Why am I not a Chinese Beauty in Cheongsam?

Painting of a Girl in Cheongsam

I had images of a pretty Chinese lady in Cheongsam and I remember now that I saw them when I was a little girl. She posed in framed photos hanging on a little wall in a tiny room in a dark and dirty house in Chinatown shared by dozens.

That was Singapore in the 1970s. And the pretty Chinese lady was one of my grandaunts. She arrived in Singapore young and single at the beginning of the last century, worked very hard all her life and never married nor had children. In her old age, she returned to China to retire and live out her final years.

I visited her occasionally with my parents (after which we would eat almond and black sesame desserts at the roadside stalls nearby) and I can still see the tiny room (the size of my current storeroom) she slept in, containing a bed, a table and a few frugal personal items. And of course those photos of her in her younger days. I remember thinking then how pretty she was in her youth and how ugly and wrinkled she had become in her old age. And if you could see the dark and dirty kitchen she shared with countless families and other old people, you would have cringed like I had even then.

Vaguely I believe that she had been much prettier than me. I would love to look like her in those cheongsams. Maybe that is why I rarely have myself photographed - because I will never look like that. Hard to believe how she could become so ugly and wrinkled in her old age.

But would I have liked her life? Had she loved and lost? Had she ever regretted not being able to lead a "normal" life, get married and have children? Did she have regrets each time she looked at herself in those photos? Those years were tough years, women who moved to Singapore either did so to marry Chinese men who had arrived earlier or were there to labour for their survival. I am no Chinese Beauty in Cheongsam, but I could hit the ball to 60m (after 4 lessons) at the driving range and spend my day at 3 supermarkets looking for fresh coriander leaves.

And hopefully I wouldn't be ugly and wrinkled in my old age. Just fat. Should I nonetheless still try to fit into a Cheongsam? In any case, I wonder how I may get my hands on those photos. She must have brought them back with her to China and she must have been dead nearly 2 decades now...