I crave your indulgence, dear reader, as I return like a homing pigeon to the subject of scrimping. As the more alert among you may recall from last week’s column, my aunt Selvam displayed a level of thrift of which most modern economists would have approved. Family loyalties aside, I have to admit she was a mere amateur in comparison to a Chinese matriarch, Loo Ping, whom I was privileged to watch up close and personal during a visit to the Bamboo Curtain in the late 90’s. Despite being comfortably ensconced in the soft underbelly of Singapore’s middle class after escaping from mainland China by boat at the tender age of three, Loo Ping had been unable to overcome her historical mind-set with regard to the home country. Mao, Deng, Liu, Zhou and Hu could have cried themselves hoarse about the remarkable strides made by China in terms of food sufficiency but Loo Ping was having none of it: for her this was still the People’s Republic of China where you could never be too certain about your next meal.
It was all very well for the Wall Street Journal to wax eloquent on the subject of “Free Trade Zones” and the economic miracles wrought by the new mandarins but what if there was a sudden shift back to the old “one bowl of kanji” regime? Be prepared was her motto and to this end she indulged in a little harmless kleptomania at the breakfast buffet: with remarkable ingenuity she stowed away eggs, bananas, dimsum and mouldy bits of cheese in a voluminous handbag that she carried with her at all times. Our guide did his best to indoctrinate her with impressive statistics on food production in the New China, to no avail. To her credit, she was generosity itself with her loot sharing the spoils with all and sundry, including our van driver.
Naked ambition proved to be her undoing on a delayed domestic flight when she woke me up to insist I took my packed meal, despite my protests that I wasn’t hungry. “Fork it over,” she mimed in universal sign language and I watched in fascination as she stowed it away in the overhead locker. An hour later, I woke up to discover that Loo Ping had perfected the art of nipping beer from the passing trolley, a feat that should qualify for an Olympics event in terms of speed and hand-eye coordination. Feigning deep sleep, she would be alerted by the squeak of the wheels to the presence of the trolley whereupon one bony hand would emerge with the speed of a striking cobra to grab a can of beer which promptly disappeared into the legendary bag. The airhostesses suspected nothing since the old lady managed a couple of reassuring snores each time they steered their trolleys down the aisle. Pretty soon the bag was filled to overflowing (it was a long flight) and Loo Ping stealthily transferred her loot to the overhead l
ocker.
Unfortunately for her, one of her fellow passengers, a prim, prissy Englishman, had chosen the same spot to store his Aquascutum blazer. As soon as we landed, he leapt up to reclaim his jacket and revert to his natural state of sartorial elegance. Crash, bang, thump went the cans of beer on his silvery, well-groomed mane and splotch…went the airline meal of steamed rice, pak choy and sliced Shanghai chicken in a congealed, sticky mess on his blazer and finally, in one of those movie moments that Tarantino may have envied, the last can of beer bounced on his upturned forehead.
It was the only occasion on the entire trip that I saw Loo Ping at a loss for words: solicitous airhostesses rushed to the Englishman’s aid and then demanded to know, in Mandarin and English, the identity of the bag owner. “Si haito kawakara zei haka wei?” or “Will the owner of this bag containing food items please identify themselves?” It must have been a wrench to part with all those goodies but Loo Ping having realized the game was up, decided to cut her losses. Displaying an alacrity that Usain Bolt may have envied, she raced down the aerobridge without so much as a backward glance.
