2 days ago
With a dream and a dictionary, this nurse left everything behind to start a new life in Singapore
In the depths of Ms Miao Lan's mind, the island of Singapore – some five thousand kilometres south from her birthplace of Henan, China – had always been somewhat of a promised land.
The city-state is extremely small compared to the colossal "Middle Kingdom", but her father made sure to point it out every once in a while on the world map that was mounted in her bedroom.
"You were both born in August 1965," he would say. "It's a small country but it's a great one."
It might have been the littlest connection, but it was all that was needed for the young girl to develop a profound desire to one day step foot on Singapore soil.
"(August 1965) is a coincidence but it was a connection with me ... It became one of my dreams since then, (that) maybe in the future, I would search for a better life in Singapore," Ms Miao said.
In 2006, at the age of 41, she finally did, to "step out of my comfort zone".
She was offered the chance by a recruitment agency – first to study and obtain a nursing board license, then to work as a staff nurse in a community hospital.
It was the opportunity of a lifetime for the senior staff nurse who spent more than a decade working for a hospital in Zhengzhou. Nurses in China seldom leave the first establishment that employs them, she said.
It was now or never for the woman who dreamt of living and working in the Little Red Dot.
Last month, at the modest three-bedroom flat in Clementi where she lives alone, Ms Miao told me that it was one of the hardest decisions she has had to make.
"I left everything behind me – my home, my stable job, my family. It was not easy," the 60-year-old said. Her husband – also born in August 1965 – was not able to leave his job as a dentist at the time while their daughter was still in school.
"But I felt I needed to step out and challenge myself overseas. Deep down, I knew I didn't want to live the rest of my life wondering, 'What if I didn't do it this way?'"
THE LANGUAGE OF THE HEART
In 2010, she joined HCA Hospice as a palliative care nurse. It is Singapore's largest home hospice care organisation, which serves thousands of patients each year.
Ms Miao's job entails providing specialised care for patients with terminal illnesses, managing their symptoms and providing emotional support during the last journey of their lives.
However, she arrived in multiracial Singapore with little to no knowledge of how to speak English or any of the other vernacular languages, so it became quite a challenge when patients mostly understood English, Malay or Hokkien.
It was a challenge she embraced, she told me.
Over the course of our two-hour-long interview, she spoke slowly in English, paused often and furrowed her brow to find the right words to express herself, but I would not have minded at all if she just spoke in Mandarin.
Yet she pressed on to speak in English, even when I posed questions in her mother tongue. She was determined to prove that she could be heard and understood in Singapore's lingua franca.
"(There were) many things I needed to learn from my patients and my colleagues," she said of overcoming the language barrier.
In her initial years here, Ms Miao's friends were limited to other nurses from China who had come to Singapore for work and she admitted that it often got lonely without the presence of her family.
To fill her spare time, she often had a dictionary by her side, looking up words and practising their pronunciations. She had some help, too.
"My Malay patients and teammates taught me the Malay language. The older people taught me Hokkien and Teochew," she said.
She does not consider herself fluent in these languages, of course, but her working knowledge of key phrases have been invaluable in her job.
"I can use some Malay to ask patients (about) their symptoms, like, 'Ada sakit?' (Are you in pain?), 'Banyak sakit?' (Is there a lot of pain?), 'Sini sakit?' (Is the pain here?)," she said.
'Sometimes, I cannot catch the words (they use), but I think when you use your heart and have compassion, the family and patients can understand what you are doing for them. Then they will trust you.
"I feel that language is a connection bridge. It's a bridge to connect with the patient and their families."
Ms Miao became a Singapore citizen in 2018 and through the years, she has amassed a photo album's worth of thank-you cards.
At her home, I looked on as she took them out and perused the contents with a sense of nostalgia.
One card from a family read: "Even though palliative care may seem a thankless job, the great compassion you have shown to patients and families will carry them a long way. Thank you for making a difference."
Another woman thanked Ms Miao and the hospice in Chinese, informing them that she had donated S$7,500 in support of the centre "to continue serving society".
I asked which patient left the most impression on her. Judging by her quick but pensive glance on the floor, I sensed that she knew who it was immediately.
Mrs Koh was a home hospice patient in her 90s who lived alone and Ms Miao Lan used to care for her at her residence. One day in 2018, the older woman was hospitalised.
"She called me to say, 'Miao Lan, can you come and see me? I know my time is quite short, I probably will be leaving tomorrow'.
"I couldn't believe it because she was still able to talk to me, but I still felt that I needed to visit this patient."
So she rushed to the hospital the moment her shift at the hospice ended. When she got there, all Mrs Koh asked her to do was to sit beside her and hold her hands. Few words were exchanged.
"At the end of the visit, she told me, 'Thank you for coming. I'm not afraid anymore'," Ms Miao recalled.
The next morning, Ms Miao received a phone text message from Mrs Koh's sister informing her that she had died.
At this point, Ms Miao's voice quivered slightly during our interview: "I know some patients treat me like family … Usually, patients ask their family members to visit them, (so) if they call you, it means you are a very important person to them."
EMBRACING ALL THINGS THAT MAKE ONE SINGAPOREAN
This year, the management at HCA Hospice promoted Ms Miao to the position of nurse manager – a role she believed would have been "impossible" back in China due to her age.
Such leadership roles are normally given to younger nurses, she explained, so she was surprised when the hospice had put its trust in her. It was a show of warmth and recognition for the work she had done for nearly two decades.
It felt like the embodiment of the culture of acceptance and harmony that she had come to experience and love about the nation, and that is her favourite thing about Singapore.
"People from different cultures, different races, different religions – they can work and live together side by side," she said.
She recalled how heartwarming it was when her Muslim neighbours offered her homecooked food to eat during their Hari Raya Puasa celebrations.
To her, being "Singaporean" transcends where one was born. "It's about showing your kindness, respecting differences and showing strength in unity.
"It's being hardworking, practical … and contributing to society."
It is also about a shared language, something she knew intrinsically would be key to her integration into society here. Singlish quips such as "cannot tahan" (cannot bear it) and particles such as "lah" and "lor" now come naturally to her.
Then, of course, there is the food culture: growing to love curry puffs, laksa, and chilli crab – dishes she once could not fathom enjoying.
On one of his visits to Singapore, when her husband expressed puzzlement at her liking for those dishes, she said to him with amusement: "People can change all the time."
Ms Miao will celebrate her 60th birthday just two weeks after Singapore celebrates its 60th year of independence. And to the naturalised citizen, it feels very much like it is a joint celebration of a milestone together.
Asked if she has any retirement plans, she said she was hoping that she and her husband would spend the rest of their days in Singapore eventually. Their daughter, now in her early 30s, has started her own family in Australia.
For now though, Ms Miao is looking forward to becoming a better nurse and hopes that Singapore retains the modern exuberance that made it the shangri-la of her youth.
"We go through the same things, experience all (sorts of) changes and challenges, but it's not too late to keep improving. I'm still growing up with Singapore."
