Lim Lin Mang Suat

Here, I intend to tell you about my somewhat bizarre Chinese tuition teacher from when I was 9. Now, probably to anyone who’s not from Asia, the concept of having a tuition teacher at age 9 is itself pretty bizarre. In Singapore, it is not. In fact, my mother started to feel pressured to start me in tuition right when I started P3 (year 3). It’s important to note, here, that my mother changes personality once every few years. I think it’s a result of changes to her context and circumstance, but to the child of such a parent, it’s immensely confusing when their standards for you are one day drastically different from the next. 

Anyway, I mention this because at this point, my mother was blossoming into her “Tiger Mother” personality phase. In Singapore, as I’m sure you all already know, there is a very high standard of education, maintained in part by “tiger parents”, as a point of pride, and as a means of ensuring that their child has a stellar future ahead of them. This involves the use of many, many assessment books (I probably have to explain what assessment books are - they’re like practise exam books that you, ideally, do part of every week, in preparation for your exams. I used to ask my parents to take me to Popular bookshop to buy assessment books, because they were just ubiquitous and obvious - you wouldn’t be able to keep up without them. There were all kinds, all colours, all different structures, but some ‘trendy’ ones, known to be good), very high standards for exam results, and the employment of tuition teachers. There are a few tuition centres, where you go and it’s like a classroom, just like after-school school - most notably Kumon. But more often than not, tuition teachers are independent and come to your house for an hour or two to teach you one-on-one. While in other countries, such tuition teachers may be used to help students understand what they’re struggling with in class at that moment, in Singapore, and other parts of Asia, tuition teachers teach you what you’ll learn in class a few weeks ahead - so you’ll be ahead and already have an understanding when your teacher teaches it (I’ve heard that in places like Korea, this is true to the point where school teachers don’t even bother teaching anymore). They’ll also give and mark practise exams, go through your real exam papers, all that tuition stuff.

P3 marks a turning point. P1 and P2 are manageable without tuition, but not P3 onwards, apparently (this brings up a lot of questions about class immobility to me). My mother was told as much, and so, while I had no tuition in P1 and P2 (though Irene, my godmother/nanny, would help me occasionally as a parent would), zealously fulfilling her Tiger Mother role, she decided P3 was Time for Tuition. My first tuition teacher was called Bee Ling, and she was a schoolteacher at a “neighbourhood school” (while all schools in Singapore that aren’t international schools are public, some, like the one I went to, are ‘name-brand’ and known to be good schools. So “neighbourhood school” signifies lower status - the Australian equivalent would be non-selective public schools.) She was pretty good, but quite abnormally relaxed for a tuition teacher - she used to talk to me about how she wanted to go shopping that next (school) day, but wasn’t sure if she should use up one of her sick days. She also taught me the word “lesbian”. Not a euphemism. 

Bee Ling taught me English, Maths, and Science. This left a void for Chinese, the only other examinable subject.  This void was filled by Lim Lin. Now, I don’t now where the hell my mum found this woman. Actually, I don’t know where my mum found any of these various people throughout my schooling career. I know she put out a newspaper ad for my brothers’ autism therapist, who later became my teacher too. But I don’t think you do that for tuition teachers; it’s more word of mouth I think? Anyway, my mother produced Lim Lin. I remember we had our first trial lesson on the balcony, at the dining table (yes, we ate every meal on the balcony, for some reason). It was twilight. I remember she was really harsh, which was jarring to me after Bee Ling. She tested me on my 听写 (spelling) words for the week, and she was like, “wow, you’re really gonna need some work”. She made me start a new Chinese tuition notebook, where I’d write out all my 听写 words, and she made me write them out more times than I ever had before (to her credit, I have used this method ever since). All still fairly normal stuff, except for how mean she was.

Oh my god, I haven’t talked about what she looked like, which is a very important element in all this, and which contributed to the disorientation. So she was 48 years old (Irene has asked, somewhat indelicately), and short, short as your average Chinese woman. She was wearing a spaghetti-strap tank top, a denim miniskirt, and high heels. I haven’t seen anyone beyond the age of like, 25, maybe 30, wear something like that (also, very 2000s!). I remember the spaghetti straps would sometimes have diamontés on them, and she always wore those clear bra straps that don’t fool anyone because they reflect light like a motherfucker. She also had on a LOT of make-up. And I don’t mean that in a pick-me way. I mean she CAKED it on. Her foundation might have been half a centimetre thick. Bits would fall off, forming craters on her face like the surface of the moon. 

Back to this trial lesson. At the end of the hour and a half (which was supposed to be only an hour), she told my mother that I needed a LOT of help, and that I would need two-hour classes. My mother nodded, indignantly. To this day, I don’t know if she was just trusting and having faith in this woman as some sort of overcompensation, proving that she didn’t judge a book by its cover, or if she was just blindly trying really hard to be a Tiger Mother, or if she really did believe this woman’s every word. The fact that my mum doesn’t understand Chinese may be a factor in this, who knows, depends which way you lean with Lim Lin. 

Another thing: her name wasn’t actually Lim Lin. Her name on her IC card was Lim Lin Mang Suat, so my mum called her Lim Lin, so I did too. But Lim was obviously her surname, and out of the three other characters, two must have been her name. I don’t know what the last remaining character could be. She also never told me her name, though she did mention that it wasn’t Lim Lin. It didn’t matter to me; I called her 老师.

We started having classes every week; two hours. Lim Lin said it couldn’t be on the balcony, and it couldn’t be in a common space like the living room where we had another big table because it was too distracting for me. It had to be in my room, door shut, lights off except for my desk lamp. She didn’t like my desk lamp either; she said it was yellow light and she didn’t get why white people use yellow light so much, she wanted white light. So a few weeks in my mum came home with a new white-lit desk lamp for me, and Lim Lin was happy. She would adjust it so much. I’m remembering her hands now; I see them on the lamp, moving its head. They’re sharp and painted some shade of red or pink. Maybe that’s why I find long acrylic nails disgusting lol. 

I don’t remember how, or how far into teaching me, but she convinced my mother that I actually needed two-and-a-half hour lessons, and then it became three. From 4pm to 7pm every Thursday, I remember, it still makes me shudder. I’d be in school on Thursday, thinking about my mammoth three hour tuition lesson after school, and I would tell myself that once it was over, I could enjoy the rest of the week. But then, come Monday, I would start to dread again, start to anticipate. Sometimes she’d come later - up to an hour late, sometimes more. One rainy dark Thursday afternoon, I was watching Kids Next Door on Cartoon Network. It got to 4, and then past 4, and I was still watching Kids Next Door, and as time passed, I got more and more hopeful, gleeful, confident she wasn’t going to show up. And then, at some time that was definitely past what should have been the point of no return, the doorbell rang. I think I had tuition till 9 that night. We got to 7 and I thought yay, short class today, she probably must have somewhere to be and will leave as she usually does at 7. But it reached 8. Surely, I thought, she’ll let me off now; it’s already so late, even if three hours isn’t up. No, 9.

Didn’t she have to go home to her kids? She had two children, I remember: a 15-year-old girl she’d play-fight with in their flat, apparently, and an 18-year-old boy. They would call up in the middle of our lesson, sometimes, and she’d tell me to write an essay or complete some reading comprehension questions while she was on the phone, but I’d often peak up from the pencil I would still grip childishly (I had, justly, been denied use of pen by my P3 teacher, Mdm Melati). They spoke dialect at home, Hokkien I think, or Teochew, which meant I couldn’t understand what she was saying on the phone to them, but sometimes, if I was lucky, she’d tell me what they were calling about. Once, her son called up crying, because his friends at school had teased him when they’d seen his mother at some sort of school event, asking if she was his girlfriend. What baffled me was twofold: not only was she then definitely aware of how unusually she dressed for her age and how she was ridiculed for it but did not waver, her son would also tell his mum that people were teasing him by calling her his girlfriend. Would you tell your parent if someone was saying that they were who you were DATING? No, that would be so awkward. But he called her up crying, looking for comfort (which she did not provide - she addressed him sharply, probably because she was offended). She said to him, apparently, “just tell them I’m your mother, not your girlfriend! Stop crying!” God, what a weird dynamic.

Something else that would intersperse our lessons would be her trips to the bathroom. I had a bathroom adjoint to my bedroom, which means I could hear her constantly running and splashing water (presumably on her face?), all the while making that horrible guttural sound. It’s mostly an Asian thing, I think. You know, that sound they make from the back of their throat to collect and spit out phlegm. At this point, I didn’t know that that was what that sound was for (because no one did it at home), and once, I was cheeky enough to ask her why she made that noise. She was very angry, and told me you can’t ask questions like that. That was the end of that, then.

I would go to the bathroom a lot, too, just to waste time really. But I would only let myself after certain time intervals had passed - I was constantly staring at digital alarm clock, literally watching the time go by minute my minute, though sometimes intervals of five or ten minutes would go past. These times were usually food times. Lim Lin was CONSTANTLY feeding me food. And when I say constantly, I mean constantly. We’d have at least three eating breaks each lesson, usually as a reward after doing some sort of homework task. The main food she’d give me was these buttery animal biscuits. They were her signature; she’d have them for her other students too. They were REALLY good, and apparently hard to find, so she was always on the lookout. Apparently, if she saw them at a 7-11, she’d buy the shop out of stock, and she’d tell me about the weird look on the cashier’s face. So yes, except for ‘dry spells’ where she couldn’t find them anywhere, she’d always bring a box for me, and dish it out as she saw fit. I recently came across these very biscuits here in China:

Some of her other signature foods were cinnamon-sugar dusted doughnuts, and these weird colourful crisp ‘discs’ (one pink, one green, one red….) the size of a plate. I didn’t like that last one very much, but I ate it when she told me to. She’d use these snacks as a leverage, almost - she’d say, “see, aren’t I a good teacher? What other tuition teacher is so nice to you? When Irene always talks bad about me, why don’t you ever speak up, tell her how nice I am to you?”

Ah yes, Irene and Lim Lin. As already hinted, they did NOT get along. Irene, who was by my side all the time (almost literally, except for when tuition was occurring, of course), saw what I saw, saw how ridiculous all this Lim Lin stuff was. She’d tell my mum; she’d say three hours was too much, that she gave too much tuition homework (yes, tuition homework was also a thing, and she gave a LOT of it), that she would scold me like her own child. She’d say almost demeaning things about herself to Lim Lin, like, “we are just workers for Pia (my mum). She treats us very good, you cannot take advantage.” Lim Lin, as you can probably guess, did not appreciate this sort of feedback. She’d tell Irene to mind her own business, and that she didn’t know anything; she was just a nanny. And Irene would say, “I am just a nanny, but I know how you should treat children.” That, I think, was also a little sore point with Irene. She was the one who taught me Chinese by speaking to me and teaching me as she looked after me from when I was 2, so I suppose it must have felt like a bit of a slap in the face that my mother would hire a Chinese tuition teacher (always called a tuition teacher, never a tutor), like Irene wasn’t good enough to help me. I don’t think that negates anything Irene would say, though, because I agreed with all of it, though I couldn’t say anything, because if I did, I would pay for it, catching hell from Lim Lin in the privacy of my bedroom.

Irene would tell my mum how bad Lim Lin was, and so would I, though she wouldn’t listen to me, of course. My Chinese marks did NOT improve - in fact, I think they dropped, and Irene would hold this fact smugly over Lim Lin. I think the peak in this drama between them was when I said goodbye to Lim Lin once, closed the front door, only for her to return five minutes later, just when I thought I was done with her for the week. Apparently, Irene had been in the lobby of the apartment, and they had a yelling match. Lim Lin locked herself in our guest bathroom and cried on the phone to my mum. I didn’t really understand what was going on. 

This wasn’t even the end - I think this was about halfway through P4. Remember, I’d started with Lim Lin at the beginning of P3. Irene and Lim Lin would just stalk around each other like cats, hissing insults at each other if they were to meet on Lim Lin’s way in or out. Irene’ favourite thing to say when Lim Lin was out of earshot was “从后面看以为是十五岁，从后面看就发现是五十岁 (From the back you’d think she was fifteen, then when she turns around you realise she’s a shocking 50-year-old)”

But then, one afternoon at the end of P4, my mum called me over to where she was at her computer, and said, “I’ve sacked Lim Lin -“ I started jumping around ecstatically, even though I was a little disoriented and embarrassed by her use of “sacked” - it was weirdly grown-up, and made apparent the employer-employee relationship, the power dynamic of which had never been apparent between Lim Lin and I.

“Stop. Stop. Sa. Stop.” She grabbed my wrist to stop me jumping around and drew her face in to mine. “But these means you have to work REALLY hard at your Chinese, right? Because I did this for you?” I nodded and flopped backwards onto our red leather couch. And I never saw Lim Lin again.