness whoever you are and may you enjoy your travels through southeast asia.

Post truth

POST -TRUTH :   When facts are sacrificed at the altar of expediency
                          

divine

Some things in life are destined ,and through moving to a new land,we could overcome the fates of  geographical limitations and political instability."It's written in the stars".Our earliest ancestors were refugees and migrants,moving across continents to escape natural disasters and nomads looking for food.

My eldest sister and aunts went back to Xinhui,my mom's ancestral home and it was good to know that the present generation have gained from modern agricultural farming practice to rear husbandry,fish and vegetables and their initial apprehension of open defecation and outhouse toilets eased when they were invited to stay a few days in a modern farmhouse with air condition and all the modern gizmos of the technological age.Well,my fourth aunt was moved by the " warm reception" and the freshness of their home cooked meals.Being a foodie,Iguess there's nothing like getting your own dinner from the backyard.
    I remember our grandparents knew how to cook food that strengthen our immune system ,the bitter tea and herbal concoctions .That's why they lived till their 80's but in search for quick relief,we had to live with the side effects.The thorny chinese spinach that grew in the wild was fabulous for detoxification when we had bacterial infection at the corner of the eye but now even eye drops would not work in the long term as that wild spinach.They cooked with bitter almond seed to nourish the lungs and speed natural recovery.
  

Hotel Iris by Yoko Ogawa

After reading Hotel Iris,it leaves a very unsettling impression on the type of relationship between a teenager and an elderly man.Is it a coming of age novel,but at the same time it starts with the restrictive life a a teenager under the control of a dominating single mother who goes to the extent  of doing up the hair of her daughter in a certain way at an age when teens are rebellious and strive to break the boundaries by establishing their independence through their appearance.Is that a subconscious sign of rebellion when she could literally let her hair down by conducting an illicit affair with a man old enough to be her grandfather who has a weird fetish.There is a sickening hint of his potential for violence and he practically seems to be  a sexual predator who exploits her sense of looking for a father figure who has been absent in her life for a long time.But her perverse will of submission and his fetish for sado machism is totally senseless and disgusting.Under the veneer of respectability lurks a beast with no saving grace.The style of writing is minimalistic but hints at so much more.

Akira Kurosawa

When I viewed the last episode of Yume or dreams by Akira Kurosawa,the surrealistic dream world shows his abiding love of the natural environment as a Luddite fantasy.The profusion of flowers,the agarian lifestyle and the celebratory mood of dance and music that accompanies a funeral.Whilst Kurosawa was against the use of nuclear weapons ,would he have forseen the devastation of Fukushima on future generations,the wipe out of the agarian lifestyle a forboding of the extent of technological destruction.
The pervasive influence of technological progress  is an uphill battle.As seen in Jamyang Kyentse Norbu's film Travellers and Magicians,there is a dilemma in introducing technological communication to a kingdom that had been cut off from the influences of commercial entertainment and relied on their oral stories to draws on traditional folk tales.How would such traditional culture hold against the excitement of dazzling Bollywood and Hollywood spectacular movies.The clash of modernity vs traditional is all to imminent as the protaganist dreams of a "cool lifestyle"that collides with the monk's simple narrative tale of lust and lurid passions.
   I would need to watch Kurosawa's "To Live " or Ikiru and contrast that with another great cinema director's epic film,Zhang YiMou's "To Live".Both deal with an individual's quest to look for meaning in Life.

Olive sunbird

The flowering plants are blooming profusely and yesterday a pair of olive sunbirds with curved beaks feasted on the nectar.

Nature is amazing that two tiny lovebirds  can zoom in  the concrete jungle to find food in my secret garden.

My ideal retreat would be in the banks of the Gopeng gushing river,to awaken to birds shrill chirps,looking for the Rafflesia or ginger plants,basking on a boulder by the ripples and dipping my toes in the swirling waters.

That's my kind of life.Simple.Rustic and far from the madding crowd.Bliss

the big picture

Difficulty to implement as the devil is in the details



All the concepts are interesting and thought provoking but sometimes when we're BIG on the PICTURE ,we 're short on the specifics.

It's like concepts like happiness and creativity.What criteria can we use to measure it and it differs from person to person.In some countries,presumably a criterion of happiness would be pristine environment but the trade off would be less industrialization.In another country,it could be basic food and shelter and yet another country political stability  or job opportunities.
Again when I look at creativity,the criteria could be something as prosaic as the dialogue or as far fetched as avant garde dances.What is the yardstick or should there be different yardsticks for different cultures?

when kumar meets his karma

Continuation

The love potion works
The kumari is so love smitten that she is unable to carry out her religious duties.
her mind is so clouded by images of kumat that she loses her ability of prophecy.
her devotees carry her on a sedan chair so that her feet will not be defiled by dirt and dust and impurities of the earth.They bribe her with the best aroma filled laddhu and gold leafed sweets in return for her third eye vision."Tell me who my future wife will be like?" " Should I sell my farm to work in Hong Kong?" they pleaded but she was not her usual self.She giggled and looked coy as she was of all things love struck.Her devotees worshipped the ground she walked on but dear kumari's head was up in the clouds.

one night,kumar smuggled into the temple and holding her hands smuggled her out .They ran as fast as possible until they couldn't catch their breadth .Onto a taxi they hopped and ran away as lovers do to the farm in the remote Pokhara.

The Kumari hadn't foreseen the devastating earthquake that nearly flattened Kathmandu.Love saved her as even the temple she resided in collapsed like a pack of cards.Death and loss lingered and lurked in every corner as not even the gods could predict the earthquake



Ah reality began to sink in when kumar realised that kumaris are goddesses with feet of clay.
She turned into a sharp tongued wife,berating him for making her slave away in the hot kitchen while he ploughed the field and did all the back breaking work of walking miles to fetch water from a well.She refused to touch the broom as it defiled her "purity".She berated him with sharp words when he couldnt afford to buy her laddhu and gulai jamun .She whined "The villagers especially those wrinkled old cow are calling me names like Mrs K who cannot get her hands dirty",Mrs K ,get down to earth,they sneered and smirked.The male folks blamed her for causing the earth to be angry as she had abandoned the gods for the sake of the mortal.

unable to take it any more,she listened to the sweet nothings of the well dressed and heavily perfumed neighbour Mr  Govinder .He smuggled her the kohl which she used to draw her eyelids,he even let her watch his Bollywoood movies when her husband was away ploughing and weeding in the hot sun.

Five months later,she had disappeared and the neighbour Mr Gobinder was no longer around.Gossips abound in the small village that they had eloped to another country,Some said Mr Gobinder was a rich ass who swindled young girls and sold them to the brothels in New Delhi.

As for Kumar,the heart broken husband sold the farm and bought a plane ticket to Kuala Lumpur. He works as an usher in a stand alone Lotus Cinema, drowning himself in sorrow at night with illicit moonshine and toddy and wtaching old reruns of glitsy actresses and Bollywood rags for riches story that sucked his beloved Kumari into the screens of illusion.

Reflections

Who am I?

This is one of the hardest question to answer as our thoughts shift from moment to moment.But in the modern world,we let money and power ,career and social status define us.We let others" expectations define who we are-  our national leaders,our religious leaders,our school system ,our community of what it means to"make it" in Life.Strip away all that veneer and start asking yourself who amI? A parent, a child,a friend, a niece or nephew ,a mentor,a citizen and the list goes on. Who am I would be  shining a light into what am I doing and where am I heading?

I've been devastated by pain and loss,two powerful forces our Teacher discovered as he left his life of no pain no stress and no fear to encounter sickness,old age ,and death.I visited the two surviving sisters left from my late mother's tight knit family of the Four sisters and 1 brother.The eldest is suffering from dementia which is a blessing in disguise as she doesn't pine for familiar faces and fourth aunt is the sweetest optimist who cooks the most delicious food and gives to family,neighbours and friends.Strong survival instincts thathave  seen them live through the second world war,deprivations ,and suffering but the sense of communal spirit and kinship is so strong.Remarkable resilience.

"Dover Beach".

The Sea of Faith
Was once,too,at the full ,and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy,long,withdrawing roar,
Retreating ,to the breath
Of the night-wind,down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world

"Ah,love,let us be true
To one another!for the world,which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various,so beautiful,so new,
Hath really neither joy,nor love,nor light,
Nor certitude,nor peace,nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night."

                                                                    From Fahrenheit 451
                                                                    Ray Bradbury
Poetry and tears,poetry and sickness;all that mush!

mooncake

This time of the year,I'll try to remember to light the lantern coz it brings to mind the reminiscence of my mom and how when she was recovering from her delivery of me in a hospital in Pudu,she looked out of the window and saw children playing with their lanterns and families nibbling on mooncakes whilst she had to eat bland hospital food.What a superwoman females of that era were.Brought up in a single parent household by a tough peasant woman ,being the second eldest she took the role of fierce protector of her younger siblings. Po po mined tin in the blazing sun and sold kuih muih ,never giving up on her children.Her only vice was she smoked her water based cigarettes,the percusor of the vape.
Tough,hardened and burnt by the scorching sun,she brought up her family of five.
     Mom used to tell me how she had a pet rabbit and when she lost it ,she went looking for it until she saw something wriggling under the bed.Stretching her hand in,she had a shock of her life,the tail was getting longer and longer.It was a python.She killed it with a cangkul.That's the migrant women-tough as nails .

Have things changed much as I just read a case of a mother in a rural area in China killing all her children due to poverty or mothers abandoning their only son.How heart breaking that there is still no social security for poor households!With the fastest trains,and the tallest skyscraperrs,has life become better for the peasants as told by Pearl S Buck in The Good Earth.

With wind and rain,how many blossoms have fallen?

When I came back from a brief holiday,the trailing pink potted periwinkles had shrunk and shrivelled with yellow leaves and parched soil. I nursed it back to health,spraying lightly with  a sprayer ,adding humus and now it has bloomed continuously with trails of pink blossoms.
But the bleeding heart was another plant that suffered a lot with burnt leaves and curling stems. I plucked and stripped the vine bare,waited for the sprouting leaves,and now she rewards me with clusters of white blossoms with a dark ,vivid red stamen.
With wind and rain ,how many blossoms have fallen?

The thing with healing of plants is we can only do so much,nature has its own way.In destroying the pests,I went overboard and killled the pests and the plant together with it.In my impatience to see her bloom,I smothered her with too much care,overwatering and excessive fertilizers and she died,her leaves dropped and she literally rotted.So now I do my best but leave it to nature to decide.There's a time for resting and a time for harvesting.

A neat turn of the phrase

Whilst flipping through a book on the history of our time in terms of cultural events,a description was made of an invention by a Japanese Daisuke Inoue and how his invention pushed the meaning of tolerance to a whole new level especially those off key idols wannabe and those living in apartments with paper thin walls.That was why ear plugs were invented as a defence shield against auditory assaults.

It takes a village to raise a child

It takes a village to raise a child.Phew ,now those years of childcare are over ......On Saturday,I woke up at five am,swept the balcony,watered my plants and sat back to enjoy the whiff of orange blossoms(with incense of tulasi lit to drive away any zika mozzies who might think of feasting on me)Light drizzling rain,a strong wind pushing wisps of dark clouds across a dark sky,slight breeze chilly against my skin-I can now sit back and stop to smell the roses.As I reflected,life has been kind to me.I have reasonable health and the luxury of going for a massage when the joints ache from all that housework and cooking,I enjoy reading and painting and time for myself to indulge in reading and testing recipes.I have a son who thinks I'm too stingy to wear street market Q and Q watches and shoes which wear out in no time. He is reasonably healthy albeit on the heavyweight side.I am contented.

And thus it was spoken

And thus it was spoken

Beneath the surface

lurks the beast

borne from  desire of the flesh

within its heart

such tender saplings sprout

And thus it was spoken

Creatures of the light 

Helpless to fight

Against creatures of the night

Who see and move swiftly

In the cloak of darkness

Alas such creatures of the night

Are blinded by the searing light
As that was destroyed will be created

And thus it was spoken

 Life spring from the bowels of the earth

From seed to plants

But now Earth is dirt

whilst plants grow on chemical laced water

Earth ends as a dump

And thus it was spoken

should religion be a private domain or public

Religionists take the moral high ground and regard atheists as morally deficient but when holy representatives abuse their positions for self enrichment or sexual or power abuse,then expect faith as no different from the faithless.

within or without

the journey within is more painful
than the journey without
to let go is a million times harder than to cling on
our attachment to people a  dead knot that is unwilling to unravel
free the mind
free our attachments

Lament by Qu Yuan

LiSao   Lament   

Lament

By Qu Yuan

Before old age o'ertake thee on thy way,
Life still is young; to profit turn thy day.
Spring is but brief, when cuckoos start to sing,
And flowers will fade that once did spread and spring."

A musing

The power of the living dead

Goodbye and the right to be forgotten

If life is a dream ,the death is an awakening isn't it?

The power of the dead on the living has seen us  preserving past monks to state leaders in living corpse that don't decompose according to the laws of nature.

After their death ,the present uses the past to reenact the dead because of their usefulness to remind the present -don't forget the past contributions.Why not judge the present by what they do in the here and now and let sleeping dogs lie.

This fetish  for the living dead dishonours them for they wouldn't let the present change as they are still in the grips of the dead.

If we don't preserve their actual bodies,them we carve and erect statues of them to make sure they are not forgotten.Only humans would do that-for animals accept death as a part of life and let go of the dead to return to ashes and dust. Humans are so a musing..

Is vice a form of neurological affliction?

After knowing the neurological basis of addictions,how would big businesses love to get a grip on the findings to make us into addicts of goods and services.

When retail therapy keeps businesses roaring,what else are we so compulsively obsessed with?
Of course to get a shopper's high is not the lesser of two evils compared to gambling or drinking,nevertheless burning a hole in our pockets and sinking into debt fuelled shopaholism destroys one's credit-worthiness but looking at how tourism spending in Asean seems to hit on such addictions like sex tourism,shopping tourism or gambling tourism,there is a mountain of wealth to be made from addictions to vices.What causes people to be addicted to virtual reality like compulsive online activities to overeating on fatty and sweet food to risk taking behaviours surely stem from some neurotic disorders or psycho /mental disorders.Sin is more profitable than virtue.

The bonds of time

How does a family break up?


The story started with grandpa Chan who worked in a rice importing shop at Petaling Street.He had a stern face but was hardworking.According to mom ,they had a quiet life after retirement but their love diminished into a cold war when he had psoriasis and felt she was reluctant to help him dress his sores.Two strangers living under the same roof who used the grandchildren to pass messages to each other .he pored over traditional chinese herbs,brewed concoctions and used himself as a guinea pig for his poultices.The one striking memory is in his meticulous recording in chinese writing of the acupuncture points of the human body and the other of his wonderful green fingers in which he poured his heart into growing vivid dahlias,zinnias,gladiloli,japanese roses and even delphinium in the small patch of land in front of the shophouse in which half was occupied by  Merlin photos and the other half was our tailor shop.Grandma the matriach was a food connoiseur who lovingly made niengao,fried peanut puffs and all the New Year delicacies.I kept the grinding stone mill in my home as a momento of the rice flour she ground to steam the nian gao.I inherited the love of plants and greenery from my grandpa's deep abiding passion in flowering plants.
    Mom was frugal and my earliest memory was of  her sewing our swimming costumes and buying pink organza to sew our Chinese New Year dresses.How Hardworking their generation was as the shop only closed on Sunday when all the cousins,aunts and uncles would gather at our shophouse and everyone pitched in to cook a feast ,the coconut pancakes,the hairy gourd pancakes sprinkled with dried prawns and waxed sausage bits.They devoted their time and energy to the children and immediate family -the homecooked nasi lemak and barbeque at  Templer's park and Port Dickson or when mom saved her money to takes us to see Disney on ice or a Chinese acrobatic show.
     Every New Year ,she went to yap Ah Loy's temple the Sze Ya temple at Petaling Street to ask for blessings for the New Year.Dad was the gung ho guyb  who loved fishing,the outdoors swimming and hunting and a deep passion for eating.Now one's ashes are scatttered at sea and the other
s ashes at the Kwangtung temple cemetery.The extended family on both sides are unhappy with us for breaking them apart in death.

Jia Bian

The novel by Ba Jin strikes a chord in my heart now that the family has fallen apart ,driven by the potent divisive forces of both religion and money.

Ba Jin 's novel on the disintegration of a family in the early 20th century reminds me of that trip to Anren old town in Sichuan which coincidentally was the birthplace of Ba Jin. It would be wonderful if a drama version of the Family could be reenacted in Anren as it has the aura of nostalgia ,old world grandeur and a certain charm of that era when individual's destiny was dictated by filial piety .Influences of the West clashed with traditional values but come to think of it,those Confucian values were wiped out during the Cultural revolution which pitted the Red guards of the youths against the traditional values of filial piety .