Book Review
The EscapeMay Chu's Singapore
|
Book Review
The EscapeMay Chu's Singapore |
|
The Tiger Balm King LOCAL HAGIOGRAPHY depicts the "Tiger Balm King", Aw Boon Haw, as a great philanthropist, a man of limitless generosity, a man who made his fortune selling cure-all "Tiger Balm." There was even a paper read at a conference in Penang on his Thought, propelling the King to the dizzy heights of such greats as Marx and Mao Tse Tung The truth is, however, less flattering. Chinese educationists in the Straits Settlements were not at all misled by the arches at the entrances to Chinese schools inscribed with the sign in both English and Chinese: "Donated by Haw-Par Brothers" - the story goes that the elder brother had promised his mother that he would look after his not-so-bright younger brother, Boon Par (a common enough pledge among the Chinese), hence every enterprise bearing the "Haw-Par" chop. But Aw Boon Haw's contribution to Chinese language education was confined to the arch only, because in fact it was the generosity of others, self-effacing and generous, that had donated the school grounds and put up the school building. It is symptomatic of Aw Boon Haw's low ranking among the Chinese in Singapore that many derogatory stories about him made the rounds, the most popular one being about his penchant for buying very young virgins for $300 to satisfy the superstition that sleeping with one would improve an old man's life expectancy considerably. And now comes a book in which Boon Par's great granddaughter tells us that Boon Haw was in fact an opium runner and fled Burma for Singapore after the British police in Rangoon charged him with illicit trafficking in opium and conterfeiting, and put the brothers under house arrest. But it was not the style of Aw Boon Haw to keep a low profile in the lands of his self-imposed exile. He travelled about the Malay States and the Straits Settlements in a huge car modified to look like a roaring tiger's head with black and yellow stripes running along the sides. |
| Greedy lawyers There were also allegations of secret society gangster connections (Aw Boon Haw was known to be a supporter of Chiang Kai Shek and the Kuomintang.) Even worse, there were unfaourable stories about his chooding to live in Japanese occupied Hong Kong when other well-known personalities had either gone into hiding or simply left for the safety foreign lands. May Chu seems to have beencondemned by the family opium curse. In these pages of detailed gossip she speaks also of her first husband's family close connection with Dan Arnold, once a campaign worker for George Bush, a CIA operative and an arms trafficker, of the CIA inspired opium trade, of their troubles with Brunei and Brunei Shell and Prince Jefri and of their escape from Brunei "thanks to their contacts" with the "right people." May Chu's divorce proceedings did not leave her with a favourable impression of Singapore courts with their "Banana Republic judges" and "crooked" and "treacherous" lawyers all greedy for money. Her remarks about Helen Yeo and her legal assistants, she says, has so angered the woman whose husband is a PAP minister that no bookshop has dared to stock the provocative "Escape from Paradise". But May Chu has retaliated; she and her second husband, Harding, now run a London website from which she conducts a propaganda war against her enemies. The website now appears battle scarred, a page has been defaced by an outside interference. The book is trivial. Its claim to popularity may well be founded on the sensational claim that Lee Kuan Yew worked for the Hodobu, the Japanese intelligence, during the Japanese occupation of Singapore. And that it is an "open secret in certain circles of the Singapore government that Indonesian prime minister Suharto kept an airplane ready at Singapore's old Seletar Airbase for Lee Kuan Yew to flee Singapore should the need arise. There was a getaway speedboat, as well." We are not told what her sources are. Singapore should not be surprised if a writ or writs are sued out by lawyers acting on behalf of the prime minister of Singapore. # Lim Kean Chye Escape from Paradise by John & May Chu Harding |
| ______ INDEX Point to the article that you want to read, and CLICK Index Page Baba Sayings Book Review Footprints Kg Dodol "Little India" Loan Words |
|
The BOOKSHOP , Chow Thye Road, stocks Penang Sketchbook as well as books previously reviewed in The Penang File such as : Tan Sooi Beng: Bangsawan ; Machiko Katayama; The Philosophy of Ikebana ; Dato J J Raj Jr: The War Years and After ; Lim Kean Siew: The Eye Over the Golden Sands ; Lim Kean Siew: Blood on the Golden Sands ; Malaysia Nature Society, Penang branch: Nature Trails of Penang Island . Lim Kean Siew: The Beauty of Chinese Tixing Teapots and the Finer Art of Tea Drinking ; Said Zahari: Dark Clouds at Dawn ; Eric Lawlor ; Friends of the Botonical Gardens: ; T N Harper: The End of the Empire and the Making of Malaya. (Telephone 228 2252)
|
| ____________________ The Penang File Issue 26 |