As is typical for most Singaporeans, my election of a compulsory second language at primary school was taken for granted. While some of us would pick a third language (usually European or other Asian languages) at secondary school or junior college, the connection between ethnicity and the choice of a second language seems inextricable. Is it because Singapore is a country where the vast majority of seven-year-olds entering primary school are able to study a second language that is culturally adjacent to or resonant with their ethnicities, with English being the dominant and theoretically egalitarian force in the classroom?

Statistically, the three most common races in Singapore are Chinese, Malay and Indian. When I attended primary school, most of my schoolmates would pick their second language based on heritage: Mandarin, Malay and Tamil respectively. While this also meant that those of my friends who were Eurasian or racially mixed had a harder time selecting, I did not recall any of us choosing a second language with which we did not have at least some form of cultural affiliation. There are manifold complexities and ramifications surrounding (i) why these are the only government approved choices for a second language (e.g. why not a different Chinese dialect, bahasa variety or language family of the Indian subcontinent), (ii) the post-colonial status of English as a first language in Singapore, (iii) the interaction of second languages and socio-cultural privilege, and (iv) the intersection of language and race, which are outside the scope of this rumination on a specific aspect of personal poetic practice.

Being based in London for the past 12 years, there have been times when I have had to interrogate my relationship with English. During my first poetry reading here in 2012, an audience member asked if the poems I had written and performed were translated. However, I have never had to similarly scrutinise my relationship with Mandarin until recently. Among my friends from countries Mandarin as a first language, it is almost common knowledge that Singaporeans have a comparatively lacklustre command of Mandarin (though not unexpected of any second language) and it has become natural not to assume otherwise. My Shanghainese friends are always impressed whenever I throw out affectations of 成语 or four character idiomatic speech, notwithstanding superficial biological proximity that certain groups in society conflate rather than comprehend.

This changed during the course of working on my next poetry collection, a central sequence of which comprises poems inspired by Mandopop songs by Singaporean artists. The ways in which poems in this sequence interact with my chosen Mandopop songs are varied, including reinterpretations of lyrics (e.g. mistranslations and erasure poetry), reflections on personal relationships inspired by the subject matter of those songs (e.g. a song about the city’s longing is used as a launchpad to examine parental relationships*), and structural decisions (e.g. a poem inspired by a song about miscommunication is written as an abecedarian**). I was also interested in the presentation of Mandarin in a poem written in English, as well as the interactions and tensions between both languages on the page, how meaning is forged in each language system but also cumulatively.

Why Mandopop, and why Singaporean Mandopop in particular? At secondary school, my music choices were inundated with Western pop (e.g. Snow Patrol, U2 and Coldplay) but sprinkled with a few Mandopop songs from Singaporean artists who made, at that time, an unprecedented leap to bigger Chinese-speaking markets like Mainland China and Taiwan. In that category, three names dominated the Singaporean consciousness: JJ Lin, Stefanie Sun and Tanya Chua. No other Singaporean Mandopop artist has objectively achieved similar success since the date of this article.

Last summer, I made the move in-house to a fund after seven years at a law firm in the City of London. During the two months between jobs, I travelled around Asia, including revisiting favourite spots in Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan. Perhaps it was being surrounded by pockets of Asian languages, or just being back in Asia more generally, that precipitated a subconscious desire to listen to these decade-old Mandopop songs again. The undertow was obsessive; I scoured the archives of Google and YouTube for ancient interviews, articles, reviews and live performances on these songs and artists. Listening to this music, having spent more than a decade apart, was strange in so many ways—familiar, yes, but I found that the melodies and lyrics took on new dimensions, even ironies. Was it the comparative ticking of lived experience vis-à-vis a pimply
secondary school boy? I felt like I had finally understood those songs for the first time. Mandarin became another instrument in the symphony, playing its buoyant string of inflections against piano, violin, drums. The Singaporean perspective became more identifiable in those songs—its easy celebration of progress amid a palpable fear of loss. Eliot put it much more eloquently: the end of all our exploring / will be to arrive where we started / and know the place for the first time.

Notes
* This poem was first published online by Magma Poetry and part of a submission which was shortlisted for the Magma Poetry Pamphlet Competition 2024. The poem can be accessed HERE

** This poem was first published in the August / September 2024 issue of The London Magazine and shortlisted for The London Magazine Poetry Prize 2024. The poem can be accessed HERE

Jerrold Yam is a Singaporean lawyer based in London and the author of three poetry collections: Intruder (Ethos Books), Scattered Vertebrae (Math Paper Press) and Chasing Curtained Suns (Math Paper Press). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Ambit, Magma, The London Magazine, Oxford Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Wasafiri, Washington Square Review and The Straits Times. He was recently shortlisted in The London Magazine’s Poetry Prize 2024. He has been a featured author at the Ledbury Poetry Festival, London Book Fair, Poetry Festival Singapore and Singapore Writers Festival. His poems, which are included in the Singapore-Cambridge GCE A-Level and O-Level syllabi, have been translated into Mandarin and Spanish.

We are delighted to host four writers in virtual residence, with support from the National Arts Council of Singapore. Joyce Chua, Marylyn Tan, Lisabelle Tay and Jerrold Yam will be in virtual residence from June to December 2024.