Hong Kong Fiascos by David T. K. Wong

Author:David T. K. Wong
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789814655576
Publisher: Epigram Books
Published: 2016-09-22T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

Trial By Marriage

SAMUEL BUTLER ONCE observed in respect of marriages that those who hesitated might sometimes be saved. But that satirist probably did not have in mind the kind of stew I found myself in regarding Man-Ying. A quick fix seemed to me an absolute necessity; hesitation would have courted disaster.

After returning to Singapore, I was so preoccupied with saving money for marriage that I was oblivious to the passage of time. My sister, Pauline, gave me a jolt when she announced to the family one day in April that she would be marrying a young Indian doctor by the name of Gopal Baratham the following month. It was then that I realised the year I had scheduled for my own marriage was drawing to a close. The dark maw of matrimony yawned threateningly but the amount I had saved was still pitifully small. The prospect of having to start married life by falling further into debt terrified me.

A wedding was supposed to be an important event in Chinese culture, for it signified the formation of society’s basic unit—the family. Tradition called for public announcements and face-enhancing display, the holding of two banquets by the face-conscious for the two families involved, the offering of cups of tea by the couple to each of their elders and a host of other symbolic ceremonies. The latter included the presentation of a roasted suckling pig to the home of the bride three days after the wedding, to acknowledge her virginal condition at the time of marriage, which would have been a laugh in our case. Everything required money but an insufficiency of it had long been an inescapable feature in my life.

I could hardly expect my family to foot the bill, since whatever it had in savings had already been expended on purchasing the bungalow in Serangoon Gardens Estate. My father was unemployed and hence without income. The running cost of maintaining the home was being borne by my grandfather’s pension and Anna’s salary from the Special Branch. I knew also that Anna had sometimes borrowed money left and right to maintain Tzi-Seng in his chemical engineering studies in London.

Even if money were available, a number of taxing problems still had to be faced. For instance, Man-Ying’s immediate family was located in Hong Kong whereas mine was in Singapore. My closest relatives were evenly split between the two places. Gathering them together was out of the question.

Technical and emotional impediments also existed. Since my father’s furtive marriage to Anna the previous year, I supposed Anna was now legally my stepmother. If so, I would have to offer her a cup of tea to acknowledge her as such. It was a gesture I was reluctant to make. My own mother, alive and well in another country, would be completely left out, not to mention her Filipino husband. Moreover, Man-Ying, young and untutored as she was, would probably baulk at the rite of offering individual cups of tea to so many strangers she had never met before.

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