Return to Singapore 1995

"Hey, Brother Fan, wake up! The lion dance team is coming downstairs!"

Li Xiaofan was shaken and pushed awake from his sleep.

There were bursts of gongs and drums outside.

In front of him was a shirtless young man with a familiar dark face, silver earrings on his earlobes, and an excited look on his face.

Li Xiaofan exclaimed: "ATAN?"

"Brother Fan, get up quickly! This is a rare New Year lion dance performance! Get up quickly, I'll go down first!"

After Ah TAN finished speaking, he hurried out and went downstairs.

Looking at Atan's retreating figure, the iconic horn-length comb stuck in the back of the jeans' butt pocket...

Li Xiaofan rubbed his eyes hard, damn! You're not dreaming, are you? Ah TAN is a Malaysian worker who lived in the same dormitory when he was working in Singapore more than 20 years ago. The weather in Singapore and Malaysia is hot and prone to sweating. Workers there like to stick a comb behind their buttocks to comb their hair at any time to maintain a good appearance.

Then I looked at the bunk bed I was sleeping on, the simple disposable wardrobe next to it, the various messy clothes and beauty magazines in the room...

And the air is hot and humid right now.

Li Xiaofan was stupid!

He stood up from the bed and walked out to the living room in a daze. There was no one outside the living room, and a pile of local Chinese newspapers and magazines in Singapore, such as "Lianhe Zaobao" and "Xinming Evening News", were scattered on the sofa.

What is playing on the TV is the entertainment program "Happy Broadcast" of Singapore's only Chinese-language channel "Channel 8". Guo Liang, a new immigrant host from Shanghai, is hosting the program with a familiar voice...

The "Happy Broadcast" program was coming to an end. After a piece of cheerful and bright music sounded, the "Afternoon News" program of Singapore's "Channel 8" began to play.

"Good afternoon, dear viewers, today is Wednesday, February 8, 1995, the ninth day of the Lunar New Year. The weather across the island in the afternoon is 28 to 32 degrees, and there are sometimes thunderstorms in the afternoon..."

"The ten-day "Spring Comes to the River" event in Singapore started on January 29, Little New Year's Eve, and ended successfully on February 7, the eighth day of the first lunar month, at Marina Bay. This event, which has been held since 1987, has become a symbol of the Lunar New Year in Singapore. A major feature of the city, attracting more than one million tourists every year..."

Listening to the broadcast hosted by two local men and women, speaking Singaporean Mandarin with a Hong Kong and Taiwanese accent, Li Xiaofan was dumbfounded.

He rushed into the bathroom next door, turned on the faucet, and poured cold water on his face several times.

Looking at his younger self in the mirror, he was stunned for a while.

After a long time, he finally faced the fact: he was actually reborn, in Singapore in 1995!

The TAN who woke me up just now is my roommate in the factory, from Penang, Malaysia. Ah TAN’s Chinese name is Chen Zhiqiang. TAN is the Cantonese and English pinyin of his surname "Chen".

When we came to the corridor outside the dormitory, the open space downstairs was already crowded with people, and everyone was vying to watch the lion dance team's performance.

With the rhythmic drumming, a mighty southern lion sometimes jumps between the piles, sometimes flies in the air, sometimes blinks its eyes, showing the lion's might and strength as it moves...

He looked at the familiar faces in the crowd downstairs, and memories from more than twenty years ago suddenly came to his face one after another:

Li Xiaofan is born in the 1970s and comes from a rural family in a coastal area of ​​Donghai Province in mainland China. After graduating from an electronic technical secondary school and working in China for two years, he came to Singapore to work in the second half of last year. In his last life, he worked in Singapore for four years. After returning to China, he worked in a multinational electronics factory in Suzhou Industrial Park for several years. During this period, he studied for an overnight undergraduate degree. He once returned to his hometown to start a business, but it collapsed within a few years. After his entrepreneurial failure, he speculated in stocks and futures, and finally worked as a salesperson at a foreign-funded company in Shanghai...

Before his rebirth, he had been busy all his life. In Shanghai, he looked like a prosperous white-collar worker in suits and ties walking into Grade-A office buildings. In fact, he could not even afford a second-hand house in Shanghai. Even in his forties, he lived with his friend in the same house as his husband. Fang, a middle-aged uncle who can't find a wife. On the morning before his rebirth, he was interviewed by the company's HR director and informed that the company headquarters had decided to close some of its businesses in mainland China. He was among the first batch of employees to be laid off...

When he was forced to lay off his job in middle age, he encountered the most tragic thing in his life! At noon, he and several of his laid-off colleagues got drunk at a small restaurant next to the company.

After waking up, I was actually reborn in Singapore in 1995!

After calming down, Li Xiaofan suddenly felt that 1995 was a very good year. Microsoft Windows 95 will be released in August this year. This is an epoch-making beginning for the global IT industry! The following year, 1998, was the first year of the domestic Internet. In that year, the golden age of the domestic Internet industry began. At the moment, Jerry Yang of Yahoo is still looking for angel investments at Stanford, Mr. Li of Geely Automobile is still toiling in the motorcycle business in his hometown, and among the three BAT giants, Dad Ma is still teaching in Hangzhou, Ma Huateng has not yet started a business, and Robin Li is still in the United States. read…………

Li Xiaofan was suddenly a little excited. He was reborn in 1995, and he was a master of explosives! It’s only 1995 now, and there are still 3 years left before 1998! If you work hard enough, you might be able to make your own way!

A great ambition rolled in Li Xiaofan's heart after his rebirth: since God gave him this chance to be reborn, he must grasp it well. In this life, he must change his way of life, build his own career and wealth kingdom, find his own love, make up for all kinds of regrets, and reshape the glory of life!

However, live in the present, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and no matter how glorious and huge the goal is, it must start from the details.

After he took a shower in the bathroom, he looked at his watch and saw that it was already past four o'clock in the afternoon. The factory shuttle bus would come on time at five quarter to pick them up for the night shift.

In his memory, the food in the factory restaurant was cheap, but it was very unpalatable.

He came to the market downstairs in his flip-flops to find food. The word "market" comes from Malay, which means market or bazaar. In Singapore, a market is a place where food is sold in a centralized manner, usually built in densely populated areas of public housing. The market in Singapore and Malaysia is also known as the hawker center or cooked food center. It is an outdoor open-air food center built by the government. The food sold here is cheap and of a wide variety, mainly Southeast Asian cooked food and drinks.

The dormitory where Li Xiaofan lives is in Orchid Village in the northeast of Singapore, close to the beach and Pulau Ubin. The dormitory consists of dozens of four-story government flats developed by the Housing and Development Board.

Although these dormitories are very old and have a 20-year age, the exterior walls of the flats have just been refreshed. They are orange and white, and look like small Mediterranean houses from a distance. They are quite beautiful.

Although the name of Orchid Village contains "village", it is located on the remote northeast coast, far away from the city, and you have to take a bus to travel. But Singapore has long achieved full urbanization. It was a small village that cultivated orchids in the 1960s, but it is completely different now. It is quiet and casual, with a beautiful coastline and an open seaside park. Different from the hustle and bustle of the city, it has become a holiday resort for local people.

At this time, the lion dance team's performance has ended.

"Brother Fan!" On the way to the market, he ran into Ah TAN and called him.