Everything Also Complain

From ‘ PRC couple attempts to abduct local boy?’ 22 March 2012, article in insing.com

A woman has complained on the internet that a Chinese national couple tried to abduct her child at Ang Mo Kio Hub. Ms ‘Allison Goon’ shared her experience on her Facebook page, explaining that she was at the AMK Hub Fiesta on Sunday (18 Mar).

She had just fed her son and walked away to throw some rubbish when she turned back and found another woman taking her son away by his hand. She shouted after her son and asked the woman why she was holding her son’s hand.

The woman, who spoke with a China accent, replied that she had “the wrong child”, then walked away with another man while pretending that nothing had happened. When Ms Allison Goon asked her son why he had followed the stranger, the boy said that the woman had told him, “follow me, I will bring you home”.

According to the ST, ‘Ms Goon said the woman had spoken in Mandarin and sounded like she could have been from China’. Whether or not this incident really happened, it speaks volumes about the recent paranoia surrounding Chinese nationals, whether they’re flaming us online for being ‘dogs’, hijacking taxis and running people over with them or murdering taxi drivers themselves,  stealing men from their wives, and in this case, attempting to steal other people’s children. Which is pretty much consistent with what foreigners have been accused of doing anyway, taking away what’s rightfully ours.

In 2008, a China national set up a phantom kidnap scam in exchange for $100,000 and was eventually thwarted by a quick-thinking parent. There was even a recorded anonymous Chinese child’s cry for help circulating last year according to a Stomp contributor. A similar ‘attempted abduction’ case occurred in Disneyland Hongkong in the same year, sparking speculations of PRC ‘kidnapping syndicates’. There doesn’t appear, however, to be any cases of successful kidnapping/torturing of local kids by PRCs to date. In fact, it was a China national’s kid who was kidnapped and brutally murdered at the hands of a Malaysian Took Leng How in the Huang Na case in 2004. In 2009, a 28 year old PRC KTV hostess named Han Yan Fei went missing, with speculations that a murdered Singaporean man and a human trafficking ring were involved.  Statistically speaking, PRCs should be more concerned for their own kids’ safety (or themselves) than us ours.

I wouldn’t be able to appreciate the high anxiety parents face whenever a child disappears into thin air, but terrified parents like Goon here sending out almost-horror stories of predatory PRCs would inevitably lead to panicky knee-jerk reactions like parents huddling kids and getting ready to call the police whenever someone who remotely looks or sounds like a PRC flashes a seemingly over-friendly wink or a smile at their child.  It’s like how people instinctively breathe through their mouth whenever a foreign construction worker boards the train, forgetting that some schoolgirl passengers in PE attire with towels wrapped around their neck smell as bad, if not worse. It also explains why toddler leashes are such a hit.

Still, one can’t get too cosy with any stranger, be it foreigner or local; a sensational history of PRC vice and violence has simply heightened our suspicions and hence the stereotypical cautionary anecdotes like Goon’s here. We would have taxi drivers having their hand on the emergency button whenever a PRC passenger’s on board, bus passengers bracing themselves for hazardous brakes when the driver’s a PRC, wives clamping down on husbands if they find out about his PRC colleague, etc.  Instead of drilling maths algorithms and phonetics into our kids or lamenting that Singapore is a PRC thief haven, perhaps we should consider inculcating some basic defensive skills in children like our parents used to do, like how to say no to strangers, screaming at the top of your lungs to draw attention, or headbutting a kidnapper in the groin when push comes to shove.

Filed under: 2000s, 2011, 2012, Bloggers, Kids, Parenting, PRCs, Shopping malls, Taxi drivers, Violence Tagged: | bloggers, discrimination, facebook, Foreign workers, Kids, parenting, parents, PRCs, stereotyping, Taxi drivers, taxis, Violence