About me

The eldest of three children, I grew up in the eastern part of the island where everyone spoke Teochew so I grew up thinking everyone in Singapore spoke the same dialect until I went to junior college. Although I am not Teochew, there is a sense of identity when communicating with friends and colleagues who speak Teochew because that is my mother tongue and that is the language that identifies me as a Chinese. It's funny how Singaporeans equate being Chinese with the ability to speak Mandarin. Because my second language is Malay and I can speak only a smattering of simple Mandarin, some of my former students have labelled me a "yellow banana" (actually the adjective "yellow" is redundant, is it not? I guess it was meant to emphasise the colour of my skin). Anyway, according to their Chinese teacher I'm yellow on the outside but white on the inside because I cannot speak Mandarin. It was as if I was a traitor to my race. I once asked them how many of their grandmothers spoke Mandarin. Only a few hands were raised. I asked if the rest considered their grandmothers Chinese despite not understanding Mandarin or using it. The reply was the affirmative. I told them I rested my case.

What many Singaporeans do not know is that many Chinese in China do not speak Mandarin. The Straits Times on December 29, 2004, reported that nearly half of China's population can't speak Mandarin or putonghua, according to a six-year survey on the use of the country's official language. This is despite five decades of effort by the Communist government to promote the use of Mandarin. The findings revealed that only a mere 18% of the respondents use Mandarin at home while 42 per cent speak it at school, work and play. Mandarin may be widely used in public activities but local dialects were more common among family members and friends. To me, Teochew is the key to my culture, not Mandarin, but because of the overwhelming success of the Speak Mandarin campaign, many Singaporeans have equated ethnicity with the use of only one and one Chinese language, Mandarin. If Mr Lee Kuan Yew had decided on another Chinese language as the official language way back then as the second language in school, we would all be speaking another Chinese dialect today.


I went to an all-girls' school for ten wonderful years which were spent playing rounders (a simplified game of softball), queueing up on Fridays for mee-goreng (sometimes we would bring along our own eggs), sharing food and soup (imagine three to four girls slurping from the same soup bowl!) and speaking in F-language. Before you think it's the f-word and that we were spewing vulgarities then, it's not; it's replacing each word with an F sound in the initial position and pronouncing each word twice; once the English word and the next, the F-sounding word. I never could do it although some of my friends mastered it. The F-language was thus the medium of communication for a tightly-knit group of girls to share secrets and gossip about friends and foe alike. Similarly today, the language used in sms-es, emails, etc. by teenagers is sometimes understood only by close friends and those within their group.

Life for me from about the age of twelve years till junior college revolved round school, table-tennis and home. Social life for me then was practically non-existent because my father wanted me to chase his dreams of winning trophies in table-tennis. So, Saturday afternoons were spent at the Civil Service Club hall in Tessensohn Road training with my father and brother. I also had to attend training sessions elsewhere at least three nights a week (more if there were tournaments round the corner). Spending time out with friends was also not allowed because my parents felt I was too young to be going out on a date even when I turned 19! I remember vividly an incident when a boy who had asked me out to a movie was left waiting at the cinema because my father refused to let me out of the house. It was only when I entered university that the reins loosened and I was able to assert some of my rights as a young adult. Fortunately for me too, my father's attention had been diverted to my younger sister, a table-tennis prodigy then and who went on to win the SEA Games individual gold medal in 1985, a feat we are still very proud of today.


Although I had a strict upbringing, I am grateful for the discipline instilled by my parents for it has made me what I am today. Being the eldest and the first girl in the family meant doing housework and being responsible for my younger siblings. I remember having to feed, bathe and even discipline my younger sister who is eight years younger. Does birth order determine your personality? I firmly believe so. Those lower in the birth order are given more leeway to experiment, to be free, to do what they want, unrestricted by impositions from their parents. Their older siblings on the other hand, have been drilled from young by their parents to be "responsible". According to Sulloway, author of "Born to rebel", younger siblings are more inclined to try experimental, sometimes dangerous things. Sulloway points out that leaders of revolutions — Thomas Jefferson, Karl Marx and Fidel Castro — were rebellious younger brothers. He says older brothers are often more conservative — former Presidents Carter and Clinton and their younger brothers, Billy and Roger. Billy Carter had a beer-making business, and Roger Clinton tried a singing career — far cries from presidential politics. Of course, there are those like Dalton Conley, author of "The Pecking Order," another book on the effects of birth order, who says, "birth order makes about as much sense as astrology, which is almost none." What do you think?