Some Chinese practices: 00

 

The focus of this mini series is on my discoveries about how differently the Chinese in Taiwan (and later mainland Chinese) did (still do??) things, compared to S.E.Asian Chinese like me, in spite of our shared genes.

    My basic education years (six primary and four secondary school years, and two Pre-U years) had been spent in English stream schools -- a Catholic convent school (St. Joseph's Convent), then RI (/ Raffles Institution).  

    Apart from Second Language, all subjects were taught in English:  Science, Maths, Geography, History, Literature, etc.  

    This was Singapore in the British colonial days, so English stream also meant that everything was geared to the English system.  Not just the syllabus.  The school week was five days, versus 5.5 (Saturday morning) for Chinese stream schools (following the Chinese system).  We played netball, not basketball (like at Chinese stream schools).  The boys at RI (originally a boys' school before girls were admitted in 1970 (I was the second lot, entering in 1971) played rugger.  (Googling tells me that girls were admitted to RI "in limited capacity for the prestigious Queen's Scholarship class in 1924".)

    (Chinese stream schools also taught Maths the Chinese way, which is well known to be far superior.  One of my regrets in life is not to have picked the brains of my three older siblings who'd gone to a Chinese stream school.)

    The contents for Geography, History and Literature followed the British curriculum.

    History was British history, so I knew all about King Henry VIII, Mary Queen of Scots, etc., but nothing about Chinese history.

    Geography focused on the British Commonwealth swathe, so I learned about Australian sheep shearing and artesian wells and the Canadian prairies, but nothing about the Gobi Desert or the Yangzi River.

    Ditto Literature: Shakespeare, Tennyson, Keats, but not Li Bai, Du Fu or Su Dongpo.

    I heard in the 70s that the Hong Kong Chinese people have a label for people like me:  "banana" -- yellow on the outside, white on the inside.

    So it was that I turned up in Taiwan as a banana, making all sorts of minor cultural mistakes, more puzzling to them because I look just like them outwardly.

    (Struggled a bit in the language too, for the first three months, in spite of my having done Mandarin as a Second Language for ten years and got distinctions throughout.  The speed and usage of language, not to mention the accents, were aspects of the language I'd not come across before then in Singapore.)