Frozen in Time

by Carmen Lum (Singapore)

Making a local connection China

They welcomed me with open arms. Exclamations filled the room as strangers crowded around me to take a good hard look. “We worked on the farm together,” one announced, grabbing my hand. “We grew up together. I remember the times we had to clean and cook every day,” a second reminisced with a chuckle. “My mother bought her as a baby despite her sickness. She was a fighter.” With a faint smile, the eldest declared. Everyone fondly remembered my Grandmother, my Popo, one way or another. In the 1930s, my grandparents journeyed from China to Singapore to escape the war. After years of selling coffee and toast, she came to own her own coffee shop. Opium and gambling soon became a constant at home. Every dollar earned went to pay off her husband’s growing debts. Still, on her few trips back to her village, she brought home second hand televisions and fans. Despite her poverty, she still cared for those poorer than her. I decided to make a trip to Fuzhou, China. I wanted to see for myself how she had lived. The farm she laboured in, the house she grew up in. I reached out to a distant relative. While not blood related, she considered herself my Aunt. The villagers were one big family she said. The visit was settled. Crowded city skyscrapers gave way to endless fields. City traffic dissipated into the occasional passing car. I kept my gaze on the truckload of pigs travelling alongside us, their eyes betraying sadness. Soon, they turned the corner and disappeared from sight. Not everyone knows where their road will lead. Some do. Standing in front of PoPo’s childhood home, I slowly took it all in. Wooden beams were scattered overhead. Supporting columns strained to stand under the weight of the roof. As I made my way up to the attic, each wooden step creaked with effort. Sunlight fought its way into the dank space through slits in the bamboo, the same way rain would have fallen in. A bicycle lay silently against a wooden chair in a corner, coated with a layer of dust. I closed my eyes and inhaled the musty air. Crickets chirped in the background. This was how she lived. Sold as a child bride into a family where she lived as a maid, she cooked, cleaned and worked in the farm until she was old enough to be married. “She doesn’t eat beef”, my mother once told me. “She used to work on the farm, right next to the cows. She feels like one of them. She can’t bear to eat those who toiled with her”. My mind whirled. Stories fell into place. Descriptions of her childhood took shape. I pictured her scampering down these steps in the morning, waking before the rooster crowed, to work in the farm. I pictured her exhausted frame making its way up the attic after a laborious day, cooling herself with a flimsy bamboo fan. An electric fan now stood in the corner of the attic, a luxury she could not afford then. As the stale attic air filled my lungs, I journeyed back 90 years. I sat down on the bamboo bed frame where she spent long nights suffering from her nearly fatal disease. I stood in kitchen by the stove. The same one she used to refine the recipes of dishes I grew up loving. “No one lives here now. We’re not poor anymore,” my Aunt said softly, interrupting my thoughts. She thanked us for the donations Popo brought back in the past. China’s economy had grown in leaps and bounds. Help was no longer needed. They were welcoming us back to reminisce the good old days. The house, frozen in time, was kept for memories. Back in my Aunt’s apartment, she performed a tea ceremony. As her hands danced across the teapots, steam rose from deftly rinsed cups and fresh brewed tea. My mind flashed back to the same way Popo prepared coffee in her coffeeshop. Silence filled her apartment as we sipped our tea, city lights flashing in a distance. Our eyes locked and we smiled at the memories we now share.