Due to some weird screw up in blogger which prevents me from posting anything new, i have decided to begin shifting to a new website,Winter is Coming. I will transfer some stuff from here to make it less barren for now. Thanks for your support, whoever you might be.


Dan Yuan Ren Chang Jiu

The above is actually the title of a song by Wang Fei. The lyrics of the song are actually from a poem composed by Su Shi. To sum it all up, Su Shi (1037-1101) was a statesman of the Northen Song (960-1127) of China, who was exiled twice due to his political leanings, which went against that of the reformer Wang An Shi (1021-1086). According to folk lore, the poem, entitled "Shui Tiao Ko Tou", was composed during one of his exiles. Su Shi, or Su Dongpo as he is more commonly known, saw the moon and thought of home, or so they say.

Now what has Su Dongpo got to do with Singapore? Just recently I did an article entitled " The Forgotten Past which talked about the fact that even the Old Guard who stood with Mr Lee Kuan Yew have been given short shrift in the media, and it is only after their passing then we will get an idea of their achievements in Singapore Society, as evidenced by Mr S Rajaratnam's passing last year. However in light of the banning of Said Zahari's film we should now turn our attention to a bunch of Singaporeans that people have mostly forgotten. They are definitely in a different league from Mr David Marshall, Dr Toh Chin Chye and others.They are, for lack of a better word, the "Su Dongpos" of Singapore.

No doubt names like Francis Seow, Gopalan Nair, Tan Wah Piow, Tang Liang Hong, Said Zahari and others will leave the typical Singaporean who spends most of his day chasing money scratching his head. In fact while the PAP Old Guard, though given no mention now in our many NE lessons and mainstream media, will probably be remembered at the time of passing or during some National Day special article, the abovementioned people would probably not be mentioned at all, judging by the way ST publishes its editorials. Perhaps the only time people like Francis Seow will be mentioned would be in articles by our dear senior editors (Andy Ho, so on so forth) or Peh Shing Huei, decrying their attempts to "subvert" the system and hailing the system as espoused by the PAP, notwithstanding that such a system has existed in history before and proven to have contributed to the downfall of certain empires .

Ths thing is no matter what their allegiance, these people, like it or not, are also Singaporeans. While they are no longer in Singapore, for obvious reasons, it is highly probably that these exiles could, like Su Dongpo, be spending their nights staring at the moon and wandering about their homeland. While what has happened is past, the least that authorities can do is allow them back to their country of birth. It is rather sad that while the authorities are making attempts to "connect" with Singaporeans and so called talents overseas who seem to be more interested in food rather than the "celebration" of the Singaporean "Identity", on the other hand, we have a group of Singaporeans who have sacrificed their livelihoods in Singapore and yet are still treated as pariah just because they happened to fight under the wrong banner. If by all means the authorities feel that it is too great a leap to make such a move, the least they could do is allow these people a chance to air their views. Remember that Said Zahari was detained without trial, thus it is not fair to paint him as a rebel, which is the impression a person will get after reading the reasons why the film was banned, which went along the lines of it painting the government in a negative light and all. This also reveals something; it is ok for one to paint the opposition and any other person not under the lightning bolt in a negative light but any criticism levied at the men in white must be followed by so called "solutions" as espoused by Ms Bhavani during the unfortunate episode of Mr Brown.

Perhaps the following scenario is not so out of the world, imagine Francis Seow or any other exile staring at the moon and wondering about his country, and one can make it into some kind of music video with Faye Wong's Dan Yuan Ren Chang Jiu playing it the background. The tragedy is that these people probably were not in the fray for money but for their beliefs and their ideals, and that Singapore at that time, perhaps even now, is still not big enough to encompass any ideal except that espoused the ruling party. If that's the case then Singapore will never truly attain a high level of culture for as long as the ruling party continues its methodology, the views and ideals of the non MIWs will continue to be, at best, derided, at worst, they will be deemed as insurgents and "traitors" of the country.

Dan Yuan Ren Chang Jiu

Ming yue ji shi you ba jiou wen qing tian
Bu zhi tian shang gong que jin xi shi he nian
*Wo yu cheng feng gui qu wei kong qiong lou yu yu
Gao chu bu sheng han qi wu nong qing ying
He si zai ren jian
Zhuan zhu ge di qi hu zhao wu mian
Bu ying you hen he shi chang xiang bie shi yuan*
[repeat *]
Ren you bei huan li he yue you ying qing yuan que
Ci shi gu nan quan dan yuan ren chang jiu
Qian li gong chan juan