Straits Times, Saturday, April 2, 1994
Singapore-born Wilfred Shimmen's first novel charts the development of Singapore from the 16th century to the present.It was launched here last week

.HANNAH PANDIAN reports.

What life was like for a Eurasian in Singapore

Wilfred Hamilton-Shimmen wants to pose for the photographer against an old house in Seletar. Not any old house, it is one overlooking the actual dockyard area where battleships used to be berthed; the house where his British colonial father and Portuguese-Eurasian mother lived. The British Naval Base house appears in the first chapter of Shimmen's massive book, Seasons of Darkness, which was launched here last week.

The book, which was launched in Malaysia late last year, has already won the praise of those who have read it; a list which includes Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad and writer Han Suyin, who wrote him a congratulatory letter from her home in Switzerland. Former Senior Minister the late S Rajaratnam also wrote to congratulate him on the "well-researched book" and called it a "valuable addition to Singapore ~ not Chinese, Malay, Indian or Eurasian -- history".

In nearly 700 pages, Seasons of Darkness spans the life of Singapore, from the 16th century to the present, in scrupulous detail. Much of the research was done in London, says Shimmen, 54, who is executive directorof his own public relations company. In fact, he claims to gave stumbled across a few rarely-published historical facts in the process. "For example, the British destroyed all the relics of the Sri Vijaya empire in Singapore, from the first to the third century AD," he says, adding that Indians inhabited this region almost 1,000 years before the British founded Singapore. He explains the destruction as the desire to eradicate traces of a previously colonial power in the minds of the newly colonised.

He unearthed this and other nuggets when he left Singapore and based himself in London for two-odd years. There he worked as a sub-editor on an evening paper and spent hours every day at the British Museum's archives, looking up the history of this region. He also traced the lineage of his father , a British colonial naval base administrator in Singapore, who was killed in World War II by a Japanese exection squad. Unable to find out anything about his father's family, Shimmen went through christening and funeral records, first in Singapore, then in London, and discovered that his great-great grandfather came from a Suffolk family of mariners.

Similarly, he went to Malacca to trace his Portuguese-Eurasian mother's ancestry, and went through documents in the Malaysian National Archives dating back to 1511, when the Portuguese first arrived in Malacca. "I went back as far as 1647 and then I got tired and stopped," he says. He found out that although his mother's maiden name was Koek, a Dutch name, his maternal grandmother had a Portuguese name, Pavanares, and along the way, he found his mother had Swedish, Norwegian and French as well as several Asian ancestors.

For Shimmen, the search was not a whimsical tracing of a family tree for the sake of curiosity, but more an attempt to prove that he could pinpoint his ancestry. He says that all his life he has been hounded by people jeering "Chap Cheng" or "ten-blood", implying that he has no knowledge of his heritage.

He also says that, in general, the Eurasian has been portrayed badly and stereotypically in literature, and cites as an example Catherine Lim's treatment of "Good-Times Charlie" in the collection of short Stories, Or Else, the Lightning God, which is a school text in Singapore. It is because of such treatment, he says, that he changed his nationality from Singapore citizenship to British citizenship, around the time he left for London in 1980.

Between then and 1983, when he returned to Singapore, he researched and scribbled fragments of his novel on old envelopes and notebooks while travelling on buses, trains and tubes. Against the backdrop of Japanese torture, trade unions and the early PAP, Shimmen spins out the story of Thomas Siddon, a largely autobiographical account of his own life. "Seasons of Darkness explores the dilemma and trauma of a first-generation British-descent Eurasian ~ born, raised and striving in his island-home ~ perceiving that he is not regarded as part of the fabric of his country, and experiencing rejection through racial bigotry, not only during the previous British colonial era but even after independence," says Shimmen's press release on the book.

He also touches on what he calls the "Sino society", a society which is tolerant of non-Chinese minorities but in which the "predominant culture had been inexorably nurtured to be Sino". Seasons of Darkness, he says, is an attempt to see Singapore in its South-east Asian, and especially Malay, context rather than as a Chinese nation. It was first launched in Kuala Lumpur late last year, because there were difficulties in getting it printed here, he says. Malaysia's Sunday Star newspaper reviewed the book as "well researched" and launded it for presenting the war years through the eyes of a little boy."

The trauma of being a child from a mixed marriage

By Katherine Ho
Sunday Star, 5 December 1993

Twelve-year-old Thomas Siddon looked like a local but spoke with an English accent. And because he was a child of a mixed marriage, he suffered for the error.

The Eurasian boy learnt the hard way the meaning of every derogatory term for "his kind" - chelop, orang puteh pantat hitam, chap cheng... The trauma of Siddon, the protagonist in Seasons of Darkness, was actually the trauma of the author, Wilfred Hamilton-Shimmen. Shimmen's accent was his inheritance from his father, an English engineer executed by the Japanese Kempetai during the war. In refusing to be repatriated, his Malacca-Portuguese mother made him the "half-caste" boy in a society where ethnic pride ruled.

"On top of everything else I had a double-barrel surname," said Shimmen, now 43 and a British citizen. "People would say I was 'this chap cheng trying to act uppity". "What they didn't realise was, I was the product of conflicting cultures. Chinese and Malay mixed children, for example, didn't have it so bad because of their Asian roots."

Like his protagonist, Shimmen eventually gave up trying to fit in and surrendered his Singaporean nationality. He claimed his birthright and returned to England. "Despite getting deeply tanned, developing an Asian (Sino) accent, eating the same food as everybody and living as an Asian, he had never really been accepted," he concluded in the book. "Growing up was extremely traumatic for me as a child," he said. "I have memory that goes right down to when I was two. I can remember the terror and hunger at the Japanese internment camp and the hatred and prejudice of the locals afterwards.
"As I grew older I began to understand why they treated me differently but I still feel it was unfair." And it is this unfairness of the society which made him write Seasons of Darkness.

"In writing this book I try to give an understanding of the Eurasian dilemma and an understanding of Singapore. It's public image is not the real image," he said. Shimmen who is openly critical in his book of the politics and policies of the Singapore administration said every publisher whom he approached in Singapore refused the manuscript. "One publisher who actually signed a contract, changed his mind at the eleventh hour. He said he had been advised by his cousin-brother not to publish the book," said Shimmen.

"Which do you think it is - they are afraid of Lee Kuan Yew or they are not interested in the story of an Eurasian" he asked. Shimmen who now works in an advertising firm in Singapore said: "I came back as a foreigner to finish my book. I had spent 10 years researching it in England, Japan and Malaysia and I needed to finish up here. I live three kilometres from the British naval base where I was born." He said in his travels, he discovered the inaccuracies that Singaporeans had been taught about the history of the region. "When you mention Johor Lama, they think it is a place in Kota Tinggi." Thus, "the historical background," which is a large chunk of the book, takes the reader from the time of Parameswara to the current administration.

This is important to understanding the ideas and ideals which affected Thomas Siddon. In explaining Singapore's past I am also taking a stab at its future and what will happen to the mixed-race progeny," he said. "The culture of Singapore today is Chinese, and the government wants to propagate a completely Sino image in the country. It is very much like Hong Kong except Singapore's past is not Chinese. "The Eurasian community whom they look down upon had been here for 500 years and yet you have roads names being changed to Hanyin Pinyin. "This is no longer the multi-racial Singapore I grew up in. The western-educated Chinese were 'Singaporeans' until they came back. After seeing how the whites treated the minorities they returned with a 'we can do what they do in the west attitude," he said.