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Samsui Girl: My first book

Samsui Girl was my first book published. It is about a cheeky 8 year old girl named Amber. She has the habit of putting her legs up on the chair, and her mother hates this. Amber's mother says that only Samsui women do this. To get her way, Amber decides to be a Samsui girl, but it is not as easy as she thinks!

The inspiration for this book came from two sources. One was my own childhood habit of putting my leg up on the chair...when I ate, when I read, practically all the time! The other inspiration was the Samsui women of Singapore. These ladies came to Singapore in the early 1900s from Samsui in China. What was special about these female Chinese immigrants was that they did the man's job of working in a construction site. Many of the buildings (bridges, houses, blocks of flats) in Singapore today were built with Samsui labour. When I was very young, I remember seeing Samsui women dressed in their 'uniform' of a dark samfu and bright red headscarf. You don't see the Samsui women on the streets anymore, so I decided to write a story to help children today learn about these women.

Samsui Girl is a chapter book best suited for children aged 8 to 11 years old. The book was awarded the First Time Writers' and Illustrators' Grant by the Media Development Authority of Singapore (MDA) in 2006.




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