Where do you call home?

'Where do you call home?' Oh asked me one day.

Married to a Singaporean for nearly 15 years, Oh has lived in Singapore for seven. She purchased an exclusive property along the sought-after East Coast. With a sea view apartment and a part-time lectureship in an art college, she seems like an enviable success symbol among the new Chinese immigrants.

And yet behind the glossy façade, she has for the last six months been struggling to pull herself out of depression.

Well-read, articulate and extremely clever, Oh had quite a career in China. Without having a clue about what film directing was, she used her love of literature and a quick brain to win a coveted place on a directing course run by two film-making power-houses in China. For four years, she was among the twenty lucky ones under the mentorship of top professionals. On graduation, she was hand-picked at the tender age of 22 to join the Shanghai Film Studio. Convinced that her directing would benefit from the first-hand experiences of the ‘real world’, she set up a firm in the mid 1990s to sell computing systems to top Chinese universities, and then spent time at Cambridge and MIT in order to advance a career in computing and business management.

With such a rich experience behind her, what is troubling this high achiever from China?

'I feel I don’t belong. Back in Shanghai, my life was riveting, punctuated by regular theatre visits and late-night debates with my intellectual friends. I had a three-story villa and travelled abroad for holidays and professional development. Yet here I feel desolately isolated, a fish out of water. I have a couple of Chinese friends who are at the top of their careers in education and media, but they are not my role models. I detest the idea of slaving away in order to get where they are and I prefer a position that would stretch my intelligence. I miss Chinese theatre and my trend-setting and high-achieving friends back there. Yet if I am honest, I am not that keen to return, either. I don’t envy my former classmates who are still working in the media industry. Once a passion turns into a way of living, compromise becomes inevitable. And there is too much compromise in film and media circles. On the other hand, if you want to go back for business, corruption is everywhere. Shanghai has changed so much since I left. Nothing is the same any more.'

The nostalgia for her former life is just one aspect of her mental state.

'The only thing that keeps me going,’ Oh revealed, ‘is my love of Chinese language and culture. It is my spiritual heritage and I cannot survive without these things for even one single day. It is painful and ironic, therefore, that although many Singaporean Chinese can speak a little Mandarin, their pronunciation and even vocabulary are different, an acute reminder that I am an exile. Even among the Chinese community, I sound like an alien and yet I hate the idea of disguising my origin and identity by changing the way I speak.’

Her origin is also written on her appearance. Unlike her peers in a similar state of affluence, Oh shows little interest in keeping up appearances or keeping up with the Joneses. Her dowdy attire accentuates her immigrant identity and when she speaks, her loud, albeit musical, tones raise more eyebrows.

Have her husband and in-laws been reaching out to ease her pain and help her settle down?

‘My husband and my daughter visit my in-laws once a week, but I have a gentleman’s agreement to join them only once a month. It is such a chore to act the part. It doesn’t appeal to me. The other day after a big argument with my husband when he was late meeting me at the bus stop, I dropped my daughter at his parents’ door and turned around straightaway. On the bus ride home, I felt bitter and miserable and wondered why I hadn’t taken a taxi instead, as I used to in China. As the sole breadwinner of the family, why have I repeatedly denied myself the comforts and living standards that I was used to and can still afford? What am I saving money for? Why has he chosen to retire early and left me with all the financial obligations to support the family? If the money which is saved for tomorrow and the family is at the cost of my happiness of today, what is the point of my present life? I wish I could be healthy and happy. But at the moment nothing interests me, not even my favourite stand-up comics.’