By Hong Hai
Friday 13, May 1969. I was ready to head downtown from Petaling Jaya (PJ) to Kuala Lumpur (KL) to spend an evening with bachelor friends when the phone rang. It was my friend in KL.
“Don’t leave your house. Turn on the news.”
Over our small black-and-white TV came the shock announcement of a curfew.
Had the call come a minute later, I would have driven along the Federal Highway where many Chinese were killed. It was the grisly beginning of the worst racial riot in Malaysian history.
For two weeks, my three bachelor friends and I were curfewed in a single-storey bungalow in PJ. My housemates were also close friends – Chinese, Indian and Malay. As the riots raged around us, each of us quietly wondered: if attacked by a racial mob, would we protect one another and likely die, or be a bystander as the mob attacked one of us? Fortunately, our loyalty to one another was never tested.
Shortly after, I joined the Singapore Economic Development Board, intending it as an interim move until the situation settled down in Malaysia. But I was swept headlong into Singapore society and had no chance to look back.
But I have always cherished my Malaysian roots.
Growing up in Muar
I grew up in a shophouse on Jalan Bakri, Muar with six siblings. My parents taught in Chinese schools. We pursued our interests by reading. I dipped into my meagre savings from cutting lunches and bought Hendrik van Loon’s The Story of Mankind in 1956 for the princely sum of $1.20. I still have the book, its yellowed pages still a delight to read.
My parents emigrated to Malaya in their early twenties from Quanzhou in Fujian, China. They inculcated in us a love of learning. It was their greatest gift to us.
Growing up with an English education while raised by Chinese-educated parents can give you cultural schizophrenia. I loved English literature, idolised Western movie stars, and was seduced by liberal democratic ideals. At age 16, I even won a state oratorical contest recounting the times of Abraham Lincoln and his Gettysburg address: Government of the people, for the people, and by the people….
Yet at home, my role model was my father who supported Mao and the authoritarian Communist Party. I cheered with him when the mighty Americans could not vanquish the backward Chinese in the Korean War.
Sometimes I felt confused. Was I an Anglophile or a Chinese chauvinist?
Resolving cultural schizophrenia
Later in life, I resolved this internal conflict when I realised that we are all complex beings with different selves and roles. It is more important that we knew our deeper values. Mine was essentially Confucian, the result of my upbringing.
On governance, it was presumptuous of the West to proselytise liberal democracy to all cultures as the ultimate for mankind. Political scientist Francis Fukuyama in his early celebrated essay, “The End of History”, predicted that liberal democracy would dominate the world and history would end there. He has since recanted that view.
In my recent book, The Rule of Culture, I suggest that benevolent authoritarianism has worked well in a China steeped in 2,500 years of Confucianism. Liberal democracy is the opiate of the West where they crave unfettered freedom at the expense of dysfunctional societies.
Practising Chinese Medicine
At age 54, I studied traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) after recovering from ill health with TCM treatment and being convinced of its efficacy. I discovered that Chinese medicine is not just a system of healing. It is also a culture of balance and internal harmony, which may explain why sometimes it works better than Western medicine.
I graduated after 6 years of part-time studies. Later, I started Renhai Clinic and published some books on science and philosophy in TCM with the view to showing Western medical professionals that there is an alternative way of healing based on empirical science and nature’s remedies.
Unity in diversity
In its wisdom, the Singapore government encourages each race to appreciate its own culture. At the same time, we celebrate a Singapore culture that includes roti prata, char kuay teow, kiasuism, and an eccentric obsession with orderliness and predictability. We are a montage of cultures, but our love for Singapore binds us.
Being comfortable in our own skin is an important part of resilience.
Published by Professor Hong Hai
Hong Hai was Professor and Dean of the college of business at Nanyang Technological University, CEO of Haw Par Corporation, and a former MP. He has been a lifelong learner, having studied engineering, economics, philosophy, Chinese literature and TCM. His book ,The Rule of Culture: Corporate and State Governance in China and East Asia (Routledge 2020), discusses East Asian cultures and governance. https://www.routledge.com/The-Rule-of-Culture-Corporate-and-State-Governance-in-China-and-East-Asia/Hai/p/book/9780367132941
