The Catherine Lim Collection

by Catherine Lim

  When we were living in a kampong in Yio Chu Kang there was an elderly uncle staying with us. He was a thin, shrunken man, with an enormous Adam’s apple sticking out of his scrawny neck, and he was always idling about in the house and kampong, wearing a singlet and faded, blue-striped, cotton pyjama trousers held up by string. I used to be fascinated by the up-and-down movements of the enormous Adam’s apple: It was only much later that I discovered a positive correlation between the speed with which that organ moved up and down, and the intensity of desire felt by Uncle as he looked upon some sarong-clad kampong belle, the sarong worn pulled up over the breasts and knotted tightly just above them. And when the sarong got wet at the kampong well, and the thin cloth clung to the rounded contours of the bathing belle, Uncle’s Adam’s apple virtually went berserk, as happened on one occasion when he actually collapsed in a faint and I had to help him home where he sat for some time slumped in a chair.

  I often wondered why he spent hours in the out-house lavatory, and one day I took a peep and saw him drooling over a Chinese comic book, one of a large collection that he had stashed away somewhere. Needless to say, the comic book was full of obscene pictures. Uncle’s favourite must have been the one of the large naked lady and the chamber-pot, because that page was clearly the most thumbed. The quintessential ‘hum-sub’!

  And growing up, I found, to my horror, that this evil tendency was part of my heritage! From the age of 16, I lusted after females. The sight of bare arms and legs would drive me wild; bare breasts and buttocks, even if they were only hinted at in pictures or words, made me insane! I realised, to my alarm, that I was joining the ranks of the despicable ‘hum subs’. I struggled against the tendency. I did not want to be classified with my grandfather, my granduncle, my father, my uncle, the whole lot of men in Singapore who have foolishly retained that part of the Chinese cultural heritage that is least worthy of retention. The hard work, the discipline, the thrift, the willingness to sweat and toil for the benefit of future generations – all these, yes – but the tendency of the polygamous instinct – no! I decided to break away from this tradition. There were two things that helped me. The first was my English education. It opened up wondrous worlds of knowledge and power and beauty to me! I read books written in English – books on Science, History, Literature. I read Shakespeare. Being absorbed in my studies helped me to keep in check those horrible impulses that I had inherited. The second thing that helped me was – you! You, Sir, you, the Vice-Consul, the model of moral propriety, correctness, rectitude! I have been an admirer of yours for as long as I can remember. I have followed every speech of yours, every public appearance. I have admired in particular your purity in the best of Confucian traditions. I know that not the slightest breath of scandal will ever taint your name ... ”

  At this point, the Vice-Consul says, a little impatiently, “All this is very well, young man, but you still have not explained your part in this most unfortunate matter concerning my public image. Are you aware of the harm – probably, irreparable – that you have done to my reputation? I demand a full explanation. And the photographs here are the proof of your culpability!”

  The young man, his tie askew in his distress and his hair dishevelled from his fingers continually running through it, looks at the Vice-Consul with none of the admiration and awe diminished. He says, “Sir, you will understand, when I have explained everything, that it was not my fault and that I couldn’t help it! I made it a point to go to every one of the functions at which you would make a speech, because I wanted to benefit from your very moral, edifying speeches! I would lap up every word, Sir.

  But something happened each time I looked intently at you, hoping to be influenced by you. It seemed that, as I gazed at you, the influence was going in the opposite direction – from me to you! What was going on in my mind became projected into yours. No matter how hard I tried to prevent the thought, it would, as if it had flown across the whole length of the auditorium, fuse with yours! And Sir – I am most ashamed to say, all salacious thoughts had not exactly left my mind, despite the assiduous efforts at eradicating them. But there was beginning to be an improvement. Instead of the coarse images that my grandfather and father had so revelled in, mine had become attenuated by the refining qualities of the English Language, as opposed to the roughnesses of Chinese dialects. Hence the Calibans of the dialectal bawdiness of my ancestors had become transformed to the Ariels of the delicate word-plays of the English Language. This you must grant, Sir, is a big step in the progress towards refinement and grace. I have to confess, though, that the libido is by no means subjugated, and every time I see a profile of a lady’s breasts, I still get worked up! Oh, Sir, anything globular, spherical, pendulous, occurring in pairs, Sir, and I have to desperately beat down these insidious impulses!’

  “You mean,” says the Vice-Consul, looking intently at the young man, “that each time you look at me while I am making a speech, you are able to project your thoughts – nay, the very words for the expression of those thoughts – into my mind, so that, against my will, I utter those filthy jokes?”

  “Oh, Sir, they are not at all filthy compared to the Hokkien and Cantonese crudities of our forebears,” pleads the young man. “They are in fact subtle innuendoes making use of the rich resources of the English Language. Oh, Sir, I’m not trying to excuse myself,” the young man adds hurriedly, “Far from it. All I’m saying is that I’m sincerely trying to improve myself still further. I’m attending some Moral Purification courses being conducted at the Civil Service Institute, after which all traces of this very contemptible trait will have been eradicated, Sir!”

  “You’d better make sure you do that,” says the Vice-Consul severely, “and that you will never again be present at any one of the functions at which I’ll be making speeches. Men like you are a blemish on the fair face of our nation. Make sure that after these courses at the Civil Service Institute, your moral rehabilitation is complete!”

  “Oh, I’m signing up for the most intensive of these courses,” says the young man gratefully. “They will free me from the ancestral curse, and I shall be a happy man at last. I shall continue to have you as my model, Sir,” he concludes, gazing reverently at the Vice-Consul.

  The Vice-Consul and his aides are glad that the cause of the mysterious happenings has been so neatly disposed of, and the Vice-Consul can continue to make the speeches that have inspired so many. The trouble, however, the Vice-Consul and his aides are beginning to notice, is that the crowds at the Vice-Consul’s functions are decreasing. For some time the word has gone round that the most interesting functions were those attended by the Vice-Consul because he could always be depended on to come out with surprises in his speeches. “His jokes,” it was whispered, “were the wittiest, the cleverest, the most delightful.” The risque element gave them a special piquancy that was missing in most Singaporean public speeches which were dull, predictable and terribly deadpan. So people had flocked to hear the Vice-Consul; but now they are staying away, because the Vice-Consul’s speeches are becoming just like any of the others. Those who remain throughout the speeches doze off or struggle to stay awake.

  The Vice-Consul is in a dilemma. He wants his crowds back. He sends his aides to discreetly inquire if the young man will agree to discontinue the Moral Purification courses at the Civil Service Institute and return to ‘assist’ him. But it is too late. The young man, in accordance with the promise he had made the Vice-Consul, has been fully rehabilitated, and is now the proud owner of a certificate that testifies to his complete freedom from those dreadful propensities of his male ancestors that, unfortunately, still beset many of his fellow Singaporeans so that they will forever bear the stigma of being ‘hum sub’. Unlike them, this young man is now in the fortunate position of being able to say, “O Lechery! O Venery! O Satyriasis! O Hum-subism! Where is thy sting?”

  Kiasuism: A Socio-Historico-Cultural Perspective

  The following is a summary of a paper ‘Kiasuism: A Socio-H
istorico-Cultural Perspective’ by Professor Arthur A. Bremer presented at the 10th Congress of World Anthropologists in Hamburg. The paper is published in World Anthropological Studies Vol 6.IV, P 21-36, Dec 1988

  1. INTRODUCTION : REASONS FOR UNDERTAKING THE STUDY

  The emergence of a national trait of character is always a phenomenon worthy of anthropological study. During my recent stay in Singapore, I was greatly interested in the development of an attitude among Singaporeans which had become widespread enough to be admitted by themselves as a national characteristic. This paper will examine the attitude of ‘kiasuism’ in terms of its manifestations in the everyday lives of Singaporeans. I will also examine its possible social, historical and cultural roots.

  2. KIASUISM : A DEFINITION

  Kiasuism may be defined as an attitude by which a person undergoes, on the one hand, extreme disquiet if he discovers that he has not got full value for his expenditure of money, time and effort, and on the other, a distinct sense of exhilaration if he discovers that he has got much more than the full value for that expenditure. The ultimate distress is when he has got nothing for something, and the ultimate joy when he has got something for nothing.

  Like any attitude, kiasuism comprises a cognitive component by which the person believes in certain things, an affective component by which he experiences certain emotions, and a conative or behavioural component by which he acts in a certain way. The person who possesses this attribute (henceforth referred to as the ‘kia-suer’) believes in the Principle of Perfect Balance, that is, any amount of money or effort expended must be perfectly matched by the returns for it; hence if the ‘kia-suer’ pays $4.95 for a set lunch in which six items have been advertised and he suddenly remembers after he has left the restaurant, that the sixth item, say, cucumber pieces in tomato sauce, had not been served, he will return for it, or insist that a proportionate sum be deducted from the bill. Only after this is done, will he feel satisfied. If he pays his Filipina maid a salary of $200 and discovers that the work she is doing is worth less than that ofother Filipina maids drawing the same salary, he will devise all manner of ways to redress the imbalance; for instance, he may get his maid to help out at his mother-in-law’s noodles shop on Sunday.

  The redressing of imbalance works only in one direction: It does not operate in situations where the kia-suer finds that he is getting more than his money’s worth. For instance, if he discovers that for the meal for which his $4.95 entitles him to six items, the absent-minded waitress puts on his table eight items instead of six, or charges him for two persons when she should charge him for three, he says nothing and lets the matter rest.

  With regard to the affective or emotive component of kiasuism, the kia-suer suffers a wide range of uncomfortable feelings when he discovers that he has not got his money’s worth. The feelings range from mild disappointment with himself for having been foolish and unwary to acute distress that will go away only when he has redressed the wrong. A multimillionaire was known to have been apoplectic with rage when he discovered that he had over-reimbursed his chauffeur by $1.30; a housewife was unable to sleep the whole night through agonising over the fact that she had paid the taxi-driver three dollars for a ride that would normally cost $2.10. The same housewife, only the week before, was rejoicing over the fact that, owing to some slip-up in the attachment of price-tags to clothes in a large departmental store, she had got a $90 dress for only $28. She had talked about it endlessly to her friends who then went to the store but found, to their intense disappointment, that the price-tags had been correctly attached this time.

  The cognitive and emotive components are expressed through the conative or behavioural component. The kia-suer goes through a complicated series of actions, such as checking and re-checking the bill he is presented with, doing complex calculations on his pocket calculator or his abacus which in many ways is more accurate in the detection of monetary fraud than the calculator. When he has the proof that he has been cheated or defrauded or shortchanged, he goes quickly to the relevant persons or authorities to make known the fact and seek compensation, preparing to argue, scold, threaten, warn and abuse until he achieves the redress, and hence restore the Principle of Perfect Balance.

  3. KIASUISM : VARIETY OF MANIFESTATIONS

  The above definition does not do full justice to the complex nature of kiasuism: rather than a single identifiable trait, it may be best described as a continuum, from a basic sense of caution against cheating and shortchanging and a tendency to ‘play safe’ at all times, at one end, to a rampant, exploitative tendency at the other. In between, there are various degrees of kiasuism, but all forms, regardless of their position on the continuum, show an invariable ferocity of purpose in the protection of self-interest and a deeply ingrained dislike of losing out to others.

  Although kiasuism is most commonly manifested in money matters, it is also evident in many other areas where money is only indirectly involved. Indeed, the variety of its manifestations is a reflection of the complexity of life in a modern, affluent, technologically sophisticated society like Singapore.

  For instance, parents of schoolchildren, in order not to ‘lose out’ to other parents, in the matter of academic achievement of offspring, buy expensive educational books containing information additional to that contained in the regular text-books, and severely warn their offspring never to lend any of these books to their classmates, in this way justifying the high cost of the books. A clerk has bought for his daughter the entire set of Encyclopaedia Britannica and she is still only in kindergarten. The fear of losing out to others is most evident in the intensity of expression on a parent’s face as she studies the marks in her child’s report book and then calls up another parent to surreptitiously elicit from her, through an apparently friendly chat, the information about her child’s marks, for purposes of comparison.

  It is not only in the field of education that kiasuism is manifested. The Singaporean on tour provides an extremely interesting case study. Having paid a large sum of money for the tour, the Singaporean makes sure that he gets his every cent’s worth, right from the moment he boards the plane to the moment he sets foot back on Singapore soil. He carries his pocket calculator with him to satisfy himself that the food, accommodation, facilities, entertainment, free gifts, etc., which form the tour package are exactly accounted for.

  There is the story of the group of Singapore tourists who were entertained with a show in their hotel, as part of the package. Now the show was a performance by a scantily clad and very acrobatic lady, with a python. There were two types of shows: Type A was ‘Lady with Python, Python does not touch Lady’, Type B was ‘Lady with Python; Python touches Lady’. Type B cost $10 more. Now the Singapore tourists were treated to Type A, but later discovered, through talking to other tourists, that they had actually paid for Type B. A great quarrel with the tour organiser and the hotel manager ensued, the Singaporeans demanding that either they be given another performance, or have the difference of $10 refunded. The tour organiser explained, with much effort, that the performance they had seen was actually Type B; it was just that the python had been too sleepy to climb out of its basket and coil itself around the lady. Apparently, the second drug that had been administered to it to get it out of the soporific effects of the first, in time for the Type B performance, was not working well enough. The explanation did not satisfy the Singaporeans who continued to clamour to see Type B and get their money’s full worth. In weary resignation, the hotel manager gave in; he gave instructions for a double dosage of the second drug to be administered to the python, as a result of which the reptile, suddenly roused to an unwonted level of energy, slid down from the lady’s torso and down the stage to the watching Singaporeans, causing pandemonium. The hotel manager was heard to remark gleefully, “Singaporeans get python; python gets Singaporeans.”

  It is often on a tour, when the Singaporean gets away from his country for a while, that kiasuism is manifested in its most conspicuous, even
bizarre forms. A Singapore tourist was told by his wife that a fellow Australian tourist had peeped at her while she was in the women’s bath: She was enjoying herself with the other women in the steaming waters when she caught sight of the Australian gazing intently at her. He had no right to go to the women’s section of the bath, but on some pretext of looking for his wife, had managed to sneak in, and there had indulged his lustful eyes. The Singapore gentleman, on hearing this complaint from his wife, immediately experienced the acute pain of losing out; he had lost out to his Australian counterpart in terms of the pleasures afforded by the tour. Each of them had paid the same amount of money, but the Australian had got more for his money for he had had the additional pleasure of gazing upon a woman’s naked beauties. And since it was his wife’s naked beauties, the Singaporean felt that he had lost out twice over to the Australian.

  Now the Singapore gentleman knew that he would know no rest till the imbalance had been redressed. And the imbalance could only be redressed by his looking upon the Australian man’s wife in her nakedness, in exactly the same length of time that the Australian man had looked upon his wife, that is, a full minute. So he waited for an opportune time, and when the lady was in the bath, he made the pretext of going there to look for his wife, taking care to gaze upon the Australian lady’s nakedness a full 60 seconds. There the similarity of the two escapades ended, for while the Australian gentleman had apparently enjoyed his one minute, he, the Singapore gentleman, forced himself to gaze upon an enormous shapeless bulk thrashing about in the water. His first impulse upon setting eyes on the amazing bulk had been to turn around and run away, but kiasuism’s first principle of exactitude operated more strongly than his aesthetic sense, and he stayed till the full minute was over.