Chapter 8: Crabs, Coffee and Cantonese Opera

One of our colleagues from the London branch office was in town. Bruce was an account manager from the UK Corporate Finance team and he was in Singapore to attend a training session on “Prevention of Money Laundering”. Nicky, KZ, Ju and I had known this guy for two to three years. He was a humorous gentleman who was very interested in Chinese culture. So Nicky suggested taking him to somewhere memorable on the night before his departure. A Cantonese opera performance.

The opera was held at the famous Esplanade. This durian-shaped theatre house is the place to watch free but “difficult to understand” performances by symphonic bands, musicians and vocalists who are not so well-known, affordable but “not easy to appreciate” contemporary dances, not costly but “very cultural” performances by famous musicians together with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, and expensive but “easily accepted by the public” operas and musicals, like Mama Mia.

Since the opera was starting at eight o’clock, we reached the Esplanade early to have our dinner. Ju suggested having a seafood dinner at a popular seafood restaurant there.

“Hey Ju, have you forgotten that KZ is a vegetarian?” I nudged.
“Oops!” Ju realized then.
“Don’t worry. Got vegetables,” said KZ calmly.

So we proceeded to have our dinner at that popular seafood restaurant. The four omnivores could not decide on whether to have chili crabs or black pepper crabs, so Ju ordered both. She ordered one more steamed fish and two vegetarian dishes for KZ, one stir-fried greens and another tofu on hotplate, and reminded the waitress sternly not to add any garlic or onions into these two dishes.

When the two plates of crabs arrived at the table, the exhilarated Bruce blurted a “Wow!” so loudly that the patrons on the next table turned around and looked. He explained to us excitedly that he had never seen such enormous crabs in the United Kingdom before.

“Are all Singapore crabs so big?” Bruce asked Ju avidly.
“No, Singapore crabs are small,” explained Ju. “These crabs are from Sri Lanka.”

Yes, Singapore relies heavily on foreign talents. We had a Malaysian to climb the Everest for us; we formed a national table tennis team with China Chinese and gave them permanent resident status so that we could compete with China during the Olympics; we even employed a Caucasian to develop our Sentosa island. We will stop at nothing if we could make use of foreign talents shamelessly to impress the world. Including crabs.

Bruce was indeed impressed by the size of the crabs though they were not locals. He was happy posing and taking pictures of the plate of crabs, the crab claws and the crab shells with his digital camera. He even requested a waitress to take a group picture of five human beings and four crabs.

“Why is he so excited?” Nicky whispered to me. “Hasn’t he seen any crabs before?”
“Hey, who posed and took picture with a plate of fish and chips in London?” I replied softly.

Nicky pretended he did not hear me and continued digging and eating the meat from the crab claw.

Our dinner finished early and we even had time to stroll by the expensive shops in the Esplanade. Bruce had been looking forward to the opera for the whole day so while most Singaporeans were late for five minutes, the five of us were already sitting in the Recital Studio fifteen minutes before the starting time. As expected, most of the audiences were old Cantonese uncles and aunties who were dressing up for a wedding dinner. What we did not expect was to see quite a number of Caucasians who were dressing up to watch The Phantom of the Opera. It was ironical that while more young Chinese Singaporeans were struggling with speaking and writing basic Chinese, more Westerners had learnt to appreciate the Chinese culture.

When the opera finally started, KZ, Ju and I were delighted to find English and Chinese subtitles flashed on the narrow white screen above the stage. I would not expect our Hong Konger Nicky to have any difficulty understanding the opera so the subtitles should be optional for him. True indeed, he did not even take a glance at the subtitles. As for Bruce, he was busy nodding his head so that he could read the subtitles above and watches the actions below. Suddenly I realized that he looked like the Hidamari No Tami Japanese toy on my desk that moved its head up and down in slow motion.

The whole performance was actually consisted of six mini operas, which Nicky said were classic Cantonese operas. The first one was about two famous warriors during the epoch of The Three Kingdoms, Zhang Fei and Ma Chao, who had to quarrel for half an hour before finally engaging in battle. The two warriors were played by two aunties dressed in modern clothing. I heard Bruce whispering to Nicky: “Geez, I had long mistaken Zhang Fei to be a guy!”

The second opera was about Wang Zhao Jun, one of the Four Beauties of ancient China, who was also one of Emperor Han Yuan Di’s concubine. The king of Eastern Xiongnu, a.k.a. some kind of barbarian state, requested to marry a Han Chinese princess on the basis of “peace marriage”. Wang Zhao Jun volunteered and so in the opera, it related how she rode a horse and left for the border with an imperial official, one soldier and two palace maids. One part where I felt very illogical in the opera was the way these people traveled. The soldier would scout the land before Wang Zhao Jun and the imperial official followed in their horse, and the palace maids followed behind, with one of them carrying Wang Zhao Jun’s famous Pi Pa, a kind of Chinese musical instrument that looked like a guitar. Either the horses were moving very slowly, or we had got three potential Olympics long distance runners there.

There was some problem in the English subtitles as well. There was a part where Wang Zhao Jun sang that she would be leading her life somewhere so far away from the country, and she was worried that nobody would know of her death in the future, and that nobody would be there to bury her bones. The translated English subtitle was “Today I go far away not knowing who would bury me when I die tomorrow”.

The third opera was about an unfaithful wife who forced her husband, a poor scholar, to divorce her so that she could marry a rich man. The unfaithful wife sang and nagged at the poor husband about how she had suffered with him, while the poor husband sang and envisaged on how they should make it through the hardship together. Finally, the unfaithful wife admitted that she had an affair with a rich man and the infuriated poor husband signed on the divorce paper.

“Poor guy,” Ju whispered softly to me.
“Yeh, but the story could’ve been more interesting. The script’s too simple.”
“How?”
“Like say, the affair could rankle the husband so much that in a fit of anger, he takes up the axe besides the pile of woods there and slash the wife from the back. Then he drags her behind that wooden frame and after a while comes out with lumps of rocks wrapped up that symbolizes the wife has been chopped into pieces. There could be a few long pieces of moving blue cloths at the back of the stage to symbolize a river, and the husband walks toward it and throws the chopped body parts of the wife into the river.”

Ju stared at me so hard that her eyes were like two torch lights shining on my face in a dark cinema.

“Have you been waiting too much Hong Kong triads movies?” Ju hissed.
“No, but I’ve been watching the news,” I whispered back.

The fourth opera was a part taken from the Dream of the Red Chamber. This time, Nick was quick enough to tell Bruce that the young master Jia Bao Yu was played by a female, before Bruce mistaken that Jia Bao Yu was a gay.

The fifth opera was about how Diao Chan, another one of the Four Beauties of ancient China, who seduced Lu Bu the warrior during the epoch of The Three Kingdoms. Together with Lu Bu, all of us except Ju had our eyes fixed on Diao Chan as well. She was the prettiest, slenderest and youngest female performer in the whole night. Especially the part where this pretty lady in pink dress and shining head gear performed a fan dance for Lu Bu.

The last opera was about the romance between a water fairy and a poor scholar. Well, they sure had lots of poor scholars in ancient China, not the rich ones we had in present days. By then, Bruce had finally understood that most of the male roles in Cantonese opera, especially those poor scholars, were played by women. Then I heard him whispering to Nicky: “Why don’t they employ more guys to play the male roles?”

After the Cantonese opera, we were rather hungry due to the early dinner so Nicky suggested that we go head towards the couple of cafes at the Fullerton One. Ju pointed out that one particular café was rather famous for its cakes, like its strawberries shortcake, so we decided to give it a try. We chose to sit by the river instead of in the air-conditioned cafe because Bruce wanted to “feel the natural air”. It was one against four, but he was the guest.

We ordered a couple of cakes and desserts, and Bruce asked the waitress if he could have a glass of iced water.

“Sorry sir, we don’t serve iced water,” replied the waitress coldly. “We have different coffees and teas on the menu, maybe you would like to take a look?”
“Isn’t now a bit late for coffee?” asked Bruce.
“Er… we have Evian mineral water too.”

Bruce pondered for a while, and then replied: “Just give me a cup of coffee then.”
“Do you want a cappuccino, latte or …”
“No, just a normal brewed hot coffee. Thank you.”
“Oh… okay, thank you sir. Let me repeat your orders…”

After the waitress had done repeating our orders and left the table, Bruce turned to me and asked: “I thought the New Water and desalination plant have already solved the water shortage issue in Singapore?”