My Schools before 4th grade

Written on March 8, 2021 and revived on February 3, 2024.
I have been trying to figure out the schools I had attended before my 4th grade in Foon Yew School in 1957. Thinking back, I had gone to 3 schools in Singapore and 1 in Labis and I don't have much memory about them. In fact, I even don't remember I was in the classrooms in these schools, not to mention the studying and doing the homework. My brother was able to remember many things in details and recalled names even though he first forgot them.

Maybe I actually didn't quite read Chinese (we didn’t go to English school) at that time so that I couldn’t remember the names and what happening. Now I can use the internets to study what had happened during those times, hopefully, to bring back my memory and establish some facts about my schooling. My brother remembered the names of the school and the places when we were in Singapore.

In 2014, there was a big exhibition on Chinese schools of Singapore during the years 1945 to 1967. Japanese surrendered in 1945 and many schools were re-opened, and in 1965, Singapore gained independence from Malaysia and the government started to restructure the schools. Many Chinese schools were reformed or closed. I found all 3 schools that I had attended on a map (divided into southern and northern parts of Singapore in below) published in the exhibition.

The 1st map at left is my 1st school in southern Singapore (Chinese called it Big-Pore). The 2nd picture is the aerial photo showing the school in Silat Village (details in "My mother's Stroy"). Ironically our house was just located outside the fence of our first school.

Our 1st school is Chiang Teck (means Showing Morality in Hokkien, later renamed Zhangde in Mandarin, originally at 64 Silat Road) which was founded in 1923 on a plot of land adjacent to a Chinese cemetery. The cemetery was presently developed into a trendy housing estate called Tiong Bahru (Tiong means Grave in Hokkien, but now it is translated into Middle in Mandarin, and Bahru means New in Malay).

We lived at the southernmost of the place called Ho Swee Hill (later found out not that close) next to Tiong Bahru which is in the north if viewed from the back of school. Also there was a view of Red Hill (Bukit Merah in Malay) which my brother said that we started to climb on it from the back of our house. I remembered walking through some graves sometimes. We had to walk through other people’s halls to get out at the back in order to go to the front of the school.

In history, Red Hill was plagued by swordfish attacking the people. A young boy proposed an ingenious solution to build a wall of banana stems along the coast. When the swordfish attacked, their snouts were stuck in the stems. He earned great respect from the people but was jealous by the rulers who finally ordered his execution. His blood soaked the soil of the hill giving rise to the red color. Not sure it was true.

I remembered one day we went out and I climbed a tree. I am sure it was near the ocean-front. I fell from the tree, broke my arm and later bandaged. My brother said there was no tree around where we lived. I just guessed we had traveled to the waterfront of Keppel Harbor (see previous "My Mother's Story"). We didn’t have many places to play and have money to go outside to entertain.

I don't think we had kindergarten at that time and I started my first grade at Chiang Teck (only my brother could remembered this sophisticated name and its location on Silat Road) in 1953. The school building looked quite significant (see picture on above map) that might scare me to go to school. Only after I lived in a shophouse with our step-mother, I got used to the high-rise in the city. Not sure this is the reason or I just didn't like going to school. I skipped classes one day and hid under a crossing bridge on top of a drainage. I remembered they found me in the late afternoon.

I expected punishment and surprisingly I didn't get it. Now I figured that it might be because my mother agreed to send us back to join our father in Labis and therefore she was very loose on my attending school. I probably had stopped going to school after that. My brother was a 1st and 2nd grader, and beginning a third grader in this school, so he was quite well educated.

After we moved back to Labis, in late 1952 or early 1953, we continued our school there. Someone, maybe our first step-mother, took us to the school to check it out. I just found out, in the year 1953, the school moved all its students to a new location (the present location, see map at left) while finishing its construction which was funded by the government in 1952. They changed the name to Labis School.

We probably went to the old location first and then the new location. Finally, they found my classroom on the new location that I was supposed to attend on school days. However, I don't remember any things about that classroom afterward.

The design of the front entrance of the school building was quite unique (see postal stamp picture at left, not there anymore) and was built before we arrived. My brother and I completely don't have any memory of it even though we walked under it on school days. He said the main interests for us to come to school was to catch spiders at the hill-side in the north of the school.
Not sure how often we skipped or didn't go classes. My brother was well educated in Singapore and was capable to study in this school, and I just wonder what made him not interested in going to classes. In fact in 1958, he graduated at the top of the class (more than 200 students) in Foon Yew Primary School.

Perhaps in a short time, we totally skipped the school. Our first step-mother didn't care less if we went to school, and no wonder my brother said she was a nice person. Since we were not going to school, we could catch spiders at places farther away from school (see previous "Edge of the Jungle").

We still had to wait for other kids to come home from school in the afternoon so that our spiders could fight each others. It was a joy to have a spider unbeatable and called the king of spiders. Sometimes the kids just fought each others and my brother’s head was hit by a bottle. We were called rotten kids in Cantonese in town and my brother thought it really means gangsters in English.

Our other activity was going to Labis River to catch fish and shrimp as mentioned before. We followed the upstream of the river through the back of the L-shaped streets (with some distance), passing some rubber plantation and into the jungle. We didn't noticed that we could have been eaten by crocodiles. We used tree branches and leaves to build shelters and put up some fire to cook the captured fish and shrimp.

In 1955, we went to join our 2nd step-mother in northern Singapore (Chinese called it Small-Pore) and started another life style. It turned up she was a person who wanted kids to go to schools, however, most of the time, she didn't care about what we were studying.

This period of life was written in my previous write-up "My Life in Singapore (Round two)". However, I have more information about my schools after I found the publication of the exhibition (left map). It is a valuable historic documentation of old Chinese schools, especially of those already disappeared. There is criticism on this historical Chinese school reform.

Now I learned that we first went to Qixiu (means Inspire Excellent) School which was owned by a single lady (my brother called her old as compared to our ages at that time) as 2nd and 3rd graders. Only recently my brother remembered the school name and I picked it up on the map. I didn’t recall anything she taught me except she changed our names. Right now her school residence is an upscale flat. In 1956, we went to Shiyong School and the teacher Mr. Deng was our lady landlord as mentioned before.

There were 3 famous amusement parks in Singapore: New World Park, Happy World Park (later renamed Gay World) and Great World Park. They were top entertainments in the world (see above map). We probably had gone to all 3 Parks with our step-mother who was very generous on food and entertainments under the condition that my father doing well in business. All these Parks are closed now.