Charmaine Leung, 44, has written a memoir entitled “17A Keong Saik Road” of her childhood in the gai dau, or “chicken stable” as it was crudely known in Cantonese – partly as an attempt to come to terms with the shadow her mother’s profession had cast on both their lives. “A lot of my childhood was shrouded in shame,” she says.

Keong Saik Road today, with its hipster cafes and swanky bars, was a foreign world to Leung when she returned to Singapore in 2011 after 15 years in Hong Kong. She remembers a street where the front doors had light boxes with red numbers on them and beautiful, perfumed women sashaying past loitering men. These women were prostitutes. Each was attached to a specific brothel, which functioned like a booking centre. “Nobody came willingly to work in a brothel district,” says Leung of these women. “They had people to take care of or they had been left by men who had impregnated them. There were many sad stories in this place, but they were professionals – they got on with their lives.”

Leung’s mother was one such sad story. An unwanted third daughter, she was given up by her birth parents in Selangor and sold to a ma-jie, a Chinese domestic helper who had taken a vow of celibacy. Her adopted mother and aunt ran an entertainment house where courtesans performed for male clients. Leung’s mother started waitressing there when she was eight and eventually took over running the house, which was converted to a brothel in the 1960s.

Leung was raised by her mother’s godmother who lived next door. Her father, a Hong Kong businessman, could not locate to Singapore because of visa restrictions.

She resented the brothel because it kept her mother from her. They would see each other only briefly to say goodnight across the adjacent windows between the shophouses, and she would cry so bitterly that the other brothel madams would complain. As she approached puberty, living in Keong Saik became undesirable. Men would stare and catcall as she passed. To her disgust, some would even try to touch her head. When she was 11, her mother decided to give up the brothel business. They moved away and her mother became a cleaner instead.

Even today, she says, it is difficult for her mother, now 78, to speak of her past. She is not named in the book, which Leung took a long time to persuade her to open up for.

Ethos Books founder Fong Hoe Fang said: “Charmaine was very brave to write this story. Such stories need to see the light of day in the context of all broken societies.”

Leung plans to read the book chapter by chapter in Cantonese to her mother, who cannot read English. “I hope what I am doing will help her to heal all the wounds she needs to heal.”

The book launch will be held on 27 May 2017 (Saturday), 4.00 pm – 7.00 pm at 15A Keong Saik Road, Singapore 089122. Admission is free. Visit the event’s Facebook page for more details.

Source: The Straits Times, 23 May 2017