By Yeow Kai Chai

Like James Bond, Phan Ming Yen is adept at reinvention. Unlike his literary hero, he remains relatively below the radar, at least in the literary scene in Singapore.

It's an odd situation, considering his resume. Billing himself these days as an independent producer, writer and researcher, he has been involved in the arts scene as a music critic, journalist, writer, arts manager and producer over the past three decades.

He held a number of leadership posts, including CEO of non-profit organisation Global Cultural Alliance. In 2007 and 2009, when he was assistant general manager of The Arts House, he co-helmed the Singapore Writers Festival (SWF) organising team and served on its steering committees between 2011 and 2018. In 2024, inspired by Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness, he produced Your Heart of Darkness, a late-night, immersive activation of The Arts House for SWF.

Lately, Phan has written on the history of music in 19th and early 20th-century Singapore, such as the Syonan Symphony Orchestra during the Japanese Occupation, in Cultural Connections, the journal by the Culture Academy of the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth; as well as on his family history in BiblioAsia, a quarterly publication by the National Library Board.

At present, he and his brother are busy setting up Thye Seng 105, a heritage and documentation centre in the former tin mining town of Kampar in Kinta Valley, Perak, in Malaysia. Located at his family shophouse, Thye Seng was named after the tin-ore dealing business his paternal grandfather, Phan Kim Sam, founded in pre-war Kampar.

He published his debut book That Night By the Beach and Other Stories for a Film Score in 2012. He is one of the four writers in the collaborative writing projects, The Adopted: Stories from Angkor (2015) and Lost Bodies: Poems Between Portugal and Home (2016), and his stories have appeared in this journal. In his latest publication is Love Connects: My Life in Dance (2025), Phan worked with ballet pioneer Goh Soo Khim on her memoir. He was also a recipient of the National Library's Lee Kong Chian Research Fellowship for 2024, researching music during the Syonan period.

1. What are you reading right now?
I have just finished Simon Tay's Enigmas: Tay Seow Huah, My Father, Singapore's Pioneer Spy Chief for a review which I owe QLRS since the last issue. Please read my review in this issue.

Now, I ought to start on books in preparation for two papers I owe the National Library Board for my recently completed Lee Kong Chian Research Fellowship on music during the Syonan period. These would include: Eri Hotta's Pan-Asianism and Japan's War 1931 – 1945; Barak Kushner's The Thought War: Japanese Imperial Propaganda; Margaret Mehl's Music and the Making of Modern Japan: Joining the Global Concert; Frederick Spotts' The Shameful Peace: How French Artist and Intellectuals Survived the Occupation; and Luciana Galliano's Yogaku: Japanese Music in the 20th Century – I can't wait for this to arrive from Amazon.

2. If you were a famous literary character in a novel, play or poem, what would you be and why?
James Bond.

He is a far more flawed and complex character in the novels than in the movies. Bond is the ultimate masochist: he keeps returning to suffer for adventure, love and country. He is nearly tortured to death in Casino Royale when he makes his first appearance. In From Russia with Love he is stabbed at the end, and you don't know if he is going to make it. His life in the "Blofeld Trilogy" – Thunderball, On Her Majesty's Secret Service and You Only Live Twice – is near shambles and a lesson on the importance of luck in survival. In Thunderball it is the female protagonist who saves him. He is devastated after the death of his wife in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and tries to pull himself together in You Only Live Twice, but only to end up with loss of memory and again, nearly his life. In the beginning of the final Fleming Bond novel, The Man with the Golden Gun, Bond returns from You Only Live Twice, still so not-together and he tries to kill his boss. What a life.

3. What is the greatest misconception about you?
That I actually like words and writing. I really don't. I would rather play the piano for a living or choreograph (if I could) than write. It's just that the gap between ambition and ability in those two fields is far too wide. Maybe it is the same for writing too.

4. Name one living writer and one dead writer you most identify with, and tell us why.
I won't say there is a writer I identify with. I would say there are writers I admire and wish I could write like them.

A living writer who is a role model is Robert Harris. He writes all the books I wish I could write: books which deal with alternate history/historical fiction (Fatherland, Archangel, Munich  and The Act of Oblivion) and the super brilliant thriller The Ghost. I recall some parts of Archangel have been cited in a book on historical fiction.

The dead writer I wish I could be is a tough choice between Ian Fleming and John Le Carre. On one hand, who would not wish to be the creator of James Bond? On the other, who would not wish to have written The Spy Who Came in from the Cold which is existentialism, politics, romance and tragedy all in the guise of a spy novel? These two writers defined the genre for the 20th and 21st century.

5. Do you believe in writer's block? If so, how do you overcome it?
No. There is simply a lack of discipline and of hunger when or if the words don't come.

6.  What qualities do you most admire in a writer?
Discipline.

7. What is one trait you most deplore in writing or writers?
Over-writing. There's a Cantonese phrase that, translated literally into English, goes something like this: "Draw picture until the intestines show." No need to write too many words. Duras' in The Lover is the text book on how to pack a lot in a very short space. But I am terribly guilty of over-writing all the time.

8. Can you recite your favourite line from a literary work or a piece of advice from a writer?
"Hunger is a good Discipline."

This is a title of a chapter from Hemingway's A Moveable Feast. It is so true. If one is not physically, mentally or emotionally hungry, there is no need to do anything.

9. Complete this sentence: Few people know this, but I...
… learnt ballet for two years when I was between six and eight years old and took a month of adult ballet class before I came down to Singapore to study many years ago. I regret I was scared by my first ballet teacher whom I thought was fierce and shouting all the time. Recently I learnt more about her life (she passed on some years back) and I realised how the impetuosity of youth led to missed opportunities of empathy, understanding and knowing someone better.

10. At the movies, if you have to pick a comedy, a tragedy or an action thriller to watch, which would you go for?
Action thriller. There is a lot to learn from action thrillers, i.e. how to keep your audience riveted, breathless and entertained — the basic duty of any artist or artistic work. Two action thrillers I could watch again and again are Where Eagles Dare and The Guns of Navarone.

11. What is your favourite word, and what is your least favourite one?
My favourite word is anicca. It is Pali for "impermanence."  All conditioned are subject to impermanence.

I don't have a least favourite word. But the I word I try to avoid if I can is "passion." It is so overused that it has become clichéd and meaningless except when it refers to a "passion fruit."

12. Please compose a short-short story in three sentences that include the following three items: Kampar, adagio, tiger.
"Oh my," she exclaimed when I told her that the former tin-mining town of Kampar was where Eu Tong Sen opened the first branch of his Eu Yan Sang shops.

 "I always thought Eu Tong Sen invented Tiger Balm and that he and Aw Boon Har were the same person going by different names!"

I shook my head and turned back to my writing of the adagio of a new symphony commissioned by the Kampar District Council to celebrate the town's 150th anniversary; and found myself inspired to write a part for the brass section where they could shock the audience with sudden sforzando that mimicked a tiger's roar.

13. What object is indispensable to you when you write?
Anything one can listen to, ranging from Internet-streaming music, laptop (with speakers), any kind of sound system. Music and recorded sound are diaries of sorts.  A recording from the 1930s is more than just music: it's a living testament of that place and time. It's the past speaking to you directly, here and now.

14. What is the best time of the day for writing?
Night.

15. If you have a last supper, which three literary figures, real or fictional, would you invite to the soiree, and why?
Rachel, from Du Maurier's My Cousin Rachel. I want to know what happened between her and Ambrose whom she is believed to have killed. She has such an otherworldly and enigmatic presence throughout the book: you never really know what's up with her. I read this book when I was 14 and have reread the book at least four times since. Rachel is the most haunting of all the characters I have read.

Hanna Schmitz from Bernhard Schlink's Der Vorleser (The Reader). No spoilers for those who have yet to read the book but its ending means it's the only book I have read that has left me with a physical ache and sadness. Hanna was a former guard at Auschwitz. I'd like to want to know what led Hanna to make the final decision she took in the book.

James Bond. Is there is a need to explain?

16. You ventured recently into memoir by working with ballet doyenne Goh Soo Khim on her life story. You chose the first person point of view instead of the third person. What artistic decisions did you make to ensure her personality and voice was captured convincingly? By extension, what did you realise about your own writing style?
There are three stages in my answer to this question.

The first stage: When I began working with Ms Goh on her life story, there were two options: to write in the third person's point of view (in which case the book would have taken the form of a biography), or from the first person's.

After a month of interviewing Ms Goh and a few others whom she had worked with, I realised that given Ms Goh's persona and experiences, her story would make for a more engaging and evocative read if told from a first person's.

The second stage was structure. I was influenced by Beryl Markham's memoir West by the Night and also Annie Ernaux's opening pages of The Years that made me realise the possibilities that a first person's point of view could offer — more creative freedom.

Ms Goh, after all, is an artist and the book has to reflect a certain structural freedom, a playfulness, and at the same time, a seriousness of intent. She was agreeable for the narrative to be episodically non-linear (albeit within a largely chronological framework), comprising a series of sections within each chapter that can be enjoyed on its own. Think of each section as you would a divertissement in a ballet, i.e. a short dance sequence for dancers to display their skill except this time the sequences are integral to the story.

The third stage was the language. How does one tell a story? There was one word used by Ms Goh's acquaintances to describe her: elegant. Indeed,  she used movements to illustrate her point on aesthetics and what she demanded from a dancer. Musicality and artistry were two other words that came up. Linguistically, the style, tone and syntax would have to reflect all these qualities. The narrative has to be musical, elegant and artistic.

With regards to my own writing style, I was very fortunate to find empathy between my own aesthetics and that of Ms Goh's, i.e. her aesthetics was something I could identify with and would like to explore in a full-length work.

17. What would you write on your own tombstone?
There will be no tombstone or niche or anything. So, no need to write anything.

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