A roof over their heads

On our way to the burial ground, my father-in-law pointed at a small shabby hut along the roadside. On the same street were a few simple stilt houses, all looked more elaborate than this humble place.

“Look, this was the house where I grew up. My whole family of eight lived under the same roof.”

My father-in-law came to Singapore when he was a teenager. He worked as an apprentice, went through much hardship before he started his own business.

I wonder how he felt when he saw his childhood home. Could he ever imagine that one day he can live in where he is staying now? What would happen if he had never left for Singapore?

In the 1950s, my parents followed their respective parents to leave China for greener pastures in Hong Kong. Life was tough as new immigrants. For decades, they worked strenuously to support their families, later their own family, and relatives they left behind in their hometown.

With their life savings they managed to buy a small flat. That few hundred square feet was a roof over their heads that they could finally call their own.

One day, a developer contacted their relatives in China, offering them an incredible price to buy over their farmland to build factories and housing projects. Not having to toll a day, these relatives became the sudden-rich and spent the windfall on building their own big houses.

Once they went to Hong Kong and paid a visit to my parents’ humble flat. They stepped in for a quick glance, totally taken aback, and couldn’t help asking my parents,

“Why do you have to leave home and work hard all your life for this place?”

My parents were speechless.

After we drove back to Singapore in the evening, I watched a documentary about the Chinese fleeing to Hong Kong between 1966 and 1976.

During the Cultural Revolution, the intellectuals and undergraduates were sent to work in farms or factories to experience the life of ‘commoners’. Every day they worked from sunrise to sunset. At night they were tortured mentally by persecutions and political brainwashing.

Some decided to flee the country. A popular route was leaving from Shenzhen to Hong Kong by swimming across the border or trekking through the mountains.

A man recalled how he attempted four times to swim to his freedom. Many of his friends were drowned in the rough sea, eaten by sharks, or caught by the marine police, sent back to China and beaten up for treason.

Anyway, it wasn’t smooth sailing either for his new-found freedom. To make ends meet in an unknown country, he took up whatever unwanted job from the locals.

Years later, his wife worked as a part-time property agent to supplement his income. They also bought properties and slowly built up a property portfolio. At one time, they had a total of eight properties, providing handsome rental income.

Unfortunately, property prices dropped 70 percent during the Asian financial crisis and left them with nothing. He had to work for somebody again until his children completed their education.

Despite the setback, he was never sorry for himself. He remembered the day when he came to this foreign land with nothing but the clothes on him. He was grateful that he was one of the lucky ones to be alive.

Nonetheless, he would still be upset when he saw his old classmates who had never left China, though suffered a lot during the Cultural Revolution, were now rich businessmen earning big bucks.

His story reminds me of a lesson from Buddhism,

“菩提本无树，明镜亦非台，本来无一物，何处惹尘埃。”
[Translation: Banyan is originally (an epiphyte and) not a tree. A bright mirror is also not a table. If there is originally nothing, where can it attract dust?]

What sacrifices have you made as a foreigner coming to Singapore? What risks have you taken in the name of upgrading the roof over your head? How will you take it, when one day you realize what you have worked so hard for, is nothing much afterall?