HeHeHaHa
嘻嘻哈哈

This is just a story. If it resembles any real life story it is merely a coincidence.

Hi, everybody!

I am Phoenix He. People like to call me HeHe because I’m always in a joyous mood of HeHeHaHa[嘻嘻哈哈].As you know, I am always blessed with good luck that even I don’t “HeHeHaHa” also cannot.

Though I am just a handicapped woman with minimal educational background, I am so lucky to be elected twice as a State Assembly representative. Of course, those fellows who failed to taste the sweet grapes would say that they were sour[ 吃不到葡萄讲葡萄酸 ]. They maintained that if I did not stand for General Elections with the tickets of the Space Boat Party, my deposits would be confiscated. Though I had a strong belief in my integrity and my capability, I still could not deny that I was among the very few lucky ones to be nominated by the party to stand and to win in the elections.

Recently, I played a vital and decisive role to cause the government of the Silver Kingdom to ‘change hand’,or to 'change sky'[变天 ] as some might like to put it. I was instrumental ‘in rocking the boat' of the Space Ship Party I joined for 20 years. With a hop I tilted the ‘Balance’ symbol of the Country Front back into power in the Silver Kingdom. I was the last straw that broke the camel's back of the People’s Coalition. My timely magnificent disappearing act followed by my balancing act of seemingly not so absolutely ‘Independent’ stance had earned me handsomely that most people on the streets would say ‘ not less than 15 million dollars in cash and in kind’. Even Mr. David Copperfield had to accept and 'kowtow' to me that his various classic disappearing acts of magic performed in the past would not have earned him that much money and excitement as my singularly simple act of disappearance.
By declaring myself as an Independent lawmaker friendly with the Country Front, I did not consider myself as a betrayal of my former party and the people I represented. I had said it again and again that ‘to turn coat’ was immaterial; to serve the people was of the utmost importance. It was with this high moral ground that I did not resign as a state assembly person. I am still the rightful representative of my people. I shall remain as a lawmaker who is always for the existing government so that I can get things and projects done for my constituency undeterred.







I pity those fellows who cursed me like hell as a frog, a running dog, a political whore and so on. If they were in my shoes, I bet they would do what I had done. If by a stone of ‘disappearing and hopping act’, you can look after the people in your constituency while at the same time you can amass wealth to look after your own pocket, would you not be doing what I was doing? This is what we use to say ‘killing two birds with one stone’ [ 一石两鸟]。 Undoubtedly, any wise man will opt to do what I did. Am I not wise? Frankly speaking, just keep it to yourself, the windfall I got can keep my family for the next five generations to come, lying flat on the ground without working or doing anything, and still sustain a luxurious life as good as a king’s.

For those people who had built me a virtual monument in the cyber world I would like to express my profound thanks and appreciation to them as it will save me the money to build one and for my children and my grandchildren the trouble to mourn me after my death in case they forget, or in case they choose not to remember.

For the time being I have to do another act of disappearing and hopping. This time I am going for holidays hopping from one undisclosed destination to another. I shall not come back until and unless those crazy and insane buggers out there in my kingdom have forgotten to pelt me with rotten eggs and bad tomatoes. Until then, please send my regards to the people in my constituency. Do advise them to write on the sand whatever grouses or grudges they have showered upon me so that 'the wind of forgiveness' plus 'the wind of forgetfulness' can easily erase them in no time. Hopefully by the time I come back everything will be back to normal as if nothing had happened before I left the country. See you then. Bye-bye!

Rangoon Cheroots

Asked around the Nibong Tebal folk of my generation about my identity, nobody knew. But, once the name of Rangoon Cheroots was mentioned all would know to whom I was related. Not that these fellows like the smell or the taste of the Burmese cigar of those days; it was the name that rang the bell with the nickname of my second brother-‘Leong Kong Cheroot’[良康朱律] which bore a similar pronunciation in Teochew dialect of the Burmese cigar, Rangoon Cheroots[仰光朱律,pronounces as ‘Yang Kwang Chu Root’]

The actual name of my second brother was Liew Leong Kong[刘良康]. His other nickname was ‘O Leong’ [乌良] as he was dark in complexion. In his later years, he was also known as ‘O Nang’ [乌人]

Ever since he was young he seldom stayed at home as he wanted to go out to play with his friends except when it was time for meals and for sleep. The house was just like a hotel to him. No matter how severely he was punished to stop him from going out, he would still opt to leave home at every opportune moment to join his friends outside. Although he mixed with bad company, he never wanted me to follow his footsteps. It could be that he wanted me to remain a good boy, or it might be that he was afraid I would be an informer of his bad deeds to our parents.

As his brother, I seldom got bullied outside as his friends knew to whom I was related. On the other hand, his friends would try to cover up my brother’s misdeeds whenever I was around with them. Sometimes his friends would help my brother to hide somewhere so that I was unable to follow him to have fun elsewhere. But if I insisted to follow him, he would give in on the mutual understanding that whatever we did outside we would keep to ourselves. Together we went round the town selling ice-cream which we got from the shop Lau Soon Lee[老顺利],earning about thirty or forty cents a day. We swam in a stream near an orchard yard from which we plucked fruits 'without permission'.


My brother was very generous. Whatever he had he was willing to share with others. During the first day of the Chinese New Year of 1964 when he was at the age of fifteen, he went out to gamble with the red packet money that he received from the elders and relatives. Before noon, he had gathered a small fortune. He quickly came home to give some to my mother. But, before the day was over, his pocket was empty again. He came home like a beaten cockerel hoping to borrow some money from my mother. My mother readily returned all the money he had given her on that day. With that money he went back again to the gambling table hoping ‘to turn the tables’.

Sometime back in the year 1988 he was lucky to strike a fortune of RM 100,000 in a 4D draw. Friends and non-friends with a pig and dog’s instinct [猪朋狗友] quickly gathered around him to help him in spending the money. I was told that every day he had meals with two or three tables of friends, in which he footed the bill. Occasionally, he would sponsor a ‘troop of combatants’ north bound for Hat Yai to do ‘body-contact battles’. Some even pestered him to get a chauffeur-driven second car to move around the town. Lavish spending planned by ‘his economic advisory planning unit’ coupled with his frequent gambling, he was back to square one within a few months.

As usual, most gamblers would go bankrupt sooner or later. He was no exception. He was broke years before his sudden death with a heart attack in 1997. At that time his life became miserable. He had to help out as a waiter to serve dishes to customers at his friend’s food stall just to secure his daily meals.

At his funeral, not a single soul of his friends with a pig and dog's instinct was there to send him off. Only a nephew, a niece and I were present to watch the cremation of his body.

What a pity was the fate of my second brother, a lifetime gambler leaving behind nothing else except an IC [identity card] and an unsettled debt he owed to a loan shark.

A Different World of Suzie Wong


This is a story written by me based on the book I read from the title ‘Sex Slaves: the trafficking of women in Asia’ by Louise Brown


I was living in a world entirely different from that of The World of Suzie Wong.

I was born to a poor family in Tachilek, a remote village in Burma. At the age twelve, my mother passed away. My father remarried. My stepmother ill treated me. I was left hungry without food most of the time . My other brothers were luckier; they were adopted by my uncles. Nobody wanted me as I was a girl and I was deemed to be not as productive as the boys in the field. In our society as well as in most others in Asian countries women were woefully discriminated against. I was a victim of such discrimination.

One day a woman came by to promise me a good job as a maid to a wealthy family in Malaysia. I was tricked and sold to a trafficking syndicate which brought me to Mae Sai, a charmless Siamese frontier town on the border between Thailand and Burma. There I was sold to a brothel owner. At that time I was too young to know that like anybody else I too had the right to say that ‘No person can sell me to any other person.’ Moreover, I was only a young illegal migrant with difficulty communicating in a foreign language and I had no access to legal assistance. I was totally helpless. I was coerced to be a sex worker even before I reached the age of puberty.

At first I refused to entertain clients. For that defiance I was beaten repeatedly and incarnated in a dark room without food and drink. I was raped several times by the brothel owner to strip me of self-esteem so as to prepare me for prostitution. After a period of seasoning I had to accept the fate of being a sex worker.


Life as a sex worker was boring. A large proportion of the day and night was spent sitting in a glass-walled room, like gold fish swimming in an aquarium, waiting around to be chosen by the clients. We were not allowed to go out. We were kept under surveillance by local tough guys and by closed-circuit television. We saw, apart from clients, practically the same people every day. The routine of the life was the same everyday. It was no difference from staying in a prison and we were treated as sex slaves, working twenty four hours a day, and seven days a week without holiday except the New Year Eve.

There were lots of problems being a sex worker. The worst were the police and the hoodlums who wanted money from us time and again which we could not refuse to give.

Although I had little knowledge of health risk, I was unable to demand my client to use condom; if I was too insistent the client would just go to another woman and I would loss the business. That could be a reason why most of the sex workers would some how or other afflicted with STDs [sexually transmitted diseases] or HIV.

I had no liberty to choose my clients. Any Tom, Dick and Harry, could climb over my body as long as he could afford to pay the fee, and I had to provide him with a professional service or else I would be beaten by the brothel owner. On the other hand, I was pressured by my boss to make the customers stay for as short a time as possible so that I had more time to service more customers. If I took more than fifteen minutes to service a customer, I would also be beaten by my boss for providing an ‘unprofessional’ service.

Like the other sex workers, I was given contraceptive pills by the brothel owner to ensure I did not become pregnant as women who had had children were not in great demand and were paid less because customers preferred childless women who had tighter vaginas. If by chance a woman got pregnant, abortion had to be carried out by a specific woman employed to massage the stomach vigorously to dislodge the foetus. Despite the pain and the emotional trauma that she had suffered due to abortion, she was forced back into work within a few days.

Our living condition was deplorable. Four or five of us were cramped in a small bedroom. Irregular eating, monotonous food and inadequate sleep were our common complaints that fell upon deaf ears.

Working life span for a sex worker was rather short. Those girls who were found to be infected with HIV would be expelled from captivity in a brothel without much delay so as to safeguard the good name of the brothel. By the time they were twenty-five most poor sex workers already looked worn out. When they reached the age of thirty most of them could not make a living from selling sex because they looked like old women. For those aging prostitutes to survive in the trade, they were prepared to accept clients who did not want to use condoms or who wanted oral and anal sex.

After a decade or so selling sex, I had cleared my debts with the brothel owner and accumulated some saving. I returned home to Burma. I upgraded my family house and purchased some showy consumers goods. With the remaining money I opened a brothel by utilizing the management skills I acquired in Thailand.

This was my world of Suzie Wong.