09.03.06

Posted in General, Queer literature at 1:37 pm by Teng Qian Xi

Anniversary

According to the Chinese legend of the White Snake, a dumpling sold by an immortal stuck in a little boy’s throat for three days. When it finally fell out, it was swallowed by a white snake, which turned into an immortal woman. After 18 years, she went in search of the boy, now a man, and married him. After many misadventures and adversities, the couple finally settled down with their son and lived a normal family life.

Today our child, home from school, announces
that he has learnt a new word – 蛇 . I tell him what it is,
then fall (as I have for years
when I see someone who might listen) into silence.
You will never tell him that his mother was once
a snake, a glorified 虫 and I convince
myself that I have forgotten the time I lived
in cool dark water under the bridge,
white and slim and glittering with scales,
an ivory livewire in the deepness.

That was before the dumpling
with three days of your life fell
like a star, streaming a grape-cluster tail
of bubbles in its silent tumbling
into my mouth. I could have spat
but I swallowed in fright,
and a new-born woman was swimming through the air,
trying to find you, my ignorant dear,
still thinking you saved me from
my watery home.

Ten years married, and I know you wonder
if there is more snake in our child
than I think. They say he is the village’s best swimmer,
as if his blood remembers it once flowed
in a wetter, deeper place. I’m glad for you
that his face is like yours but somehow
when he moves he reminds me of
what I thought I didn’t remember. The love
between water and white scale lies
in my heart like a burnt-out star, deferred
for ten years. Now it flares each time our boy writhes
with a joy that has no need for any word.

*蛇 – the Chinese character for “snake”
*虫 – the Chinese character for “worm”

Xu Xian

According to the legend of the White Snake, a dumpling sold by an immortal stuck in the throat of a little boy called Xu Xian. When it finally fell out, it was swallowed by a white snake spirit called Bai Suzhen. She then turned into an immortal woman and after 18 years, she went in search of Xu Xian and married him. The couple eventually settled down with their son and lived a normal family life.

I grew up in water. In the evenings
rain fell across the window
like a woman’s fishlines of hair
as I helped my older brother
with his maths homework.
On good days: scrabbling up rambutan trees
for handfuls of small red galaxies.

Before my mother died we visited a market
and I choked on a bean-paste dumpling
black and sweet as night.
She had to hang me over a drain,
thrashing my back until gobs
fell like grubby snow
and I couldn’t talk for hours.
Sometimes I wonder if
the words to change my life
are still floating like orphans
in that lamp-stained water.

The rest of my family swims every day.
After work I watch their shadows
from our fifteenth-floor condominium
drifting like dead fish.
Each week my son and I play golf in silence.
The white balls careen
like frozen tears on the ironed green.

Waterlights

According to the legend of the White Snake, Bai Suzhen (a white snake that turned into an immortal woman) bought a green snake which she turned into a young girl. She named her Xiao Qing, and she remained her companion even after her marriage. When an evil monk trapped Bai Suzhen in a pagoda, it was Xiao Qing who, after years of martial arts training, was the one to free her. Together they fought the monk, and after winning they went back to her family home and lived happily ever after.

I appeared in the story only because you
wanted me to. It was your pale hands
that lifted me, a whip of emerald,
from the marketplace basket, and it was your words
that writhed out a soul from my shine-crusted body.
So there I was, to the world something between
your friend and a maid. He tended
towards the former; he was nice, that husband
of yours. I remember the rain when we
first saw him – it lanced silver across your cheek
while I cried out in spite of myself, isn’t he the one?
You just smiled, holding his hand as you
stepped lightly onto the boat.
That, I tell people, is how it began –
love at first sight, silver flashing down your face
while I (everyone laughs here) vomited into
the spangles on the water.

It was never explained to him why I moved
into his new home – I was just the giveaway
that had to be accepted with the amazing deal.
We got along in the end, and there was always
three of us at important events –
your child’s birth, the shop’s opening
and the inconvenient business you try not to remember.
But there was only me through the years
of perfecting my dance of death for you.
It was a rain of silver blades that I lived ten years in,
that quivered your pagoda-prison
into a thousand glittering shards. We won, of course. Now
it’s difficult at New Year visits; I ignore
your rhapsodies on family life
and the bachelors you invite to dinner. Now
your child thinks I’m his aunt; he pesters me
for stories of your life, but only my eyes
(when the tears melt him into your image)
tell him what you have forgotten:

Your face darted among the swords
like a river’s shifting light and we danced
in a rain of silver for the last time
together. Darling, I would have died for you
but I never had the luck.

• About: Teng Qian Xi is incredibly fascinated by metamorphoses.
• Forum discussion: Writer's Corner
• technorati: poetry, Teng Qian Xi, glbt, queer, lesbian, gay, white snake

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08.13.06

Waterlights

Posted in General at 6:56 pm by Teng Qian Xi

According to the legend of the White Snake, Bai Suzhen (a white snake that turned into an immortal woman) bought a green snake which she turned into a young girl. She named her Xiao Qing, and she remained her companion even after her marriage. When an evil monk trapped Bai Suzhen in a pagoda, it was Xiao Qing who, after years of martial arts training, was the one to free her. Together they fought the monk, and after winning they went back to her family home and lived happily ever after.

I appeared in the story only because you
wanted me to. It was your pale hands
that lifted me, a whip of emerald,
from the marketplace basket, and it was your words
that writhed out a soul from my shine-crusted body.
So there I was, to the world something between
your friend and a maid. He tended
towards the former; he was nice, that husband
of yours. I remember the rain when we
first saw him – it lanced silver across your cheek
while I cried out in spite of myself, isn’t he the one?
You just smiled, holding his hand as you
stepped lightly onto the boat.
That, I tell people, is how it began –
love at first sight, silver flashing down your face
while I (everyone laughs here) vomited into
the spangles on the water.

It was never explained to him why I moved
into his new home – I was just the giveaway
that had to be accepted with the amazing deal.
We got along in the end, and there was always
three of us at important events –
your child’s birth, the shop’s opening
and the inconvenient business you try not to remember.
But there was only me through the years
of perfecting my dance of death for you.
It was a rain of silver blades that I lived ten years in,
that quivered your pagoda-prison
into a thousand glittering shards. We won, of course. Now
it’s difficult at New Year visits; I ignore
your rhapsodies on family life
and the bachelors you invite to dinner. Now
your child thinks I’m his aunt; he pesters me
for stories of your life, but only my eyes
(when the tears melt him into your image)
tell him what you have forgotten:

Your face darted among the swords
like a river’s shifting light and we danced
in a rain of silver for the last time
together. Darling, I would have died for you
but I never had the luck.

• About: Teng Qian Xi was one of the 15 overall winners in the Simon Elvin Young Poet of the Year Awards 2000 for "Waterlights". She was the first non-British winner of this award. Previously published in: Fairy Tale Matches – poems by the Simon Elvin Young Poets of 2000, Project Eyeball online, the2ndrule.com, Love Gathers All: The Singapore-Philippines Anthology of Love Poetry (Ethos Books, Singapore, 2002).
• Forum discussion: Writer's Corner
• technorati: Teng Qian Xi, poetry, Simon Elvin Young Poets of the Year Award, glbt, lesbian, queer

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08.07.06

Why I am cynical about Singapore’s political process

Posted in General, Politics at 2:47 pm by Teng Qian Xi

I live in a country where the state believes they have the right to decide whether people should be digits, or creative or entrepreneurial.

I live in a country where the ministers claim that the ruling party’s majority votes means “the people want to be led.” (Dr Wang Kai Yuen, ST, April 4 2002) I live in a country where before the general elections, the ruling party redraws constituency boundaries to have more walkovers, bankrupts opposition politicians and castrates the national press while its ministers tell everyone to speak up, not to fear being “hit by a big stick” (Raymond Lim, ST, April 4 2002). This is safe because the people who spoke up before MPs encouraged them to are either overseas, silenced or dead.

I live in a country where no minister has campaigned publicly for the abolition of the Internal Security Act even if they believed that it was a violation of human rights. Even if they knew that Communism is demonised by the authorised history. Even if they knew that most of the population heads down to Orchard Road on Sundays.

I live in a country where the ministers who determine the political process are paid private-sector salaries. There are few other reasons to join the ruling party, so certified talents are worth their price.

I live in a country where the state announces that we must have a vibrant arts scene. So they build the Esplanade which is too big for most local performance groups. On National Day they say that promoting the arts is another way to attract more tourists to this ‘global hubcity’; they do not even pretend that pandering to foreign money is less important than giving citizens an awareness of their own country’s culture.

I live in a country where the front shelves of bookshops are crowded with one man’s words. Until recently, anything that disagrees these words could only be found in Select Books (Tanglin Shopping Centre) or overseas.

I live in a country where my parents have friends who were tortured by the Internal Security Department. So for them and others, an 18-year-old girl talking to the press about politics will never be seen as invulnerable. An 18-year-old girl who comments on a minister in an newspaper interview will be told she could cause someone in MOE to lose their job.

I live in a country where the national paper will announce that a poem has won a foreign prize, but they will not willingly add (until much later) that it is written from a lesbian perspective. What the paper’s employees think of homosexuality and its criminalisation has nothing to do with this.

I live in a country where the state makes its arguments too simple. Such as: the PAP = the country. Such as: democracy = protests = violence = disorder = national disaster. Such as: human rights = confusing Western concept that our people don’t need to learn very much about. Such as: history = one man’s story. Such as: Chia Thye Poh = opposition = Marxist = dangerous = 32 years of imprisonment = non-existence in the authorised history.

I live in a country with a population that is constantly hit by men in white with invisible and visible sticks. I live in a country where it is hard to expect people to value anything more than protecting themselves from these big sticks, or getting your own stick and white uniform.

• About: This article has been reproduced by kind permission of the author, Teng Qian Xi. The article was first published in NewSintercom.org and the2ndrule.com in 2002. This article was originally requested by the New Paper in early April 2002, but when Qian Xi sent it to them, they decided they could not print it until they managed to get a government scholar to write a retort. The two articles were eventually printed side by side on 19 May 2002.
• Forum discussion: Sayoni Forum
• technorati: teng qianxi, glbt, queer asian women, singapore

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