Wu Xia

I was born in the 70s and at that time, the prime time TV was all about HK serials. I grew up on a staple of Adam Cheng, Mi Xue, Liu Songren and then it became Andy Lau, Tony Leung Chiu Wai in the 80s.

At that time, Jin Yong and Liang YuSheng's swordfighting novels were hot and lots of TV serials were produced after them.

Thank God, mom was not into strict parenting and didn't mind me watching tons of TV. Granny was an ardent fan and I watched with her.....though sometimes, she remembered I was a primary schooler and scolded me into cutting back.

But unknown to her, instead of scuttling upstairs, I was catching TV through the "hole" in the wall separating the living room from the stairs.

My house then was a 60s style semi-D in Katong and typical of the architecture then, there is a wall separating the stairs from the living room and there are "holey" patterns on the wall that allows you to peep over the other side.

Well, a whole generation of Singapore's 70s generation -nope SE Asia's 70s generation - grew up on this diet of Jin Yong, Liang Yu Sheng based serials.

It bred a huge support base of Andy Lau, Tony Leung fans but it got further for some of us.

We progressed to reading those novels. This is no mean feat as in those days, the novels were published in traditional chinese script and we in Singapore, were taught the simplified characters.

What determination we possessed then !

The perseverence paid off in that it bred in us the "ambidexity" to switch between scripts. Jin Yong and Liang YuSheng's fantastic grasp of Chinese history, literature and culture seeped into their writings. The novels were rich literary works. Like osmosis, readers gained teachings no history, literature and cultural classes can teach in such short time.

A couple of years back, when I was in Fuzhou St Shanghai's bookshops, I came across a work which is basically analysing the impact of those novels on a whole generation of SE Asian Chinese and the resultant effects on bringing us closer to our roots : in history, literature and cultural understanding.

Without Jin Yong or Liang Yu Sheng, a lot of us would have been truly belachan (not banana nor potato) - neither shrimp, nor chilli, neither wholly Chinese nor wholly Malay or Peranakan.