Yours Toothfully by Dr Chan Joon Yee

Like many impoverished Hakka people in Guangdong Province, my grandparents fled from a turbulent China and settled down in a little village near Ipoh. With hardly any formal education, they worked as tin miners, toiling in the sun and the mud from dawn to dusk. Seeing little future in Malaysia, my parents came to Singapore to work during the 50s. Having found better job opportunities in Singapore, they decided to settle down here. I was born into the “State of Singapore” in 1964. A year later, Singapore became a republic. As my parents maintained their close ties with Ipoh, we never really lost touch with our uncles and cousins in Ipoh. Over the years, some of my cousins in Ipoh followed my parents’ footsteps and came to Singapore to work. Some started their own businesses, married and had children here. Most of them were happy as permanent residents of the lion city.

Just recently, a member of our family surprised everyone with a heroic deed. My nephew, Kok Khew Fai, better known as the legendary LTA Kok Khew Fai, saved the life of a recruit at a grenade throwing range. He received an award for his bravery. He later applied for and was awarded an SAF scholarship. He is now studying in the UK. We are all very proud of him.

The guy with the moustache is my cousin. We used to go fishing together and we called him by his nickname Ah Chin. You may be able to tell that Cousin Chin is not the sort who is comfortable with neckties. In fact, he and his wife felt a bit out of place sitting with the well-heeled parents of the other SAF scholars. Well, who cares? My only concern is that it’s going to be hard on Khew Fai to keep up the poster boy image. He is going to be brought out repeatedly during important speeches, as a foreigner who not only did his NS to become a citizen, he even saved some Singaporean asses while doing his NS. I’d like to believe that heroism runs in the family. I just hope Khew Fai knows where and when to stop playing hero when he returns from his studies and joins the establishment.

We know exactly what a poster boy ought to and ought not to do or say just by looking at Uyghur poster girl Rebiya Kadeer. One mainland Chinese supporter argued that the very fact that Rebiya Kadeer managed to become one of the richest women in China shows that Uyghur oppression is nonsense. But did this fellow realise that when Rebiya was doing well in China, she was vice chairwoman of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region Federation of Industry and Commerce, and vice chairwoman of the Xinjiang Association of Women Entrepreneurs as well as member of the National People’s Consultative Conference? She not only lost all these posts, she was even imprisoned the moment she spoke out against the Party’s policies.

Poster boys/girls are meant to be there to prove something that the authorities want to show. They are not meant to be heroic and speak their minds.

From poster boys/girls, we move to local innovations. As a Singaporean, I’d be proud of local inventions that make a difference. Earlier on, while commenting on Singapore women’s success on Everest, I’ve said that I’d be very proud of our girls if they had managed to do something that no other women’s team managed to do.

If there’s a dental product developed by Singaporeans and if it is something that no one else managed to do or sell at an agreeable price, I would buy tonnes of the product and use it exclusively. Some time ago, the manufacturers of Alvelac pushed a box of the socket preservation thing as a consignment in my clinic. I didn’t turn them down. One of the researchers who came up with this concept was a senior of mine in dental school. That ought to give me another reason to feel proud.

Looks impressive? Well, just how useful is it? The manufacturer mentioned quite casually that the scaffold must be inserted in the socket, near the edges of the buccal and lingual walls. This means that in order for the product to work, the socket must be completely surrounded by bone. How often do we get extraction sockets which are like that? Make no bones about it, most teeth are extracted because of gum disease nowadays. With gum disease, you will almost never get perfect bone walls suitable for Alvelac.

What if you do get perfect walls? Well, a socket that is perfect for Alvelac would also be perfect for immediate implant placement. Why bother to preserve the socket with something that prepares it for implantation when you can implant and preserve the socket immediately, saving the patient time and money?

Sorry, guys. I would love to support this local product and I would still keep my consignment just in case a patriot decides to insist on the placement on Alvelac, but I will keep patients informed of the much better option of immediate implantation.

China surprises everyone. Those who expect to find brotherhood in the motherland have been surprised. Those who expected to see widespread poverty and starvation under the big, bad communists have been surprised. Those who thought that every Chinese man on the street carries a rich cultural and historical baggage have been surprised. Western democracy advocates who thought that the Red Guards are still in charge have been surprised.

It’s been 60 years since the communist chased the KMT out of the mainland. Chinese nationals all over the world are celebrating, though I can never be sure what they are actually celebrating. I’m not sure about our table tennis players who are technically not Chinese nationals, but there are many Chinese nationals who definitely not in the mood to celebrate. For these “rebels” (who would have been quickly put to death in the days of emperors), they saw it as 60 years of oppression, propaganda and show of might at the expense of basic welfare, justice and opportunities for the common people.

With 1.3 billion people, it’s not surprising that there should be more than one opinion or sentiment when it comes to national pride. With so many creative minds around, it will also only be a matter of time that someone comes up with the idea of a female contingent in pink dresses, white boots and rifles. Who says the Japanese rule in this area?

And with the continued colonisation by this “pink army” (which won’t need to serve NS in Singapore), it’s probably only a matter of time that we see China flags hanging out of HDB flats.

It’s surprising that not that many references have been made to the deadly riots in Xinjiang in an attempt to justify OB markers and press muzzling and my sympathy goes to ex-NMP Siew Kum Hong for not being nominated for a second term.

There has been a lot of talk on what NMPs should and should not do. Mr Siew’s involvement in a straw poll on whether Bukit Batok residents wanted a by-election was often seen as “crossing the line”. But then, why is an attempt to seek public opinion seen as “non-neutral” unless some people may not be comfortable with the results?

But the biggest objections towards Mr Siew seem to come from Netizens who felt that he shouldn’t have taken sides in the AWARE saga. I’m not sure if people from a certain religious group have ganged up against him, but to me, many people seem to have forgotten that Mr Siew may have been an MP, but he had absolutely no power to change laws or dictate the outcome of parliamentary “debates”. We should certainly get worried if the Minister for Law or Home Affairs sits in at the AWARE AGM and applauds certain members while booing others, but Mr Siew? Come on! I’d rather have him than people who don’t raise eyebrows or leave any impression.

Let’s take a trip back to Xinjiang and like many people who love to travel to exotic places, Xinjiang tops my list of “Must Go Again” places. What’s the attraction there? Well, you can read any travel brochure for the details, but Xinjiang in 1997, struck me as a Chinese territory that had a character of its own. Though the Han Chinese were fast becoming a majority there, the Uyghurs stood out with their characteristic signboards, buildings, bazaars and festivals. Not far from Urumqi is Tianchi, a lake in the Tianshan mountains. The inhabitants here are mostly Kazaks. I’ve spent a night in a yurt here run by a Kazak family. Their customers were all Han Chinese or foreigners. They spoke good Mandarin and were positively pro-business, arranging ethnic dances and suggesting extras like a lamb BBQ for us. He even sent a runner to get us some beer. The boss of the tour company that arranged this trip for me was a Uyghur.

Urumqi had bazaars on Fridays and even the Han Chinese restaurants served dumplings stuffed with mutton. Several Han businessmen I’ve met showed off their linguistic talent by speaking Uyghur. Even though it’s already a modern city back then, Urumqi still exuded the exotic charm of a minority race’s culture. Sure, I noticed the differences and a lack of community bonding between the Uyghurs and the Hans, but I found the Uyghurs to be quite positive about China’s economic develpment. Absolutely nobody was going to migrate to the poorer neighbouring states. The Uyghurs had it good in Xinjiang. People here, both Hans and Uyghurs were a lot friendlier, more laid back, less grouchy and calculative than people from the other provinces. A racial riot was the last thing on my mind.

It’s 2009 now. More Han Chinese people have moved into Xinjiang, not just as tourists but as settlers. Unlike the earlier settlers, they were less sensitive to local customs and practices. Tall buildings pierce the skyline. 5-star hotels and cybercafes are everywhere. Today’s Uyghur youths sport mobile phones and can be contacted by email or SMS. Some even have notebook computers. The new airport put most domestic terminals in Thailand and Malaysia to shame. I’m quite sure the majority of Uyghurs welcome all that. But the streets of Urumqi resemble those of Bangkok. The glitzy shopping malls and sleazy karaokes have overshadowed the more traditional buildings. It’s easy to see why the traditional Uyghurs are more than a little uncomfortable. Change has come about too quickly. Not enough was done to curb some of the undesirable side effects of change.

But over the past week or so, the most glaring opinion coming from learned members of the Singapore community, is that the Uyghurs were against progress/business and hence attacking the Han immigrants. It obviously shows a lack of understanding of how Urumqi has already progressed, under Han and Uyghur leadership, into a modern and even wealthy city way back in the 90s.

Even in ancient times, Xinjiang was not just a barren desert but an oasis on the Silk Road, providing horses, food and water for traders and pilgrims. This was made possible by an ancient technology to channel glacial melts from the Tianshan mountains into the deserts. Intrepid and starving travellers from Western Tibet have reported arriving at outposts in the deserts of Xinjiang, overflowing with food, fruits and other supplies. How can one say that the natives are backward and agianst progress? They certainly weren’t and they certainly aren’t.

My take? If China still wants to fight and control separatism, it’s not only religion and the media that need to be moderated and regulated here. One also needs to moderate “progress” and “development”. As with all other cities in China, progress brought pollution, corruption, cover-ups, increased crime rate, a loss of comaradire and culture. No good Muslim or Han Buddhist, Taoist, Christian or free-thinker would chop people’s heads off like what some of the rioters did. For the violent rioters, both Han and Uyghur, it’s not about religion. It’s about the beast taking over the moral human when light-speed, unregulated wealth-seeking are the order of the day. It’s each man for himself. They would kill for their own interests. Han or Uyghur, they both love their food and their money. It’s not that the Uyghurs want to impose fundamentalist policies and fight again progress and wealth-generating projects.

The trigger point for these riots was actually an anti-Uyghur attack that occurred in a Guangdong toy factory owned by Hongkong tycoon Francis Choi. Native Guangdong workers entered a Uyghur dormitory and attacked, killing 2 and injuring 118. Apparently, these workers were acting on an unsubstatiated claim by a Guangdong woman that she was raped by two Uyghur men. Had the lawless workers been arrested and publicly punished as they deserved, it would have been far more difficult to spark off Uyghur anger in Xinjiang.

What should have been done? In the age of SMS and broadband internet, anything that happened in Guangdong is only an SMS away from Urumqi. Covering things up won’t work in this century.

Many of us in so-called developed countries dream of accumulating wealth and retiring in a peaceful, unspoilt paradise island. How would we feel if the paradise we have retired to turns into the same noisy, hustling, bustling city of crowded MRTs, expressionless faces, traffic jams, COEs, ERPs a 3/4 tank rules? Do we not feel cheated? Was the island paradise not developed enough already? Where do we go from there?

Well, there are some people who don’t wish to go anywhere. While some city states are made up of immigrants with no shared culture and history, Xinjiang is very different, with rich cultures, traditions and a history of which the people are proud. What happens if you start changing the face of a once peaceful, religious and sufficiently well-endowed land, with which the people are quite contented, turning it into an economic powerhouse that only worships money? Everybody wants the economy to be good, but the economy isn’t everything.

“Our forefathers were once foreigners here, and they managed to rise up to own property and land, which they have passed down to us, their children. Truly, we have forgotten our roots.”

The blogger who said that didn’t mention if he lives at Serangoon Gardens. I don’t. So why not we try to persuade our fellow citizens at Serangoon Gardens to be more gracious and let the 1000 or so foreign workers stay at the former Serangoon Gardens Technical School? After all, they are contributing to our economy, they are humans too and our ancestors were just like them. See how easy it is to say politically correct things when you are not immersed in the situation?

But let’s put matters in perspective. There are Chinatowns everywhere in the world. Rude, rowdy and spitting mainland Chinese immigrants have once colonised relatively undeveloped places all over the world and turned them into dirty, noisy and chaotic marketplaces that did a lot of good for the regional if not national economy. Had the governments in these countries been hostile towards these folks, they might not have realised their country’s full potential for growth.

As a far more soft-spoken and non-spitting descendent of these Chinese folks, I had a similar intention of building up a “Singapore village” for our retirees in Thailand. We can have a food centre serving laksa, mee siam (without cockles of course), char kway teow (with cockles), Hokkien mee, mee goreng, roti prata (with curry and not condensed milk), nasi lemak, nasi biryani, bak koot teh and nonya cakes. We can have bookshops selling publications which our local bookstores are not keen to carry. We can have a few mahjong tables to steal some local customers from the IRs. We can hold long tea/coffee sessions to gossip about bungling ministers and their well-deserved salaries. In short, it would be a fun place for Singaporeans to feast and have fun in a familiar environment - in Thailand. We can eat, drink, smoke and swear all we want. We can play mahjong late at night. We can even chew gum and act like teenagers.

Does it make me a hypocrite if I sympathise with the unhappy residents at Serangoon Gardens? That would depend on where I decide to build my Sin-Thai Village. Would I be so insensitive as to build it in in front of some prominent landmark in downtown Bangkok? Of course not. This village will have to be in the mountains of Chiangmai or even Mae Hong Son - accessible only by trekking or 4WD. Being an expat “colony”, it has to be low profile and totally unobtrusive. Can I expect to build this village in some Bangkok suburb dominated by middle class yuppies and not expect a major protest?

It’s really a matter of common sense. If I lead an exodus across a desert and set up shop in an undiscovered oasis, nobody is going to bother me. Rewind to the days when our forefathers were rowdy, foul-mouthed, spitting and opium-smoking coolies. Where did they live? Next door to Sir Stamford Raffles? Could Sir Stamford have welcomed the delivery of a steaming bowl of pig organ soup, courtesy of his Chinese neighbours? Could he have welcomed Malay fishermen to feast on durians on his porch? The old Singapore had plenty of space for the various foreign communities to set up shops and cater to their own people’s needs. There was class struggle. There were racial riots. There was poverty. There was widespread illiteracy. And there was even chewing gum and durian intolerance. But decades later, water found its own level. We are reaching a state of equilibrium.

Equilibrated Singapore today is very, very crowded. Chinese, Indian, Malay or Eurasian, we can communicate in English and we know that there are no cockles in mee siam. Another wave of wealth-seeking foreigners has reached our shores. Frightened? Why? They are not criminals - not that we know of. Why can’t we accept them as a part of our society. Nobody is going to die if they put cockles into our mee siam.

But we can’t really accept and embrace people we don’t know. Must we wait for government to declare a Foreign Workers’ Day where each Singaporean family that takes a foreign worker out for a day at Sentosa or the zoo will stand to win a lifetime ERP-free pass? Or is it the duty of common citizens like us to connect with a foreign community operating on a different wavelength, working long hours for 2 years for the sole purpose of sending money back home? How about inviting a few Indian construction workers for tea every Sunday afternoon without the enticement of a lucky draw? How about introducing our maids to them? How about letting them go on dates. They are humans too, aren’t they? They need a social life, don’t they? Our forefathers were like them, weren’t they?