“Mapping Three Lives Through a Red Rooster Chamber Pot” - A Short Story by Elaine Chiew from her amazing debut collection,The Heartsick Diaspora - 2020

“Mapping Three Lives Through a Red Rooster Chamber Pot” - A Short Story by Elaine Chiew from her amazing debut collection,The Heartsick Diaspora - 2020

Gateway  to Elaine Chiew on The Reading Life,

“My Mother’s Ashes” - flash fiction by Elaine Chiew.  Click here to read

“Mapping Three Lives Through a Red Rooster Chamber Pot” is the final of foureteen Short Stories in Elaine Chiew’s highly regarded debut collection of Short Stories.  The stories deal with various aspects of the Diaspora that created modern Singapore, a superlative place by any measure, and the subsequent Diaspora of children of immigrates to London and New York City.  Some stories feature people in desperate poverty, where life is a struggle just to eat.  In a way we see the grandchildren or great grandchildren of immigrants into Singapore from Malaysia or China now living, some as “Crazy Rich Asians” in London, starting chic resturants in New York City, trying to be a writer or a corporate drone.  The stories Show us people trying to keep in touch with their ancestral culture, food plays a big part in this, while trying to fit in their new homes.  Chiew shows us a vile xenophobic attack on an elderly Malay/Singapore woman living with her son and daughter in Law in London who wants to go home, a neophyte  writer visited by a Hindu God, and much more.  I have visited Singapore and now, I think understand it better.  One story was a lesson in modern Singaporian art, another showed us life under Japanese occupation.  Another took us into the life of a woman working in a resturant in Florida.

Writing historical Short Stories is not an easy task.  To do it successfully, you must develop both the background and characters with economy.  Today’s story, “Mapping Three Lives Through A Red Rooster Chambef Pot” is one of  the best such Short Stories I have yet read.  It tells the story of a very important group of women imm  igrates, The Samsui Women, from China to Singapore.
I was not famliar with this group so i did a bit of Research.

From Wikepedia

“The term Samsui women (三水妇女; 三水婦女; sān shuǐ fù nǚ) broadly refers to a group of Chinese immigrants who came to Malaya and Singapore between the 1920s and 1940s in search of construction and industrial jobs.[1] Their hard work contributed to the development of the Straits Settlements, both as colonies and later as the new nations of Singapore and Malaysia. Samsui women did manual labour similar to coolies but were more independent.

Around 3,000 Samsui women are believed to have moved to Singapore from China between 1934 and 1938. This migration continued until 1949 when emigration from China was declared illegal.[2]

Samsui women mainly came from Sanshui (Samsui) in Guangdong (Kwangtung) Province, but also from Shunde and Dongguan.[3] About 90% of them were Cantonese, while the rest were Hakka.
In Chinese, these women are referred to as Hong Tou Jin (红头巾; 紅頭巾; hóng tóu jīn), which means "red bandana", because of the red cloth hats they wore.
Coming to Singapore as cheap labourers between the 1920s and 1940s, Samsui women worked mainly in the construction industry and other industries that required hard work.”


A standard cliche in writing about immigrates is to say they helped build a nation.  That is exactly what the Samsui women did.  Their contribution is very much now recognized.  The Singapore Broadcasting Corporation has produced an Award winning 24 part series (partially available on YouTube in Chinese.) The very good 25 minute documentary produced by The BBC has English subtitles.

The story is divided into three segments.

The first segment, Min Fong, samsui woman, 1938 details the very hard life of a young immigrate woman.  She works on a construction site, carry heavy loads.  She lives with numerous others in a communal House.  All the older women are in her business. She has a never correctly diagnosed menstural problem which necessitates her bleeding into a chamber pot brought from China.

The middle section, Katharine, bookkeeper, 1969, takes us 29 years ahead.  Katharinle’s life history has tragic elements but a real estate agent trying to sell her a shophouse thinks she and her husband “reek of money”.  I will leave her story unspoiled but to quote a bit on her connection with the Red Chamber Pot:

“The coffin sat in a death house, and a washbasin with a rooster design had sat on a stool in front of a portrait of the deceased, who was a young-looking samsui woman with a stern expression, as if ever ready to cudgel you around the ears if you sassed her. Inside the washbasin was a cup, complete with toothbrush, toothpaste and a towel. Katharine remembered thinking, what the heck is this, are you supposed to wash your face and brush your teeth before you kowtow to the dead?”

It is the chamber Pot from part one.

The final segment, Heidi, documentary filmmaker, 1996 deals with a woman making a documentary about several very old Samsui women on a return trip to their home area.

All three have trouble frought relationships with men.

There is much more in the story.

As i write my last post on the fourteen stories in Elaine Chiew’s The Heartsick Diaspora I finding myself wishing for many more.  This wonderful collection has helped me get through now 73 days of lockdown and taught me a lot along the way.

From her publisher

“Elaine Chiew is a writer and a visual arts researcher, and editor of Cooked Up: Food Fiction From Around the World (New Internationalist, 2015).
Twice winner of the Bridport Short Story Competition, she has published numerous stories in anthologies in the UK, US and Singapore.
Originally from Malaysia, Chiew graduated from Stanford Law School and worked as a corporate securities lawyer in New York and Hong Kong before studying for an MA in Asian Art History at Lasalle College of the Arts Singapore, a degree conferred by Goldsmiths, University of London.
Elaine lives in Singapore and her book The Heartsick Diaspora, and other stories, will be published by Myriad in 2020.”

I expect great things from Elaine Chiew and hope to follow her work for a long time.

Mel u