Kreta Ayer - Story of a Chinese Immigrant in Singapore[1]

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Non-fiction

Singapore Chinatown’sHidden Scars

as seen from the eyes of a Chinese immigrant

Andrew Yip

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About the Author

The Author is a psychologist, administrator, housing developer and businessman. Hewas educated in Edinburgh, Malaysia, Singapore and in Pennsylvania, USA. Holder of a M.Ed., Dip. Ed-D in Education and Advanced Psychology and Bachelor of ArtsHonours Degree, he held various top academic and professional appointments. Hehas worked as a psychologist in a Scottish clinic and held top management positionsin the private sector in various countries. An accomplished poet, Chinesecalligrapher, and author of many publications, he was well known in the art andliterary circles overseas, particularly in China where he spent his retirement years.Andrew W.K. Yip began to write at an early age. In the 1950s, he joined the PoetryCircle in Singapore and immersed in Anglo-American modernist poetry, and writingpoetry in both English and Chinese. His poetic corpus is nourished by the belief thatpoetry constitutes “a quiet motivating force in the modern age”. In 1964, hetravelled to the USA and UK on a UNESCO Fellowship where he became immersed inpsychological studies, psychotherapy and guidance techniques. He returned toSingapore to launch various programmes related to guidance and counseling,psychological testing and social rehabilitation. As editor of a number of publications,he also launched various newspapers in the ASEAN region. Yip stopped writing whenhe joined the private sector as a housing developer, but resumed writing poetry andbooks in English and Chinese in the 1980s under various pen-names, including “Andre W. Keye”, and “Zhou Tian, ” after he started work in China’s TranslationBureau in Guangdong. Son of a world famous photographer, Yip Cheong-Fun, whowas elected by New York as the 'Outstanding Photographer of the Century' in 1980,he has written many poems to depict the artistic images created by his late father,both in Chinese and English. An anthology of his poems, entitled 'A poetic vision -the photography of Yip Cheong-Fun', was published in mid-2009 by ServiceWorldCentre and distributed overseas.

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About Kreta Ayer

Were you ever curious when you strolled along the narrow winding streets and lanes of Kreta Ayer? Did you ever wonder how old immigrants from China lived in the slumsand coolie houses in the early years of Singapore? The opportunity to relive the past andto feel the sights and sounds of the old Chinatown is in Kreta Ayer. Here at last is adramatic story of the early immigrants who lived in Chinatown in Singapore, as told by aliving witness. It is actually history, as seen from the sharp eyes of a little girl, Li Zhang,who came from China in the 1930s and lived through the gray and grim years of theJapanese Occupation. She returned to her homeland at the age of 14, and now at the ageof 80, tells a candid story of her life in Singapore. Her account of the things thathappened in Singapore and China is non-fiction and based on actual events that touchedher life and the lives of countless people in the Asian region.Li Zhang lived in Chinatown. When Chinatown was hit by bombs, she screamed, shecried. She experienced hardships, heartaches and disappointments like many earlyimmigrants. She felt the stinging thorns of pain and anxiety and knew fear and death.Hers is not a tale of fiction. Hers is a true description of history as it unfolds based onfactual information. In a sense, the account is unique in that information is presented likea novel, but the observations made are fresh like steaming hot cakes from a burning oven.Kreta Ayer is about time. It’s about changes in Singapore and in China. It’sabout changes in ourselves. You and I, like, Li Zhang, are the variables.Kreta Ayer is the drama of life. It’s about people living in the present andthose in the past as well as time remote

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Kreta Ayer is more than just drama; it is a symbol of the crucible of change.Time past, time present and time future - all of us, like Li Zhang, are caught in thiseternal triangle o

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time. No one - whether kings or knaves - can escape from the tangledwebs of the triangulation of past, present and future. The story of life, like, KretaAyer is never complete, nor is it ever a closed chapter. It always depends onsomething yet to come in the future as well as itself, sometimes created bysomething already depleted or dead in the past. The present is often tenuousand uncelebrated, as we are preoccupied in our mind and hearts with therigours of the passage of time. What is important is to move on, recognize thelarger consciousness or the light we find here and there that shines too dimlybetween the cracks, and then realize that time allows us to rebuild on the flatsurface of our present life. We must not allow whatever shadows in ourpresent or the past, which is often cluttered with sad memories, brokendreams or lost loves, to leave us in the deep, dark and deadly pit of hopelessness and despair. That precisely is a moral lesson to be learnt fromKreta Ayer.