Noon at Five O'Clock: The Short Stories of Arthur Yap

Notes

52 Notes 1 The Yap family employed an amah to look after the infant Arthur Yap during the 1940s at their residence in Kim Seng Road. 2 Mandore: not found in OED, but apparently means “road mender”. See “Mandore Jailed for Theft”, Singapore Free Press, 24 December 1947, p. 5. 3 Singapore Anti Tuberculosis Association, an expatriate voluntary organization that began in 1947. 4 Yaps description of a shop-house with a “court-yard encased by two walls”, which the protagonist views from an upstairs window, appears to correspond to a style of shop house featuring a rear courtyard. However, the description of a dim interior when entering from the back street door may suggest rather an absence of a rear courtyard. In this case, the schoolboy could be viewing from the upstairs window not a rear courtyard, but perhaps an airwell. See “Variations of Shop-house”, Singapore Urban Redevelopment Authority Conservation Guidelines, December 2011. 5 An allusion to the first and second Malayan 5-year Plan (1956–65), which has its origin in the Russian soviet model. It was later deployed as a title for Singaporean public housing policies. 6 From September 1963 to August 1965, Singapore was a member of the Federation of Malaysia. 7 William Wordsworth defined poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions recollected in tranquillity”, “Preface” to Lyrical Ballads. 8 The preceding two sentences are recycled and reworked in “The Story of a Mask”. 9 Plum blossoms are traditionally used as decoration during the Chinese New Year. 10 Occurring in late January to early February, the longest and most important festivity in the Chinese calendar. 11 One of Yap’s neighbours at River Valley Road was an endearing mentally handicapped child. 12 Singapore Television broadcasts began in 1963. In June 1966, Singapore’s former second Chief Minister and later Malaysian High Commissioner to Australia, 51-year-old Lim Yew Hock disappeared for ten days. He was subsequently discovered, after a much publicized search in Australia. The press subsequently reported on his association with 19-year-old Sydney stripper Sandra Nelson. 53 n o t e s 13 Here perhaps, we encounter Yap’s first sustained representation of local speech patterns. Rather than the democratized Singlish/patois suggested in “two mothers in a hdb playground” (1980), here ten years earlier, we encounter the standard, studied, English of an upper middle class urban Singaporean neighbourhood of the 1960s. The expression “without so much as a sign of exhaustion” is reminiscent of curious constructions of good Chinese Singaporean English. 14 An allusion to Alexander Pope’s “For fools rush in where angels fear to tread”, An Essay on Criticism (1711). 15 Chinese Mid-Autumn (harvest festival), occurring in September–October. 16 The passing away of this minor ritual in Singapore about the mid-1960s was an indirect effect of Westernization, modernization and perhaps redevelopment. 17 Bearing in mind Singapore’s immigrant past, the narrator’s description of grand-uncle and grand-aunt’s background as “uncomplicated” (28) seems disingenuous. 18 A monetary gift given on special occasions. 19 In Chinese tradition, red is the colour of prosperity. 20 In 1961, the passage of the Women’s Charter put polygamy to an end. However, even prior to that, it was only practiced by the wealthy elite among Chinese Singaporeans. 21 The phrase is also used in a more nuanced sense in Yap’s last short story, “A Beginning and a Middle without an Ending”, which features an imagined representation of twentyfirst century, Singapore. 22 In the case of marriage to a second wife, the first wife, along with other relatives of the groom, would be served tea by the new wife at a traditional Chinese tea ceremony. 23 A festive red banner sash is traditionally hung over the front door to ward off evil. 24 This is the sole reference in Yap’s short stories to government housing. Queenstown, a Singapore Improvement Trust public housing estate in Singapore begun in 1953. Mei Ching’s name echoes that of a section of the estate, Mei Chin (meaning beautiful view” in Mandarin“). 25 Katong Park is not far from Marine Parade where the Yap family relocated from River Valley Road in the 1970s. It was a popular Singaporean public space from the 1930s to the 1960s. A decade or so later, the time in which the action of “None the Wiser” is set, the recent redevelopment of the East Coast had left the park landlocked, reduced and neglected though still...