Seletar

It is rare to find a book, and a literally heavy tome at that, that is written and published by a residents' association. "Down the Seletar River - Discovering a hidden treasure of Singapore", is just one of them. It is a coffee table book in the sense that almost every one of its 284 pages contains at least a picture. Many pages are pictures. And each page is somewhat glossy and thick, which is necessary to bring out the vibrant colours of the photographs that fill the book. And did I say that it weighs a ton? So it has to stay on the table. You probably can't take it along with you as you could an Economics textbook. Yes, it is that big. But juicy in the extreme, and I am not referring to the fruit trees that littered the landscape of rural Seletar.

This book contains a wealth of information about that part of Singapore called Seletar. It is not exactly a kampong tucked away in an obscure part of the island of Singapore. No, it is a place that is known to many British, Australian and New Zealanders who served in the their respective armed forces right up to the nd of the 1960s. And it is not too far away from the former British Naval Base, where I grew up. In that sense, Seletar is a close cousin. Whereas the Naval Base was where the ships were, Seletar was where the airplanes were. As the book points out, "the Naval Base at Sembawang and the British Royal Air Force (RAF) base in Seletar...were to serve as the frontline of British defences in the East.". Since then, Seletar Airbase has been home to the Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF), and civilian planes fly out of Seletar Airport.

Since the British finally left Singapore in the early 1970s, Seletar has been re-developed gradually. Today, it is difficult to pinpoint a particular place that is Seletar. Rather it is now south of Yishun - a satellite heartland, encompassed by Seletar Hills, Jalan Kayu, Seletar Airbase, Yio Chu Kang and Lorong Buangkok.

Given the wide expanse of land that it used to occupy, the history of the area is rich and varied - all of which are documented in this book. The book recounts the development of the land into rubber plantations in the early 1900s. Before the decade of the 1910s was over, the Bukit Sembawang Rubber Company, which owned and developed rubber plantations, including those in the Seletar area, had become the largest rubber plantation company in Singapore. Pioneers such as Lim Boon Keng, Lim Nee Soon, Tan Chay Yan, Tan Kah Kee and Song Ong Siang all made their fortune in plantations. From the late 1940s onwards, Bukit Sembawang Rubber Company began to build houses in Seletar. This set off the real estate boom in the 1950s and 1960s in that area, initially catering to the families of the British soldiers, but gradually taken up by wealthier locals. While many of these early single and double storey semi-detach houses remain today, newer houses with improved roads and amenities have followed. The book also dwells into the rich flora and fauna that dots the Seletar landscape and highlights the origin of landmark schools, roads and foods that were to make Seletar a destination.

The book contains a wide selection of reminisces of its residents. This is not surprising as it is put together by the residents of the area. These help to put live into the narrative and showcase a part of the development of Singapore as a community of peoples. I enjoyed reading the book, and the great selection of photos that accompanies the narrative has made this a must-have book on the coffee table.

Bank Bust

By now, many books have been published on the 2008 Financial Crisis that engulfed almost the entire civilized world. Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman has written about it in "The Return of Depression Economics". Gillian Tett's "Fool's Gold" is another, and Alex Brummer's "The Crunch" is yet another. First published in 2008 and updated in 2009, "The 'Crunch" focuses on the failure of Northern Rock and the crisis that it precipitated for the British financial system. This British-centric focus is different from the many books already written on the financial crisis of 2008, which are more centred on Wall Street and the US. And if this is missing from your mental history of this most momentous event up till now of the 21st century, then you can read it up here. This book does go into details on the people whose actions unwittingly caused the near meltdown of the financial situation in Britain, and this is not referring just to Adam Applegarth, the rogue CEO of Northern Rock who single-handedly almost brought Britain's financial system to its knees. Of course the problem really originated in the US through the uncontrolled sub-prime lending by banks and the subsequent investments in these toxic assets the world over.

This book takes a look into the triumvirate of the Bank of England, the Financial Services Authority and the  Treasury. An invention of Gordon Brown, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, it worked well enough in regulating and managing the financial flows and investments in Britain, which was centred on London. Indeed London succeeded in becoming a major financial centre in the world. While this worked well in good times, it failed to hold up when crisis hit. During the meltdown, these 3 parties descended into a finger-pointing stance, impeding the institution of necessary policies and actions quickly to overcome the run on Northern Rock and shoring up the rest of the banking system. This book makes for fascinating reading, and the chapter on the Central Bankers, which relates the life of key people such as Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England,  Ben Bernanke of the Federal Reserve, Jean-Claude Trichet of the European Central Bank, and how each approached the financial crisis makes for absorbing reading.

In the end, hindsight is always perfect, and Brummer concludes the narrative by deconstructing the whole episode from various angles to draw 'painful lesson' from it. A good read.

A Doctor and a Gentleman

There has been a rash of books published by Singaporeans on Singapore in the last few years. Mr Lee Kuan Yew published his memoirs some time back, and the latest on him, which has stirred up not a bit of controversy, is actually out of stock in many bookstores due to overwhelming demand. Then there is the tome written by some former Straits Times journalist on the history of the PAP. Even President S.R. Nathan has weighed in with an account of his time with seamen. A month ago, I picked up another book, a thinner and more 'manageable' book, also on Singapore, but on a subject, or more precisely, on a Malayan Singaporean. Why a Malayan Singaporean? Because he lived till 1954, well before Singapore obtained self-government in 1959 and eventually independence in 1965. But Dr Charles Joseph Pemberton Paglar was, in his lifetime, very much a Singapore native, and the book "Dr Paglar: Everyman's Hero" by Rex Shelley (with Chen Fen) recounts the life and times of this hero of Singapore. Dr Paglar was a Eurasian, the offspring of an illicit relation between an Indian women and a British planter by the name of Pemberton. And as offsprings of illicit relations went at that time, he was sent away (abandoned is perhaps a better word here) to a convent in Penang (Malaysia) in which he grew up.

He was eventually adopted by Alexander Paglar and his wife, both of whom were Catholics and Eurasians. Dr Paglar migrated to Singapore in 1910, while still a young man, to further his education. He eventually won a Queens scholarship to study medicine in Britain. Dr Paglar later returned to Singapore and set up his medical practice. He got married, and became friends with the lowly and the royalty - specifically the Sultan of Johor, who made him his personal physician. The Second World War, while disruptive, did not change his routine - he still practiced medicine although medicine was hard to come by, for which he turned to the Japanese conquerors. Therein lies the controversy of his 'collusion' with the enemy. But the book attempts to explain his rationale for working with the Japanese, which was for the good of his own people and the poor and defenseless.

After the war, he turned to helping rebuild Singapore society, and in particular sports. He was very generous with his money and time. The Singapore Badminton Hall still stands as a testimony to his effort, amongst many other facilities. Alas his life in politics proved short-lived. He was elected to the Legislative council in 1951 but died in 1954.

This is a simple book. It doesn't dwell into great detail. For example, Dr Paglar was married 4 times, but the circumstances and reasons for his first divorce are hardly mentioned, and the narrative is also silent on his other marital relationships beyond a single sentence that hinted that he had a weakness for women. But otherwise, the book does introduce you to the man and his times in a short read. The other plus about this book is that it is filled with pages and pages of photographs, some of which show society in a now long forgotten era in Singapore's history.

Looking Back

Many Singaporean's are expecting the General Elections to be held this year. The elections to choose the President of Singapore will be held in August, so the question is whether the GE is before or after that date. Whenever that date will be will be decided by the sitting government, but it appears that Opposition parties are gearing up for this once in a 4-year event to choose the next government. Most expect the siting government to be re-elected. The only question is how many seats will fall to the Opposition, and if a GRC or more will be captured.

A signal event that took place in the last month is the gazetting of the erstwhile community blog, The Online Citizen. Over the years, its has evolved into a sort of Opposition platform, with lots of dissenting views and, in some cases, quite vitriol comments directed at government policies and actions, and personalities. And to do so seems fashionable, as it has always been, and is taken as a badge of the thinking person.

I disagree with some government policies, but there are other policies I agree with. I do not want to hurl any criticism at MM (Minister-Mentor) Lee Kuan Yew. When all is said and done, he, together with his collaborators has lifted Singapore from a third world backwater, neglected by the British for as long as they had been around, to a first world country, so much so that foreigners are making a beeline for its shores. One may point to the dirty politics that he may have played, about muzzling dissent, throwing people into jail for long periods of time using the ISA (Internal Security Act), etc., But it is often conveniently forgotten that he himself was played out several times in the formative years of the PAP when it shared its bed with the Chinese socialist/communists. Then it was either you or me, and anyone with any sense would want to be the one that emerges the victor. Politics, as the PAP continues to emphasize, is not about charity, but might and perhaps, right.

Whether you agree with me or not is of course up to you. But before you jump to any conclusion, it is best if you found out more about how the PAP developed. And for this, I would recommend that you read "Men in White - The Untold Story of Singapore's Ruling Political Party". This is written by a number of journalists. Though they were once employees of the Strait Times, which, though not always so, tended to be sympathetic to the government's cause, they have, in my opinion, been fairly objective in their account of the birth and development of the most dominant, if not the only dominant political party on this island state. But it was never always so, and the account narrates how the PAP nearly disintegrated. Many say that MM Lee had been vicious and vindictive. But these same people never bother to look at the other side of the fence. If they did, they would find others just as "dirty", if not more dangerous, than the MM.

My father voted for the PAP in every election. The workers unions where we grew up came around to harass him because he would not join their cause. They were fighting Lee Kuan Yew. My father believed in hard work, they believe in agitation. He believe in the PAP, and we, his descendants, are enjoying the fruits of that belief in the PAP government.

We must do justice to ourselves to read both sides of the story and then make up our minds instead of parroting others to gain acceptance in a certain circle of opinion makers so as not to appear as 'running dogs' of the government.

Internet Log

The Internet is certainly the greatest invention in the last century. It is certainly no hyperbole to state that in this century, the 21st, it has already changed people's lives, and the way businesses are conducted. Many accounts of the invention and development of this marvelous platform starts from the early 1990s, when the World Wide Web really became popular. Many mention, rightly, that ARPANET is the precursor and that the US military was one of the main sponsors in its development. But who were the people behind its development? What were their dreams and intentions? How did they envision technology in the future? These are answered in Johnny Ryan's book, "A History of the Internet and the Digital Future". More than this, Mr Ryan goes on to discuss recent phenomenons such as social networking via the internet.

The first part of the book begins with a discussion of the need for a distributed network by the military as far back as the late 1950s and early 1960s. The Cold War was on. Russia and the US were pointing their nuclear missiles at each other. This need, to ensure survival in a MAD world, gained importance, which eventually resulted in the creation of RAND, a think tank formed to advise the US armed forces. It was here that Paul Baran proposed that messages could be transmitted via small "packets" of information rather than the conventional end-to-end  transmission method. This single idea, which was also proposed by Donald Davies, underpins and drives the entire internet today. A detailed account is given of the people who developed on this idea, people you may not have heard of unless you are in the scientific community.

In transitioning from these early days to the www of the 1990s, Mr Ryan also recounts the developments that took place in Universities and hobbyist communities that resulted in technologies such as BITNET, FidoNet and for a time, the very popular Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) . This part of the book will be interesting to people who missed out on this transitional phase in the use of communications technologies leading up to the ubiquitous e-mail systems today.

These, really, are the interesting parts of the book.

Mr Ryan goes on, in the second part of the book, to discuss the development of the World Wide Web, stressing a common underlying approach that brought it so much success - the centrifugal/community/social dimensions. The book concludes with Ryan's discussion of the future of the internet, including its use in the political/social arena (e.g. Obama's very successful use of the Internet to reach out to the electorate, and how US candidates for the Presidency have managed to use the medium to gather monetary contributions for the expensive campaigns that characterizes bids for US political office). Topics and issues on Web 2.0 are also discussed. These issues have been covered in numerous books but Ryan has brought the account up to date.

This is a "can't put down book" once you start.

Lion of the Nation

Even as I write this review, I received news of the death of Mr Lee Kuan Yew's wife, Mdm Kwa Geok Choo. But what does that have to do with the book, "The Singapore Lion", on the life of Singapore's long-time Foreign Minister, Mr Sinnathamby Rajaratnam? Everything, I suppose, because Mr Lee became a significant part of Mr Rajaratnam's life, and through Mr Lee, Mrs Lee would also have figured greatly too. I am only speculating though because that second part of Mr Rajaratnam's story has yet to be told in Irene Ng's biography of Mr Rajaratnam.

"The Singapore Lion" chronicles the life of one of the founding fathers of modern Singapore, tracing his life from his beginnings growing up in Seremban to the time when Singapore attained merger with Malaya to form Malaysia. Mr Rajaratnam was a Ceylonese Tamil, whose family migrated to Malaysia to escape the poverty of his homeland. His father eventually made well in Seremban, which enabled Mr Rajaratnam to proceed to study Law in London. This book begins with an account of his growing up in Seremban and about the hard life of the rubber tappers which his father supervised. So Mr Rajaratnam has known days of want and observed the lot of the poor. It describes him as a quiet and sensitive person totally devoted to books. He loved books, and he devoured them like a Lion (though this is not why the book is so titled). This is perhaps the single unchanging  aspect of Mr Rajaratnam throughout his life. Indeed, it would contribute towards his single ability to weave words into power language in his struggle to build a Singapore according to his ideals.

The book gives much space to his life in London, and especially his interaction with people who believed passionately in communism. The Left Book Club was to be the main vehicle for him to wade into the world of Leftism, where he formed friendships with people of like mind. His own passion about social consciousness in life and society, and his beginning to write on the same eventually led him to abandon his studies in Law, dashing the hopes of his father. As events would have it, the Germans began to bomb London during the Second World War and Mr Rajaratnam, who was not able to make his way back to Malaya, stayed in London, dodging bombs and trying to eck out a living for himself and his Hungarian wife, Piroska.

The second major part of Mr Rajaratnam's life is recounted in his days as a journalist, first with the Singapore Standard and later, the Straits Times. By now, he had begun to agitate for the abolition of British colonial rule. The book describes in great detail his life as a journalist, perhaps because the author, also a journalist, shares with Mr Rajaratnam the love for the word and world of journalism.

A third phase of Mr Rajaratnam's life began when he formed a close association with Mr Lee Kuan Yew in the shared objective of getting rid of the colonial government, and working for an independent Malaya. Mr Rajaratnam had always believed that independence had to mean the integration of Singapore into the then Malaya to form a Malaysian Malaysia, void of racial segregation or any special consideration for one race over another. The idea of equality, regardless of race, language or religion, was his creed, which he fought so valiantly for. Mr Rajaratnam eventually gave up his career as a journalist to become a politician, finding common cause with people like Mr Lee Kuan Yew, and yet able to work with erstwhile communists such as Lim Chin Siong. The book describes Mr Rajaratnam's mighty and valiant hands with words, and how he would make use of his powerful pen (actually his typewriter) to challenge, debunk and defend his ideals and those of the PAP, like a fearless and fearsome Lion, the Singapore Lion.

The book is written in a sympathetic manner, where Mr Rajaratnam failings, if there are any, are explained in the context of the times, the difficulties and challenges. This is not surprisingly as the author has known Mr Rajaratnam both at the professional level and a personal level. Nevertheless, the treatment of his life is both sensitive and factual. It is obvious that much research has gone into the writing of this book.

The Qings

History is a pet subject of mine, and non more so than about the country of my origin - China. No, I wasn't born there because my parents/grandparents migrated to Singapore in the middle of the last century. And I haven't really found out from either of these 2 parties why exactly they quit China. Perhaps it had something to do with the chaotic situation in China that characterized, so I am given the impression from popular history, much of the the latter part of the Qing dynasty into the Nationalist period after the fall of the Empire. This book doesn't cover all the ground I am interested in, but it does give me a sense of how China 'progressed' towards revolution and thus the birth of modern China.

Mr William Rowe has written a scholarly yet highly readable account of the Qing Empire, from the fall of the Ming dynasty to the 'golden era' of the Qings under its 3 most illustrious and effective Emperors, Qianlong, Yongzhen and Kangxi. Rowe writes extensively about Chinese society under these emperors - the imperial examination system inherited from the previous dynasty and its effect on social stratification, politics, customs and practices. Rowe also covers the period of the 19th century on the arrival and intrusion of the Europeans and Japanese people onto China's soil and highlighting the opening of trade with the 'outside world'. An unfortunate by-product of an otherwise beneficial trade relation resulted in the Opium Wars, and the Taiping rebellion owed its origins to people who embraced, though later, distorted the Christian religion that was brought to its shores by western foreigners such the British and the French. A heart-wrenching (from a Chinese perspective) account of how these foreigners, including Japan, 'bullied' China into ceding precious land and monetary reparations highlighted the overall weakness of the Qing emperors in the latter part of the 19th century.

I am no historian, and I do not know if Mr Rowe's account is revisionist or otherwise. He does cite accounts from earlier sources to evaluate what happened and how, with the hindsight of a 21st century knowledge, long held beliefs about Chinese history during the Qing period could be mistaken. For example, he shows that China expanded its territories significantly under the Qing empire, subjugating much of the foreign tribes and nationalities in North-eastern China (for which China is now paying a price), its annexation of the island of Taiwan, and its tributary control over the Korean Peninsula. Mr Rowe also makes that point that the Qing emperors largely devolved the governance of its far-flung domain to appointed governor-generals working with a hierarchy of local literati-gentry-merchants over the span of its history. This perhaps made its dynastic rule much more manageable from the center. And he does make the point the were it not for the Empress Dowager Cixi and her group of followers, China would have been more unstable in the twilight of its empire.

Finally, Rowe discussed the role of the various people who contributed, either more or less, to the brewing revolutions that eventually toppled the Qing empire in 1911. He quite frankly portrays Sun Yat Sen as a bungling revolutionary and, at best, a representative, though largely symbolic  figure, in the overall toppling of the Qing empire and the establishment of the Nationalist government. He makes the point, more than once, that Sun was faraway in Denver, USA, when the revolution in Wuchang succeeded.

This is an absorbing account and will no doubt engage even the non-historian.

Being Just

I confess, I haven't read a book on such a topic for a long long time. I used to read these category of books when I was much younger, when I had much less commitments, a teenager looking for meaning and devouring ideas that people have taken the time and trouble to pen. Perhaps I was a bit tired of the business and technology and politics/history books that has been my staple for the last 10 to 15 years. So as I nibbled at the book, I was tentative about completing it. Well, the material caught on and I eventually completed the book. This is perhaps a measure of its quality.

In Justice, Michael Sandel discusses the subject of, well, Justice, what doing the right thing means for people past and present. He starts with the Utilitarians, probably best represented by Jeremy Bantam, where the 'right thing' is determined by the weight of alternatives, that that which gives the greatest happiness is the 'right thing'. For example, it is just to tax people and forcibly spread the wealth in a society so that the greatest number attains happiness. The Libertarians differ. Is it not obvious that forcing someone to do something against his will, or on pain of penalty, unjust? They insist that inequality is a fact of life. Whether you are rich or poor, and whether you rise above your poverty, or stay poor, all things being equal, is a matter of personal choice. Thus the libertarians advocate minimal interference from the powers that be in the affairs of men so that freedom prevails. These 2 fundamental philosophies underlie issues of justice and freedom.

Sandel goes on to discuss Immanuel Kant's views on freedom and and introduces morality into the picture. Kant is not easy to understand. I read about him many years ago, and even heard people quote him in public talks, but I have never understood him. Sandel has been able to shed light on Kant's philosophy in this book so I now understand him better. Sandel argues that whether one accepts a particular position on justice, morality and freedom, one cannot ignore one's own context. So the contexts of affirmative action, abortion and the common good, are discussed. Aristotle's thinking on morality and freedom is introduced as a counter-weight against Kant and John Rawl's position. Aristotle insists that one's objectives as opposed to an abstract, in the case of Kant and Rawls, is probably just as important, if not more so, in the final analysis on issues of justice, morality and freedom.

Burmese History

Burma (now more commonly known as Myanmar) has been in the news lately because of Ms Aung San Suu Kyi. In fact, it has been on the world's radar ever since Ms Suu Kyi stood for and won the elections back in 1990. Unfortunately, that victory was taken from her by the erstwhile military rulers and she has been in house arrest ever since.

What kind of country is Burma anyway? Why, when its close neighbour and ally, China, has shaken off the shackles of communism, does its military rulers remain intransigent over the handing of power back to the people? So my curiousity was pricked when I chance across a book with the title, "The River of Lost Footsteps - A personal history of Burma". It was a paperback with 388 pages, something that I thought I could sink my teeth into in the limited time that my busy schedule afforded. I was wrong, it took longer than what I had expected to finish it, if only because the content of this book provides some much information through a broad sweep of history of and around Burma since the time of the Sakiyan Prince Abhiraja. 'Around' because the history of Burma cannot be told without mention of India and China, its neighbours to the West and Northeast. In fact, the author, Mr Thant Myint-U, brings in the Thai, the French and the British nations into the narrative because they, at one time or another, shaped and influence the development of Burma.

The book narrates the Burmese Kings, their conquests and their rise, and their eventual demise, to be replaced by another strongman, not unlike the history of most other kingdoms, such as China. The French came in the 1700s, and in the 1800s was displaced by the British colonisers. Burma relationship with China on its Northeast and Thailand on its eastern borders are also covered in this book. All these make for fascinating reading. But the book is not only about ancient history. It covers the period right up to the 1990s where the narrative involves General Aung San, the father of Aung San Suu Kyi, U Nu its first post independence PM, and even the author's maternal grandfather, U Thant - the Secretary General of the UN in the 1960s. General Ne Win, who started Burma's current militaristic rule has not been left out.

The breadth of the narrative is truly amazing and one would pick up nuggets of history as you read along, and begin to understand the psyche of the Burmese based on its long history. One of the things that struck me is the author's conclusion, based on its history, that political and economic sanctions against Burma will never work because it has been isolated for so long anyway. Rather, Burma needs to be engaged. Hopefully, such engagements will eventually draw the reclusive military regime, through its people, to became an active part of the world community.

The world seems to have begun to realise this.

Black Coffee

Black Gold - something you'd associate with oil at the first instance. But Antony Wild has used the same phrase, aptly it appears, to point to coffee as black gold. At first, it is not obvious, because coffee, and indeed most other cash crops, hasn't always yielded obscene riches to people who grow them. The prices of coffee goes up and down according to worldwide market supply and demand. Mr Wild suggests other reasons, particularly, for the low prices of coffee.

As a coffee trader of more than 10 years (he took over the family business) and a sometime historian of the same, Mr Wild would be qualified to write about coffee's origins (in Ethiopia) and development as a beverage. In this book, "Black Gold - A Dark History of Coffee", he traces the beginnings of coffee and the development of the beverage derived from the coffee beans among the Arabs since the 1200s. Much of the information will be new to the average reader, given the esoteric nature of the subject. One would normally read of the rise and fall of civilizations rather than the development of a humble bean. Yet Wild's narrative encompasses both - of how people, cultures and conflicts interacted with this cash crop in the transmission and clash of civilizations. As expected, Wild discusses the various strains of coffee beans and offers his take on the relative value of each strain, the principal locations where they are found, and its propagation, particularly into the new world of Central and South America. Along with this narrative, Wild injects a lot of social and political commentary. He spent no small part of the book discussing Napoleon Bonaparte's exile on the island of St Helena and the coffee that probably converted him into a regular coffee drinker where once he advocated chicory, a coffee substitute, for his European empire.

Coffee appears to have spread globally through the slave trade, from Africa to Europe, and to Central and South America, perpetrated by the Spanish, Portuguese, European and British colonialists, both to the East and West Indies via their Navies, and in the case of the British, via the East India Company. Wild is highly critical of the use of slaves and slave labour for the propagation of the beverage. His commentary on the evils of the oppressive ways of the colonialists can be uncomfortable reading for some who have been brought up on generous doses of the adventure and heroism of these voyages of discoveries in the 14th to 18th centuries. He continues to lambast the neo-colonialists, sans slavery, in the 20th century, who did no better in its use of low cost labour and low coffee prices to reap huge profits for itself. Starbucks is mentioned as one example of how big corporations reap their great profits at the expense of the pittance that people who actually farm the coffee beans receive. Wild also discussed the coffee industry in Central and South America before turning his attention to Vietnam and Timor in the East.

This book discusses coffee - the beans, the roasting techniques, such as espresso, and, in Wild's opinion, the quality and desirability of each type of coffee. But it also discusses the darker part of the development of coffee by commenting on the people and their means of propagating and profiting from the bean. The former was enlightening, but the latter can make for uncomfortable reading at times.

Outlaws of the Marsh

Every great civilization has them. The English have the Shakespearean plays - tragedies, histories and comedies. Today, these are studied in schools and form the basis for attaining competency in English Literature. This is true not only in the Bard's native land, but also in many of Great Britain's former colonies, especially those that have made English an important part of the national language competency. Singapore is one of these.

The Chinese have their own literary classics. The most popular and widely read are the four great classical novels: Three Kingdoms, A Dream of Red Mansions, Journey to the West and Outlaws of the Marsh. Every child in a Chinese household would likely have heard of or read, by age 10, about the naughty monkey that is Sun Wu Kong in Journey to the West and Wu Song the tiger killer in Outlaws of the Marsh. These classics have in turn been made into movies, such is the popularity of the material contained in them.

However, how many Chinese outside of China can claim to have read any or all of these 4 classics in their entirety in the original language? I haven't, and probably never will. So I am doing the next best thing - read these in their entirety in the English translations. I have completed Three Kingdoms, and have just completed the 3-volume Outlaws of the Marsh. That's 2 down, 2 to go. But more about the Outlaws of the Marsh.

This novel was written in the 13th century AD during the Ming Dynasty by Shi Nai'an and Luo Guan Zhong (who also wrote Three Kingdoms). A complete translation in the English language by Sidney Shapiro is available as a 3 or 4-volume set (depending on the specific edition). It is this translation that I spent the last month or so reading. The story revolves around a growing group of bandits who took residence in Liangshan Marsh, an inaccessible, water-bound mountain that became the scourge of the Song Emperor and his corrupt officials for more than 3 years.

The story tells of how various people - weapons instructors, military officials including Generals, and even a clerk, came to take refuge in Liangshan Marsh. Throughout the first part of the epic, the recurrent theme revolves around how people were forced to commit crimes against corrupt officials, which eventually drove them to take refuge in the Marsh. Some were tricked into joining the bandits in Liangshan Marsh. Yet others, mainly Generals defeated in battle by the bandits, joined the bandits because they couldn't face their corrupt civilian masters. The characters and circumstances in this classic are varied enough to provide hours of suspense as the stories unfold. Some plots were predictable. An example is how Song Jiang, the eventual leader of the Liangshan bandits, made it a habit to recruit people who his bandit brothers defeated in battle. It didn't always sit well with his brother bandits who had expended much energy defeating them, but, as the novel suggests, it was destined that the full complement of bandits reach 108. Song Jiang must claim credit for attracting good, skillful and intelligent men AND women into banditry.

But of course, these bandits made it a point of robbing only the rich. They left the poor and needy alone. In fact, they often provided for them. They were the Robin Hoods of China. Incredibly both stories -of the bandits of Liangshan Marsh and the robbers of Sherwood Forest, were written between the 11th and 13th Century AD, barely two hundred years apart. However, there is probably more blood and gore in the Chinese novel - something that I wasn't too comfortable with. One of its most violent protagonists, the Black Whirlwind Li Kui, killed without blinking an eye (as the Chinese would say). Of the 108 bandits, he was probably its most effective when it came to killing people - both the good and the bad. This quality, however, was put to great effect in some of the more difficult battles that Song Jiang's outlaw army had to fight.

In the end, many of these 108 outlaws were to die under various, and might I say, honourable, circumstances. Don't jump to last the volume to find out about this. It is best to start from the beginning and let the story unfold gradually. This novel will give you hours of suspense.

Old Chinese Classics

I am an ethnic Chinese but has been schooled in English all my life. My mother-tongue is Chinese and I learnt Chinese as a second language. Though I take tremendous pleasure in reading, I have never thought of reading Chinese language books as pleasurable. The reason is that I would be plodding along and skipping words and thus, meaning, because I may not recognise the Chinese characters and phrases. This handicap has restricted my access to the many Chinese language books that are published and its Chinese social, cultural and historical thought. As a Chinese, that was and remains a great loss. So imagine my delight, as I was passing through Beijing Capital Airport to find full English translations of the Chinese classics "Three Kingdoms", "Outlaws of the Marsh", "A Dream of Red Mansions" and others being sold. Actually, I shouldn't be surprised as, after all, the bookstore is in Beijing Airport, which catered to the travelers' interests in China and the Chinese.

You might be surprised at my 'discovery' for surely, such books are available in metropolitan Singapore, especially where roughly 70% of its inhabitants are ethnic Chinese? But truth be told, I have never been able to find a full translation of these books in the more popular bookstores, not even Popular Bookstore - a bookstore that began its business selling Chinese language books. The best there was were books written in the graphic style (think comics), and thus were abridged versions. I suppose if one looked hard enough, one would find them sold in some obscure bookshop. Strangely, I never looked up the public libraries. In any case, I bought the "Three Kingdoms" for RMB130, which is roughly S$26. This particular translation came in three volume hardbacks. I also put my money down on the 3-volume hardback "Outlaws of the Marsh" at a similar price. It was really a bargain. Considering that the same "Three Kingdom" books cost US$40, before shipping, on Amazon.com, it was a steal. So when you next in Beijing Capital Airport, be sure to drop by the bookshop (sorry, I did no notice its name) for these invaluable translations of the Chinese classics at bargain prices.

But why buy anyway? Because the stories in these books are gripping...