Notes from Comun on BL(Beast´s Lair). I'm just posting here.
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Chapter 3:
The chapter opens with an Ergo dream sequence, showing his mind being consumed by his hunger, with only his loneliness stopping him from losing himself completely, as he wants to learn more about himself and have people in his life. He hears his mother calling his name, so he turns back and sees three figures. The first one wears a futuristic uniform and calls him a failure, ashamed of her own ineptitude. The second woman is dressed primitively, was significantly more filled with life than the others, and her eyes had red irises and gold pupils. She says she likes Ergo this way, and gets into an argument with the Crudelis person, who accuses her of being giving useless information to the failed experiment. While they argued, the third figure just watched Ergo without saying a thing. Her eyes were completely without a self. Ergo felt like he was making eye contact with absolute zero disguised as a nebula. Even after seeing all three of them, Ergo can't identify which of them was the mother he heard. The dream ends on him hearing a fourth voice calling him from the other side. It's Waver, with Gray right behind him.
Gray wakes up in an apartment provided by the Clock Tower's Singapore branch and goes nurse the unconscious Ergo. It's been three days since she and Waver have been taking turns doing that, and she feels like she has a little brother now. The fact that Ergo doesn't wake up reminds her of the cat Waver couldn't save. Ergo then wakes up and the two start catching him up on what happened. Before Rin and Gray joined the battle, Rin had already evacuated the children, as she had trained them for that in case a real pirate crew ever invaded their turf. Ergo got killed when the Wuzhiqi took off a third of his head, but then his Phantom Hands went out of control and merged into a single giant hand that destroyed half the island (explaining the giant handprint in Chapter 2's cliffhanger). Ergo's head was fully restored when the big hand formed. No one died because they were all in the spaces between the fingers, maybe by luck, maybe by intent. They try to discuss Ergo's origins, but Latio is the only real lead they have now. Waver doesn't know much about the Six Sources, only that they're the 6 oldest families in Atlas, as the Atlas people don't interact with the outside much, and the only other Source he ever met, Zepia, is not the standard Atlas mage. What he does know is that instead of researching to reach the Root like Clock Tower mages, the Atlas mages research to prevent a predicted end of the world. Meaning that if the Crudelis family contributed to making Ergo, that means he's tied to whatever doomsday event the Crudelis is assigned to prevent. As Ergo shakes from his life having just escalated from "happy days playing with kids" to "bound to confront a potentially world ending threat", Gray makes her good internal commentary on how mages are just people painfully aware of the end of all, clumsily trying to cope with that by either finding something absolute while there's still time (Clock Tower) or struggling to delay the inevitable (Atlas). Back to the Ergo exposition, Waver explains that his memories aren't "lost", they're saturated. Gods have a lot more information than what it fits in a human, so whenever he access the god powers in his Phantom Hands, he needs to open space by removing from his memories and personality, until he's completely replaced by the gods inside him. Yes, just like Gray. Waver extends him his hand (after a long speech about hands as symbols of destruction, contact, and evolution) and asks what he wants to do. Ergo comments that didn't had anything to do, so he always went along with whatever Rin and the kids were doing. Even now, he still considers that the objectively right thing to do because they had things to do, unlike him. Ergo insists that supporting people with clearer goals is the right thing to do, but being offered this promise to look together for what he wants, he says wants to make that mistake. And so, Waver tells his two students to go outside, as it's their turn to get on the offensive.
The trio regroups with Rin, who had made all the calls she was asked for, thought she protests that she was made to contact the Thought Magecraft people in his stead. This was because Waver just assumed Rin had Chinese contacts since she knew Baji Quan. Rin explains she learned it from a priest she knows, and Waver gets very interested in being introduced to Kotomine because a priest knowing Baji Quan is an usual combination, but Rin replies that he wouldn't like him and he's dead. They go to the big commercial district and receive a suitcase from Chris, the head of the Clock Tower's Singapore branch. Next, they go to a Chinatown and Rin rings a bell, making a pair of buildings become visible. A black building and a red building coiling around each other. That's the Louxuan Guan's Singapure branch. The Louxuan Guan (Chinese for "spiral manor") is one of the two major Though Magecraft organizations. All of their buildings incorporate the shape of the spiral in some way, with the most common being building literal spiral manors, as it's the case here. Waver skips on explaining the other major Thought Magecraft organization because they're all Xians, so there's no reason to expect them to ever interact with humans. A Guan mage named Tao gives Waver a small wooden box. The party then goes the secret Harry Potter reference area in the subways, and Waver opens the wooden box and suitcase, with each of them containing one key. To explain what's the deal with that we need to talk about magecraft copyright. The biggest source of income for most mages comes from royalties from their patented magecraft formulas. In fact, the main reason why so many mages want Waver dead is because his MO is figuring out the inner workings of other people's magecrafts, changing them, and then patenting them under his own name. But, as we know, magecraft is practiced in secrecy, so the copyright bills can only be properly charged due to the Carrion observatory in Albion. However, the Carrion can't observe the entire world, which is why the Clock Tower has other branches, which with their own observatory, allowing magecraft copyright to be enforced in about 70-80% of the globe. The Singapore branch has the Luxcarta, but since it also covers Guan territory, accessing it requires authorization from both the Clock Tower and the Guan. What's happening here is that Waver is lying that he's investigating unauthorized use of his copyright so he can track Latio. That's what the phone call to Reines on the Interlude's cliffhanger was. The Carrion/Luxcarta normally detects the traces of magecraft Clock Tower mages cast on the world, but since Atlas mages cast magecraft on their own bodies, tracking Latio's magic bones shows her exact location.
The scene cuts to Latio, sleeping in an abandoned construction site in Sentosa. She sleeps sitting, with her back on a steel beam. Tangere wakes her up because the Wuzhiqi arrived 16 minutes and 35 seconds before the predicted time. Latio asks if she knew Ergo would survive her smashing his head and she confirms it, saying his creators, herself included, would be really stupid if they made him easily killable. Latio unsuccessfully tries to piece out what happened with the giant hand, but instead of telling her the answer, the Wuzhiqi instead decides to reward her effort by warning that Waver already found her. Latio doesn't buy it. She's confident Waver isn't insane enough to abuse his Lord powers and scam the Guan just to track her. The latter could cause a major conflict between factions. The Wuzhiqi insists she's taking a Lord's underhandedness too lightly, until she goes on a big tangent about humanity's nature to consume the planet's resources, and claims that humanity should stop wasting the planet's time already. She believes just burning down the home they were born in and going outside is the correct path for humans. Latio deduces that the god she chose is a Taoist one because she was talking about "correct path". Interestingly enough, the Wuzhiqi reacts with a "What? Yours isn't?". Latio says she doesn't need to know. The Wuzhiqi transforms from that hawk form into the gold-pupiled woman and asks Latio to give Ergo to her. She claims this would preserve the order in the old contract. Rights to Ergo's ownership came first to the Crudelis, second to her, and last to the Wandering Sea. Latio refuses but the Wuzhiqi reminds her of how she got terrified and opened herself to negotiations when Gray was about release Rhongo. Latio doesn't have a counter to Rhongomyniad, while the Wuzhiqi is strong enough to deal with it. The Wuzhiqi taunts her even further, talking about the Crudelis family's history of just hiding behind other families' back, scavenging on their skeletons, but Tangere intervenes and de-escalates the situation before Latio turned it into a fight. The Wuzhiqi likes his style and ask to keep him, but Latio refuses that as well. She claims she already has everything calculated to deal with Gray's trump card. The Wuzhiqi leaves with a warning that all sides involved have their personal reasons to want Ergo, so this won't be over soon. Of course, the Wuzhiqi doesn't mind waiting a little more after having already waited for so long.
Later that night, Gray catches Ergo singing a song about the fear of ghosts (cue 5 paragraphs of narration detailing every reason why Ergo is an awful singer). He tells that Lana (the kid who cut his hair) noticed he was scared once and taught him this song, assuming he was scared of ghosts. Ergo now understand that he was actually scared of something that was inside him. Something that would suppress his memories and personality and replace him. Gray can relate a lot to that, so she starts talking about how her life with Waver and Reines gave her the will to stay herself. The bonding moment lasts until Ergo's stomach growls. Gray offers to cook to him, and starts to notice Ergo looks at her a lot more intently whenever he's hungry.
While Gray and Ergo where having their moment, Waver was watching Rin treat her jewels. Rin is impressed Waver was so fast to devise this formula to counter Latio's magecraft with Rin's. He's terrifyingly knowledgeable of how her circuits and foundations work. Waver answer it's his nature as a talentless man to look at an absurd talent like Rin's Average One and constantly think about what he could do if he had that. They share some Chinese tea after she's done with her preparations, and Waver questions if her sense of responsibility towards Ergo is her only reason to fight alongside them. Rin admits that she's also doing it because she's excited to be on an adventure (an adventure of Lord El-Melloi II, if you will). After exhausting his attempts to convince her to back down, Waver says he wants to hire as a pirate consultant. They agree the terms, and before saying goodbye, Rin asks him about Gray's relationship with Saber. She easily through Waver's false answers but decides not pry if he doesn't want to explain. She just assumes she's like Ergo, but Waver says they aren't the same. Rin tries to come up some metaphors to define their difference, but nothing she's saying is feeling right, so Waver proposes the metaphor that they're like sheep and wolf.
The next morning, the party goes to Sentosa. Waver is visibly sleep deprived. They meet Lana, who says she already grouped up all the kids old enough to understand what they were doing. This was a joint operation between Waver's group and Rin's pirate crew. The pirate kids, familiar with the region, would guide them, following Waver's commands. Waver is concerned about putting the kids in danger, but their quick evacuation and restructuring to a new base shows that Rin raised those kids to be survivors. Since Ergo is Latio's goal, he has a big role to play here as the bait. Waver is worried about other parties like that Wuzhiqi, but Latio is the only one they can go for now, so one step at a time.
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"Thought Magecraft belonged to two organizations. This one, the Louxuan Guan(Spiral Manor), incorporates the shape of the spiral in itself and all its branches, in some form. The most popular take on this are buildings that take their name literally." "And the second one?" "Oh. There is a second one, but they wouldn't ever interact with the human world. They're Xian territory."
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📷 Originally Posted by Reign 📷You know I'd been assuming Ergo was going to be a love interest for Gray but if she's comparing him to a little brother maybe not.
Yeah, Ergo's POV scenes can get weirdly horngry, but Gray's POV scenes are solidly on the little brother angle.
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📷 Originally Posted by warellis 📷Is there any chapter here detailing just what Thought Magecraft is?
No explanations yet, but one example here in chapter 3. The Guan building appearing and disappearing as Rin rings that bell she got from is a really advanced Feng Shui-based crowd hypnosis. The buildings are always there, it's just the people in the Chinatown that are unable to notice it. This is described as a special feat only possible because the buildings are in that specific location, since that's how Feng Shui works.

Hello fellow captains,
My last small analysis post about the new Fu Hua costume Onyx Simurgh was received extremely well, and I thought I'd do one for every valk there is if I had time, and in those time, what do I have but time?
At first, I thought I'd do a battlesuit a week, but I saw that there were like at least 52 and I thought "No way I'm passing my whole year to it, I'll be bored before the end and I'd leave people hanging". So I thought that I'd do three battlesuits per week, with a two days interval for each. But when I, finished White Comet, there was absolutely not enough stuff to post a post every two days, so I said: "Fuck it, I'm doing a character a week, and I'll see if I can be regular enough to last".
A little bit of a disclaimer to start.
1) Mythologies are complicated. I'm taking surface information, and usually stuff that is pertinent to my point of view. If you're interested, do your own researches, I'm sure you'll find joy and happiness there.
2) Analysis and opinions are mostly subjective, if you interpret something in another manner entirely, feel free to share it in the comments.
3) All criticisms and input are welcome.
Without further ado, let's welcome Mihoyo's most beloved, Kiana Kaslana!
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Kiana Kaslana

White Comet:

The name “White Comet” is somewhat lacking in interpretation. The only thing I’ve come up with is a sort of lotus plant (not really relevant I assume) and the fact that apparently, Chinese astronomers actually knew a lot more about comets than us Westerners did at the time (first sighting is reported and catalogued in 613 BC).
What I think it comes from is that they didn’t have the name ready before the first cinematic of the game (the one where she drops from the Hyperion) and that when they saw the render, they came up with that, because let’s be honest, it does look like a shooting star, and if White Shooting Star doesn’t sound good, White Comet surely does.
Another point, being absolutely not a Chinese reader-speaker myself, I’ve been using Google Translate to get some names from the official Mihoyo Website, and while some are quite accurate and others are more inventive, White Comet would apparently translate as “Field Costume - White Training”. Any Chinese reader could confirm what it says in Chinese?
So basically… She’s falling and is fast as a comet, and she’s white. Soooo… yea. They can’t be all super inventive and full of foreshadowing.
About her skills: Everything is pretty much comet themed, or cat-themed, or valkyrie themed. Nothing special in that regard.
Now about her costumes :
The first one, Starless Rift, is still space-themed. The name is pretty much explanatory, nothing much to say: it’s a covert op version of the White Comet, so it’s darker, and in space, nothing is darker than a place without stars.
The second one, Prodigal Girl, is somewhat more interesting. Prodigal can mean “who makes sacrifices for other people’s sake”. Seeing what happens to Kiana post chapter 15, I’d say it is rather appropriate.

Valkyrie Ranger:

First battlesuit of the “Valkyries” series (every suit with “Valkyrie” in the name). In the original sense of the term, a ranger is an armed guard that patrols the land and forest of a king to prevent poachers, illegal hunters.
So, basically, she’s an armed guard that patrols the Earth, and the poacher is the Honkai. Simple.
Her skills, just like White Comet, are pretty much still space-themed, cat-themed, or Valkyrie themed. One exception though: her special, the Gungnir Fire.
In Norse Mythology, Gungnir would be the lance of Odin, one of the supreme deities of the Northern pantheon. It was created by dwarves, and used by Odin to kill Fafnir, a gigantic wolf. It is said to be able to strike any targets.
Now onto her costumes:
Ocean Ranger is just a palette swap from white to blue, hence the name. No need to look farther. Although I have to say she looks a lot like some Azur Lane character when she's dressed up like that…
Honkai World Diva was for an event probably (I wasn’t around at the time) where they were idols I guess? Nothing to say here, except that (that’s probably unrelated), Mei’s theme Houkai Utahime no Sekai also translates as Honkai World Diva. Coincidence? Probably.
Her augment, Void Drifter, gives her a look cool as dope. Void Drifter, not only because she’s a drifter with the power of the void, but also because her life is devoid of much hope after what happened, she has a void in her heart and she drifts away, little by little, eaten by Sirin’s power.
Her augment also has a palette swap version, Red Lictor. “Justice is now red.” says the text. A lictor in imperial Rome is the executor of the law: they coerce and punish. They most often than not accompany the representative of the Emperor’s authority. Read: Red Lictor was released for Chapter 13, where Kiana, the executor, teams up with Rita, representative of Schicksal, and by extension, Otto, the emperor. Good job Mihoyo.

Divine Prayer:

Not much to say here, it’s a divine prayer, it’s rather explicit, it’s a religious-themed outfit with a religious-themed name to refer to the Catholic church which Schicksal is the representation. It’s canonically Kiana’s first battlesuit, third-gen battlesuits like White Comet are only given to B rank valks, and Valkyrie Ranger is her school uniform.
Her skills are now space-themed, gun-themed and religiously-themed, with germans inclusions like “Weihwasser” (Holy Water) and old pompous words like “Song of Alacrity”, alacrity meaning “speed and eagerness” (it’s a passive that boosts speed during special, so name checks out)
Costumes :
Frostmoon Bunny comes straight out of Honkai Zero. Unfortunately, I didn’t play the event, so I can only guess (a bit of help here would be appreciated.)
I have absolutely no idea why the cat-themed Kiana was suddenly replaced by a bunny, but the most important symbol of Kiana, the moon, is still here.
The Frost Moon is the name of the Full Moon in November, named as such by natives American. It’s associated with the start of the chillier season at the time.
The Frost moon, being the full moon of a chilly month, is also totally a representation of Kiana, being born December 7th, a chill day. Speaking of that…
Winter Princess, or Kiana being cast into Frozen. Joke aside, that dress was handmade by Cecilia, before her death in 2000. She had damn good weaving skills, and a good measure of luck to have the measurement of her daughter right 16 years after her death. That dress is featured into the Second Eruption manga as well as the Cooking With Valkyries anime. Nothing much to say about the name, Winter because she was born in December and Princess because which mother wouldn’t want to see her daughter as a princess growing up but now Cecilia can’t because she’s dead and goddammit Mihoyo now I’m crying, moving on.
Lavender Love is a palette swap switching white for lavender purple. No surprise here, the description says everything we need to know.

Knight Moonbeam:

Now we’re entering some good stuff.
The Knight Moonbeam, a prototype of 4th generation Godsbane battlesuit. Each of them is moon-themed in their name because the moon seems to be very, very important in this game.
The Knight part is a reference to the Kaslana’s heritage, knights pledging their swords to Schicksal in order to save the world. This armor is tailored for a Kaslana, obviously shown by the presence of their sigil on the chest plate.
The Moonbeam is a reference to the weapon system of the armor which fires gamma rays on the target.
In Chinese, the armor is also called White Knight Moonlight, a White Knight being exactly what the Kaslana are as a whole.
The skills are pretty much all space-themed, except for Gungnir Execution which is Nordic-themed.
The costumes :
Dark Devourer is the evil palette swap of KMB. The whole immaculate armour turns black, a symbol of corruption, as does the Kaslana sigil. Not much to say about the name, it’s very explicit.
However, there might be a small reference to Egyptian mythology on that one: the dark devourer might refer to Apophis, the gigantic serpent that seeks to devour the Sun (yes, yet another Serpent that tries to kill everything, but we’re not to Jormungand yet.) And it is most interesting because it is sometimes said that Apophis was defeated by Ra (the Sun) taking the form of a cat, or by the cat goddess herself, Kiana’s symbol.
Talking about cats…
Bastet’s secret! Bigger Egyptian reference, Bastet is the goddess of maternity, joy in the household, and sunshine’s warmth. Her greek name would also give the greek name for the cat.
However, she can also turn into Sekhmet, goddess of war.
Hmm, a cat-themed individual always bright, which joy always brings warmth in the house, but can be deadly in battle, where have I heard that one I wonder…
Also, did I mention that sometimes, she’s represented with the lunar disc? Damn moon, always everywhere.
And lastly, Lemon Soda, a cat-themed summer outfit, nothing much to say there.

Herrscher of the Void:

Here she is, Sirin herself graced us with her presence. Not much to say with the name, everyone knows everything, Herrscher is the german for "ruler", she can measure stuff with her name, moving on.
Her skills are space and void themed, with some German mixed in, like Gegenstrom (against the flow, or reverse the flow) or Weltraum Richter (judge of the space)
Her costumes are
Parasol Kaiserin, not much to say here, Kaiserin being the feminine version of Kaiser, a synonym of Herrscher and Parasol because it’s a summer version
and Frigid Empress, not much to say either.
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And that's it! Thanks for all those who stayed and read until the end.
Have I made a mistake or forgotten something? You tell me.
Stay tuned for next week, with "Battlesuit's names, augment and costumes analysis [Round 2 Electric Boogaloo: Mei Raiden]"

"A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government." - Edward Paul Abbey
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Resisting every urge to yawn, Tongxuan clenched his jaw hard as he attempted to tense his forehead to stop his eyelids from touching each other. Remembering that wiggling the mouse of a computer would wake it from a screensaver, Tongxuan acquired the creative idea of rolling his eyes to scan around his peripheral vision, hoping that some stimuli would drive the drowsiness away. It was too early in the morning after all. Looked like he was not the only sluggish one: pretty much all of his fellow classmates seemed to find it hard to maintain their stature, slouching like withering flowers. Prefects were seen patrolling between the rows looking for anyone to report for being out of line, like sharks trying to catch the scent of blood.
Tongxuan could feel his tummy bellowing. It was a mistake to skip breakfast. But the bigger mistake was oversleeping. He swore he set his alarm clock last night. At least he was here standing with the entire school on time and his teachers knew that he was where he should be. His school was stringent on rules and the prefects were more than happy to help punish any student who broke them. Renpin, a student from his class, was greeted by a prefect by the school gates, blocking him from going through them as the school bell rang immediately before he could step through them so he could be apprehended. As punishment, he had a week to copy out the ‘Lateness’ section of the school rules 10 times and submit it to the disciplinary department, or else he would face more severe consequences. Not only that, he was also warned that this act of tardiness was recorded, and should he repeat this offense his punishment would be doubled. Tongxuan remembered that on the first day of school, the disciplinary head announced that the rules were strict for a reason - to mold students into model citizens the country approved of. Whatever that meant, he was glad he was not punished for something so trivial.
“Attention!” A prefect stepped onto the stage and announced on the speakers. “Right fist on your chest!” Like soldiers in a military drill, everyone instinctively put their curled hands in position. “We, the citizens of -” The words resonated around the assembly square as everyone recited the pledge in unison. Tongxuan muttered as his mind was annoyed how long the entire thing was going to take, another half an hour maybe? Perhaps right before homeroom starts later, he could sneak a baozi from his snack box to the toilet and have his mini breakfast there. His hunger was getting more and more unbearable.
“You may lower your fists!” The prefect announced after the recitation was over. “Now the National Anthem will be played.”
After stepping down the stage, speakers brought this overly recognizable tune to life. Sounds of trumpets and trombones boomed as the prefect and another one headed over to flagpoles next to the stage, beginning to raise a red flag decorated with small ornaments, along with another one that was of a similar design. The two flags slowly ascended their poles until they reached the top, one of them slightly higher than the other. The music stopped and silence returned to the assembly square.
At this point, standing for half an hour in this weather that resembled a low-temperature sauna. Having an empty stomach was not helping as it was driving Tongxuan to his limit. It felt like being hung on a ledge of a cliff for ages, with every urge to let go and end this, only to have a sadistic person pouring soap over his hands to make life more difficult for him. He was not sure if it was just him or whether the faces of teachers on the stage were getting more and more blurry. He rubbed his eyes, thinking it would make it go away. The next thing he knew was being on a bed in the infirmary room.
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Junhao was excited about the field trip next week. If his memory served him correctly, his class should be heading over to see this sculpture of a fish-tailed creature. He remembered the site being closed down for renovations since some people thought it was due for some restoration or even an upgrade. His parents probably took him to see it once when he was very young but he could not remember something so long ago. Apparently the news mentioned they are building a larger sculpture next to it for some special occasion. Was it a bear? Something along the lines of that. But that did not matter to Junhao, the field trip would be a nice change compared to being locked in a classroom with textbooks shoved in front of his face. For now, he knew he had to endure until the date came.
“Alright, alright boys and girls. Settle down.” A middle-aged teacher hushed the class as he rubbed the whiteboard clean. “Turn to page 64 of your textbooks. Today we will learn about the Speak Mandarin Campaign. Back when you kids weren’t born at all, the city was a huge linguistic mess because no one was speaking the right language, so in 1979 the campaign was finally launched to fix all of that. Now that everyone is speaking Mandarin, we can finally understand each other. This makes things more efficient and that is all thanks to our brilliant leadership, so the city will continue to prosper as how our founders envisioned! Yes, Junhao?” His eyes caught his raised hand, asking permission to speak.
“But Mr. Chen, I heard my grandmother say that it is not good because now less and less people can speak dialects and understand what she is saying.” Junhao voiced out.
“Yes, but this is easier for all of us because instead of learning all of the dialects to understand each other, we only need to learn Mandarin and that’s what we need to save time.” Mr. Chen explained, “In other words, the leaders know what is better for you than your grandmother, Junhao. That’s why we need to put our faith in them. They know what’s best for our people. Moving on-”
“But what about the other people living in the city who aren’t even Chinese at all?” Junhao jutted his hand up in the air again, “Does that not make them excluded? I thought the city is supposed to be diverse and multiracial?”
“Junhao, for the last time, you will only speak when I allow you to.” A hint of annoyance could be detected in Mr. Chen’s words, “Yes that is the case, but our leaders decided that it would be easier if all of us speak it. After all, why complicate things with unnecessary languages? Ever since this was implemented, the city came to see more solidarity and unity, thus ushering more growth and prosperity to bring our country forward! People who disagree with what the leaders have planned out are always free to leave the country, it’s their choice to do so. There must be a good reason that they put these rules in place and as good citizens, we must listen and follow them.”
“But what if there is a better solution to this?” Junhao’s hand was still raised.
Slam!
Frustrated with his bombardment of irrelevant questions, Mr. Chen smashed his textbook on the table and pointed at him in a rather threatening pose. The other students’ eyes fixed on the two, not sure how to react but stay silent and watch the events play out, for they knew that defiance would not go unpunished.
“Listen, boy.” Mr. Chen said in a dangerously low voice, as though he were bellowing. Most students knew better than to further provoke him whenever he spoke like this. “That was very unpatriotic of you and could have cost you patriotism points. I am willing to overlook everything you just said if you shut your mouth for the next half an hour because we still have a lot to cover, okay? One more word from you and you can expect not going to that field trip next week, understood?”
As if he swallowed a rock, his throat was stiff and a heaviness surfaced in his stomach. Junhao nodded and avoided eye contact with his teacher for the rest of the lesson.
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Steam erupted from the electric rice cooker as its lid was uncovered. After waiting for it to dissipate, a scoop was used to mix it around, before neatly filling bowls with rice and being sent out to the dining table by Zihui. Her father was sitting by it, fiddling with the television’s remote, flicking through channels for the evening news. It was still a bit too early for that to be on, so the station’s signoff section aired the National Anthem. Without anything else to do but wait for his daughters and wife to serve dinner, he could just barely notice that the Anthem echoed through the opened windows as it was being played simultaneously on his neighbors’ televisions as well. Ziyue, his younger daughter, came to arrange chopsticks, spoons, and soup bowls on the table neatly, excited to tell him what happened at school today. He smiled and gently nodded to every sentence she said.
Dish after dish, the dinner table slowly crowded with food. Hot steam was rising up from every bowl and plate. The family of four assembled at the table, ready to eat.
“Dàjiā chīfàn¹!” All of them exclaimed at the same time and chopsticks were raised.
As Zihui and Ziyue’s mother, Huiting’s chopsticks reached for a few stalks of caixin and placed them into their rice bowls despite their protests. Her children must have a healthy diet. She dug out the cheeks of the soya sauce steamed fish and placed it in her husband’s rice bowl. The best parts of the fish had to go to the love of her life after all.
“Listen to your mother.” He said as Huiting gave him a nudge under the table to keep them in control. “You can only have ice cream after you finish all your vegetables.”
“Good evening, citizens. I am your host Zhang Yiying, it is 7 p.m., and welcome to today’s Evening News.” The television screen transitioned to a female news anchor after an irritatingly catchy motif was played, “Our first story is the reopening of the Merlion statue, after its 6-month long renovation. As a symbol of the city, we take pride in it, which is why the Ministry of Culture proposed this restoration plan. In addition to this project, the Central Government constructed a twin for it. Now if you visit the reopened site, a beautifully-crafted marble panda can be seen by its side, symbolizing China’s eternal friendship with the city and also a welcome-back gift, commissioned since Singapore’s majority voted to become part of China.”
“W-We went there last week at school!” Zihui said excitedly as she pointed to the television screen.
“I want to see the panda!” Ziyue looked at her mum with enthusiasm, hoping that she would take her there over the weekend.
“And now, Cao Wen, the Central Minister of Culture would like to address the citizens of Singapore.” The screen transitioned to a black-suited middle-aged man with a receding hairline. “We, the Party, would like to express our thanks to the Chinese people of Singapore, though separated for generations, still have faith in their Ancestral Homeland. Although the earthquake and tsunami was a tremendous hurdle in Singapore’s history, we are extremely honored that the Chinese people of Singapore were the first to seek the help of China. We united and persevered in these hard times to rebuild the city. We are very humbled that the Chinese people of Singapore decided to reunite with the People’s Republic of China. We ensure that under the Five-starred Red Flag, Singapore will bloom into a stunning orchid as the nation’s newest special administrative region.
“Today, the police raided a storage house in Woodlands and seized prohibited copies of the board game Rift. Rift is a Taiwanese-designed board game that desecrates our glorious victory in the Civil war and is extremely disrespectful to the veterans who gave their own lives to pave the foundations of the Party. It is very unfortunate that the rebels in the rogue province have done something like this to hurt the feelings of the Chinese people by driving themselves away from their Ancestral Homeland. Due to its unpatriotic nature, people who are found to have copies of Rift will be charged 5000 dollars and sentenced to reeducation for 6 months. If you manage to find any copies of the board game or know anyone who owns it, please do not hesitate to report them to the police. Your service to the country will be greatly rewarded.”
“Mommy?” Zihui looked at her mother curiously. “Why did we have a civil war?”
“It’s complicated.” Huiting struggled to think of a way to explain it. “I’ll tell you when you grow older.”
“Okay...” She replied, dissatisfied and knowing she would not get her answer any time soon.
“Up next, Malaysia and Indonesia expressed extreme discontent with our country’s increased naval patrols in the Straits of Malacca.” The screen returned back to the news anchor. “The prime minister of Malaysia, Mohamed Afiq bin Faruq Hakeem, said this is a clear violation of Malaysia's sovereignty. The president of Indonesia, Ida Bagus Gusti, sees this as a potential declaration of war. Other ASEAN leaders attempt to negotiate with Kuala Lumpur and Palangkaraya to ease tensions down and see if compromises could be arranged between us. Meanwhile, the Australian prime minister, Oliver Taylor, condemned our country, claiming that our fleet of destroyers was in close proximity to Christmas Island. The Central Ministry of Defense reassures the public that we are following international protocols and have not broken any regulations.”
“Daddy, why are they angry at us if we didn’t do anything wrong?” Ziyue looked worried.
“No talking while you’re eating, Ziyue.” To be honest, he was not sure how to answer that either.
“Finally, we rejoice as a referendum based in Vancouver was passed in favor to be ceded to our country as her newest special administrative region just hours ago.” The news anchor shuffled her scripts around as she announced. “The Prime Minister of Canada, Colleen Anawak, has already arranged talks with Wu Feng, the Central Minister of Foreign Affairs to discuss the transfer of sovereignty and wishes the Party good luck in further prospering China’s first North American city. The integration of our city as a special administrative region has sparked a new wave of patriotism worldwide. Many cities with a significant overseas Chinese diaspora are proposing referendums for unification with the Ancestral Homeland, which is delightful news. Central Minister Wu warns that if these referendums were not permitted and the will of the Chinese people were unanswered, the Party will not shy from using military force to liberate our people. I am your host, Zhang Yiying, and I will see you again after the commercials with our daily schedule of street name changes. Wǎn'ān².”
----
“Hmm? What’s the matter, Zuyao? Something on your mind?” Huiting’s slumber was interrupted by the ruffling of bedsheets. Her heavy eyelids barely made a slit large enough for her to glimpse on her husband, who was merely a shadowy shape of his back facing her. She had been with him long enough to know that there was something troubling him. “What’s wrong?”
She was only met with silence. Huiting also had been with him long enough that he was too stubborn to talk about issues like these. Men could always be so hard-headed. Another minute passed and she was not going to be entertained with her husband’s lack of a reply, so she turned her back away from him and closed her eyes, “I’ll just go back to sleep then.”
Zuyao laid on his side motionless. His eyelids were still light and he knew that he was not going to sleep anytime soon. His wife was right after all, he did have something in his mind. As he closed his eyes, his stream of thoughts drifted him to the dinner table when he was Zihui’s age. His mother’s chopsticks left a few stalks of baicai onto his rice bowl as his father’s were going for the steamed chicken. The windows were closed, for the torrential rain poured down upon Singapore as it usually did in the monsoon season. His father grabbed the remote control to turn the television’s volume up, though it was still drowned by millions of bullet-like raindrops that hurtled hard onto the glass from the heavens. Realizing that it was futile, their eyes laid on the subtitles just at the bottom of the screen.
“I can’t believe they’re still carrying it out right now.” Zuyao’s mother sounded concerned.
The television screen showed a parade square packed with soldiers equally spaced out in formation. The camera zoomed into their unfazed faces, rainwater trickling down their brows, across their cheeks, before pouring down their chins. Their uniforms were darkened from being drenched, but that still never stopped the ceremony from being called off. Then the camera panned to a sheltered pavilion just in front of the soldiers, where middle-aged black-suited men could be seen smiling and shaking each other’s hands before making back to their respective seats. Not long after that, the screen showed three flag poles that stood between the pavilion and the parade square. The two on the right were empty. The one on the right hoisted a red and white flag decorated with a crescent moon and five stars. A few commands in Malay were shouted and the orchestra under the pavilion started playing. The old flag started its descent for its last time in Singaporean history. The bows of the violins ground to a halt.
More commands were shouted, this time in Chinese, and the orchestra sprang to life again with The March of the Volunteers, Five-starred Red Flag began its ascent with another flag on the flagpoles to the right. With the final blast of the trumpet, it towered over its companion, the rest of the parade’s participants, and by extension the citizens of Singapore.
“We welcome Singapore into the warm embrace of her Ancestral Homeland. The region has been administered by the Chinese people and will continue to be so. This is the promise, and this is the Unshakable Destiny.” One of the black-suited men came forth to make a speech. His words did not make much sense to Zuyao. Perhaps they were too complicated. Or perhaps he was not paying much attention to them. The stream of thoughts brought him back to his middle-aged self, in his bed next to his sound-asleep wife. Although the speech made by the first chief executive was blurry in his memory, the words “Unshakable Destiny” were still branded in his mind.
He could still remember many politicians were staunchly opposed to the Handover as Singapore’s independence was at stake. As far as he could tell, merely the mention of this polarised the entire island’s population way before when it was first proposed. Even though the Merdeka generation was a relic of the past, their spirit that strived to painstakingly build an international metropolis from a mere fishing village still resonated amongst the populace. That was what made him proud to be Singaporean.
As a small city-state on the chessboard of global politics, Singapore had been extremely careful to make as many friends as she could. That was the only way she could survive. Unfortunately, some friends just could not get along with each other. No matter how much China wanted to be friends with Singapore, diplomats found it extremely hard to ignore how America and Taiwan had extremely close military ties with her. One of the only things Singapore could do was to reject America’s offer to become an ally at war, but it was not enough. Pressure on Singapore’s shoulders was heavy. She was not able to skip between her friends anymore. She could only choose China. In a country where bribing was unheard of, politicians eventually had pockets stuffed with communist gold. More bilateral friendship monuments were erected, more pandas were flown over from Sichuan, and then the referendum for the Handover was proposed.
The ruling party who architected the city had been doing so since her independence. They made it more efficient by only permitting protests or other public gatherings with a government permit, effectively making them illegal. Zuyao remembered student leaders once holding speeches with ideas deemed controversial by the government found themselves behind bars or exiled, never to return home again. He dared not to make any noise. He did not want to be taken away. The fear of being recorded for voting the opposition party and socially ostracised was very real. As a whole, his countrymen had become a very docile people, though constantly raising complaints on issues, but in actuality they would do very little or nothing for any meaningful action to be taken against this. Everyone was too selfish to get into trouble for the sake of the collective. Why would he risk his life for people who would probably not appreciate it?
The opposition, with only less than five seats in Parliament could do nothing more than struggle like a rat beneath a cat’s pointed claws. If such an Unshakable Destiny could not be changed by them, what could he, a commoner, even achieve? With that thought concluded, Zuyao closed his eyes once more and drifted back into slumber.
----
¹ Let's eat!
² Good night.

"A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government." - Edward Paul Abbey
----
Resisting every urge to yawn, Tongxuan clenched his jaw hard as he attempted to tense his forehead to stop his eyelids from touching each other. Remembering that wiggling the mouse of a computer would wake it from a screensaver, Tongxuan acquired the creative idea of rolling his eyes to scan around his peripheral vision, hoping that some stimuli would drive the drowsiness away. It was too early in the morning after all. Looked like he was not the only sluggish one: pretty much all of his fellow classmates seemed to find it hard to maintain their stature, slouching like withering flowers. Prefects were seen patrolling between the rows looking for anyone to report for being out of line, like sharks trying to catch the scent of blood.
Tongxuan could feel his tummy bellowing. It was a mistake to skip breakfast. But the bigger mistake was oversleeping. He swore he set his alarm clock last night. At least he was here standing with the entire school on time and his teachers knew that he was where he should be. His school was stringent on rules and the prefects were more than happy to help punish any student who broke them. Renpin, a student from his class, was greeted by a prefect by the school gates, blocking him from going through them as the school bell rang immediately before he could step through them so he could be apprehended. As punishment, he had a week to copy out the ‘Lateness’ section of the school rules 10 times and submit it to the disciplinary department, or else he would face more severe consequences. Not only that, he was also warned that this act of tardiness was recorded, and should he repeat this offense his punishment would be doubled. Tongxuan remembered that on the first day of school, the disciplinary head announced that the rules were strict for a reason - to mold students into model citizens the country approved of. Whatever that meant, he was glad he was not punished for something so trivial.
“Attention!” A prefect stepped onto the stage and announced on the speakers. “Right fist on your chest!” Like soldiers in a military drill, everyone instinctively put their curled hands in position. “We, the citizens of -” The words resonated around the assembly square as everyone recited the pledge in unison. Tongxuan muttered as his mind was annoyed how long the entire thing was going to take, another half an hour maybe? Perhaps right before homeroom starts later, he could sneak a baozi from his snack box to the toilet and have his mini breakfast there. His hunger was getting more and more unbearable.
“You may lower your fists!” The prefect announced after the recitation was over. “Now the National Anthem will be played.”
After stepping down the stage, speakers brought this overly recognizable tune to life. Sounds of trumpets and trombones boomed as the prefect and another one headed over to flagpoles next to the stage, beginning to raise a red flag decorated with small ornaments, along with another one that was of a similar design. The two flags slowly ascended their poles until they reached the top, one of them slightly higher than the other. The music stopped and silence returned to the assembly square.
At this point, standing for half an hour in this weather that resembled a low-temperature sauna. Having an empty stomach was not helping as it was driving Tongxuan to his limit. It felt like being hung on a ledge of a cliff for ages, with every urge to let go and end this, only to have a sadistic person pouring soap over his hands to make life more difficult for him. He was not sure if it was just him or whether the faces of teachers on the stage were getting more and more blurry. He rubbed his eyes, thinking it would make it go away. The next thing he knew was being on a bed in the infirmary room.
----
Junhao was excited about the field trip next week. If his memory served him correctly, his class should be heading over to see this sculpture of a fish-tailed creature. He remembered the site being closed down for renovations since some people thought it was due for some restoration or even an upgrade. His parents probably took him to see it once when he was very young but he could not remember something so long ago. Apparently the news mentioned they are building a larger sculpture next to it for some special occasion. Was it a bear? Something along the lines of that. But that did not matter to Junhao, the field trip would be a nice change compared to being locked in a classroom with textbooks shoved in front of his face. For now, he knew he had to endure until the date came.
“Alright, alright boys and girls. Settle down.” A middle-aged teacher hushed the class as he rubbed the whiteboard clean. “Turn to page 64 of your textbooks. Today we will learn about the Speak Mandarin Campaign. Back when you kids weren’t born at all, the city was a huge linguistic mess because no one was speaking the right language, so in 1979 the campaign was finally launched to fix all of that. Now that everyone is speaking Mandarin, we can finally understand each other. This makes things more efficient and that is all thanks to our brilliant leadership, so the city will continue to prosper as how our founders envisioned! Yes, Junhao?” His eyes caught his raised hand, asking permission to speak.
“But Mr. Chen, I heard my grandmother say that it is not good because now less and less people can speak dialects and understand what she is saying.” Junhao voiced out.
“Yes, but this is easier for all of us because instead of learning all of the dialects to understand each other, we only need to learn Mandarin and that’s what we need to save time.” Mr. Chen explained, “In other words, the leaders know what is better for you than your grandmother, Junhao. That’s why we need to put our faith in them. They know what’s best for our people. Moving on-”
“But what about the other people living in the city who aren’t even Chinese at all?” Junhao jutted his hand up in the air again, “Does that not make them excluded? I thought the city is supposed to be diverse and multiracial?”
“Junhao, for the last time, you will only speak when I allow you to.” A hint of annoyance could be detected in Mr. Chen’s words, “Yes that is the case, but our leaders decided that it would be easier if all of us speak it. After all, why complicate things with unnecessary languages? Ever since this was implemented, the city came to see more solidarity and unity, thus ushering more growth and prosperity to bring our country forward! People who disagree with what the leaders have planned out are always free to leave the country, it’s their choice to do so. There must be a good reason that they put these rules in place and as good citizens, we must listen and follow them.”
“But what if there is a better solution to this?” Junhao’s hand was still raised.
Slam!
Frustrated with his bombardment of irrelevant questions, Mr. Chen smashed his textbook on the table and pointed at him in a rather threatening pose. The other students’ eyes fixed on the two, not sure how to react but stay silent and watch the events play out, for they knew that defiance would not go unpunished.
“Listen, boy.” Mr. Chen said in a dangerously low voice, as though he were bellowing. Most students knew better than to further provoke him whenever he spoke like this. “That was very unpatriotic of you and could have cost you patriotism points. I am willing to overlook everything you just said if you shut your mouth for the next half an hour because we still have a lot to cover, okay? One more word from you and you can expect not going to that field trip next week, understood?”
As if he swallowed a rock, his throat was stiff and a heaviness surfaced in his stomach. Junhao nodded and avoided eye contact with his teacher for the rest of the lesson.
----
Steam erupted from the electric rice cooker as its lid was uncovered. After waiting for it to dissipate, a scoop was used to mix it around, before neatly filling bowls with rice and being sent out to the dining table by Zihui. Her father was sitting by it, fiddling with the television’s remote, flicking through channels for the evening news. It was still a bit too early for that to be on, so the station’s signoff section aired the National Anthem. Without anything else to do but wait for his daughters and wife to serve dinner, he could just barely notice that the Anthem echoed through the opened windows as it was being played simultaneously on his neighbors’ televisions as well. Ziyue, his younger daughter, came to arrange chopsticks, spoons, and soup bowls on the table neatly, excited to tell him what happened at school today. He smiled and gently nodded to every sentence she said.
Dish after dish, the dinner table slowly crowded with food. Hot steam was rising up from every bowl and plate. The family of four assembled at the table, ready to eat.
“Dàjiā chīfàn¹!” All of them exclaimed at the same time and chopsticks were raised.
As Zihui and Ziyue’s mother, Huiting’s chopsticks reached for a few stalks of caixin and placed them into their rice bowls despite their protests. Her children must have a healthy diet. She dug out the cheeks of the soya sauce steamed fish and placed it in her husband’s rice bowl. The best parts of the fish had to go to the love of her life after all.
“Listen to your mother.” He said as Huiting gave him a nudge under the table to keep them in control. “You can only have ice cream after you finish all your vegetables.”
“Good evening, citizens. I am your host Zhang Yiying, it is 7 p.m., and welcome to today’s Evening News.” The television screen transitioned to a female news anchor after an irritatingly catchy motif was played, “Our first story is the reopening of the Merlion statue, after its 6-month long renovation. As a symbol of the city, we take pride in it, which is why the Ministry of Culture proposed this restoration plan. In addition to this project, the Central Government constructed a twin for it. Now if you visit the reopened site, a beautifully-crafted marble panda can be seen by its side, symbolizing China’s eternal friendship with the city and also a welcome-back gift, commissioned since Singapore’s majority voted to become part of China.”
“W-We went there last week at school!” Zihui said excitedly as she pointed to the television screen.
“I want to see the panda!” Ziyue looked at her mum with enthusiasm, hoping that she would take her there over the weekend.
“And now, Cao Wen, the Central Minister of Culture would like to address the citizens of Singapore.” The screen transitioned to a black-suited middle-aged man with a receding hairline. “We, the Party, would like to express our thanks to the Chinese people of Singapore, though separated for generations, still have faith in their Ancestral Homeland. Although the earthquake and tsunami was a tremendous hurdle in Singapore’s history, we are extremely honored that the Chinese people of Singapore were the first to seek the help of China. We united and persevered in these hard times to rebuild the city. We are very humbled that the Chinese people of Singapore decided to reunite with the People’s Republic of China. We ensure that under the Five-starred Red Flag, Singapore will bloom into a stunning orchid as the nation’s newest special administrative region.
“Today, the police raided a storage house in Woodlands and seized prohibited copies of the board game Rift. Rift is a Taiwanese-designed board game that desecrates our glorious victory in the Civil war and is extremely disrespectful to the veterans who gave their own lives to pave the foundations of the Party. It is very unfortunate that the rebels in the rogue province have done something like this to hurt the feelings of the Chinese people by driving themselves away from their Ancestral Homeland. Due to its unpatriotic nature, people who are found to have copies of Rift will be charged 5000 dollars and sentenced to reeducation for 6 months. If you manage to find any copies of the board game or know anyone who owns it, please do not hesitate to report them to the police. Your service to the country will be greatly rewarded.”
“Mommy?” Zihui looked at her mother curiously. “Why did we have a civil war?”
“It’s complicated.” Huiting struggled to think of a way to explain it. “I’ll tell you when you grow older.”
“Okay...” She replied, dissatisfied and knowing she would not get her answer any time soon.
“Up next, Malaysia and Indonesia expressed extreme discontent with our country’s increased naval patrols in the Straits of Malacca.” The screen returned back to the news anchor. “The prime minister of Malaysia, Mohamed Afiq bin Faruq Hakeem, said this is a clear violation of Malaysia's sovereignty. The president of Indonesia, Ida Bagus Gusti, sees this as a potential declaration of war. Other ASEAN leaders attempt to negotiate with Kuala Lumpur and Palangkaraya to ease tensions down and see if compromises could be arranged between us. Meanwhile, the Australian prime minister, Oliver Taylor, condemned our country, claiming that our fleet of destroyers was in close proximity to Christmas Island. The Central Ministry of Defense reassures the public that we are following international protocols and have not broken any regulations.”
“Daddy, why are they angry at us if we didn’t do anything wrong?” Ziyue looked worried.
“No talking while you’re eating, Ziyue.” To be honest, he was not sure how to answer that either.
“Finally, we rejoice as a referendum based in Vancouver was passed in favor to be ceded to our country as her newest special administrative region just hours ago.” The news anchor shuffled her scripts around as she announced. “The Prime Minister of Canada, Colleen Anawak, has already arranged talks with Wu Feng, the Central Minister of Foreign Affairs to discuss the transfer of sovereignty and wishes the Party good luck in further prospering China’s first North American city. The integration of our city as a special administrative region has sparked a new wave of patriotism worldwide. Many cities with a significant overseas Chinese diaspora are proposing referendums for unification with the Ancestral Homeland, which is delightful news. Central Minister Wu warns that if these referendums were not permitted and the will of the Chinese people were unanswered, the Party will not shy from using military force to liberate our people. I am your host, Zhang Yiying, and I will see you again after the commercials with our daily schedule of street name changes. Wǎn'ān².”
----
“Hmm? What’s the matter, Zuyao? Something on your mind?” Huiting’s slumber was interrupted by the ruffling of bedsheets. Her heavy eyelids barely made a slit large enough for her to glimpse on her husband, who was merely a shadowy shape of his back facing her. She had been with him long enough to know that there was something troubling him. “What’s wrong?”
She was only met with silence. Huiting also had been with him long enough that he was too stubborn to talk about issues like these. Men could always be so hard-headed. Another minute passed and she was not going to be entertained with her husband’s lack of a reply, so she turned her back away from him and closed her eyes, “I’ll just go back to sleep then.”
Zuyao laid on his side motionless. His eyelids were still light and he knew that he was not going to sleep anytime soon. His wife was right after all, he did have something in his mind. As he closed his eyes, his stream of thoughts drifted him to the dinner table when he was Zihui’s age. His mother’s chopsticks left a few stalks of baicai onto his rice bowl as his father’s were going for the steamed chicken. The windows were closed, for the torrential rain poured down upon Singapore as it usually did in the monsoon season. His father grabbed the remote control to turn the television’s volume up, though it was still drowned by millions of bullet-like raindrops that hurtled hard onto the glass from the heavens. Realizing that it was futile, their eyes laid on the subtitles just at the bottom of the screen.
“I can’t believe they’re still carrying it out right now.” Zuyao’s mother sounded concerned.
The television screen showed a parade square packed with soldiers equally spaced out in formation. The camera zoomed into their unfazed faces, rainwater trickling down their brows, across their cheeks, before pouring down their chins. Their uniforms were darkened from being drenched, but that still never stopped the ceremony from being called off. Then the camera panned to a sheltered pavilion just in front of the soldiers, where middle-aged black-suited men could be seen smiling and shaking each other’s hands before making back to their respective seats. Not long after that, the screen showed three flag poles that stood between the pavilion and the parade square. The two on the right were empty. The one on the right hoisted a red and white flag decorated with a crescent moon and five stars. A few commands in Malay were shouted and the orchestra under the pavilion started playing. The old flag started its descent for its last time in Singaporean history. The bows of the violins ground to a halt.
More commands were shouted, this time in Chinese, and the orchestra sprang to life again with The March of the Volunteers, Five-starred Red Flag began its ascent with another flag on the flagpoles to the right. With the final blast of the trumpet, it towered over its companion, the rest of the parade’s participants, and by extension the citizens of Singapore.
“We welcome Singapore into the warm embrace of her Ancestral Homeland. The region has been administered by the Chinese people and will continue to be so. This is the promise, and this is the Unshakable Destiny.” One of the black-suited men came forth to make a speech. His words did not make much sense to Zuyao. Perhaps they were too complicated. Or perhaps he was not paying much attention to them. The stream of thoughts brought him back to his middle-aged self, in his bed next to his sound-asleep wife. Although the speech made by the first chief executive was blurry in his memory, the words “Unshakable Destiny” were still branded in his mind.
He could still remember many politicians were staunchly opposed to the Handover as Singapore’s independence was at stake. As far as he could tell, merely the mention of this polarised the entire island’s population way before when it was first proposed. Even though the Merdeka generation was a relic of the past, their spirit that strived to painstakingly build an international metropolis from a mere fishing village still resonated amongst the populace. That was what made him proud to be Singaporean.
As a small city-state on the chessboard of global politics, Singapore had been extremely careful to make as many friends as she could. That was the only way she could survive. Unfortunately, some friends just could not get along with each other. No matter how much China wanted to be friends with Singapore, diplomats found it extremely hard to ignore how America and Taiwan had extremely close military ties with her. One of the only things Singapore could do was to reject America’s offer to become an ally at war, but it was not enough. Pressure on Singapore’s shoulders was heavy. She was not able to skip between her friends anymore. She could only choose China. In a country where bribing was unheard of, politicians eventually had pockets stuffed with communist gold. More bilateral friendship monuments were erected, more pandas were flown over from Sichuan, and then the referendum for the Handover was proposed.
The ruling party who architected the city had been doing so since her independence. They made it more efficient by only permitting protests or other public gatherings with a government permit, effectively making them illegal. Zuyao remembered student leaders once holding speeches with ideas deemed controversial by the government found themselves behind bars or exiled, never to return home again. He dared not to make any noise. He did not want to be taken away. The fear of being recorded for voting the opposition party and socially ostracised was very real. As a whole, his countrymen had become a very docile people, though constantly raising complaints on issues, but in actuality they would do very little or nothing for any meaningful action to be taken against this. Everyone was too selfish to get into trouble for the sake of the collective. Why would he risk his life for people who would probably not appreciate it?
The opposition, with only less than five seats in Parliament could do nothing more than struggle like a rat beneath a cat’s pointed claws. If such an Unshakable Destiny could not be changed by them, what could he, a commoner, even achieve? With that thought concluded, Zuyao closed his eyes once more and drifted back into slumber.
----
¹ Let's eat!
² Good night.

In actual traditional Chinese legends and belief, ladybugs do symbolize good luck but mostly limited in romantic aspects, and black cats actually are seemed as defenders against evil spirits.
For the closest animal duo can transmit the metaphor of "good luck and bad luck" and "yin and yang" in tradional Chinese culture, I think that should be magpie and crow.
Magpies are symbols of good fortune, hospitality, safe living in China. They are literally named "lucky bird/喜鹊". The aggressive nature of magpie is rarely mentioned and less known in China, but in another word, that's their way to protect home areas.
Black crows, like in most other places, in China they can represent death and bad luck, while also can be a symbol of wisdom and intelligence. Sometimes crows can also be a symbol of fealty due to their sociality.

"A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government." - Edward Paul Abbey
----
Resisting every urge to yawn, Tongxuan clenched his jaw hard as he attempted to tense his forehead to stop his eyelids from touching each other. Remembering that wiggling the mouse of a computer would wake it from a screensaver, Tongxuan acquired the creative idea of rolling his eyes to scan around his peripheral vision, hoping that some stimuli would drive the drowsiness away. It was too early in the morning after all. Looked like he was not the only sluggish one: pretty much all of his fellow classmates seemed to find it hard to maintain their stature, slouching like withering flowers. Prefects were seen patrolling between the rows looking for anyone to report for being out of line, like sharks trying to catch the scent of blood.
Tongxuan could feel his tummy bellowing. It was a mistake to skip breakfast. But the bigger mistake was oversleeping. He swore he set his alarm clock last night. At least he was here standing with the entire school on time and his teachers knew that he was where he should be. His school was stringent on rules and the prefects were more than happy to help punish any student who broke them. Renpin, a student from his class, was greeted by a prefect by the school gates, blocking him from going through them as the school bell rang immediately before he could step through them so he could be apprehended. As punishment, he had a week to copy out the ‘Lateness’ section of the school rules 10 times and submit it to the disciplinary department, or else he would face more severe consequences. Not only that, he was also warned that this act of tardiness was recorded, and should he repeat this offense his punishment would be doubled. Tongxuan remembered that on the first day of school, the disciplinary head announced that the rules were strict for a reason - to mold students into model citizens the country approved of. Whatever that meant, he was glad he was not punished for something so trivial.
“Attention!” A prefect stepped onto the stage and announced on the speakers. “Right fist on your chest!” Like soldiers in a military drill, everyone instinctively put their curled hands in position. “We, the citizens of -” The words resonated around the assembly square as everyone recited the pledge in unison. Tongxuan muttered as his mind was annoyed how long the entire thing was going to take, another half an hour maybe? Perhaps right before homeroom starts later, he could sneak a baozi from his snack box to the toilet and have his mini breakfast there. His hunger was getting more and more unbearable.
“You may lower your fists!” The prefect announced after the recitation was over. “Now the National Anthem will be played.”
After stepping down the stage, speakers brought this overly recognizable tune to life. Sounds of trumpets and trombones boomed as the prefect and another one headed over to flagpoles next to the stage, beginning to raise a red flag decorated with small ornaments, along with another one that was of a similar design. The two flags slowly ascended their poles until they reached the top, one of them slightly higher than the other. The music stopped and silence returned to the assembly square.
At this point, standing for half an hour in this weather that resembled a low-temperature sauna. Having an empty stomach was not helping as it was driving Tongxuan to his limit. It felt like being hung on a ledge of a cliff for ages, with every urge to let go and end this, only to have a sadistic person pouring soap over his hands to make life more difficult for him. He was not sure if it was just him or whether the faces of teachers on the stage were getting more and more blurry. He rubbed his eyes, thinking it would make it go away. The next thing he knew was being on a bed in the infirmary room.
----
Junhao was excited about the field trip next week. If his memory served him correctly, his class should be heading over to see this sculpture of a fish-tailed creature. He remembered the site being closed down for renovations since some people thought it was due for some restoration or even an upgrade. His parents probably took him to see it once when he was very young but he could not remember something so long ago. Apparently the news mentioned they are building a larger sculpture next to it for some special occasion. Was it a bear? Something along the lines of that. But that did not matter to Junhao, the field trip would be a nice change compared to being locked in a classroom with textbooks shoved in front of his face. For now, he knew he had to endure until the date came.
“Alright, alright boys and girls. Settle down.” A middle-aged teacher hushed the class as he rubbed the whiteboard clean. “Turn to page 64 of your textbooks. Today we will learn about the Speak Mandarin Campaign. Back when you kids weren’t born at all, the city was a huge linguistic mess because no one was speaking the right language, so in 1979 the campaign was finally launched to fix all of that. Now that everyone is speaking Mandarin, we can finally understand each other. This makes things more efficient and that is all thanks to our brilliant leadership, so the city will continue to prosper as how our founders envisioned! Yes, Junhao?” His eyes caught his raised hand, asking permission to speak.
“But Mr. Chen, I heard my grandmother say that it is not good because now less and less people can speak dialects and understand what she is saying.” Junhao voiced out.
“Yes, but this is easier for all of us because instead of learning all of the dialects to understand each other, we only need to learn Mandarin and that’s what we need to save time.” Mr. Chen explained, “In other words, the leaders know what is better for you than your grandmother, Junhao. That’s why we need to put our faith in them. They know what’s best for our people. Moving on-”
“But what about the other people living in the city who aren’t even Chinese at all?” Junhao jutted his hand up in the air again, “Does that not make them excluded? I thought the city is supposed to be diverse and multiracial?”
“Junhao, for the last time, you will only speak when I allow you to.” A hint of annoyance could be detected in Mr. Chen’s words, “Yes that is the case, but our leaders decided that it would be easier if all of us speak it. After all, why complicate things with unnecessary languages? Ever since this was implemented, the city came to see more solidarity and unity, thus ushering more growth and prosperity to bring our country forward! People who disagree with what the leaders have planned out are always free to leave the country, it’s their choice to do so. There must be a good reason that they put these rules in place and as good citizens, we must listen and follow them.”
“But what if there is a better solution to this?” Junhao’s hand was still raised.
Slam!
Frustrated with his bombardment of irrelevant questions, Mr. Chen smashed his textbook on the table and pointed at him in a rather threatening pose. The other students’ eyes fixed on the two, not sure how to react but stay silent and watch the events play out, for they knew that defiance would not go unpunished.
“Listen, boy.” Mr. Chen said in a dangerously low voice, as though he were bellowing. Most students knew better than to further provoke him whenever he spoke like this. “That was very unpatriotic of you and could have cost you patriotism points. I am willing to overlook everything you just said if you shut your mouth for the next half an hour because we still have a lot to cover, okay? One more word from you and you can expect not going to that field trip next week, understood?”
As if he swallowed a rock, his throat was stiff and a heaviness surfaced in his stomach. Junhao nodded and avoided eye contact with his teacher for the rest of the lesson.
----
Steam erupted from the electric rice cooker as its lid was uncovered. After waiting for it to dissipate, a scoop was used to mix it around, before neatly filling bowls with rice and being sent out to the dining table by Zihui. Her father was sitting by it, fiddling with the television’s remote, flicking through channels for the evening news. It was still a bit too early for that to be on, so the station’s signoff section aired the National Anthem. Without anything else to do but wait for his daughters and wife to serve dinner, he could just barely notice that the Anthem echoed through the opened windows as it was being played simultaneously on his neighbors’ televisions as well. Ziyue, his younger daughter, came to arrange chopsticks, spoons, and soup bowls on the table neatly, excited to tell him what happened at school today. He smiled and gently nodded to every sentence she said.
Dish after dish, the dinner table slowly crowded with food. Hot steam was rising up from every bowl and plate. The family of four assembled at the table, ready to eat.
“Dàjiā chīfàn¹!” All of them exclaimed at the same time and chopsticks were raised.
As Zihui and Ziyue’s mother, Huiting’s chopsticks reached for a few stalks of caixin and placed them into their rice bowls despite their protests. Her children must have a healthy diet. She dug out the cheeks of the soya sauce steamed fish and placed it in her husband’s rice bowl. The best parts of the fish had to go to the love of her life after all.
“Listen to your mother.” He said as Huiting gave him a nudge under the table to keep them in control. “You can only have ice cream after you finish all your vegetables.”
“Good evening, citizens. I am your host Zhang Yiying, it is 7 p.m., and welcome to today’s Evening News.” The television screen transitioned to a female news anchor after an irritatingly catchy motif was played, “Our first story is the reopening of the Merlion statue, after its 6-month long renovation. As a symbol of the city, we take pride in it, which is why the Ministry of Culture proposed this restoration plan. In addition to this project, the Central Government constructed a twin for it. Now if you visit the reopened site, a beautifully-crafted marble panda can be seen by its side, symbolizing China’s eternal friendship with the city and also a welcome-back gift, commissioned since Singapore’s majority voted to become part of China.”
“W-We went there last week at school!” Zihui said excitedly as she pointed to the television screen.
“I want to see the panda!” Ziyue looked at her mum with enthusiasm, hoping that she would take her there over the weekend.
“And now, Cao Wen, the Central Minister of Culture would like to address the citizens of Singapore.” The screen transitioned to a black-suited middle-aged man with a receding hairline. “We, the Party, would like to express our thanks to the Chinese people of Singapore, though separated for generations, still have faith in their Ancestral Homeland. Although the earthquake and tsunami was a tremendous hurdle in Singapore’s history, we are extremely honored that the Chinese people of Singapore were the first to seek the help of China. We united and persevered in these hard times to rebuild the city. We are very humbled that the Chinese people of Singapore decided to reunite with the People’s Republic of China. We ensure that under the Five-starred Red Flag, Singapore will bloom into a stunning orchid as the nation’s newest special administrative region.
“Today, the police raided a storage house in Woodlands and seized prohibited copies of the board game Rift. Rift is a Taiwanese-designed board game that desecrates our glorious victory in the Civil war and is extremely disrespectful to the veterans who gave their own lives to pave the foundations of the Party. It is very unfortunate that the rebels in the rogue province have done something like this to hurt the feelings of the Chinese people by driving themselves away from their Ancestral Homeland. Due to its unpatriotic nature, people who are found to have copies of Rift will be charged 5000 dollars and sentenced to reeducation for 6 months. If you manage to find any copies of the board game or know anyone who owns it, please do not hesitate to report them to the police. Your service to the country will be greatly rewarded.”
“Mommy?” Zihui looked at her mother curiously. “Why did we have a civil war?”
“It’s complicated.” Huiting struggled to think of a way to explain it. “I’ll tell you when you grow older.”
“Okay...” She replied, dissatisfied and knowing she would not get her answer any time soon.
“Up next, Malaysia and Indonesia expressed extreme discontent with our country’s increased naval patrols in the Straits of Malacca.” The screen returned back to the news anchor. “The prime minister of Malaysia, Mohamed Afiq bin Faruq Hakeem, said this is a clear violation of Malaysia's sovereignty. The president of Indonesia, Ida Bagus Gusti, sees this as a potential declaration of war. Other ASEAN leaders attempt to negotiate with Kuala Lumpur and Palangkaraya to ease tensions down and see if compromises could be arranged between us. Meanwhile, the Australian prime minister, Oliver Taylor, condemned our country, claiming that our fleet of destroyers was in close proximity to Christmas Island. The Central Ministry of Defense reassures the public that we are following international protocols and have not broken any regulations.”
“Daddy, why are they angry at us if we didn’t do anything wrong?” Ziyue looked worried.
“No talking while you’re eating, Ziyue.” To be honest, he was not sure how to answer that either.
“Finally, we rejoice as a referendum based in Vancouver was passed in favor to be ceded to our country as her newest special administrative region just hours ago.” The news anchor shuffled her scripts around as she announced. “The Prime Minister of Canada, Colleen Anawak, has already arranged talks with Wu Feng, the Central Minister of Foreign Affairs to discuss the transfer of sovereignty and wishes the Party good luck in further prospering China’s first North American city. The integration of our city as a special administrative region has sparked a new wave of patriotism worldwide. Many cities with a significant overseas Chinese diaspora are proposing referendums for unification with the Ancestral Homeland, which is delightful news. Central Minister Wu warns that if these referendums were not permitted and the will of the Chinese people were unanswered, the Party will not shy from using military force to liberate our people. I am your host, Zhang Yiying, and I will see you again after the commercials with our daily schedule of street name changes. Wǎn'ān².”
----
“Hmm? What’s the matter, Zuyao? Something on your mind?” Huiting’s slumber was interrupted by the ruffling of bedsheets. Her heavy eyelids barely made a slit large enough for her to glimpse on her husband, who was merely a shadowy shape of his back facing her. She had been with him long enough to know that there was something troubling him. “What’s wrong?”
She was only met with silence. Huiting also had been with him long enough that he was too stubborn to talk about issues like these. Men could always be so hard-headed. Another minute passed and she was not going to be entertained with her husband’s lack of a reply, so she turned her back away from him and closed her eyes, “I’ll just go back to sleep then.”
Zuyao laid on his side motionless. His eyelids were still light and he knew that he was not going to sleep anytime soon. His wife was right after all, he did have something in his mind. As he closed his eyes, his stream of thoughts drifted him to the dinner table when he was Zihui’s age. His mother’s chopsticks left a few stalks of baicai onto his rice bowl as his father’s were going for the steamed chicken. The windows were closed, for the torrential rain poured down upon Singapore as it usually did in the monsoon season. His father grabbed the remote control to turn the television’s volume up, though it was still drowned by millions of bullet-like raindrops that hurtled hard onto the glass from the heavens. Realizing that it was futile, their eyes laid on the subtitles just at the bottom of the screen.
“I can’t believe they’re still carrying it out right now.” Zuyao’s mother sounded concerned.
The television screen showed a parade square packed with soldiers equally spaced out in formation. The camera zoomed into their unfazed faces, rainwater trickling down their brows, across their cheeks, before pouring down their chins. Their uniforms were darkened from being drenched, but that still never stopped the ceremony from being called off. Then the camera panned to a sheltered pavilion just in front of the soldiers, where middle-aged black-suited men could be seen smiling and shaking each other’s hands before making back to their respective seats. Not long after that, the screen showed three flag poles that stood between the pavilion and the parade square. The two on the right were empty. The one on the right hoisted a red and white flag decorated with a crescent moon and five stars. A few commands in Malay were shouted and the orchestra under the pavilion started playing. The old flag started its descent for its last time in Singaporean history. The bows of the violins ground to a halt.
More commands were shouted, this time in Chinese, and the orchestra sprang to life again with The March of the Volunteers, Five-starred Red Flag began its ascent with another flag on the flagpoles to the right. With the final blast of the trumpet, it towered over its companion, the rest of the parade’s participants, and by extension the citizens of Singapore.
“We welcome Singapore into the warm embrace of her Ancestral Homeland. The region has been administered by the Chinese people and will continue to be so. This is the promise, and this is the Unshakable Destiny.” One of the black-suited men came forth to make a speech. His words did not make much sense to Zuyao. Perhaps they were too complicated. Or perhaps he was not paying much attention to them. The stream of thoughts brought him back to his middle-aged self, in his bed next to his sound-asleep wife. Although the speech made by the first chief executive was blurry in his memory, the words “Unshakable Destiny” were still branded in his mind.
He could still remember many politicians were staunchly opposed to the Handover as Singapore’s independence was at stake. As far as he could tell, merely the mention of this polarised the entire island’s population way before when it was first proposed. Even though the Merdeka generation was a relic of the past, their spirit that strived to painstakingly build an international metropolis from a mere fishing village still resonated amongst the populace. That was what made him proud to be Singaporean.
As a small city-state on the chessboard of global politics, Singapore had been extremely careful to make as many friends as she could. That was the only way she could survive. Unfortunately, some friends just could not get along with each other. No matter how much China wanted to be friends with Singapore, diplomats found it extremely hard to ignore how America and Taiwan had extremely close military ties with her. One of the only things Singapore could do was to reject America’s offer to become an ally at war, but it was not enough. Pressure on Singapore’s shoulders was heavy. She was not able to skip between her friends anymore. She could only choose China. In a country where bribing was unheard of, politicians eventually had pockets stuffed with communist gold. More bilateral friendship monuments were erected, more pandas were flown over from Sichuan, and then the referendum for the Handover was proposed.
The ruling party who architected the city had been doing so since her independence. They made it more efficient by only permitting protests or other public gatherings with a government permit, effectively making them illegal. Zuyao remembered student leaders once holding speeches with ideas deemed controversial by the government found themselves behind bars or exiled, never to return home again. He dared not to make any noise. He did not want to be taken away. The fear of being recorded for voting the opposition party and socially ostracised was very real. As a whole, his countrymen had become a very docile people, though constantly raising complaints on issues, but in actuality they would do very little or nothing for any meaningful action to be taken against this. Everyone was too selfish to get into trouble for the sake of the collective. Why would he risk his life for people who would probably not appreciate it?
The opposition, with only less than five seats in Parliament could do nothing more than struggle like a rat beneath a cat’s pointed claws. If such an Unshakable Destiny could not be changed by them, what could he, a commoner, even achieve? With that thought concluded, Zuyao closed his eyes once more and drifted back into slumber.
----
¹ Let's eat!
² Good night.

"A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government." - Edward Paul Abbey
----
Resisting every urge to yawn, Tongxuan clenched his jaw hard as he attempted to tense his forehead to stop his eyelids from touching each other. Remembering that wiggling the mouse of a computer would wake it from a screensaver, Tongxuan acquired the creative idea of rolling his eyes to scan around his peripheral vision, hoping that some stimuli would drive the drowsiness away. It was too early in the morning after all. Looked like he was not the only sluggish one: pretty much all of his fellow classmates seemed to find it hard to maintain their stature, slouching like withering flowers. Prefects were seen patrolling between the rows looking for anyone to report for being out of line, like sharks trying to catch the scent of blood.
Tongxuan could feel his tummy bellowing. It was a mistake to skip breakfast. But the bigger mistake was oversleeping. He swore he set his alarm clock last night. At least he was here standing with the entire school on time and his teachers knew that he was where he should be. His school was stringent on rules and the prefects were more than happy to help punish any student who broke them. Renpin, a student from his class, was greeted by a prefect by the school gates, blocking him from going through them as the school bell rang immediately before he could step through them so he could be apprehended. As punishment, he had a week to copy out the ‘Lateness’ section of the school rules 10 times and submit it to the disciplinary department, or else he would face more severe consequences. Not only that, he was also warned that this act of tardiness was recorded, and should he repeat this offense his punishment would be doubled. Tongxuan remembered that on the first day of school, the disciplinary head announced that the rules were strict for a reason - to mold students into model citizens the country approved of. Whatever that meant, he was glad he was not punished for something so trivial.
“Attention!” A prefect stepped onto the stage and announced on the speakers. “Right fist on your chest!” Like soldiers in a military drill, everyone instinctively put their curled hands in position. “We, the citizens of -” The words resonated around the assembly square as everyone recited the pledge in unison. Tongxuan muttered as his mind was annoyed how long the entire thing was going to take, another half an hour maybe? Perhaps right before homeroom starts later, he could sneak a baozi from his snack box to the toilet and have his mini breakfast there. His hunger was getting more and more unbearable.
“You may lower your fists!” The prefect announced after the recitation was over. “Now the National Anthem will be played.”
After stepping down the stage, speakers brought this overly recognizable tune to life. Sounds of trumpets and trombones boomed as the prefect and another one headed over to flagpoles next to the stage, beginning to raise a red flag decorated with small ornaments, along with another one that was of a similar design. The two flags slowly ascended their poles until they reached the top, one of them slightly higher than the other. The music stopped and silence returned to the assembly square.
At this point, standing for half an hour in this weather that resembled a low-temperature sauna. Having an empty stomach was not helping as it was driving Tongxuan to his limit. It felt like being hung on a ledge of a cliff for ages, with every urge to let go and end this, only to have a sadistic person pouring soap over his hands to make life more difficult for him. He was not sure if it was just him or whether the faces of teachers on the stage were getting more and more blurry. He rubbed his eyes, thinking it would make it go away. The next thing he knew was being on a bed in the infirmary room.
----
Junhao was excited about the field trip next week. If his memory served him correctly, his class should be heading over to see this sculpture of a fish-tailed creature. He remembered the site being closed down for renovations since some people thought it was due for some restoration or even an upgrade. His parents probably took him to see it once when he was very young but he could not remember something so long ago. Apparently the news mentioned they are building a larger sculpture next to it for some special occasion. Was it a bear? Something along the lines of that. But that did not matter to Junhao, the field trip would be a nice change compared to being locked in a classroom with textbooks shoved in front of his face. For now, he knew he had to endure until the date came.
“Alright, alright boys and girls. Settle down.” A middle-aged teacher hushed the class as he rubbed the whiteboard clean. “Turn to page 64 of your textbooks. Today we will learn about the Speak Mandarin Campaign. Back when you kids weren’t born at all, the city was a huge linguistic mess because no one was speaking the right language, so in 1979 the campaign was finally launched to fix all of that. Now that everyone is speaking Mandarin, we can finally understand each other. This makes things more efficient and that is all thanks to our brilliant leadership, so the city will continue to prosper as how our founders envisioned! Yes, Junhao?” His eyes caught his raised hand, asking permission to speak.
“But Mr. Chen, I heard my grandmother say that it is not good because now less and less people can speak dialects and understand what she is saying.” Junhao voiced out.
“Yes, but this is easier for all of us because instead of learning all of the dialects to understand each other, we only need to learn Mandarin and that’s what we need to save time.” Mr. Chen explained, “In other words, the leaders know what is better for you than your grandmother, Junhao. That’s why we need to put our faith in them. They know what’s best for our people. Moving on-”
“But what about the other people living in the city who aren’t even Chinese at all?” Junhao jutted his hand up in the air again, “Does that not make them excluded? I thought the city is supposed to be diverse and multiracial?”
“Junhao, for the last time, you will only speak when I allow you to.” A hint of annoyance could be detected in Mr. Chen’s words, “Yes that is the case, but our leaders decided that it would be easier if all of us speak it. After all, why complicate things with unnecessary languages? Ever since this was implemented, the city came to see more solidarity and unity, thus ushering more growth and prosperity to bring our country forward! People who disagree with what the leaders have planned out are always free to leave the country, it’s their choice to do so. There must be a good reason that they put these rules in place and as good citizens, we must listen and follow them.”
“But what if there is a better solution to this?” Junhao’s hand was still raised.
Slam!
Frustrated with his bombardment of irrelevant questions, Mr. Chen smashed his textbook on the table and pointed at him in a rather threatening pose. The other students’ eyes fixed on the two, not sure how to react but stay silent and watch the events play out, for they knew that defiance would not go unpunished.
“Listen, boy.” Mr. Chen said in a dangerously low voice, as though he were bellowing. Most students knew better than to further provoke him whenever he spoke like this. “That was very unpatriotic of you and could have cost you patriotism points. I am willing to overlook everything you just said if you shut your mouth for the next half an hour because we still have a lot to cover, okay? One more word from you and you can expect not going to that field trip next week, understood?”
As if he swallowed a rock, his throat was stiff and a heaviness surfaced in his stomach. Junhao nodded and avoided eye contact with his teacher for the rest of the lesson.
----
Steam erupted from the electric rice cooker as its lid was uncovered. After waiting for it to dissipate, a scoop was used to mix it around, before neatly filling bowls with rice and being sent out to the dining table by Zihui. Her father was sitting by it, fiddling with the television’s remote, flicking through channels for the evening news. It was still a bit too early for that to be on, so the station’s signoff section aired the National Anthem. Without anything else to do but wait for his daughters and wife to serve dinner, he could just barely notice that the Anthem echoed through the opened windows as it was being played simultaneously on his neighbors’ televisions as well. Ziyue, his younger daughter, came to arrange chopsticks, spoons, and soup bowls on the table neatly, excited to tell him what happened at school today. He smiled and gently nodded to every sentence she said.
Dish after dish, the dinner table slowly crowded with food. Hot steam was rising up from every bowl and plate. The family of four assembled at the table, ready to eat.
“Dàjiā chīfàn¹!” All of them exclaimed at the same time and chopsticks were raised.
As Zihui and Ziyue’s mother, Huiting’s chopsticks reached for a few stalks of caixin and placed them into their rice bowls despite their protests. Her children must have a healthy diet. She dug out the cheeks of the soya sauce steamed fish and placed it in her husband’s rice bowl. The best parts of the fish had to go to the love of her life after all.
“Listen to your mother.” He said as Huiting gave him a nudge under the table to keep them in control. “You can only have ice cream after you finish all your vegetables.”
“Good evening, citizens. I am your host Zhang Yiying, it is 7 p.m., and welcome to today’s Evening News.” The television screen transitioned to a female news anchor after an irritatingly catchy motif was played, “Our first story is the reopening of the Merlion statue, after its 6-month long renovation. As a symbol of the city, we take pride in it, which is why the Ministry of Culture proposed this restoration plan. In addition to this project, the Central Government constructed a twin for it. Now if you visit the reopened site, a beautifully-crafted marble panda can be seen by its side, symbolizing China’s eternal friendship with the city and also a welcome-back gift, commissioned since Singapore’s majority voted to become part of China.”
“W-We went there last week at school!” Zihui said excitedly as she pointed to the television screen.
“I want to see the panda!” Ziyue looked at her mum with enthusiasm, hoping that she would take her there over the weekend.
“And now, Cao Wen, the Central Minister of Culture would like to address the citizens of Singapore.” The screen transitioned to a black-suited middle-aged man with a receding hairline. “We, the Party, would like to express our thanks to the Chinese people of Singapore, though separated for generations, still have faith in their Ancestral Homeland. Although the earthquake and tsunami was a tremendous hurdle in Singapore’s history, we are extremely honored that the Chinese people of Singapore were the first to seek the help of China. We united and persevered in these hard times to rebuild the city. We are very humbled that the Chinese people of Singapore decided to reunite with the People’s Republic of China. We ensure that under the Five-starred Red Flag, Singapore will bloom into a stunning orchid as the nation’s newest special administrative region.
“Today, the police raided a storage house in Woodlands and seized prohibited copies of the board game Rift. Rift is a Taiwanese-designed board game that desecrates our glorious victory in the Civil war and is extremely disrespectful to the veterans who gave their own lives to pave the foundations of the Party. It is very unfortunate that the rebels in the rogue province have done something like this to hurt the feelings of the Chinese people by driving themselves away from their Ancestral Homeland. Due to its unpatriotic nature, people who are found to have copies of Rift will be charged 5000 dollars and sentenced to reeducation for 6 months. If you manage to find any copies of the board game or know anyone who owns it, please do not hesitate to report them to the police. Your service to the country will be greatly rewarded.”
“Mommy?” Zihui looked at her mother curiously. “Why did we have a civil war?”
“It’s complicated.” Huiting struggled to think of a way to explain it. “I’ll tell you when you grow older.”
“Okay...” She replied, dissatisfied and knowing she would not get her answer any time soon.
“Up next, Malaysia and Indonesia expressed extreme discontent with our country’s increased naval patrols in the Straits of Malacca.” The screen returned back to the news anchor. “The prime minister of Malaysia, Mohamed Afiq bin Faruq Hakeem, said this is a clear violation of Malaysia's sovereignty. The president of Indonesia, Ida Bagus Gusti, sees this as a potential declaration of war. Other ASEAN leaders attempt to negotiate with Kuala Lumpur and Palangkaraya to ease tensions down and see if compromises could be arranged between us. Meanwhile, the Australian prime minister, Oliver Taylor, condemned our country, claiming that our fleet of destroyers was in close proximity to Christmas Island. The Central Ministry of Defense reassures the public that we are following international protocols and have not broken any regulations.”
“Daddy, why are they angry at us if we didn’t do anything wrong?” Ziyue looked worried.
“No talking while you’re eating, Ziyue.” To be honest, he was not sure how to answer that either.
“Finally, we rejoice as a referendum based in Vancouver was passed in favor to be ceded to our country as her newest special administrative region just hours ago.” The news anchor shuffled her scripts around as she announced. “The Prime Minister of Canada, Colleen Anawak, has already arranged talks with Wu Feng, the Central Minister of Foreign Affairs to discuss the transfer of sovereignty and wishes the Party good luck in further prospering China’s first North American city. The integration of our city as a special administrative region has sparked a new wave of patriotism worldwide. Many cities with a significant overseas Chinese diaspora are proposing referendums for unification with the Ancestral Homeland, which is delightful news. Central Minister Wu warns that if these referendums were not permitted and the will of the Chinese people were unanswered, the Party will not shy from using military force to liberate our people. I am your host, Zhang Yiying, and I will see you again after the commercials with our daily schedule of street name changes. Wǎn'ān².”
----
“Hmm? What’s the matter, Zuyao? Something on your mind?” Huiting’s slumber was interrupted by the ruffling of bedsheets. Her heavy eyelids barely made a slit large enough for her to glimpse on her husband, who was merely a shadowy shape of his back facing her. She had been with him long enough to know that there was something troubling him. “What’s wrong?”
She was only met with silence. Huiting also had been with him long enough that he was too stubborn to talk about issues like these. Men could always be so hard-headed. Another minute passed and she was not going to be entertained with her husband’s lack of a reply, so she turned her back away from him and closed her eyes, “I’ll just go back to sleep then.”
Zuyao laid on his side motionless. His eyelids were still light and he knew that he was not going to sleep anytime soon. His wife was right after all, he did have something in his mind. As he closed his eyes, his stream of thoughts drifted him to the dinner table when he was Zihui’s age. His mother’s chopsticks left a few stalks of baicai onto his rice bowl as his father’s were going for the steamed chicken. The windows were closed, for the torrential rain poured down upon Singapore as it usually did in the monsoon season. His father grabbed the remote control to turn the television’s volume up, though it was still drowned by millions of bullet-like raindrops that hurtled hard onto the glass from the heavens. Realizing that it was futile, their eyes laid on the subtitles just at the bottom of the screen.
“I can’t believe they’re still carrying it out right now.” Zuyao’s mother sounded concerned.
The television screen showed a parade square packed with soldiers equally spaced out in formation. The camera zoomed into their unfazed faces, rainwater trickling down their brows, across their cheeks, before pouring down their chins. Their uniforms were darkened from being drenched, but that still never stopped the ceremony from being called off. Then the camera panned to a sheltered pavilion just in front of the soldiers, where middle-aged black-suited men could be seen smiling and shaking each other’s hands before making back to their respective seats. Not long after that, the screen showed three flag poles that stood between the pavilion and the parade square. The two on the right were empty. The one on the right hoisted a red and white flag decorated with a crescent moon and five stars. A few commands in Malay were shouted and the orchestra under the pavilion started playing. The old flag started its descent for its last time in Singaporean history. The bows of the violins ground to a halt.
More commands were shouted, this time in Chinese, and the orchestra sprang to life again with The March of the Volunteers, Five-starred Red Flag began its ascent with another flag on the flagpoles to the right. With the final blast of the trumpet, it towered over its companion, the rest of the parade’s participants, and by extension the citizens of Singapore.
“We welcome Singapore into the warm embrace of her Ancestral Homeland. The region has been administered by the Chinese people and will continue to be so. This is the promise, and this is the Unshakable Destiny.” One of the black-suited men came forth to make a speech. His words did not make much sense to Zuyao. Perhaps they were too complicated. Or perhaps he was not paying much attention to them. The stream of thoughts brought him back to his middle-aged self, in his bed next to his sound-asleep wife. Although the speech made by the first chief executive was blurry in his memory, the words “Unshakable Destiny” were still branded in his mind.
He could still remember many politicians were staunchly opposed to the Handover as Singapore’s independence was at stake. As far as he could tell, merely the mention of this polarised the entire island’s population way before when it was first proposed. Even though the Merdeka generation was a relic of the past, their spirit that strived to painstakingly build an international metropolis from a mere fishing village still resonated amongst the populace. That was what made him proud to be Singaporean.
As a small city-state on the chessboard of global politics, Singapore had been extremely careful to make as many friends as she could. That was the only way she could survive. Unfortunately, some friends just could not get along with each other. No matter how much China wanted to be friends with Singapore, diplomats found it extremely hard to ignore how America and Taiwan had extremely close military ties with her. One of the only things Singapore could do was to reject America’s offer to become an ally at war, but it was not enough. Pressure on Singapore’s shoulders was heavy. She was not able to skip between her friends anymore. She could only choose China. In a country where bribing was unheard of, politicians eventually had pockets stuffed with communist gold. More bilateral friendship monuments were erected, more pandas were flown over from Sichuan, and then the referendum for the Handover was proposed.
The ruling party who architected the city had been doing so since her independence. They made it more efficient by only permitting protests or other public gatherings with a government permit, effectively making them illegal. Zuyao remembered student leaders once holding speeches with ideas deemed controversial by the government found themselves behind bars or exiled, never to return home again. He dared not to make any noise. He did not want to be taken away. The fear of being recorded for voting the opposition party and socially ostracised was very real. As a whole, his countrymen had become a very docile people, though constantly raising complaints on issues, but in actuality they would do very little or nothing for any meaningful action to be taken against this. Everyone was too selfish to get into trouble for the sake of the collective. Why would he risk his life for people who would probably not appreciate it?
The opposition, with only less than five seats in Parliament could do nothing more than struggle like a rat beneath a cat’s pointed claws. If such an Unshakable Destiny could not be changed by them, what could he, a commoner, even achieve? With that thought concluded, Zuyao closed his eyes once more and drifted back into slumber.
----
¹ Let's eat!
² Good night.

"A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government." - Edward Paul Abbey
----
Resisting every urge to yawn, Tongxuan clenched his jaw hard as he attempted to tense his forehead to stop his eyelids from touching each other. Remembering that wiggling the mouse of a computer would wake it from a screensaver, Tongxuan acquired the creative idea of rolling his eyes to scan around his peripheral vision, hoping that some stimuli would drive the drowsiness away. It was too early in the morning after all. Looked like he was not the only sluggish one: pretty much all of his fellow classmates seemed to find it hard to maintain their stature, slouching like withering flowers. Prefects were seen patrolling between the rows looking for anyone to report for being out of line, like sharks trying to catch the scent of blood.
Tongxuan could feel his tummy bellowing. It was a mistake to skip breakfast. But the bigger mistake was oversleeping. He swore he set his alarm clock last night. At least he was here standing with the entire school on time and his teachers knew that he was where he should be. His school was stringent on rules and the prefects were more than happy to help punish any student who broke them. Renpin, a student from his class, was greeted by a prefect by the school gates, blocking him from going through them as the school bell rang immediately before he could step through them so he could be apprehended. As punishment, he had a week to copy out the ‘Lateness’ section of the school rules 10 times and submit it to the disciplinary department, or else he would face more severe consequences. Not only that, he was also warned that this act of tardiness was recorded, and should he repeat this offense his punishment would be doubled. Tongxuan remembered that on the first day of school, the disciplinary head announced that the rules were strict for a reason - to mold students into model citizens the country approved of. Whatever that meant, he was glad he was not punished for something so trivial.
“Attention!” A prefect stepped onto the stage and announced on the speakers. “Right fist on your chest!” Like soldiers in a military drill, everyone instinctively put their curled hands in position. “We, the citizens of -” The words resonated around the assembly square as everyone recited the pledge in unison. Tongxuan muttered as his mind was annoyed how long the entire thing was going to take, another half an hour maybe? Perhaps right before homeroom starts later, he could sneak a baozi from his snack box to the toilet and have his mini breakfast there. His hunger was getting more and more unbearable.
“You may lower your fists!” The prefect announced after the recitation was over. “Now the National Anthem will be played.”
After stepping down the stage, speakers brought this overly recognizable tune to life. Sounds of trumpets and trombones boomed as the prefect and another one headed over to flagpoles next to the stage, beginning to raise a red flag decorated with small ornaments, along with another one that was of a similar design. The two flags slowly ascended their poles until they reached the top, one of them slightly higher than the other. The music stopped and silence returned to the assembly square.
At this point, standing for half an hour in this weather that resembled a low-temperature sauna. Having an empty stomach was not helping as it was driving Tongxuan to his limit. It felt like being hung on a ledge of a cliff for ages, with every urge to let go and end this, only to have a sadistic person pouring soap over his hands to make life more difficult for him. He was not sure if it was just him or whether the faces of teachers on the stage were getting more and more blurry. He rubbed his eyes, thinking it would make it go away. The next thing he knew was being on a bed in the infirmary room.
----
Junhao was excited about the field trip next week. If his memory served him correctly, his class should be heading over to see this sculpture of a fish-tailed creature. He remembered the site being closed down for renovations since some people thought it was due for some restoration or even an upgrade. His parents probably took him to see it once when he was very young but he could not remember something so long ago. Apparently the news mentioned they are building a larger sculpture next to it for some special occasion. Was it a bear? Something along the lines of that. But that did not matter to Junhao, the field trip would be a nice change compared to being locked in a classroom with textbooks shoved in front of his face. For now, he knew he had to endure until the date came.
“Alright, alright boys and girls. Settle down.” A middle-aged teacher hushed the class as he rubbed the whiteboard clean. “Turn to page 64 of your textbooks. Today we will learn about the Speak Mandarin Campaign. Back when you kids weren’t born at all, the city was a huge linguistic mess because no one was speaking the right language, so in 1979 the campaign was finally launched to fix all of that. Now that everyone is speaking Mandarin, we can finally understand each other. This makes things more efficient and that is all thanks to our brilliant leadership, so the city will continue to prosper as how our founders envisioned! Yes, Junhao?” His eyes caught his raised hand, asking permission to speak.
“But Mr. Chen, I heard my grandmother say that it is not good because now less and less people can speak dialects and understand what she is saying.” Junhao voiced out.
“Yes, but this is easier for all of us because instead of learning all of the dialects to understand each other, we only need to learn Mandarin and that’s what we need to save time.” Mr. Chen explained, “In other words, the leaders know what is better for you than your grandmother, Junhao. That’s why we need to put our faith in them. They know what’s best for our people. Moving on-”
“But what about the other people living in the city who aren’t even Chinese at all?” Junhao jutted his hand up in the air again, “Does that not make them excluded? I thought the city is supposed to be diverse and multiracial?”
“Junhao, for the last time, you will only speak when I allow you to.” A hint of annoyance could be detected in Mr. Chen’s words, “Yes that is the case, but our leaders decided that it would be easier if all of us speak it. After all, why complicate things with unnecessary languages? Ever since this was implemented, the city came to see more solidarity and unity, thus ushering more growth and prosperity to bring our country forward! People who disagree with what the leaders have planned out are always free to leave the country, it’s their choice to do so. There must be a good reason that they put these rules in place and as good citizens, we must listen and follow them.”
“But what if there is a better solution to this?” Junhao’s hand was still raised.
Slam!
Frustrated with his bombardment of irrelevant questions, Mr. Chen smashed his textbook on the table and pointed at him in a rather threatening pose. The other students’ eyes fixed on the two, not sure how to react but stay silent and watch the events play out, for they knew that defiance would not go unpunished.
“Listen, boy.” Mr. Chen said in a dangerously low voice, as though he were bellowing. Most students knew better than to further provoke him whenever he spoke like this. “That was very unpatriotic of you and could have cost you patriotism points. I am willing to overlook everything you just said if you shut your mouth for the next half an hour because we still have a lot to cover, okay? One more word from you and you can expect not going to that field trip next week, understood?”
As if he swallowed a rock, his throat was stiff and a heaviness surfaced in his stomach. Junhao nodded and avoided eye contact with his teacher for the rest of the lesson.
----
Steam erupted from the electric rice cooker as its lid was uncovered. After waiting for it to dissipate, a scoop was used to mix it around, before neatly filling bowls with rice and being sent out to the dining table by Zihui. Her father was sitting by it, fiddling with the television’s remote, flicking through channels for the evening news. It was still a bit too early for that to be on, so the station’s signoff section aired the National Anthem. Without anything else to do but wait for his daughters and wife to serve dinner, he could just barely notice that the Anthem echoed through the opened windows as it was being played simultaneously on his neighbors’ televisions as well. Ziyue, his younger daughter, came to arrange chopsticks, spoons, and soup bowls on the table neatly, excited to tell him what happened at school today. He smiled and gently nodded to every sentence she said.
Dish after dish, the dinner table slowly crowded with food. Hot steam was rising up from every bowl and plate. The family of four assembled at the table, ready to eat.
“Dàjiā chīfàn¹!” All of them exclaimed at the same time and chopsticks were raised.
As Zihui and Ziyue’s mother, Huiting’s chopsticks reached for a few stalks of caixin and placed them into their rice bowls despite their protests. Her children must have a healthy diet. She dug out the cheeks of the soya sauce steamed fish and placed it in her husband’s rice bowl. The best parts of the fish had to go to the love of her life after all.
“Listen to your mother.” He said as Huiting gave him a nudge under the table to keep them in control. “You can only have ice cream after you finish all your vegetables.”
“Good evening, citizens. I am your host Zhang Yiying, it is 7 p.m., and welcome to today’s Evening News.” The television screen transitioned to a female news anchor after an irritatingly catchy motif was played, “Our first story is the reopening of the Merlion statue, after its 6-month long renovation. As a symbol of the city, we take pride in it, which is why the Ministry of Culture proposed this restoration plan. In addition to this project, the Central Government constructed a twin for it. Now if you visit the reopened site, a beautifully-crafted marble panda can be seen by its side, symbolizing China’s eternal friendship with the city and also a welcome-back gift, commissioned since Singapore’s majority voted to become part of China.”
“W-We went there last week at school!” Zihui said excitedly as she pointed to the television screen.
“I want to see the panda!” Ziyue looked at her mum with enthusiasm, hoping that she would take her there over the weekend.
“And now, Cao Wen, the Central Minister of Culture would like to address the citizens of Singapore.” The screen transitioned to a black-suited middle-aged man with a receding hairline. “We, the Party, would like to express our thanks to the Chinese people of Singapore, though separated for generations, still have faith in their Ancestral Homeland. Although the earthquake and tsunami was a tremendous hurdle in Singapore’s history, we are extremely honored that the Chinese people of Singapore were the first to seek the help of China. We united and persevered in these hard times to rebuild the city. We are very humbled that the Chinese people of Singapore decided to reunite with the People’s Republic of China. We ensure that under the Five-starred Red Flag, Singapore will bloom into a stunning orchid as the nation’s newest special administrative region.
“Today, the police raided a storage house in Woodlands and seized prohibited copies of the board game Rift. Rift is a Taiwanese-designed board game that desecrates our glorious victory in the Civil war and is extremely disrespectful to the veterans who gave their own lives to pave the foundations of the Party. It is very unfortunate that the rebels in the rogue province have done something like this to hurt the feelings of the Chinese people by driving themselves away from their Ancestral Homeland. Due to its unpatriotic nature, people who are found to have copies of Rift will be charged 5000 dollars and sentenced to reeducation for 6 months. If you manage to find any copies of the board game or know anyone who owns it, please do not hesitate to report them to the police. Your service to the country will be greatly rewarded.”
“Mommy?” Zihui looked at her mother curiously. “Why did we have a civil war?”
“It’s complicated.” Huiting struggled to think of a way to explain it. “I’ll tell you when you grow older.”
“Okay...” She replied, dissatisfied and knowing she would not get her answer any time soon.
“Up next, Malaysia and Indonesia expressed extreme discontent with our country’s increased naval patrols in the Straits of Malacca.” The screen returned back to the news anchor. “The prime minister of Malaysia, Mohamed Afiq bin Faruq Hakeem, said this is a clear violation of Malaysia's sovereignty. The president of Indonesia, Ida Bagus Gusti, sees this as a potential declaration of war. Other ASEAN leaders attempt to negotiate with Kuala Lumpur and Palangkaraya to ease tensions down and see if compromises could be arranged between us. Meanwhile, the Australian prime minister, Oliver Taylor, condemned our country, claiming that our fleet of destroyers was in close proximity to Christmas Island. The Central Ministry of Defense reassures the public that we are following international protocols and have not broken any regulations.”
“Daddy, why are they angry at us if we didn’t do anything wrong?” Ziyue looked worried.
“No talking while you’re eating, Ziyue.” To be honest, he was not sure how to answer that either.
“Finally, we rejoice as a referendum based in Vancouver was passed in favor to be ceded to our country as her newest special administrative region just hours ago.” The news anchor shuffled her scripts around as she announced. “The Prime Minister of Canada, Colleen Anawak, has already arranged talks with Wu Feng, the Central Minister of Foreign Affairs to discuss the transfer of sovereignty and wishes the Party good luck in further prospering China’s first North American city. The integration of our city as a special administrative region has sparked a new wave of patriotism worldwide. Many cities with a significant overseas Chinese diaspora are proposing referendums for unification with the Ancestral Homeland, which is delightful news. Central Minister Wu warns that if these referendums were not permitted and the will of the Chinese people were unanswered, the Party will not shy from using military force to liberate our people. I am your host, Zhang Yiying, and I will see you again after the commercials with our daily schedule of street name changes. Wǎn'ān².”
----
“Hmm? What’s the matter, Zuyao? Something on your mind?” Huiting’s slumber was interrupted by the ruffling of bedsheets. Her heavy eyelids barely made a slit large enough for her to glimpse on her husband, who was merely a shadowy shape of his back facing her. She had been with him long enough to know that there was something troubling him. “What’s wrong?”
She was only met with silence. Huiting also had been with him long enough that he was too stubborn to talk about issues like these. Men could always be so hard-headed. Another minute passed and she was not going to be entertained with her husband’s lack of a reply, so she turned her back away from him and closed her eyes, “I’ll just go back to sleep then.”
Zuyao laid on his side motionless. His eyelids were still light and he knew that he was not going to sleep anytime soon. His wife was right after all, he did have something in his mind. As he closed his eyes, his stream of thoughts drifted him to the dinner table when he was Zihui’s age. His mother’s chopsticks left a few stalks of baicai onto his rice bowl as his father’s were going for the steamed chicken. The windows were closed, for the torrential rain poured down upon Singapore as it usually did in the monsoon season. His father grabbed the remote control to turn the television’s volume up, though it was still drowned by millions of bullet-like raindrops that hurtled hard onto the glass from the heavens. Realizing that it was futile, their eyes laid on the subtitles just at the bottom of the screen.
“I can’t believe they’re still carrying it out right now.” Zuyao’s mother sounded concerned.
The television screen showed a parade square packed with soldiers equally spaced out in formation. The camera zoomed into their unfazed faces, rainwater trickling down their brows, across their cheeks, before pouring down their chins. Their uniforms were darkened from being drenched, but that still never stopped the ceremony from being called off. Then the camera panned to a sheltered pavilion just in front of the soldiers, where middle-aged black-suited men could be seen smiling and shaking each other’s hands before making back to their respective seats. Not long after that, the screen showed three flag poles that stood between the pavilion and the parade square. The two on the right were empty. The one on the right hoisted a red and white flag decorated with a crescent moon and five stars. A few commands in Malay were shouted and the orchestra under the pavilion started playing. The old flag started its descent for its last time in Singaporean history. The bows of the violins ground to a halt.
More commands were shouted, this time in Chinese, and the orchestra sprang to life again with The March of the Volunteers, Five-starred Red Flag began its ascent with another flag on the flagpoles to the right. With the final blast of the trumpet, it towered over its companion, the rest of the parade’s participants, and by extension the citizens of Singapore.
“We welcome Singapore into the warm embrace of her Ancestral Homeland. The region has been administered by the Chinese people and will continue to be so. This is the promise, and this is the Unshakable Destiny.” One of the black-suited men came forth to make a speech. His words did not make much sense to Zuyao. Perhaps they were too complicated. Or perhaps he was not paying much attention to them. The stream of thoughts brought him back to his middle-aged self, in his bed next to his sound-asleep wife. Although the speech made by the first chief executive was blurry in his memory, the words “Unshakable Destiny” were still branded in his mind.
He could still remember many politicians were staunchly opposed to the Handover as Singapore’s independence was at stake. As far as he could tell, merely the mention of this polarised the entire island’s population way before when it was first proposed. Even though the Merdeka generation was a relic of the past, their spirit that strived to painstakingly build an international metropolis from a mere fishing village still resonated amongst the populace. That was what made him proud to be Singaporean.
As a small city-state on the chessboard of global politics, Singapore had been extremely careful to make as many friends as she could. That was the only way she could survive. Unfortunately, some friends just could not get along with each other. No matter how much China wanted to be friends with Singapore, diplomats found it extremely hard to ignore how America and Taiwan had extremely close military ties with her. One of the only things Singapore could do was to reject America’s offer to become an ally at war, but it was not enough. Pressure on Singapore’s shoulders was heavy. She was not able to skip between her friends anymore. She could only choose China. In a country where bribing was unheard of, politicians eventually had pockets stuffed with communist gold. More bilateral friendship monuments were erected, more pandas were flown over from Sichuan, and then the referendum for the Handover was proposed.
The ruling party who architected the city had been doing so since her independence. They made it more efficient by only permitting protests or other public gatherings with a government permit, effectively making them illegal. Zuyao remembered student leaders once holding speeches with ideas deemed controversial by the government found themselves behind bars or exiled, never to return home again. He dared not to make any noise. He did not want to be taken away. The fear of being recorded for voting the opposition party and socially ostracised was very real. As a whole, his countrymen had become a very docile people, though constantly raising complaints on issues, but in actuality they would do very little or nothing for any meaningful action to be taken against this. Everyone was too selfish to get into trouble for the sake of the collective. Why would he risk his life for people who would probably not appreciate it?
The opposition, with only less than five seats in Parliament could do nothing more than struggle like a rat beneath a cat’s pointed claws. If such an Unshakable Destiny could not be changed by them, what could he, a commoner, even achieve? With that thought concluded, Zuyao closed his eyes once more and drifted back into slumber.
----
¹ Let's eat!
² Good night.

"A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government." - Edward Paul Abbey
----
Resisting every urge to yawn, Tongxuan clenched his jaw hard as he attempted to tense his forehead to stop his eyelids from touching each other. Remembering that wiggling the mouse of a computer would wake it from a screensaver, Tongxuan acquired the creative idea of rolling his eyes to scan around his peripheral vision, hoping that some stimuli would drive the drowsiness away. It was too early in the morning after all. Looked like he was not the only sluggish one: pretty much all of his fellow classmates seemed to find it hard to maintain their stature, slouching like withering flowers. Prefects were seen patrolling between the rows looking for anyone to report for being out of line, like sharks trying to catch the scent of blood.
Tongxuan could feel his tummy bellowing. It was a mistake to skip breakfast. But the bigger mistake was oversleeping. He swore he set his alarm clock last night. At least he was here standing with the entire school on time and his teachers knew that he was where he should be. His school was stringent on rules and the prefects were more than happy to help punish any student who broke them. Renpin, a student from his class, was greeted by a prefect by the school gates, blocking him from going through them as the school bell rang immediately before he could step through them so he could be apprehended. As punishment, he had a week to copy out the ‘Lateness’ section of the school rules 10 times and submit it to the disciplinary department, or else he would face more severe consequences. Not only that, he was also warned that this act of tardiness was recorded, and should he repeat this offense his punishment would be doubled. Tongxuan remembered that on the first day of school, the disciplinary head announced that the rules were strict for a reason - to mold students into model citizens the country approved of. Whatever that meant, he was glad he was not punished for something so trivial.
“Attention!” A prefect stepped onto the stage and announced on the speakers. “Right fist on your chest!” Like soldiers in a military drill, everyone instinctively put their curled hands in position. “We, the citizens of -” The words resonated around the assembly square as everyone recited the pledge in unison. Tongxuan muttered as his mind was annoyed how long the entire thing was going to take, another half an hour maybe? Perhaps right before homeroom starts later, he could sneak a baozi from his snack box to the toilet and have his mini breakfast there. His hunger was getting more and more unbearable.
“You may lower your fists!” The prefect announced after the recitation was over. “Now the National Anthem will be played.”
After stepping down the stage, speakers brought this overly recognizable tune to life. Sounds of trumpets and trombones boomed as the prefect and another one headed over to flagpoles next to the stage, beginning to raise a red flag decorated with small ornaments, along with another one that was of a similar design. The two flags slowly ascended their poles until they reached the top, one of them slightly higher than the other. The music stopped and silence returned to the assembly square.
At this point, standing for half an hour in this weather that resembled a low-temperature sauna. Having an empty stomach was not helping as it was driving Tongxuan to his limit. It felt like being hung on a ledge of a cliff for ages, with every urge to let go and end this, only to have a sadistic person pouring soap over his hands to make life more difficult for him. He was not sure if it was just him or whether the faces of teachers on the stage were getting more and more blurry. He rubbed his eyes, thinking it would make it go away. The next thing he knew was being on a bed in the infirmary room.
----
Junhao was excited about the field trip next week. If his memory served him correctly, his class should be heading over to see this sculpture of a fish-tailed creature. He remembered the site being closed down for renovations since some people thought it was due for some restoration or even an upgrade. His parents probably took him to see it once when he was very young but he could not remember something so long ago. Apparently the news mentioned they are building a larger sculpture next to it for some special occasion. Was it a bear? Something along the lines of that. But that did not matter to Junhao, the field trip would be a nice change compared to being locked in a classroom with textbooks shoved in front of his face. For now, he knew he had to endure until the date came.
“Alright, alright boys and girls. Settle down.” A middle-aged teacher hushed the class as he rubbed the whiteboard clean. “Turn to page 64 of your textbooks. Today we will learn about the Speak Mandarin Campaign. Back when you kids weren’t born at all, the city was a huge linguistic mess because no one was speaking the right language, so in 1979 the campaign was finally launched to fix all of that. Now that everyone is speaking Mandarin, we can finally understand each other. This makes things more efficient and that is all thanks to our brilliant leadership, so the city will continue to prosper as how our founders envisioned! Yes, Junhao?” His eyes caught his raised hand, asking permission to speak.
“But Mr. Chen, I heard my grandmother say that it is not good because now less and less people can speak dialects and understand what she is saying.” Junhao voiced out.
“Yes, but this is easier for all of us because instead of learning all of the dialects to understand each other, we only need to learn Mandarin and that’s what we need to save time.” Mr. Chen explained, “In other words, the leaders know what is better for you than your grandmother, Junhao. That’s why we need to put our faith in them. They know what’s best for our people. Moving on-”
“But what about the other people living in the city who aren’t even Chinese at all?” Junhao jutted his hand up in the air again, “Does that not make them excluded? I thought the city is supposed to be diverse and multiracial?”
“Junhao, for the last time, you will only speak when I allow you to.” A hint of annoyance could be detected in Mr. Chen’s words, “Yes that is the case, but our leaders decided that it would be easier if all of us speak it. After all, why complicate things with unnecessary languages? Ever since this was implemented, the city came to see more solidarity and unity, thus ushering more growth and prosperity to bring our country forward! People who disagree with what the leaders have planned out are always free to leave the country, it’s their choice to do so. There must be a good reason that they put these rules in place and as good citizens, we must listen and follow them.”
“But what if there is a better solution to this?” Junhao’s hand was still raised.
Slam!
Frustrated with his bombardment of irrelevant questions, Mr. Chen smashed his textbook on the table and pointed at him in a rather threatening pose. The other students’ eyes fixed on the two, not sure how to react but stay silent and watch the events play out, for they knew that defiance would not go unpunished.
“Listen, boy.” Mr. Chen said in a dangerously low voice, as though he were bellowing. Most students knew better than to further provoke him whenever he spoke like this. “That was very unpatriotic of you and could have cost you patriotism points. I am willing to overlook everything you just said if you shut your mouth for the next half an hour because we still have a lot to cover, okay? One more word from you and you can expect not going to that field trip next week, understood?”
As if he swallowed a rock, his throat was stiff and a heaviness surfaced in his stomach. Junhao nodded and avoided eye contact with his teacher for the rest of the lesson.
----
Steam erupted from the electric rice cooker as its lid was uncovered. After waiting for it to dissipate, a scoop was used to mix it around, before neatly filling bowls with rice and being sent out to the dining table by Zihui. Her father was sitting by it, fiddling with the television’s remote, flicking through channels for the evening news. It was still a bit too early for that to be on, so the station’s signoff section aired the National Anthem. Without anything else to do but wait for his daughters and wife to serve dinner, he could just barely notice that the Anthem echoed through the opened windows as it was being played simultaneously on his neighbors’ televisions as well. Ziyue, his younger daughter, came to arrange chopsticks, spoons, and soup bowls on the table neatly, excited to tell him what happened at school today. He smiled and gently nodded to every sentence she said.
Dish after dish, the dinner table slowly crowded with food. Hot steam was rising up from every bowl and plate. The family of four assembled at the table, ready to eat.
“Dàjiā chīfàn¹!” All of them exclaimed at the same time and chopsticks were raised.
As Zihui and Ziyue’s mother, Huiting’s chopsticks reached for a few stalks of caixin and placed them into their rice bowls despite their protests. Her children must have a healthy diet. She dug out the cheeks of the soya sauce steamed fish and placed it in her husband’s rice bowl. The best parts of the fish had to go to the love of her life after all.
“Listen to your mother.” He said as Huiting gave him a nudge under the table to keep them in control. “You can only have ice cream after you finish all your vegetables.”
“Good evening, citizens. I am your host Zhang Yiying, it is 7 p.m., and welcome to today’s Evening News.” The television screen transitioned to a female news anchor after an irritatingly catchy motif was played, “Our first story is the reopening of the Merlion statue, after its 6-month long renovation. As a symbol of the city, we take pride in it, which is why the Ministry of Culture proposed this restoration plan. In addition to this project, the Central Government constructed a twin for it. Now if you visit the reopened site, a beautifully-crafted marble panda can be seen by its side, symbolizing China’s eternal friendship with the city and also a welcome-back gift, commissioned since Singapore’s majority voted to become part of China.”
“W-We went there last week at school!” Zihui said excitedly as she pointed to the television screen.
“I want to see the panda!” Ziyue looked at her mum with enthusiasm, hoping that she would take her there over the weekend.
“And now, Cao Wen, the Central Minister of Culture would like to address the citizens of Singapore.” The screen transitioned to a black-suited middle-aged man with a receding hairline. “We, the Party, would like to express our thanks to the Chinese people of Singapore, though separated for generations, still have faith in their Ancestral Homeland. Although the earthquake and tsunami was a tremendous hurdle in Singapore’s history, we are extremely honored that the Chinese people of Singapore were the first to seek the help of China. We united and persevered in these hard times to rebuild the city. We are very humbled that the Chinese people of Singapore decided to reunite with the People’s Republic of China. We ensure that under the Five-starred Red Flag, Singapore will bloom into a stunning orchid as the nation’s newest special administrative region.
“Today, the police raided a storage house in Woodlands and seized prohibited copies of the board game Rift. Rift is a Taiwanese-designed board game that desecrates our glorious victory in the Civil war and is extremely disrespectful to the veterans who gave their own lives to pave the foundations of the Party. It is very unfortunate that the rebels in the rogue province have done something like this to hurt the feelings of the Chinese people by driving themselves away from their Ancestral Homeland. Due to its unpatriotic nature, people who are found to have copies of Rift will be charged 5000 dollars and sentenced to reeducation for 6 months. If you manage to find any copies of the board game or know anyone who owns it, please do not hesitate to report them to the police. Your service to the country will be greatly rewarded.”
“Mommy?” Zihui looked at her mother curiously. “Why did we have a civil war?”
“It’s complicated.” Huiting struggled to think of a way to explain it. “I’ll tell you when you grow older.”
“Okay...” She replied, dissatisfied and knowing she would not get her answer any time soon.
“Up next, Malaysia and Indonesia expressed extreme discontent with our country’s increased naval patrols in the Straits of Malacca.” The screen returned back to the news anchor. “The prime minister of Malaysia, Mohamed Afiq bin Faruq Hakeem, said this is a clear violation of Malaysia's sovereignty. The president of Indonesia, Ida Bagus Gusti, sees this as a potential declaration of war. Other ASEAN leaders attempt to negotiate with Kuala Lumpur and Palangkaraya to ease tensions down and see if compromises could be arranged between us. Meanwhile, the Australian prime minister, Oliver Taylor, condemned our country, claiming that our fleet of destroyers was in close proximity to Christmas Island. The Central Ministry of Defense reassures the public that we are following international protocols and have not broken any regulations.”
“Daddy, why are they angry at us if we didn’t do anything wrong?” Ziyue looked worried.
“No talking while you’re eating, Ziyue.” To be honest, he was not sure how to answer that either.
“Finally, we rejoice as a referendum based in Vancouver was passed in favor to be ceded to our country as her newest special administrative region just hours ago.” The news anchor shuffled her scripts around as she announced. “The Prime Minister of Canada, Colleen Anawak, has already arranged talks with Wu Feng, the Central Minister of Foreign Affairs to discuss the transfer of sovereignty and wishes the Party good luck in further prospering China’s first North American city. The integration of our city as a special administrative region has sparked a new wave of patriotism worldwide. Many cities with a significant overseas Chinese diaspora are proposing referendums for unification with the Ancestral Homeland, which is delightful news. Central Minister Wu warns that if these referendums were not permitted and the will of the Chinese people were unanswered, the Party will not shy from using military force to liberate our people. I am your host, Zhang Yiying, and I will see you again after the commercials with our daily schedule of street name changes. Wǎn'ān².”
----
“Hmm? What’s the matter, Zuyao? Something on your mind?” Huiting’s slumber was interrupted by the ruffling of bedsheets. Her heavy eyelids barely made a slit large enough for her to glimpse on her husband, who was merely a shadowy shape of his back facing her. She had been with him long enough to know that there was something troubling him. “What’s wrong?”
She was only met with silence. Huiting also had been with him long enough that he was too stubborn to talk about issues like these. Men could always be so hard-headed. Another minute passed and she was not going to be entertained with her husband’s lack of a reply, so she turned her back away from him and closed her eyes, “I’ll just go back to sleep then.”
Zuyao laid on his side motionless. His eyelids were still light and he knew that he was not going to sleep anytime soon. His wife was right after all, he did have something in his mind. As he closed his eyes, his stream of thoughts drifted him to the dinner table when he was Zihui’s age. His mother’s chopsticks left a few stalks of baicai onto his rice bowl as his father’s were going for the steamed chicken. The windows were closed, for the torrential rain poured down upon Singapore as it usually did in the monsoon season. His father grabbed the remote control to turn the television’s volume up, though it was still drowned by millions of bullet-like raindrops that hurtled hard onto the glass from the heavens. Realizing that it was futile, their eyes laid on the subtitles just at the bottom of the screen.
“I can’t believe they’re still carrying it out right now.” Zuyao’s mother sounded concerned.
The television screen showed a parade square packed with soldiers equally spaced out in formation. The camera zoomed into their unfazed faces, rainwater trickling down their brows, across their cheeks, before pouring down their chins. Their uniforms were darkened from being drenched, but that still never stopped the ceremony from being called off. Then the camera panned to a sheltered pavilion just in front of the soldiers, where middle-aged black-suited men could be seen smiling and shaking each other’s hands before making back to their respective seats. Not long after that, the screen showed three flag poles that stood between the pavilion and the parade square. The two on the right were empty. The one on the right hoisted a red and white flag decorated with a crescent moon and five stars. A few commands in Malay were shouted and the orchestra under the pavilion started playing. The old flag started its descent for its last time in Singaporean history. The bows of the violins ground to a halt.
More commands were shouted, this time in Chinese, and the orchestra sprang to life again with The March of the Volunteers, Five-starred Red Flag began its ascent with another flag on the flagpoles to the right. With the final blast of the trumpet, it towered over its companion, the rest of the parade’s participants, and by extension the citizens of Singapore.
“We welcome Singapore into the warm embrace of her Ancestral Homeland. The region has been administered by the Chinese people and will continue to be so. This is the promise, and this is the Unshakable Destiny.” One of the black-suited men came forth to make a speech. His words did not make much sense to Zuyao. Perhaps they were too complicated. Or perhaps he was not paying much attention to them. The stream of thoughts brought him back to his middle-aged self, in his bed next to his sound-asleep wife. Although the speech made by the first chief executive was blurry in his memory, the words “Unshakable Destiny” were still branded in his mind.
He could still remember many politicians were staunchly opposed to the Handover as Singapore’s independence was at stake. As far as he could tell, merely the mention of this polarised the entire island’s population way before when it was first proposed. Even though the Merdeka generation was a relic of the past, their spirit that strived to painstakingly build an international metropolis from a mere fishing village still resonated amongst the populace. That was what made him proud to be Singaporean.
As a small city-state on the chessboard of global politics, Singapore had been extremely careful to make as many friends as she could. That was the only way she could survive. Unfortunately, some friends just could not get along with each other. No matter how much China wanted to be friends with Singapore, diplomats found it extremely hard to ignore how America and Taiwan had extremely close military ties with her. One of the only things Singapore could do was to reject America’s offer to become an ally at war, but it was not enough. Pressure on Singapore’s shoulders was heavy. She was not able to skip between her friends anymore. She could only choose China. In a country where bribing was unheard of, politicians eventually had pockets stuffed with communist gold. More bilateral friendship monuments were erected, more pandas were flown over from Sichuan, and then the referendum for the Handover was proposed.
The ruling party who architected the city had been doing so since her independence. They made it more efficient by only permitting protests or other public gatherings with a government permit, effectively making them illegal. Zuyao remembered student leaders once holding speeches with ideas deemed controversial by the government found themselves behind bars or exiled, never to return home again. He dared not to make any noise. He did not want to be taken away. The fear of being recorded for voting the opposition party and socially ostracised was very real. As a whole, his countrymen had become a very docile people, though constantly raising complaints on issues, but in actuality they would do very little or nothing for any meaningful action to be taken against this. Everyone was too selfish to get into trouble for the sake of the collective. Why would he risk his life for people who would probably not appreciate it?
The opposition, with only less than five seats in Parliament could do nothing more than struggle like a rat beneath a cat’s pointed claws. If such an Unshakable Destiny could not be changed by them, what could he, a commoner, even achieve? With that thought concluded, Zuyao closed his eyes once more and drifted back into slumber.
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¹ Let's eat!
² Good night.