What makes us ready for a Singapore beyond Lee Kuan Yew

Sound values ingrained in system

SINGAPORE’S model of good governance, built on the principles of meritocracy, fairness and efficiency, has propelled it to great success.

Future leaders from my generation will have to ensure that this system continues to work well. Fortunately, we have what it takes due to the education we have received that is better than our parents’. That allows us to make the present system work even better.

Values such as industriousness, sensitivity towards cultural differences and strong community spirit continue to be embraced by this generation and are fundamentally ingrained into the Singapore system.

Because of this, Singapore will continue to thrive even after Lee Kuan Yew.

Ephraim Loy, 27, is a final-year social science student at Singapore Management University.
The dangers of playing it safe

MM LEE’S no-nonsense leadership has had an extremely profound impact on the psyche of Singaporeans, and this will not disappear over time. He will never ‘leave’ Singapore even after he has passed on.

However, many youth from my generation are now extremely deferential and respectful towards authority, and dependent on the Government to settle many aspects of life, such as the provision of jobs, educational opportunities and even life partners.

We have become so conditioned to following the tried-and-tested route in Singapore’s secure and predictable environment that we might not be able to adapt quickly should global conditions change drastically or a sudden crisis strike this country, like the current economic crisis.

In these cases, Singapore runs the danger of losing much of what the previous generation has painstakingly built up.

Jonathan Kwok, 24, is an honours student in economics at the National University of Singapore.
Able to think global, but act local

SINGAPORE’S youth are more worldly today compared to our predecessors. We live in a time of affordable and accessible travel, with ample opportunities to broaden our horizons.

Some of my friends and I are fortunate to be able to travel and experience different cultures, politics and means of governance. This allows us to weigh the pros and cons of different systems, making us less narrow-minded and instead, capable of lateral thinking. At the same time, many of us realise that the grass is not always greener on the other side. Home is still where our hearts are, so we will embrace our overseas lessons with a mind to returning home to contribute to Singapore’s future progress.

With these life experiences and outward-looking attitudes, I am confident my generation will continue MM Lee’s good work and produce future leaders.

Tabitha Mok, 22, is a fifth-year medical student at the University of Western Australia.
Idealistic with dose of pragmatism

I AM confident that Singapore will not just ’survive’ past MM Lee, or to quote Mr Ho Kwon Ping (‘Singapore beyond Lee Kuan Yew’, ST, April 22), ‘muddle its way through’ if the People’s Action Party’s leadership renewal goes awry.

Years of world-class education have given us the worldliness and vision to imagine bold change for Singapore – for the better. Hence, our constant thirst for success, desire for greater civil liberties, and courage to ask hard questions of those in power.

But we are not consumed entirely by our own idealism. It is tempered by a good dose of pragmatism. We know where our limits lie, and we know too much is at stake to start a riot. Instead, we try creative ways to work around the restrictions. We share ideas on blogs and Facebook. We set up campaigns to raise awareness about issues such as environmentalism.

I believe for every youth lost to apathy or emigration, there is one here willing to stand up and be counted when push comes to shove.

Eisen Teo, 24, is an honours student in history at NUS.
Material comforts spur us on

A LEGACY of MM Lee is the creation of a society that places economic progress at the fore of its priorities.

It is a system that emphasises a rigorous education, hard work, perseverance and developing intellect.

My generation has grown up in this environment and we cherish the material comforts this system engenders: stellar careers, nice houses and a beautiful, prosperous and peaceful city. We have come to expect these as the minimal standard of living, from which we constantly push for higher ground.

We want to earn bigger bucks, have nicer houses, get promotion at work and have a city that ranks higher year-on-year on the ‘Best Cities’ list. We are trained to be competitive and reap what we sow. We don’t want to jeopardise our material comforts by backsliding on our work ethic.

This is what will compel us to continue striving hard to move Singapore forward – beyond MM Lee or any political party.

Jason Zhou, 23, is a third-year economics student from SMU. He is currently on exchange at Wirtsch�rftsuniversit�t Wien in Vienna.

For fresh grads, a Catch-22 situation

IT HAS been nine months and 10 days since I graduated – for me, a transitional period that I call bittersweet.

Now, with a recent letter from the Central Provident Fund Board requesting I repay in cash the amount withdrawn for my university education, I’m reminded that I am among the statistics of fresh graduates struggling to land a job in the current global economic downturn.

Since I graduated in July, I have sent a total of 32 resumes to statutory boards, government ministries, private financial institutions, etc.

Six companies replied – five to offer me an interview, one to reject me.

Though my peers might have sent out more cover letters and resumes, I believe there is a growing sentiment of depression felt equally by us all – we might have consigned ourselves to the waiting room of Limbo, considering the need to seek a psychiatrist.

More companies have frozen their headcounts, others have retracted job offers – as has happened with a few of my friends. Still others are cutting back on hiring fresh graduates with little or no working experience.

Indeed, after seven months of trying, I even allowed myself to be coaxed by a licensed representative of a leading life insurance company in Singapore into taking the Capital Markets & Financial Advisory Services Module 5 examination (requisite for all representatives of licensed and exempted financial advisers).

This, even though the social stigma currently attached to the job of a financial adviser clashes with my introverted personality.

In the meantime, it seems I’m caught in a perennial waiting game.

I send resumes and cover letters, then wait to hear from the human resource personnel. I take screening and personality tests, then wait for the actual job interview, where I wait again for the inevitable but dreaded question: ‘What is the reason for your unemployment gap?’

Call it a Catch-22 for fresh graduates: we don’t have the experience needed for the job, but how can we prove ourselves if we cannot get anyone to hire us in the first place?

The market, having shifted from a seller’s market to a buyer’s market in the months before I graduated, does not look set to improve – quite the contrary, in fact.

Come this July, the graduating class of undergraduates from the three local universities will be unleashed into the job market, and competition might well intensify.

This influx is one more concern, especially for those like me.

I read sociology, considered a general degree, which I had thought would offer me considerable options in the working world.

After all, my peers who opted out of the honours track and hence graduated a year earlier than I did are all working in very different professions: sales, teaching, banking, communications and even airspace management, to name but a few.

But it seems my repeated tries are telling me otherwise.

While I do not disparage the discipline for which I have much respect, I do in hindsight wonder if it was prudent for me to have chosen my major out of interest rather than practical reasons.

Now, I am dejected, and at times worried that the woes of my unemployed status will spill over into other areas of my life.

Wallowing in self-misery, however, is not a solution.

In the meantime, I have chosen to give tuition, which has been a really rewarding experience.

As my students grow and improve, I find myself with more assignments coming my way. Even more, I am determined to keep my chin up, though I still long for the day when I can be truly proud of that graduation portrait of mine silently residing in the living room.

The writer, 25, graduated from NUS last year with a degree in sociology. He is currently giving tuition while applying feverishly for a job.

Helping dad cross the digital divide

WE ALL know that technology makes our lives easier. Or so I thought, until my dad became my friend on Facebook.

Ever young at heart, he decided some time last year that it would be cool to jump on Mr Mark Zuckerberg’s social networking bandwagon.

But what started out as a cyber-paradise for him soon morphed into a maze of hyperlinks, buttons and weird things called ’superpokes’.

‘Why are these people poking me?’ he once asked innocently.

Because they can and they have nothing better to do, I replied dryly, confident that my answer was sufficient and, with any luck, even insightful.

But his questions kept coming.

Why am I getting so much junk mail from Facebook? How do you upload photos? What does tag mean?

Suffice to say, I have been less than patient with him on many occasions.

How can he possibly not know?

For me – and many of my generation, fiddling with new gadgets and software has become second nature, sometimes even foolproof.

But not for someone like my dad.

For him, technology often spells confusion, not convenience.

I have seen him give up his sleek touch-screen mobile phone for an older model, so it would not make calls on his behalf.

He has asked me how to use a thumb drive, and he forgets how to operate the video recorder at home.

Once, instead of Googling, he pored through an outdated encyclopaedia to find out if a cucumber is a fruit or vegetable.

But for all his backward moments, I can understand why my dad feels so distanced from technology.

After all, he did not grow up with PlayStations and hi-fi stereos in the house.

When he was my age, music played from gramophones, not iTunes; and his first cellphone was the size of a sledgehammer.

So it is no wonder that, unlike me, he does not view modern trappings like 3G phones and Facebook as necessities.

To him, they are luxuries, hence the apparent aloofness.

For all this and more, I must admit that I have been rather unfair to my dad – he is, after all, my technological enabler.

I have been so caught up with e-mail and scribbling on virtual walls that I have taken my readiness with technology for granted.

After all, who bought the computer at home? Who taught me how to use the keyboard? And who pays the Internet bill?

Without my parents I might never have had access to technology, much less be bothered by my dad’s questions.

If anything, at least it shows that he bothers. We always long for our parents to understand us better, so why push them away when they are trying to cross the digital divide?

And while my dad’s foray into the realm of technology has backfired time after time, I think I would actually want to be like him when I grow up, when technology is beyond me and it is my turn to ask the questions.

Because nobody wants to be irrelevant, and technology is always easier when somebody shows you how.

How does your school ‘brand’ you?

Values, not brand name

I SPENT my junior college days in Hwa Chong, a notably premier institution whose achievements include having produced 49 President’s Scholars – a record among junior colleges here.

But what matters more to me are the values it inculcated in me.

My identity stemmed greatly from its can-do mindset, and I was constantly encouraged to break boundaries. I still vividly remember its philosophy: ‘Live with Passion, Lead with Compassion.’

And, staying true to our Chinese origins, I was encouraged to adopt a global perspective and yet remain culturally aware of our history and traditions.

These shaped me more than just the fact that I came from a ‘premier’ school.

Last month, The Straits Times reported that Hwa Chong has a four-generation teaching crew. I think the desire of alumni to return attests to the strength of its ethos.

Berton Lim, 21, is a first-year business administration student at NUS.

Branding is indispensable

WHICH school one attended is almost a requisite feature in introductory small talk among youth.

We spend large parts of our time in school, so it is only logical for us – or even adults – to associate the branding of a school with its ‘products’.

Emphasis on branding is not new, and has taken on new levels in recent times.

In a 2004 Wall Street Journal article, Raffles Junior College was dubbed the ‘Gateway to the Ivy League’ for its ‘cognitive produce’. Ivy League admissions officers candidly declared how brand names helped them in making the decision whether to accept or reject an applicant.

More recently, old boys from Hwa Chong lobbied for a nearby Circle Line MRT station to be named after their school.

For youth with little else but an education, school branding is indispensable.

After all, the easiest way for me to judge someone else at face value is on grounds of his academic affiliations and I expect the same scale to be exacted on me. Call me judgmental, but it’s the sad truth that we all are.

Rueben Tan, 20, has a place to read law at NUS later this year.

Caught in the middle

WHEN I was in secondary school six years ago, my school’s academic ranking was average – neither ‘neighbourhood’ nor ‘elite’.

Such rankings affect the way students think of themselves.

Among peers in places like tuition centres, I felt inferior to those from ‘elite’ schools – their pride in their grades was always evident. Others from lower-ranked schools displayed their hostility by ignoring me, lumping me in the same league as the ‘elite’ students.

After completing my A levels at a ‘neighbourhood’ junior college, I worked as an intern in a media company with others from top junior colleges who held scholarships.

I made it a point to work doubly hard to prove myself and, fortunately, my tenacity and passion – along with a friendly disposition – helped me dispel prejudices.

Not everything is about the uniform I used to wear.

Eunice Quek, 22, is a final-year English major at NTU.

Bucking the trend

THERE’S an old joke which goes: How many Victoria Junior College (VJC) students does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: One to change it. The whole school to cheer him on. The joke pokes fun at the over-enthusiasm of VJC students, but there are 16 others like it, ribbing at every junior college’s stereotype.

It’s also pretty telling that a common ice-breaker in Singaporean conversation is ‘Which school were you from?’ Many youth, myself included, probably find it tempting to pigeonhole others and rank ourselves based on alma mater.

But brands are fast becoming relics.

Recently, schools like Catholic and Meridian junior colleges are carving their own niches in Knowledge and Inquiry and Project Work respectively.

I also have schoolmates from ‘neighbourhood’ schools like Kranji and Bishan Park Secondary who scored 6 A1s for their O levels. For every stereotype, there are always individuals who will buck the trend.

Chong Joe En, 17, is a humanities student at ACJC.

‘Course identities’ for the polytechnics

A POLYTECHNIC student rarely gets ‘branded’ according to his school, but rather, the course he is enrolled in.

For example, mass communications students are supposedly individualistic and the life of the party. Business studies students are professional and well-dressed, while early childhood students are caring and pleasant-mannered.

In time, these oft-observed qualities develop into a ‘course identity’ and as long as you are in the course, you carry its trademarks.

One downside is getting stereotyped according to your course of study. But on the lighter side, such identities are usually the result of casual, fun observations and rarely come back to haunt the people associated with them.

Bryan Toh, 16, is a first-year mass communications student at Ngee Ann Polytechnic.

Youth elitism undesirable but inevitable

BE IT parents or relatives who use their children’s achievements in games of one-upmanship, or an education system overly focused on the segregation of achievers from non-achievers, we have been indoctrinated with the idea that there is an upper strata of ‘top’ schools where only the ‘best’ study.

And just as adults derive a sense of superiority from factors such as income or profession, it is also a characteristic human failing for us youth to label ourselves and feel good based on the brand of our schools.

I am from a perceived top junior college and the manner by which my peers and I compared, envied and condescended among ourselves reflected a broader societal emphasis on ranks, results and achievements.

It was only as I grew older and started to mix with friends from other schools that I realised such notions of self-worth were just meaninglessly elitist.

Nonetheless, as long as society continues to place a premium on brand names and ranking, elitism will probably remain inevitable.

Jeremy Teh, 21, has a place to read law at NUS.

‘Elite’ isn’t the only way to go

I ONCE thought I was being subversive by choosing a polytechnic over a junior college.

After all, I had attended a so-called elite secondary school where students aim for top junior colleges, go on to ace their A levels, land prestigious scholarships, an Ivy League education and soar through corporate ranks at lightning speed.

It is a stereotype, sure, but I think the person who came up with the phrase ‘there is no smoke without fire’ made a lot of sense.

In some ways, this was the elite path my school was setting us all up for.

Only, I didn’t feel very elite at all.

In my first semester of Secondary 1, I held the record for the lowest Higher Chinese Common Test score across the entire level.

The incident was emblematic of my four years there – scraping through to the next level by the skin of my teeth, and I believe, the grace of a very good God.

As you can imagine, my time there did little for my fragile teenage self-esteem and I was miserable.

I decided to put an end to all of this by opting for what I thought was a very different route – a polytechnic diploma in design.

I took pride when my friends gasped in awe and respect because they thought I was being so brave, and I even dissed my friends in junior college for not yet knowing what they wanted to do with their lives.

But what I did not quite realise until recently was how I never quite broke away from the culture of elitism I tried to run away from.

I did go to polytechnic, but I was enrolled in one of Singapore’s most prestigious design schools there.

I then went on to snag a full undergraduate scholarship to study film in New York, and later attained a master’s degree in international law in Washington DC.

Subversive?

Turns out I was anything but.

But I’m glad at least I did it on my terms, my own way, because my life would have turned out so differently if I had chosen the other path.

Fact is, achievement matters in Singapore and we must ‘get there’ eventually.

But I’ve found there’s some wiggle room in how we arrive – ‘elite’ isn’t the only way to go.

School’s a journey, not an end in itself

I KNEW I was from a different school of thought when my colleague, with a perplexed look, asked me what the word gatal meant.

I tried my best to put across an explanation in proper English. I told her gatal, literally ‘itchy’ in Malay, is also slang for being perverted or lewd. Offended that someone had used the word to describe her, she angrily declared she was no such thing.

It was now my turn to be confounded.

Singlish is second nature to me. I went to a neighbourhood school where my classmates and I exchanged jokes that would have probably made little sense to those who hail from the more ‘elite’ schools. I had assumed everyone else was as well versed in everyday patois.

Which leads me to the elite and non-elite divide, or as I like to call it, the atas versus the non-atas. (That plain enough for you?) In fact, I was oblivious to this distinction until I joined my current company, where the majority of workers are Singaporeans.

One of the first conversation starters was always, ‘Which school did you go to?’, and never ‘What work experience do you have?’. That second question comes only after I reply to the first: Commonwealth Secondary School.

You see, it was an unfamiliar name to the alumni of schools like Raffles Girls’, Methodist Girls’ and River Valley High. They have, so to speak, brand recognition, sparking an entire debate I did not quite get.

In my previous workplace, a multinational firm, it did not matter if you were from ABC secondary or XYZ college. What my colleagues and employers, mainly foreigners, were interested in was my work experience.

Is it a Singaporean phenomenon then to have an elitist mentality? Would one rather be considered average in an atas school or above average in a neighbourhood school?

According to a Facebook quiz, I belong to Singapore Chinese Girls’ School, and like to bake and dream about boarding schools, British aristocrats and American high society. Yeah, right.

The closest I have come to a British aristocrat was walking past Buckingham Palace.

Does it matter which school you went to if the destination is the same? I am doing the same kind of work and trying to meet the same deadlines as my colleagues who have a company scholarship.

In fact, if anything, my neighbourhood school background has given me the social skills to relate to more people on the ground.

Instead of a homogenous environment where everyone speaks the same colloquial English, I come from a school where your mother tongue prevails, whether you are speaking or cursing.

I would never ask someone, ‘Which school did you go to?’ because, as the atas person would say: ‘Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.’

Making a difference beyond ‘voluntourism’

I HAVE a cause.

I believe children should not be exploited, especially in a sexual way, and have been educating myself on how I can help prevent this.

I have found that a lot of it comes down to ‘making poverty history’, as the global campaign goes, though I have no illusions of seeing this happen in my lifetime.

Still, it does not stop busloads of young hopefuls like myself from believing we can make someone else’s life better. So we venture to neighbouring countries like Cambodia to do some good, or so we think.

Last month, I visited anti-child trafficking organisation Riverkids just when a group of international school students were there to volunteer for a few days.

Riverkids provides social and educational support for slum families in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, in the hope that the children will not be sold or drop out of school to find work.

The volunteering students were a sweet group, genuinely interested in making the children happy by playing games, going on outings and taking pictures with them. But I was painfully conscious of the poverty that surrounded me and could not help but wonder:

What happens after they leave?

Overseas service learning projects, or ‘voluntourism’, have become increasingly popular among secondary school and junior college students.

School groups generally visit sites in nearby countries to build homes, dig wells, paint murals and interact with the people – activities that make for the ‘real’ way to see a country, as some put it.

I have no doubt the work these volunteers do in the few days does make a difference to lives of the people there.

But I am also aware poverty is a result of systemic problems in a country, like corruption and weak governance; something a happy mural will not change.

Voluntourism can be a starting point for us to taste and see what life outside of our wealthy bubble is like, but if we truly want to help, we cannot let such short trips abroad be our end point.

Rather, we should think of these ’sampler’ trips as launch pads for thought and action in the long term about what we can do to effect positive change.

One model I have come across is a small Singaporean-owned social enterprise called Changiville, a guesthouse in Phnom Penh where girls from Riverkids learn hospitality through a vocational skills programme. This enables them to find steady jobs that pay at least US$65 (S$98) a month after they graduate.

Having job skills means they do not need to turn to prostitution for a living.

Efforts like these are part of a slow and long process. While Changiville’s programmes do not sound as glamorous as roughing it out in slums and brothels for months, they address the gaps that desperately need to be filled.

In some ways, Changiville’s strategic use of resources and understanding of the community’s needs can bring about change more effectively than any short trip to an orphanage would.

The difference is in their end goal: to make the community self-sufficient.

All I ask is that on your next voluntourist trip, consider your volunteer site’s long-term goals and find out how you can be an effective part of them.

Stuffed toys and tubs of Play-Doh are fun for a while, but when the dust settles, would you have left behind a legacy?

Facebook? There’s nothing like face to face

NO, I do not have a Facebook account.

It is Friday night and I am catching up with a group of old friends whom I have not met in a long time. As we start to chat, the first question they ask me is: ‘Eh Bryan, why can’t we find you on Facebook?’

‘Because I don’t have a Facebook account.’

Gasps erupt, as if I’d just said something blasphemous. Sadly, for the few young people like me in today’s world, it is.

Social networking sites have been on teenagers’ ‘Favourites’ list ever since the birth of a certain Friendster. Nowadays, we have sites such as Meebo, Twitter and, of course, the social networking god that is Facebook.

My friends always give me reasons why I should start a Facebook account: It brings convenience into our lives; it lets us lead a healthy social life without actually having to leave our desktops; one can catch up with friends through the chat function, see what’s up in their lives through their photos and even send gifts (albeit virtual ones) to them!

As a student, time is often the one thing that’s not on my side. With Facebook, I could maintain a social life in a less time-consuming way.

There seems to be no downside, right?

Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t believe in leading my social activities through the Internet. I have always preferred good old chats over dinner, or phone conversations. It just provides that extra tangible something which Facebook – or any other social networking site for that matter – doesn’t give.

Which is why I’m not on Facebook.

Sure, it’s interesting to see your friends tag you in pictures, do silly Notes they post or just find an old kindergarten mate, but are we in danger of becoming people who live our social lives on the Net?

I certainly hope not. Because then we’d be slaves to technology, and that wasn’t what technology was created for.

In all fairness, Facebook has its perks, but just not enough for me to make it my social life management device.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get ready for dinner with my friends.

The writer, 17, is a first-year mass communications student at Ngee Ann Polytechnic.

What I’m willing to do while waiting for a job

I’ll do it for free

I WOULD gladly intern for free, were I convinced that the experience would be worth it in my chosen field of journalism.

With hiring freezes in almost all local news media companies, I found many doors shut in my face. So after evaluating my choices, I felt it might be a good idea to work for free at foreign wire companies because the experience might open doors in the future.

Among the many resumes and cover letters I sent out were a few for non-paying internships. The agencies included the Associated Press and CNN.

Money is important, but it becomes secondary to internships that could add lustre to my resume.

Besides, when else could I work for free but when fresh out of school, when I have lower expectations and am not weighed down by monetary responsibilities – yet?

It’s just too bad that even some non-paying internships seem to have stopped accepting applications.

Lee Khai Yan, 22, is a fourth-year student at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, NTU.
Studying through bad times

IN THESE bleak times, I would rather further my studies after graduation than go out to work and settle for lower starting pay.

Pursuing a post-graduate degree is a tempting and practical option. It can be in an area more suited to one’s interest, or perhaps it can offer a different skill set to bolster one’s qualifications.

The opportunity cost of further studies in a gloomy economy is low, as one can be sure of not losing much by way of income in the first year.

Also, with better qualifications, I might be better placed for a higher starting pay upon entering the workforce when the economy picks up.

After all, when you have nothing much to begin with, you have little to lose.

Chew Zhi Wen, 21, is a first-year law student at NUS.
Experience over money

I LACK work experience because of few internship opportunities during university.

But I know that building up relevant skills in the profession I hope to enter – which would be writing or reporting – is vital.

Thus, I’d be willing to do an internship for as little as $500 a month, even though I understand that social science honours graduates get starting salaries of more than $2,500 a month.

After all, when you’re starting out, getting work experience is more important than aiming for a high salary.

But I can’t work for nothing as I cannot expect my parents to continue paying for my living expenses indefinitely.

For me to be able to work at such low pay, the company offering the internship would have to be very reputable (such as a national newspaper or an international news agency). Even then, I would have to give tuition on the side to pay for basic necessities.

Jonathan Kwok, 24, is an honours student in economics at NUS.
Pay us appropriately

I WOULD not hesitate to reject an unpaid internship.

Even though I am still a student, I have to cover my living expenses as I stopped taking an allowance from my parents when I turned 18.

Part-time work would be preferable to an unpaid internship.

Recession or not, I find the culture of students willing to intern for free rather demeaning.

This signals to companies that our education doesn’t even merit a meagre allowance, let alone commensurate pay.

If this culture becomes increasingly pervasive, companies might even come to expect it as the norm to offer unpaid internships, even in robust economic conditions.

As students, we don’t want to go down this slippery slope, do we?

Jason Zhou, 23, is a third-year economics student at SMU. He is now on an exchange programme at Wirtsch�rftsuniversit�t Wien in Vienna.

QING MING: More than just a ritual

		Apart from the offering of prayers or food at ancestral graves, Qing Ming is also a time for extended family bonding. — TNP FILE PHOTOS

IT IS that time of the year again. I am falling asleep in my parents’ car. The inside smells vaguely of incense and home-cooked food. Drizzle dots the car windows. It is not yet bright enough for me to spot the ink-dark blots on the tar paving the long road.

Finally, we reach our destination. Torches out. Orders in whispers. We trek down rows of sleeping graves. After a few wrong turns and stumbles in the dark, we find my great-grandmother’s grave. Next to her lies my beloved grandfather, whom I have come to miss every year on this special day. We were never close, though. It was not possible, with such a big extended family.

But somehow, today, just like on the same day last year and the year before that, I can feel him smile at us, the same way he used to smile from the top of the table at reunion dinners. It is as if he is still bringing us all together.

The food is unwrapped. We place it in front of him, complete with chopsticks. Surely he will enjoy this home- cooked meal like before. And then we light our joss sticks, hold them tightly and shake them gently against our chests with silent murmurs.

‘I miss you,’ I whisper. ‘I miss what it was like with you among us.’ The joss sticks are placed together and left to burn – our lighthouse signalling to him across worlds as though to say, ‘Come join us, we’re here’.

This happens every year. And every year I go, taking pleasure in the memory of my grandfather. But all these rituals turn meaningless when I turn to face my great-grandmother’s grave.

It is sad, I know. But I never knew her – I have nothing to say, nothing to reminisce upon.

I have always thought sadly about the day when my generation passes on. Nobody else will know grandfather. Will they still keep coming? Will they still come and sweep his grave, offer him food, and gather our family to him? As it is, fewer and fewer people I know take part in this tradition.

Those who do so partake with a huge sense of obligation and sometimes, dread. I cannot blame them entirely though. I would find it difficult to put my heart into waking in the wee hours to offer joss sticks to someone I have never met, especially when I do not subscribe fully to these Taoist beliefs of connecting across worlds through incense and prayer.

What keeps Qing Ming going? Is it tradition and respect for the ancestors, or a chance to indulge in fond memories of loved ones? Surprisingly, overseas Chinese communities have been reported to take this more seriously than our mainland counterparts. Some people would even travel back to the mainland. But there is more than filial piety to this.

After ancestral worship, the whole family would gather nearby and feast on the food just offered to their ancestors. This happens to be one of my favourite parts. With our hectic work schedules, it is hard enough nowadays to meet up with the whole extended family.

So it seems that Qing Ming is more than just ancestral worship. It is family bonding, reminiscing, and paying respects all rolled into one. More than just reliving fond memories of my grandfather, it is a hearty and boisterous lunch with my extended family with our ancestors at the backs of our minds. Even if I never knew my great-grandmother personally, there is always someone there to reminisce aloud fond incidents involving her while we go about the rituals.

Every year I hear the same stories. And strangely, I never grow sick of them. Perhaps I find comfort in learning of my identity, my ‘roots’, by listening to my uncles’ stories of my grandfather’s childhood in a village outside of Guangzhou, where my great-grandfather went to work, and how my great-grandmother brought her children up, insisting they go to school and get an English education, and so on.

Memories of my grandfather will be lost with time, my great-grandmother’s lost in my generation already. Perhaps this is why people look to leaving a legacy so much, at least in a family name – to keep the memories going in the form of heritage and hand-me-down family values. Ancestral lineage keeps at least respects coming. Like how I have my great-grandmother to thank for the endearing person I had in my grandfather.

The writer, 22, is a fourth-year law student at the National University of Singapore.