part0012

I am often accused of interfering in the private lives of citizens. Yet if I did not, had I not done that, we wouldn’t be here today. And I say without the slightest remorse, that we would not have made economic progress if we had not intervened on very personal matters - who your neighbour is, how you live, the noise you make, how you spit, or what language you use. We decide what is right; never mind what the people think…

The tang-ki was a large solid looking man in his late fifties possessed by the hell-spirit Toa A Pei [eldest uncle]. He was dressed in a white gown and a white hat and was walking down the middle of the large canvas tent to the main altar, slowly but surely, his upper body rocking backwards and forwards in time with his walking, his tongue hanging out symbolic of being dead. There was an old opium pipe filled with tobacco in one hand, the tobacco being symbolic of opium. In the other hand was a flask of brandy. Toa A Pei was accompanied by Ji A Pei [second uncle], dressed in black with a long metal chain, symbolic of the chains of hell, inserted through his cheeks. Occasionally the two stopped, smoked the pipe and then carried on. Later, people crowded around them as the tang-ki possessed by Toa A Pei gave out numbers people would use to buy lottery tickets. This rather carnivalesque scenario of opium-smoking spirits contrasts markedly with the more sombre scenario of Van Tuong Nguyen, an Australian citizen, who in December 2006, was put to death by the Singaporean Government for the possession of 396.2 grams of heroin. i

The first scenario above shows two of the spirits who possess spirit mediums to be quite liberal if not anarchic. They smoke tobacco, symbolic of opium and drink alcohol, which, while not frowned on in Singaporean Chinese society, is not particularly encouraged, and they give out lucky numbers for lottery tickets. All three practices – smoking, drinking alcohol and buying lottery tickets - would seem to go against a ‘Protestant Ethic’, or, perhaps more correctly, a ‘Confucian Ethic’ of thrift, efficiency, rationality and hard work; manifestly present in Singaporean society.

The second scenario, of Van Tuong Nguyen put to death by the State, points to a certain harshness, at least for those from countries that do not have death penalties, on the part of the Government in Singapore. It brings one up against a certain reality and seriousness about life in Singapore. The Government policy on drugs is but only one policy of the Government that emphasizes control and harshness but when contrasted with the representation of Toa Ji A Pei as opium-smoking spirits, it makes us think about the relationship of tang-ki worship to authority.

The relationship of tang-ki worship to authority and the State is the main topic of this chapter, and it is argued that tang-ki worship is somewhat subversive of authority. The relationship of Chinese deities and tang-ki worship to authority as presented in the literature is first discussed. Tension between the people of Singapore and the governing authority is then considered. The Government and its manner of governing are then outlined and, lastly, the relationship of tang-ki worship towards the governing authority is shown.

The pantheon of Chinese gods can be seen to be part of a bureaucratic, hierarchical order that mirrors the bureaucratic, hierarchical order of traditional social and political life in China. This view is seen in the writings of Ahern (1981), Feuchtwang (1974) and Wolf (1974). In this rather Durkheimian view, the Chinese deities are supportive of the establishment and can be seen as, ‘…enhancing the hegemonic position of the Confucian elite…’ (Shahar and Weller 1996: 9). Weller (1987), Sangren (1996) and others question this viewpoint and develop a view that, in fact, some of the Chinese gods are somewhat radical counter-cultural figures.

The title of Shahar and Weller’s (1996) book UNRULY GODS suggests the gods are not as orderly and accepting of dominance as some make out. Speaking of the gods and tang-kis they ‘possess’, Chan talks of Hokkien stage dramas, ‘…which tell of anti-establishment gods who come down to earth to do battle against oppressive rulers’ (2002: 120). She speaks of Hokkien peasant people being disenfranchised by the State cult that sets up the emperor as the ‘son of heaven’, without the right to worship gods, which was reserved for the higher echelons of society. The response of the poorer people was to create their own gods and worship them in tang-ki rituals. Chan speaks of tang-ki worship as despised by the educated classes and holds that this is still the case in Singapore today (2002: 304). She then points to the tang- ki as a liminal figure and, therefore, as being somewhat anarchic and feared by the establishment (2002: 312). Yet the view of tang-ki worship in Singapore being counter-cultural in today’s society is not developed by Chan.

There are examples in the history of Taoism of tension between tang-ki cults and their followers and the authorities. Even Kirkland, who is strongly against the idea of Taoism as groups of anarchic individuals opposed to Confucian legalism, admits that there were popular rebellions by Taoist groups (Kirkland 2004: 9, 149). He does not mention spirit mediums in his work but does suggest that mainstream Taoism, rather than opposing Confucianism, feared the ‘disreputable’ cults [including spirit medium cults] more (2004:149). Davis, in his work on spirit possession in Song China (960-1276 CE), similarly, talks of tension between bureaucratic and religious leaders, including Taoist priests and spirit mediums and their followers (2001: 7). Strickmann sees Taoism as intending to supplant the popular religion of the spirit mediums and their multifarious gods (2002: 2). It does seem, therefore, that there is room to consider some of the Chinese gods and spirit mediums as being resistant to establishment norms.

When one considers the stories of some of the gods, there are clear accounts of them being anti-establishment. We have seen in the last chapter that Miao-shan and Nezha can be seen as being rebellious against the then traditional ideas of the roles of women and men. Moreover, Nezha and Guan Gong engaged in a war against unjust rulers. Guan Gong, himself, had been on the run from the law for six years before meeting up with Liu Bei and Zhang Fei. Before this, he had killed a local magistrate because of the magistrate’s greed, corruption and cruelty (Roberts 1994: 1005). In the novel FENGSHEN YANYI an adviser to King Zhou says, ‘The rule can only last when the king reigns with virtue and diligence and the people remain satisfied’ (CREATION OF THE GODS 1992: 12). Another adviser says that if the Emperor punishes one particular man then the people will see that, ‘… you had insulted a good man and imposed limitations on freedom of speech…’ (CREATION OF THE GODS 1992: 13). FENGSHEN YANYI is about the battle against the unjust regime of the last Shang ruler King Zhao. It was written in the Ming dynasty, which saw the return of rule from the Mongols [Yuan dynasty] to the Han Chinese. The story can be taken, in part, as a celebration of this event and as a vindication of justice.

Sun Wukong, the monkey god [a leading character in the novel JOURNEY TO THE WEST ], is described by Shahar as rebelling against the whole heavenly bureaucracy (Shahar 1998: 14). Sun Wukong, like Nezha, is rebellious in nature and is always getting into mischief. On finding his position in heaven was a lowly one, he caused so much trouble that he obtained the title ‘Great Sage Equal to Heaven’ [Qitian Dashen]. Shahar also mentions the martial deities, from the story of the Water Margins, as engaged in social banditry (Shahar 1998: 14). Jigong [The Vagabond Buddha or Crazy Monk] is said to have first rebelled against the rule of the monastery and was seen as the champion of the poor against the abusive state (Shahar 1998: 12). Jigong is always depicted in torn old clothes, drinking alcohol and sometimes eating meat. This deity has sometimes been the tutelary deity of secret societies in Malaysia.

The above descriptions of gods involve them all in actions that are rebellious in nature. ii

One Chinese Malaysian woman, interviewed during this research, said when it was mentioned that people do not seem to talk much about the Government or criticize it, that this was because there are no problems in Singapore. This woman is a confident, assertive person usually very quick to give her views on any topic. Her life, holding on to a short-term teaching contract and bringing up a daughter without much help from her husband, is difficult. Admittedly, if this woman went back to Malaysia to live [which she, as a Malaysian citizen, would have to do if she did not have work] her life would be much more difficult.

Many people interviewed and spoken to in the course of the research were of the same view as the Chinese Malaysian woman about life in Singapore. One can conclude from this that either there are no major problems in Singapore or that the Government’s hegemonic grip of the people is so powerful that the people, themselves, are unaware of areas of dissatisfaction.

Most people spoken to in Singapore supported the Government and its policies. Anna said Lee Kuan Yew, considered to be the founder of modern Singapore, was not superhuman or a god but certainly a genius. Wei also said that without Lee Kuan Yew and the People’s Action Party [ruling political party since 1959] there would be no Singapore. The men at the Redhill temple also explained how Lee Kuan Yew got rid of gangs notorious for drug dealing, prostitution and extortion in the Redhill area and made it a safer place to live. Many women also mentioned how safe Singapore was when going out alone at night, compared with many Western countries.

There was also less corruption amongst Government agencies in Singapore than in nearby countries. Once when travelling in a car in Malaysia, the police stopped our car for speeding. My acquaintance got out of the car with fifty dollars in his hand to give to the police officer in order to prevent us getting a fine. If this had happened in Singapore, the driver would probably have been charged with bribery. There are many aspects of life in Singapore, then, that people value, yet there are also signs that not all is right.

It was difficult in Singapore to investigate people’s attitudes to the Government and the State; this is not a topic of conversation that often arose. If it did, when, for example, sitting in a restaurant or hawker [food] centre, people nearly always looked around to see if someone was listening. This situation, in itself, made me start to think that not all was well. One man in his seventies, who had been a police officer many years before, said he had stopped his employment because of the way prisoners were treated; he used the word ‘torture’ to describe the treatment. He stated that when working as a police officer he had been frightened of retribution from the gods. However, he totally supported the Government and allowed no criticism. One lawyer said he had been openly against the Government several times and was harassed by both the police and the law society.

Only two people from a shrine spoke about the Government negatively. One, a wealthy entrepreneur, said he did not support the present Government while the other was a shrine member who, near the end of my stay, started talking about the history of Singapore and the authority of the State. The second person said we would not be able to talk about this topic in the hawker centre as it was too sensitive a subject.

These situations all made me increasingly aware that the relationship of people with the State was an important issue when considering tang-ki worship.

The tang-kis possessed by Toa Ji A Pei [a name referring to both Toa A Pei and Ji A Pei] immediately seem to invite questions about the relationship of tang-kis to the State. The representation of tang-kis as opium-smokers seems to be one that contrasts greatly with how the Singaporean Government wants to portray Singapore - as drug-free, clean, tidy and with the people involved in a discourse of rationality. Opium pipes are sometimes found on altars dedicated to Toa Ji A Pei and cigarettes are lit and placed in ashtrays on the altar during tang-ki sessions. Also, patches of lacquer, which ooze down the chin of the statues like opium, are sometimes placed on the faces of the statues of these spirits. One story about Toa A Pei and Ji A Pei is that they were originally coolies when living on earth and that the two had got into difficulties one day when the weather was very stormy. Toa A Pei left his comrade under a bridge and went for help because the nearby river was rising but, on returning, found his friend dead. He then killed himself out of grief.

The representation of Toa Ji A Pei as opium-smoking coolies is, perhaps, a key element in understanding that tang-ki worship is partly about people’s relationships with authorities and their policies. Once, on a visit to a shrine where Toa A Pei possessed the tang-ki, my acquaintance had a conversation with the possessed medium about opium. My acquaintance said to Toa A Pei that he needed a smoke and on being asked why recited a list of difficulties in his life. He mentioned personal ones and some problems related to his job and also some related to the wider issue of the stress of life in Singapore. Toa A Pei commiserated with him. They both then smoked tobacco in the pipe.

At temple celebrations, it is fascinating to watch Toa Ji A Pei tang-kis. At one temple celebration, the two tang-kis possessed by these two spirits were walking together, seemingly deep in thought, occasionally stopping for a smoke of the pipe. They invoked for me a caricature of two English country gentlemen going for a walk in a garden, or, perhaps, walking through a crowded street in Singapore in colonial days. I wondered if, in their conversations, the subject of capital punishment for people like Van Tuong Nguyen ever came up. In some ways, it does not matter if it did not arise, as it is argued here that Toa Ji A Pei’s very representation as opium-smoking spirits speaks of issues of tension with authorities, in the language of condensed symbols rather than in explicit discourse.

Anna, on one occasion, took me to visit another shrine, but on entering the shrine, she suddenly felt sick and had a headache [bushufu – ill, literally uncomfortable]. She felt a presence of something strange and at dissonance with what she had learnt from Guanyin. After leaving the shrine, Anna criticized its way of doing things; she considered some of the ways of carrying out procedures were not quite right. iii

Subsequently, I sometimes visited the same shrine that Anna had visited and got on with the people well; although I tended not to tell Anna of visits as she seemed to show disapproval and warned me against going to various shrines. She said that in some shrines you can pick up evil things, dirty things [angzang] and one never knows if the people in other shrines practice black magic. It seemed on the visit to this shrine that Anna’s thoughts about the shrine were mediated through a discourse of possession including symptoms of illness. I, myself, saw what happened from the perspective of a psychological discourse involving rivalry, jealousy and enviousness.

However, on one occasion, when visiting a large American company operating in Singapore, where pressure was exerted on me to join the company, I had an experience of thinking about and visualizing the various gods and spirits I had become acquainted with. This experience helped me deal with my discomfort [bushufu] with the visit and might have been similar to Anna’s experience and way of dealing with the situation that arose when she visited the shrine.

As well as being about personal problems in inter-relationships, the tang-ki discourse can be seen as being about wider concerns, including politics and economics. This insight became clearer when visiting the American company that was selling health care products. Tony, whom I met at one of the shrines seeking a consultation with the tang-ki, insisted on taking me to the organization’s open day when the overseas director of the company, a medical doctor, was present. Tony worked for the company part-time; in fact, he was a partner in the business as was everyone employed there. While he suggested that I might be interested in visiting the company, which I was, his motivation seemed to be to get me to join the organization.

The American company was located in an old building once used by Chinese medical practitioners. Chinese paintings were hanging on the wall, and there were some statues of Chinese people from ancient times around the building. After I entered the building and having gone through a courtyard, I could see about a hundred people, the men dressed in business suits and the women in business fashion, gathered around the American medical doctor, who was giving a talk about the company. After the talk, many people had their photos taken with him.

My acquaintance took me to meet another person, who started to talk about my joining this enterprise and becoming a partner, all for the price of fifteen dollars. He also insisted on my having a photo taken with the American doctor. However, I refused and resisted signing up as a partner and having my photo taken. As more pressure was put on me to have my photo taken with the director and to sign up as a partner, I left the building, as I was extremely uncomfortable. At the same time, I became aware of myself imagining what it would be like if all these gods I had become acquainted with over the past year were present: Nezha with his fire wheel and perhaps dummy in his mouth; Guanyin, either as a women or a man; the Monkey god peeling the skins of bananas and throwing them all over the place; Ji Gong, the mad monk, having a drink of Guinness, foot up on a chair and Toa Ji A Pei offering me opium.

Of course, such a presence of the gods, were it to happen, would be totally incongruous to the ‘performance’ of capitalism that I was witnessing. This experience, near the end of my stay in Singapore, served as a key in helping make sense of some of the practices of spirit mediums and their followers. The presence of this wealthy American enterprise having taken over the premises of an old Chinese traditional medicine shop was somewhat distasteful and again brought to mind the subject of colonialism that had first surfaced after meeting the tang-kis possessed by Toa Ji A Pei. I was very much aware that people like Tony were dependent on such companies to scrape out a living, much as the coolies were dependent on the colonial government of their time to make a living. Just as the coolies could not protest, so people today cannot openly protest. However, it is in the very rituals of tang-ki worship that play out scenarios like Toa Ji A Pei smoking opium that one sees a type of [unconscious] protest against this aspect of Singaporean life.

My experience of representations of gods became a tool that enabled me to deal with this encounter with an aggressive company and made me more aware of how they could similarly be operating for the likes of Anna, Wei and their followers.

During the research, I started to think that people did not remember or think about certain actions by the Government that could be viewed negatively, but this was not entirely so. Towards the end of my stay in Singapore, one member of a shrine, who was also a factory worker started talking about the Government. The person spoke in a manner that left sentences open and avoided too many direct statements when saying:

You know, if we were now in the market place we could not talk like this; if people overheard … We have wives and children. We just do what they say. You may not be aware because you are only here for eleven months, but we are always here. There is no point, we have wives and children; we just do what they say. They provide food and other things. If people are not liked then other people interfere with one’s life, otherwise they leave you alone. If you leave them alone they leave you alone .

This man carried on talking about various events that had happened in the history of Singapore, for example, the closing of the Chinese speaking Nanyang University; the university which, he said, had been supported by all classes of Chinese-speaking people [The university had been a hotbed of radicalism. It was, in fact, the university my wife had gone to]. The man spoke of people being sued and people disappearing. He also mentioned a fire that had happened in the locality many years back. The Government had wanted people to move from that area, he said, and although he would not commit himself to saying how the fire started, there was some suggestion that it was not completely an accident. I was surprised by this person’s knowledge. I had not previously come across someone who talked openly about these events, and I wondered if people even knew about them. This discussion clearly indicated that some people were very aware of Government policies and that they saw some of these as negative.

I met another person, a lawyer, not involved in Chinese temples and not a Chinese person, who was very aware of other negative aspects of the Government. He was openly critical of the Government. We had dinner together one night outside a restaurant in the city district of Singapore. This was the first time I had a conversation about politics and the Government where people did not look around to see if others were listening. In fact, I, myself, became a little conscious of the overtly political nature of the conversation and was looking around to see if people were listening, given that people were sitting close by. It was the first time I had met someone who was explicitly against Government policy on many points. This man was a professional person and had a particular interest in people who had been given capital punishment. He spoke of being hounded by the Government for his position and said that attempts had been made to oust him from a particular professional body. He talked about the tendency on the part of the authority to insinuate on some occasions that people who opposed the Government were mentally ill, and he said that this had happened to him. On finding out I was a psychotherapist, this person suggested that there should be more private psychotherapists in Singapore as they were needed to provide a person whom others could consult without the psychotherapist being an agent of the State. This rather refreshing encounter with someone who was extremely open about his views on politics reinforced my notion that politics played a vital part in Singaporean life, although it was seldom mentioned, and that tang-ki worship was somehow connected to this aspect of life in Singapore.

The President of Singapore’s term of office ended in 2005, and there was a call for applications for nomination as a candidate for presidential elections. S.R. Nathan, who had been the president for the previous six years, decided to stand for re-election. There were three other applications, but the selection committee, appointed by the Government, declined these nominations, as they did not meet the required standards. The one person, apart from Nathan, who had the requisite work qualifications, did not meet the ‘personal standards’ required for nomination, so Nathan was the only eligible candidate and was appointed as president for a second term. Not many people commented on the process of his taking up the role of president again, but a few saw the whole process as rather farcical – another example of the Government’s authoritarian nature.

One could be excused for thinking that Singapore is a one party State as since gaining power, in 1959, the People’s Action Party [PAP] has controlled the country. In 1995, there were only two non-PAP members in the parliament, and from 1968 to 2011, there have never been more than four non-PAP members. Lee Kuan Yew, one of the founding members of the PAP party, is considered to be the father of modern Singapore. He was the Prime Minister up to 1990, when Goh Chou Tong then took over. Then, in 2004, Lee Kuan Yew’s son, Lee Hsein Loong, became Prime Minister.

The first opposition Member of Parliament, elected in 1981, was a former judge J.B. Jeyaretnam, a member of the Workers’ Party. In 1984, he was charged with misstating party accounts regarding three small donations totalling $1600. He was acquitted of three charges and convicted of one defrauding charge. After a state appeal and after Jeyaretnam was re-elected to parliament, the verdict was reversed, and a new trial took place, where he was found guilty, lost his parliamentary seat and was disbarred from practicing as a solicitor, although later, after an appeal to the Privy Council, he was able to practice law again (Tremewan 1994: 206-209; Mauzy and Milne 2002: 137). In 1988, Jeyaretnam lost a defamation case to Lee Kuan Yew, and in 1997 he was accused by Goh, Lee and other members of the PAP of libel by innuendo and was found guilty (Mauzy and Milne 2002: 136-137). Jeyaretnam has paid over one million dollars to Lee Kuan Yew and other PAP litigants for legal costs and damages (Chee 2001:36). Similar occurrences have happened to other members of the Workers Party.

The leader of the Singaporean Democratic Party, Chee Soon Juan, also lost defamation suits brought against him and was ordered to pay to Lee and Goh nearly 500,000 dollars (Chee 2001: 37). Chee also became bankrupt. One can not help but agree with the historian Baker who says, ‘Participating in oppositional groups [in Singapore] can be an expensive proposition’ (2005: 394). Prior to the elections of 1997 and 2006, people were warned that constituencies that voted for the opposition would not have their houses upgraded as quickly as other constituencies (George 2000: 152). Trocki talks of the systematic elimination of opposition soon after the PAP took power (2006: 139). Opposition to criticism and dissent has continued since then. There is little wonder, then, that criticism is muted in Singaporean society and that, if expressed at all, it is often expressed implicitly and in coded form.

It is not only in the parliamentary system that one sees the absolute control of the Government. One sees it in various areas of life. According to Trocki, the Government on coming to power asserted an, ‘…overarching hegemony of the State in all areas of life’ (T 2006: 138). This included economics, housing, labour, fertility, religion and media, down to hairstyles and cleanliness (2006:137). For example, in the late 1960s, the Government did everything it could to reduce the rate of population increase. Then, in 1984, because of a low population, the government introduced incentives for people to have more children and it set up the Social Development Unit to encourage university graduates to marry.

The Government’s housing policy, including building high-rise flats, solved the problem of overcrowding. It has enabled over 88% of the population to live in this type of accommodation. Racial quotas as to the number of any race that might live in any block were also part of the housing policy. Singapore’s housing policy is described as, ‘…probably one of the most impressive and successful feats of social engineering in modern times’ (Baker 2005: 299).

The Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act of 1990 made it illegal for religious groups to engage in politics. This act was partly motivated by the actions of a group of Catholic workers in the 1980s in support of migrant workers. They Government accused them of being part of a Marxist conspiracy.

There were considerable restrictions placed on the media – television, radio and newspapers – and they were all, to some extent, placed under Government control (Baker 2005: 370-371).

Under the Societies Act (1967), any organization of more than ten people has to be registered and should, under a 1988 amendment, not make any political comment beyond its scope (Mauzy and Milne 2002: 133).

To create and implement policies such as those mentioned above, Lee Kuan Yew attempted to create an elite meritocracy to govern Singapore (Trocki 2006: 129-130). He argued that out of any three thousand people, perhaps only one would have both the intellectual and personal qualities needed to lead the country (2006: 155). The Government thus headhunted possible candidates for Government posts and gave them large salaries. The candidates are mainly chosen, after extensive investigation and psychological tests, from law, engineering, science and business management backgrounds and are described by Trocki as technocrats (2006: 130). Trocki speaks of the PAP being controlled less by people representing those who elected them than by those who have a commitment to, ‘…universal standards of rationality and professionalism’ (2006: 130).

While many of the policies of the Government are supported by the people of Singapore and have produced positive outcomes, the Government’s way of formulating and implementing the policies can be understood as being dictatorial and as sidelining the responsibility and agency of the ordinary people of Singapore.

Economics is central to the Singaporean way of life. One of the major objectives of the Government, after it took over the running of the country, was the aligning of itself to international corporate capitalism in order to obtain an outlet for a manufacturing industry and also to attract overseas investment (Trocki 2006: 160). To attract foreign investment, Singapore had to appear attractive by showing, amongst other things, that it had a disciplined workforce. The Government did this by disbanding the Left, controlling the unions and restricting free speech. The policy worked to the extent that it created wealth, although the country became dependent on overseas investment, particularly from the United States and Japan. However, the Government has been criticized for overvaluing the economic sphere compared to other areas of human life. Ooi and Shaw talk of Singapore’s single-minded pursuit of money and material ends (0oi and Shaw 2004: 29).

Education policy is also highly managed by the Government. Emphasis is given to subjects such as the sciences, commerce, law and technical subjects, needed to build up a trained skilled workforce (Ooi and Shaw 2004: 39). A great deal of emphasis is placed on examinations. Chua describes education as, ‘…a compulsive paper chase, culminating in what could be called the certification of the self’ (1998: 32). Ng characterizes education in some Asian countries, including Singapore, as being instrumental, regimented, pressurizing, competitive and performance orientated (2001: 104).

In Christopher’s family, when living in Malaysia, the children were woken daily at five in the morning and taken to Singapore to attend their school. They returned home by about eight o’clock at night. Many of the people at the shrines did not have tertiary education. Perhaps, however, participation in tang-ki worship can be seen to be an education in itself; an ‘anti-education’ in Illich’s (1970) sense in that it proclaims a person’s worth not in terms of certificates and formal knowledge but in terms of another type of knowledge gained from daily life and the encounter with deities and spirits.

There are many alternatives for people seeking care for their health in Singapore: Western biomedicine, Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic aromatherapy, homeopathy and tang-ki worship. One general hospital in Singapore has a department of Chinese medicine. Still, Sinha speaks of the hegemony of biomedicine and says that, ‘Western medicine occupies a dominant position in the health care infrastructure. It is endorsed by the state and its practitioners enjoy prestige and certain privileges’ (1995: 312).

Sinha notes that while the State supports this situation, people in their individual life do not always recognize the distinction between biomedical treatment and other treatments (1995: 312). She, however, does not talk of psychiatry or mental health. While there is an excellent psychiatric service in Singapore, the predominant orientation seems to be biological psychiatry and psychiatrists are seen as being at the pinnacle of the mental health system. Tang-ki worship, however, is viewed by most people working in mental health as being outside the health system, despite evidence that many Chinese people who engage with the mental health system also engage with tang-ki healing (Kua, Chew and Ko 1993: 449).

The Singaporean system of government has been described as authoritarian (Tamney 1996: 81), an illiberal democracy (Perry et al. 1997) or even as a dictatorship (Trocki 2006: 131). Trocki describes Singapore as being like a large classroom (2006: 156). Ooi and Shaw use the concept panopticon from Bentham, filtered through Foucault, to characterize the way public housing was built in Singapore so as to allow for maximum surveillance (2004: 70). This panopticon has been used in the construction of prisons and psychiatric hospitals so that inmates and patients can be observed at all times from a central place. Perhaps, given the concern with pathology in this book, one could add to these characterizations of Singapore and suggest the thought that it is modelled on the concept of a psychiatric hospital concerned with installing ‘normality’ in its inmates.

However, while some of the above characterizations and previous policies seem very negative, they have allowed a degree of control to be maintained that has enabled the Government and many organizations to be efficient, productive and effective. These concepts bring to mind Weber’s notion of ‘instrumental rationality’, which can be described as being about the strict calculation of ends and means in an abstract, efficient, logical manner (Weber 1978: 23-24). The concept can be seen more clearly when Weber defines economic activity as rational, ‘…to the degree in which provision of needs, which is essential to every rational economy, is capable of being expressed in numerical, calculable terms, and is so expressed’ (1978: 85).

A capitalist economic system is a prime example of a rational system for Weber. Singapore is a strong capitalist system with economic development put as the foremost value by politicians. The education system is a similar system of rational control, based on examinations and the ideal of producing an efficient workforce that can produce material gain. An over-arching importance is given to disciplines with a factual empirical content such as the sciences, rather than value-based disciplines such as the humanities.

Chua and Kuo characterize the social order of modern Singapore, especially education, created by industrialization and intensive economic development, in terms of its ‘instrumental rationality’ (1991: 7). For Weber, at the pinnacle of leadership in a society governed by instrumental rationality, is an impersonal, bureaucratic state, which is exemplified, in my opinion, in the way Singapore is governed. Weber, though, despairs of such a society and thought that it could lead to a sense of being trapped in an ‘iron cage’ with no way out and with various cherished values such as creativity and freedom eliminated.

Another concept useful for looking at the way Singapore is ‘managed’ is the Gramscian concept of ‘hegemony’. Gramsci (1973) distinguishes between power involving force that he called ‘coercion’ and power involving consensus that he called ‘hegemony’. While he mainly talks about hegemony in regards to civic society, the term is also used more generally to characterize the way authorities and the Governments get people to accept its policies. The concept of ‘hegemony’ was originally developed to help explain why people agreed with ruling ideologies even when it seemed to go against their interest.

While there is some degree of coercion in the way the Government in Singapore rules its citizens, it is also the case that many Singaporean people go along with the Government’s policies and do not criticize them. Many, if not most, people openly support the Government, despite its high level of control in many areas of life. Castells says:

For evidence that ‘hegemony’ is an apt term to describe the way the Government rules in Singapore, Sim (2004) points to the fact that during a recent economic recession in Singapore in 2001, the People’s Action Party improved its popularity, whereas one might have expected the opposite given there were wage reductions. The concept of ‘hegemony’, then, seems an apt term to describe aspects of the governing of Singapore.

However, the concept of ‘hegemony’ as a description of the way a dominant group can get others to accept their values, sometimes contrary to the dominated group’s interests, is not entirely without problems. Scott, for example, opposes the legitimacy of such a concept. He does not agree that people take on a form of thinking or behaviour that is against their interests, and he disagrees that people just resign themselves to dominant forms of thought (1990: 72). Scott thinks dominated groups do resist, in some ways, dominating ideas if they have an opportunity, but he thinks that if people can obtain something from the system they may not resist. Resistance, for Scott, often takes disguised forms; what he calls ‘hidden transcripts’ that he contrasts with the ‘official transcripts’ people might utilize openly to support dominant discourses. Scott uses the ideas of Bakhtin to exemplify what hidden transcripts are. He talks about the use of parody, ridicule, blasphemy and the grotesque as examples of how ‘hidden transcripts’ are constructed. While denying the concept of ‘hegemony’ as useful, he uses the idea of anti-hegemony to describe resistance discourse (1990: 122). Scott’s concepts of resistance and hidden transcripts can usefully be added to the Gramscian idea of hegemony in looking at tang-ki worship.

To describe further the nature of control in Singapore, I utilize the Lacanian concept of the discourse of the master (Lacan 1969/70). This concept is able to subsume the concepts of both ‘hegemony’ and ‘domination’. It does not automatically have a negative connotation as the concepts of ‘hegemony’ and ‘domination’ have. It also has a connection to psychological life as well as to social life, unlike both the concepts of ‘hegemony’ and ‘domination’. The discourse of the master, as the term suggests, is about mastery, totalization and control of the self and of ‘the other’. As such, it is about bringing things together, synthesizing and making totalities of them; making things work. In the realm of the personal, it is about making a person or one’s self a unity, whole, undivided and self-identical (Bracher 1993: 121). As a discourse, it is not just about a particular way of speaking in the imperative voice but also a way of thinking, feeling, desiring and acting (Bracher 1993: 118). At its core is a master, a master signifier or a metanarrative that organizes knowledge, identity and all of life or as much of life as is possible.

The psychoanalyst giving interpretations to an analysand is one example of a master operating. The capitalist [master] commanding the worker [slave] is another. The obsessional person wanting to make everything neat and orderly can be located here. Lacan mentions medicine as a discourse of mastery (1969/70: II 2). Here medicine dominates the patient’s symptom so much that it cancels out the symptomatic, of what the symptom is about, and treats it as only physical. In the psychoanalytical tradition, symptoms are seen as being in the body but not of the body, to use Davis’ (2000: 78) expression. [Davis is not a psychoanalyst, but her statement conveys precisely what the ‘symptom’ is about in psychoanalysis].

The discourse of the master is closely related to the discourse of the university that puts rational, mainly empirical knowledge as primary. This discourse is also often the discourse of the obsessional person. Both discourses deny doubt, fantasy, lack and desire. They put law first. Bureaucracy can be seen as exemplifying both the discourse of the university and the discourse of the master.

The discourse of the master is a concept that can help describe various phenomena and relate them together. It can describe the situation of a mother and child, doctor and patient, government and people and teacher and pupil. The discourse can also be seen to encapsulate the relationship of tang-ki and believer, but this relationship, it is argued, is better seen as part of the discourse of the hysteric that rails against a master’s discourse.

For a person to take up the position of being part of a master’s discourse, either as agent [dictating] or receiver [accepting master signifiers], is not necessarily negative, although that is not where Lacanian psychoanalysts would like to position themselves. Indeed, to have no master signifiers would probably be a psychotic state. However, to be strong in a discourse of mastery would make one either a tyrant or an obsessional or both. In an actual psychoanalysis, the idea would be that a person could obtain some movement between discourses. Master signifiers would be deconstructed and room made for the person to form new master signifiers, ones not so destructive to their life and ones that people have a hand in helping to construct. All forms of politics would have their master signifiers whether the form of government is liberal, conservative or totalitarian.

The use of the concept of the discourse of the master may be more appropriate for the description of authority in Singapore than the idea of hegemony in that people, themselves, do not describe the Government as hegemonic or authoritarian, but they do see those running the country as leaders or masters. I am not so much concerned about making a judgment about the rightness or wrongness of the Government in this work but am trying to describe the governing system and how it asserts its authority over its subjects.

The discourse of the master can be taken as an apt appellation for describing the way Singapore is governed. The State tells people what to do and the people follow with little dissent. The discourse of the master covers the idea of hegemony and dominance and also the Weberian notion of ‘instrumental rationality’, which includes the concepts of efficiency, calculability, predictability and control. Ritzer (1993) uses these terms to characterize what he sees as the ‘McDonaldization of Society’. All these terms can be used as descriptions of the way of governing Singapore. In this world of mastery, there is little place for criticism or for fantasy, imagination and desire, all necessary for the development of subjectivity. However, there are present other discourses in Singapore, such as that of the hysteric, where criticism, imagination and desire can all be developed. One sees another discourse present in the phenomenon of tang-ki worship.

The tang-kis possessed by Toa Ji A Pei smoke their opium pipes as they walk through the tent crowded with worshippers wanting to get closer. Later on, the Toa A Pei tang-ki gives out numbers that people will use to buy lottery tickets. The tang-ki possessed by Huang Lao Xian Sier [In Chinese history Huang Lao Xian Sier was a medical doctor] smokes on his pipe, a more conventional pipe in this case. Here, the tobacco is not symbolic of opium. He gives a diagnosis of having a blood clot to a person suffering from migraines. The tang-ki massages the person’s head and gives the person some water to drink. To someone else suffering from anaemia he gives a [symbolic] blood transfusion. The same tang-ki possessed by the monkey god [Qi Tian Da Sheng] throws a banana skin on the floor and leaps up on the seat scratching himself. I would argue that the above scenarios have an element of resistance in them.

It seemed incongruent for the American medical doctor and his company to be operating in the premises where Chinese traditional medicine practitioners once practised. The way the company operates reminds me of the way companies like McDonalds operate – in a highly-planned, rationalized way along the lines of Weber’s concept of ‘instrumental rationality’. Such a way of operating depends on domination [a master’s discourse] and colonization; in McDonald’s case a domination of local food industries, and in this case, the domination of American health products over local health products. People like Tony, who introduced me to this company, are dependent on this type of enterprise to earn a small wage. I understood the presence of this business in Singapore in the light of the importance of a capitalist economy and, in particular, a dependency on American finance and, at least previously, a low emphasis placed on local small business ventures.

Tony, who also took me to visit a psychiatrist at a local hospital, had an ability to get past the receptionist gatekeeper. He did not want me to talk to the psychiatrist about his visiting mediums, as the psychiatrist had helped him in the past, and he did not want to talk about being helped by a tang-ki. Tony said the psychiatrist would not understand. In the conversation with the psychiatrist, though, we did speak about tang-kis. The psychiatrist stated that often psychiatrists cure people, but the mediums get the credit.

We see in the psychiatric system of Singapore a modern health care system; one certainly less financially concerned than the American medical doctor’s business but still one that, even in the small comment by the psychiatrist, showed a tendency to be dominant over other systems of curing and caring for people. A meeting with a psychologist who worked in the mental health system and who wanted to be put in touch with tang-kis further led me to this belief. It was the psychologist’s belief that given many people with mental health problems go to see mediums [although for him this does not work], the mental health services should make an alliance with mediums to be able more quickly to meet people with incipient illnesses. It is easy to see who would have the dominant role here and who would lose their position if such a meeting happened. Again, we can see the attitude in this plan as a colonizing or hegemonic attitude on the part of the mental health establishment. I also met another psychologist who was interested in tang-ki phenomena, although he said that his colleagues were not interested.

The Kentucky Fried Chicken shops where I used to meet with Tony, the American company’s business premise and the psychiatric hospital where we met with the psychiatrist contrasted sharply with the place where I first met Tony, in a small house-shrine located on the fourth floor of a block of flats in a poorer part of Singapore. The inside of the shrine was rather untidy, cluttered with old objects, adorned with many statues of gods and the walls blackened with smoke from the incense. The tang-ki was dressed in yellow boxer shorts, and he sat on a plastic chair three feet in front of an old, small television set with his legs up on the table, half-asleep with a cigarette in his mouth. The first places mentioned above had an aura of ‘cosmopolitanism’ about them, the second place had an aura of ‘heartlander’. iv

In the meeting with the psychiatrist, Tony did not comment when the psychiatrist said psychiatrists cure people, but the medium gets the credit. This comment did not stop Tony going to visit a tang-ki. Two weeks later, Tony obtained a more permanent job; the reason why he went to see the medium in the first place.

It seems that the conversation with the psychiatrist was the ‘official discourse’ in Scott’s terms, which Tony by his silence seemed to go along with without questioning. Similarly, the discourse of the American company as to how one could become rich selling their commodities can be seen as an ‘official discourse’ that tells one that by working hard one too can become rich and become a manager of a company. These discourses can be seen to be examples of an ‘official discourse’ Singaporeans are meant to follow - work hard, go to see real doctors, etc.

Nevertheless, one could find Tony the next week at the shrine following a different logic or discourse. Here he was drinking water containing the burnt fu [talisman] to help his concern about not having a job and more importantly to help him find a job. This involvement with the shrine was the ‘hidden discourse’, one that by parody mocked the official one, the rationalized discourse that promised to make him rich and the psychiatric one, promising to cure him or to make him normal. Tony did not entirely believe in the discourse of the doctors. He could listen to them, pose no challenge, have his photo taken with the American doctor and yet, in many ways, feel more comfortable sitting down with a tang-ki who was in bare feet, wearing an old pair of shorts and who spoke about the power of Nezha to help Tony get a job. No diagnosis was given in this situation. In this discourse, one did not have to have degrees, good clothes, good presentation and an unquestionable belief in science to obtain some sense of worthiness.

Anna at one point told me she was going to counsel a girl, which consisted of sitting the girl down and showing her pictures of the various levels of hell where people who did not behave went. We can see in this venture a type of refusal to accept modern liberal notions of counselling, where talking about hell to a client would be seen as taboo, although, for example, in the case of anorexia, one might talk about the possibility of death. Almost weekly, one can see in one of the main Singaporean papers, The Straits Times, advertisements for various certified counselling and psychotherapy courses. Anna can be seen as refusing to accept this ‘certification of the self’ (Chua 1998: 32) as the only means of making one capable of helping people.

The tang-ki possessed by Huang Lao Xian Shi, said to be a doctor in ancient times, made explicit diagnoses – a person had a blood clot, a person needed a blood transfusion. During consultations with people, he occasionally took out his pipe and smoked it, thoughtfully. This tang-ki looked like a caricature of an intellectual. Some of the shrine assistants smiled as he went about his work. Before being possessed by Huang Lao Xian Shi, the tang-ki had been possessed by Qi Tian Da Sheng [the monkey god] and had created a mess in the place, throwing peanut shells on the floor, spitting into joss paper and throwing the paper on the floor. A ‘blood transfusion’, with blood coming from the tang-ki’s finger, was carried out in this environment; an environment that contrasted strongly with and caricatured the sterile environment in which a bio-medical practitioner would normally carry out a blood transfusion. Here, in the shrine, it seemed order, cleanliness and the need for a highly qualified elite with a scientific training were being railed against.

It is interesting to note that the meaning of ‘rail’ is to complain bitterly and is derived from the Old French ‘raillery’ that means to mock and from the Old Provencal ‘ralhar’ meaning to joke (Collins English Dictionary 1994: 1281). Much of the discourse of tang-ki worship can be seen as mocking in a humorous way. In the above-mentioned shrine, a discourse of the master was being mocked rather humorously and, at the same time, was being deconstructed. At this shrine, one of the main helpers, a man, English educated to MA level, said he tried not to use biomedicine and preferred Chinese medicine. He was completely against the placing of people in psychiatric hospitals and maintained they were turned into zombies. He preferred the tang-ki way of treating illness.

At shrine celebrations, some of the helpers and the tang-kis would have their arms pierced. In some shrines, larger needles pierced the cheeks or the backs of tang-kis. I was going to have my arm pierced but became concerned about possible infections, and I wanted to clean the needle, perhaps by burning it first. Anna was horrified and upset when I suggested this. She said there are more things than science in this world, and that science cannot cure everything. She said the needles were the body of the gods, and you cannot burn them. A member at another temple, who was trained in the sciences, when told about the situation, said that theoretically I would be protected from infection if I inserted the needle into my arm because of the power of the gods. Here the tang-ki and the followers seemed to be saying that the dominant discourse of ‘rational’ science is not the only discourse, perhaps echoing Pascal, ‘The heart has its reason of which the mind knows nothing’.

Much of the tang-ki’s work is about healing. Some of the scenarios of healing are reminiscent of what happens in biomedical consulting rooms. Even some of the phrases are the same – blood clots and the need for blood transfusions. However, it would be a mistake to see this curing in an intellectualist way as an attempt at science, a failed attempt made in the absence of an ability to produce true scientific results. The tang-ki discourse of healing can rather be seen as having the function of mocking dominant systems of thought, as a counter-hegemonic discourse similar in some ways to discourses like Illich’s (1975) criticism of modern medicine and Laing’s (1965) criticism of modern psychiatry, albeit in a different medium of communication. It can also be seen as a discourse of the hysteric.

Opium was a major commodity in the economy and life of Singapore throughout the 19th century and was the reason for many traders going to Singapore in the first place (Trocki 1990: 2, 50). Opium was the major item of trade in the 1820s and 1830s, and the revenue gained from taxing the local use of opium provided 40-60% of total state revenue from 1815-1915 (Trocki 1990: 10). In Trocki’s opinion, the liberal free trade capitalist economy of Singapore both created and was sustained by opium-smoking coolies (1990: 2).

Thousands of people, particularly the Chinese coolies, engaged in hard labour and used opium both as a medicine and as a method of dealing with the hardships of life. It seems ironic, then, that the present Government, admittedly not the same as the colonial one, is so strongly against the use of drugs given that the country was built on this economy. The representation of Toa Ji A Pei as opium-smoking spirits in tang-kis can be taken as a comment on this paradox. It is not that the tang-kis such as those possessed by Toa Ji A Pei and their followers are calling for the liberalization of Singapore’s policies on drug use. Far from it, all the people met during the course of the research would be against such a policy. Nevertheless, it is being suggested that tang-kis as opium-smoking spirits are making a link between the hard work and powerlessness of exploited coolies in the 19th century and the hard work and powerlessness involved in present day life for many people. The tang-kis, as they smoke their pipes and are seen to be bringing judgment to those who have done wrong, are caricaturing and parodying present day officials. They also speak for a ‘brotherhood’ rather than a competitive Hobbesian ethic of each man for himself.

The distribution of lottery numbers seems to speak directly to Singapore’s capitalist economic system, which is, supposedly, meant to reward hard work [the official script and master signifier] but in reality seems to reward people arbitrarily. Winners in the system appear to come from a type of arbitrary lottery process, again parodied by the tang-ki giving out lucky numbers [hidden transcript]; and seen, also, in an almost obsessional preoccupation with lotteries amongst some members of the shrines I visited. While it can be seen that the exorbitant interest in lotteries and wealth and in the spirits Toa Ji A Pei amongst some people in the tang-ki shrines in Singapore, is just a reflection of the interest of people generally in wealth production, it can also be seen as being counter to the values of capitalism. After all, Toa A Pei tried to help his brother coolie Ji A Pei.

Some people are aware of structures and rules of society that appear excessive and which the tang-ki discourse opposes. However, people do not give the impression that they are explicitly aware of the tang-ki discourse as going against these structures. v vi It does not seem that people want to subvert government policy or that they articulate their discontent knowingly, as Scott seems to imply happens when people are subordinated to a powerful regime. At least, they do not do it in the same way as people living in a modern liberal society might. At the same time, one does not need to say that it is an unconscious activity in the strict Freudian sense, although it may be similar. It is suggested here that it is in the very ritual or discourse of the tang-ki that the anti-hegemonic nature of tang-ki worship resides. This just is the language of discontent. There is no other hidden language behind it.

McIntosh says that the same individual may embody hegemonic assumptions in their possessing experience while at the same time condemning the hegemony (2004: 90). The opposite also is possible. A discourse could embody anti-hegemonic assumptions while people involved in this support the hegemony. I suggest this is the most likely situation in the case of tang-ki worship in Singapore. No one met during the research would dispute the idea that the taking of drugs is wrong, yet many would look and laugh at Toa Ji A Pei’s mockery of this idea. At some time most people would go to biomedical doctors, yet the tang-ki discourse speaks of another way of obtaining a cure and sometimes makes fun of biomedical treatment. On one occasion, the tang-ki Wei told someone repeatedly to go and see the dentist.

Most people in Singapore, including those attending tang-ki shrines, put much effort into giving their children an education and are proud when their children gain certificates and diplomas, yet tang-ki practices downplay the need for qualifications. The qualification for being a tang-ki comes from a call from the gods and the receipt of an answer to the question of whether it is correct that the god wants one to be a tang-ki, by throwing two crescent-shaped divination blocks into the air and seeing the position in which they land.

Tang-ki practices mock virtues of cleanliness and tidiness. One person who accompanied me to see a medium possessed by Guan Gong was upset by the way the medium was shabbily dressed in an old singlet [vest] and torn trousers. He said, ‘This man is supposed to exemplify Guan Gong, a hero of mine from when I was a child, yet here he is in rags’. It went against his values of how one should present oneself. This person is someone with a professional job and academic qualifications and one could see modernity’s influence on him in his comment that this way of dressing would never be seen in Christian churches.

As mentioned previously, hardly anyone spoke against the Government, not just because they were scared to, but because, it seems, they could not see how any other Government could bring about the results of this Government. It is argued they were mocking not the Government so much as the edifice built around it, an edifice based on an ‘instrumental rationality’ that sometimes makes them feel they are living in, to use Weber’s terms, an ‘iron cage’.

Underlying the analysis of the State enterprise in Singapore is an implicit idea that there is a process of social memory that takes place. While aware of Berliner’s (2005) critique of the overuse of the notion of ‘social memory’ in anthropology for almost taking on the function of the concept of ‘culture’, the author feels it is pertinent in this analysis. While Connerton (1989) reserves the place for psychoanalysis of memory as concerned with the individual, I believe this is a simplification of the psychoanalytical understanding of memory.

In his book SINGAPORE: THE STATE AND THE CULTURE OF EXCESS , the anthropologist Yao (2007) takes the Freudian notion of trauma, as exemplified in Carruth’s (1995) Lacanian-inspired work, to show how memory and forgetting take place in what he calls the excess of State intervention and the Singaporean story. vii The Singaporean story, for Yao, is about the struggle of the Singaporean people against the adversity and disorder of such situations as communism, militant unionism, race riots, the economic disaster following Britain’s withdrawal of its military base, Singapore’s expulsion from the Federation of Malaysia and the State’s part in overcoming these adversities (2007: 33-39). Yao sees the memory of these events as being constructed [by the State] as trauma with a concomitant compulsion to return to these memories alongside an anxiety. He sees this anxiety as being mitigated by an ‘excess’ of State control, which spurs a person into action against the anxiety of trauma by way of a puritan, hard-work ethic (2007: 47).

While Yao’s analysis is somewhat speculative [and his emphasis on The Hock Lee Bus Depot riots of 1954 where four people were killed seems not to have been remembered or known by the people I associated with], he provides an interesting framework to look at the issue of forgetting and remembering. The Singaporean Story is part of a Singaporean’s consciousness, but it is not the totalizing story Yao makes it out to be. There are variations to the story, and it appears that while the story is traumatic, many people have worked through the trauma.

It is precisely the ritual aspects of the shrines that allow the traumatic nature of the memories to be brought into the symbolic and to be lived out, not as traumatic memories but as memories that create identity which motivate people. The stories in the shrines are slightly different from the State’s telling of the story. Thus, the narrative and ritual performance of Toa Ji A Pei invoke the memories of the hardship people have in settling in Singapore and also help heal the traumatic aspect of these memories, enabling people to carry on with their lives.