My Nantah Story: The Rise and Demise of the People's University

By Tan Kok Chiang

In 1958, more than a hundred thousand people attended the inauguration ceremony of Nanyang University (Nantah), a true "people's university" that was founded with the support of all strata of society, from tycoons to trishaw-men. After producing 12,000 graduates and winning global recognition, the institution, the first Chinese-medium university outside China, held her final convocation in 1980. Drawing from the author's own research and diverse sources that have never before been available in English, this book tells the fascinating story of Nantah's short and eventful life and deconstructs the many myths and misconceptions that continue to surround her.

*Errata — Mr Lee Hsien Loong's quote on page 23 was taken from NUSS' 60th anniversary lecture, and not the 16th anniversary lecture as printed.

Reader Reviews:

"This book is important reading for all Malayans. It captures a brief moment in our history when a group of oppressed people rose up, set aside differences, and joined hands, in the face of great challenges and severe resistance, to build an edifice that aspired to a greater vision for mankind. Nanyang University is gone, but the Nantah spirit lives on. May we one day reclaim it for Malaya."

—Thum Ping Tjin (Historian, Director of Project Southeast Asia, Oxford University)

"Tan Kok Chiang has succeeded in writing a remarkable book which can certainly be regarded as a comprehensive history of the old Nanyang University. More than this, his monumental work can also be upheld as a significant addition to the growing corpus of books considered to be alternative (or people's) history, different from and breaking the monopoly of such official elite versions of history as exemplified by Lee Kuan Yew's The Singapore Story."

—Syed Husin Ali (Member, Malaysian Senate, and President, People's History Centre)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ethos Books
• Release date: Apr 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9789811405013

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

NANYANG UNIVERSITY (NANTAH) was the first Chinese-medium university to be established outside mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Built with funds raised from the Chinese community across Southeast Asia, the institution was patterned upon the private university model of pre-1949 China of providing education and training to the largest number of students.

Tan Lark Sye, a successful local businessman and an ardent supporter of education, made the call for her establishment in 1953. Within three years, Nanyang University was declared open. On March 15, 1956, her flag was raised over Yunnanyuan, the poetic name used by many to refer to the university’s campus.

She held her 21st and final convocation on August 16, 1980, after turning out approximately 12,000 graduates and winning recognition around the world. She was then merged with the University of Singapore (SU) to form the National University of Singapore (NUS) under an Act of Parliament on July 29, 1980. Lee Kuan Yew, the Prime Minister at the time, took full personal responsibility for the move and expressed regret that he did not take this step earlier.

The closing of a young functioning university in a time of peace and rising economic affluence was unprecedented in the history of education. At the time, it did appear that Nantah had willingly entered the merger with the other university on the island to form a national institution. However, it soon became clear that the consequence of the merger was the complete swallowing up of Nantah.

Nantah stood at the apex of the Chinese-medium education system in Singapore. Its closing contributed to the extinction of a system that had been built up over more than a century; one that even powerful colonial forces had failed to undermine and destroy. In the years that followed, it became common to hear complaints about the decline of the language of the island’s largest ethnic group to a bazaar language and the emergence of a chop suey culture. It is no stretch of imagination to say that the disappearance of the Chinese-medium schools was a major contributing factor to these developments. One could also argue that the closing of Nantah curtailed the Chinese community’s role in nation-building.

In the official narrative of Singapore, those parts played by the left-wing political parties, the progressive trade unions, rural organisations, the Chinese-medium school students, and the educational and cultural groups in the anti-colonial and rights movements have all been neglected in favour of the version of history propagated by the People’s Action Party (PAP), which has held continuous rule over the island since 1959. Only since the 1990s have former members of these groups been able to voice their side of history, in a bid for a more balanced telling of the Singapore Story, a term Lee Kuan Yew used in his memoirs to refer to the developments that happened after his party ruled Singapore. These emerging efforts to correct perceived distortions can be viewed as attempts to tell the People’s Story.

The telling of the history of Nantah has been one-sided so far. In the various state-endorsed narratives, Nantah has been painted as second-rate, communal and communist-inspired, and as such, was an entity whose life had to be ended. Those who wanted Nantah to survive and thrive were helpless against the powerful forces that sought at every turn to prevent the university from achieving her objectives.

One can never deny that Nantah was truly a People’s University. She was built with resources donated by members of the Chinese community in Southeast Asia, especially Malaya, including Singapore. She was given the mission to stand as the highest educational institution protecting and developing Chinese language and culture while acting as an agent of inter-cultural understanding and exchange, at the same time nurturing nation-builders as Malaya moved towards independence. She was thus a symbol of the determination of the local Chinese community to make Malaya their home and play their part in the progress of the new nation.

Nanyang University was an inspiration to the younger generation, many of whom grew up in conditions of deprivation and limited rights under colonial rule. Encouraged by the success of the anticolonial struggles and revolutions against the old order in other parts of the world, they were ready to work towards the independence of their place of birth, creating a society that was just and harmonious. For many graduates, their time at Nantah was the most inspiring and unforgettable period of their lives. Many felt a strong sense of commitment to repay her and the community which gave birth to her by living up to the expectations held of them.

The closing of Nantah brought great pain to many members of the alumni. The trauma that was experienced by the community and among the alumni in particular has not healed despite an interval of more than three and a half decades. Indeed, revulsion has grown among some as current political leaders in Singapore continue to exaggerate the inferior quality of education delivered by the university while they pontificate the value of the PAP’s brand of bilingualism, all to justify the actions of their political predecessors.

Even in the darkest days of the White Terror, there were those who expressed their anger and grief in various Chinese publications and media. Yet, to date, the Nantah Story has not been communicated in any meaningful way to the English-speaking world. This is something that needs to be done. With the disappearance of the Chinese schools, the English-speaking have become the mainstream of Singapore society and they have the right to know this other side of the Singapore Story.

This volume, then, is my small contribution to the telling of the People’s Story, an attempt to present the truth about one aspect of the modern history of Singapore. It is a story that reflects the experiences and viewpoints of those who love Nantah, especially the alumni.

It is a story that challenges the current narrative and exposes the biases and prejudices against Nantah that have been constructed ever since the idea of a People’s University was first mooted.

I graduated from Nantah in 1959. Apart from my own recollections, my story is taken from the writings of many alumni, as my direct association with my alma mater lasted only four years (1956-1959) as a student and another year (1973) as Visiting Associate Professor. One can choose to see this volume as an articulation of the collective memory of those who have directly benefited from the university’s 24 years of existence. That memory has not faded with time. Indeed, as some recent commentaries on Nantah show, time has allowed the participants of history to gain more insights; emotions about Nantah’s fate have, if anything, grown stronger.

Of course, I cannot claim to be speaking on behalf of all Nantah alumni. I take full personal responsibility in including some of the materials contained in their writings in this volume.

This is not a history of Nantah but one person’s view of her rise and demise. I hope something good can come of it. Perhaps it could lead to a re-evaluation of the language and culture policies that affect the Chinese community, which remains the largest ethnic group on the island. To this end, I am encouraged by this statement made by Lee Hsien Loong, the current Prime Minister, when he spoke at the NUS Society's 60th anniversary on October 3, 2014:

I think there is no hindrance to discussing the past in a normal way. People express, recount their memories, they write their memoirs. Historians research the archives, they write their thesis, they propound revisionist views of history, others rebut them. Academic fratricide is normal.¹²

Since my main sources are in Chinese and are taken from various publications and websites that are not easily accessible to the English language reader, I have decided to reproduce as much of them as possible, in order to present them in their full contexts. The government has had the chance to present an uncontested view of the matter for decades. Thus, my aim in writing this volume is to convey as much as I can of what supporters of Nantah, such as Tan Lark Sye, have said.

In the course of writing this book, I have collected and translated voluminous materials relating to Nanyang University. As including them in this volume would make the book too long, I will be sharing them on the website: www.mynantahstory.com.

PART ONE

A PROUD GRADUATE’S

PERSONAL STORY

My Journey to Nantah

I WAS JUST a young secondary school student in 1951 when Tan Lark Sye, one of the richest businessmen in Singapore, issued his first call for a Chinese-medium university to be set up. He had done so after the University of Malaya, which had just been formed in Singapore, rejected his proposal to establish a Chinese department, despite his large donation to the university for the purpose. In 1953, when he made his second call, I was in Standard VIII at Raffles Institution. Inspired by the local Chinese community’s determination to protect its language and culture and Tan Lark Sye's courageous efforts at setting up the university against opposition from the colonial government, I was immediately set on the idea of being part of the university.

I had attended both English- and Chinese-medium schools in my youth, going to one in the morning and the other in the afternoon for a few years. I was thus able to read the Chinese newspapers and was aware of the passionate response from the ground to Tan’s call. Until then, I had not thought about going for further studies after getting my Cambridge School Certificate. This new university that would be built, by the people and for the people, caught my imagination. One stumbling block was the fact that I did not possess a Chinese Senior Secondary Certificate, which was a basic requirement for admission. In fact, I did not even possess a Chinese primary school certificate. When I completed Primary 5 at Catholic High, a Chinese-medium school, I was unable to proceed to Primary 6 as that level was only offered in the morning session. The principal allowed me to skip a level and go directly to secondary school, where I joined the special Junior Secondary I class, which was held in the afternoon. As I progressed, especially when I was admitted into Raffles Institution in 1953, I gave up attending the afternoon session in the Chinese-medium school because of the heavier academic workload.

Following the clash between the Chinese secondary school students and the colonial authorities over the issue of military conscription on May 13, 1954, two of my brothers, together with dozens of their fellow students at Catholic High, were expelled because they took part in actions in support of the protesters, who were mainly from Chinese High and Chung Cheng High. In comparison, there was not much talk of this development at Raffles Institution. The students there were in the dark, not knowing that they had to register for compulsory military service for the colonial administration after they reach eighteen, which, for me, would be a year later. Curious, I arranged to meet the Chinese secondary school student leaders organising the movement. I even joined my brothers, who, along with around a thousand other students, had barricaded themselves in the Chinese High campus to put pressure on the colonial authorities. Over several weeks, I would go to Chinese High on Friday afternoon to spend the weekend there with the protesters before returning home on Sunday afternoon to get ready for classes at Raffles the next morning. At the Chinese High camp-in, I was assigned to the senior class, living with the 30 or so students who made me their junior student-teacher in English.

For me, the camp-in was a true eye-opener. Lee Kuan Yew had talked about Chinese secondary school students being well-organised, disciplined and cohesive, and that was my impression too. But unlike Lee, who saw these students as potential threats to his power and therefore, a group that had to be put under his absolute control, I saw them as heroes, as role models, as friends, and as individuals who believed in justice and equality. It was at this time that an anti-colonial fire started burning in me. When the protests ended, I had come to the conclusion that after taking my Cambridge School Certificate examinations at the end of the year, I would join them in the Chinese speaking world and work towards building a successful Nantah. In that environment of anti-colonialism, the idea of Nantah was a powerful magnet drawing young people seeking to give their lives to a meaningful cause. I received the strongest support from my father who, despite our poor financial situation, did not mind that I continue my studies, instead of finding employment to help support the family.

On graduation from Raffles, my new-found friends helped me prepare for the entrance examinations to Chung Cheng and Chinese High. I would have preferred to enter Chinese High, where my two brothers went after they were expelled from Catholic High. Unfortunately, I failed the entrance examination as it contained a paper on trigonometry, a subject that was not on my English secondary school curriculum. I remember that I could only answer it with my knowledge of geometry!

But my failure turned out to be the best thing to have happened to me. Since the Principal at Chung Cheng, Dr. Chuang Chu Lin, had an open-door policy for those who wished to learn, I was admitted. A recent female graduate of St. Margaret’s Girl’s School also ended up in Chung Cheng on her way to Nantah and was assigned to the same Senior Secondary II class as I was. We had never met before, but here we were, two new students among a group that had been promoted together from Senior Secondary I. There was a natural mutual attraction but we grew even closer because we were the two new faces in a class of nearly forty students who had known one another for at least a year. Ching and I eventually became life-long partners.

At Chung Cheng, I continued to play the role of junior student teacher in English. I was also elected as English Secretary in the newly formed Singapore Chinese Middle School Student Union (SCMSSU) to help bridge the gap between the Chinese- and English stream students, and to be the liaison with our English-speaking legal advisers, Lee Kuan Yew and Tan Wee Tiong. It was in this capacity that I first met Lee when I went to his Malacca Street office with a list of the student activists who were arrested by the police in 1955 and 1956.

Nantah remained on my mind despite my busy life as a student activist. My father made sure that I did not waver, even as he encouraged two of my fellow students in the student union executive committee to continue their studies at the university that would soon be established. The Nantah fund-raising drive was reaching its peak even as the Lin Yutang incident (see Chapter 4) was stirring up the community. I passed my Senior Secondary II examinations and applied to take the entrance examination for admission into the Department of Modern Languages at Nantah, believing that this would be easy for me, with my Raffles Institution background. While waiting for the results, I continued on to Senior Secondary III. It was during this period that I had the privilege of having the late women’s rights and anti-colonial activist Linda Chen as my English teacher. She made this English school graduate feel that there was still much to be learned in an English class at a Chinese-medium school. Unfortunately, I only had Linda as my teacher for a short three months. The unwelcome news of her arrest by the colonial authorities and the good news of my acceptance by Nantah came at the same time.

Arrival at Nantah

On March 15, 1956, I became a member of the first class of students to attend Nantah and joined my friends from Chung Cheng outside the imposing Administration/Library Building to witness the raising of the university flag. Unfortunately, there was no Nantah anthem, otherwise we would all have sung it at the top of our voices, such was our joy at making history as the first batch of students at the first Chinese-medium university outside China. Our voices joined that of Tan Lark Sye as he passionately declared, Long Live Nantah!

Despite my yearning to embark on my university education, I was still an active SCMSSU member. The year 1956 was a turbulent one. Since the SCMSSU constitution stated that one’s membership remained effective for a year after graduation, I continued my involvement. I was part of the delegation to the Asian-African Student Conference in Bandung and this was followed by various activities in support of workers’ strikes, protests against the arrests and detentions of workers and students, the efforts to appeal the banning of the student union and others. The student union executive committee had to deal with a continuous tide of major political developments.

Father had provided me with some funds to purchase a small Fiat with three fellow students, so that we could commute between our homes in the city and the Nantah campus in Jurong, so I did manage to attend some classes.

My involvement with the Singapore Chinese Middle School Student Union meant that I missed much of the excitement that was taking place in Yunnanyuan. The fledgling institution had to deal with a succession of teething problems such as irregular water supply, blackouts and a shortage of dormitory space. I also failed my Chinese language paper in the first term and had to re-sit the examination.

The secondary school student protests eventually subsided as the Lim Yew Hock government ruthlessly implemented the Preservation of Public Security Ordinance with the help of the police and Special Branch. This meant that I could finally experience life fully as an undergraduate at Nantah. I moved into the university dormitory, thinking that the campus would be a good place to lay low, as no one knew when the arrests and detention of activists under the Lim Yew Hock government would end. I kept my vigilance, looking out for suspicious characters coming onto the campus. One day, a fellow student who had been a leader in an alumni association that had been banned by the government noticed two such characters wandering from the Arts Building to the Commerce Building, which had been temporarily converted to become our dormitory. He and I quickly fled to his girlfriend’s dormitory, where we remained over the weekend.

During the year-end vacation, although students could stay on campus, a fellow student activist and I felt it was unsafe to do so because of the small number of people that remained (approximately half of the students were from the Federation and had gone home for the holidays). We moved out to spend the holidays with a friend in the Tanglin area. I also spent some time at my elder sister’s home in Tiong Bahru. I did not know for sure if the police were indeed looking for me. Given the considerable number of professional students working as government spies in our midst, I am sure they would have found me if they really wanted to.

In my second year of university, I transferred to the Department of History and Geography and began to really enjoy campus life. It felt good to be a member of the first batch. We did not have to get the juniors to respect us through the common university tradition of ragging. Respect for one’s seniors came naturally in the culture we were all trying to protect. As well, we were the pioneers who had gone through the first year of the fledgling university, and the juniors must have felt that there was much they could learn from us. This has remained unchanged over the decades. Even at alumni gatherings today, graduates of the earlier batches are always addressed as xuexiong or xuezhang (elder fellow student) and served tea before others.

To be honest, in those days, I often felt like a junior myself because many of my fellow students were much older and more mature than I was. Many had graduated from secondary school years ago and seemed to know what was expected of a university student. On their own, they stepped forward to organise student life, working with the university administration to deal with teething problems and providing leadership in their classes. That was the time when the university faced problems with maintaining adequate academic staff; some who were recruited overseas arrived late or spoke in thick northern Chinese accents that were unintelligible to Southeast Asians. These older students would step forward to act as junior teachers to help in whatever ways they could. During school vacations, they would organise extra classes on subjects not covered in our provisional curriculum.

We were taken by surprise when Chew Swee Kee, the Education Minister in the Lim Yew Hock government, announced that Nantah had no power to confer degrees, and that recognition of those degrees would have to be worked out with the other university on the island. It was an unwarranted statement from an elected official. How could anyone make a judgment on the competence of a university’s graduates barely two months into her first year? Why was there a need to continue the policy of discrimination against Nantah that was started by the colonial administration? In publicly stating this prejudicial view of Nantah, the Education Minister had given others the justification to take adverse positions against Nantah for their own purposes. We lost all respect for this man who was too ignorant to realise that universities had the right to confer degrees to students who met the requirements of their programme of study, regardless of how others saw those degrees. In comparison, many of us were impressed by the People’s Action Party (PAP), whose representatives were passionately speaking out against the colonial education policies in Parliament.

When the Nanyang University Student Union (NUSU) was formed in 1957, I was elected to its executive committee and served as a member of the external affairs sub-committee. At the time, there was no formal group responsible for producing the English edition of the University Tribune and I would occasionally be called on to help. I would sometimes visit the Dunearn Road hostel of the University of Malaya to seek the help of friends there to polish my English text. The sub-committee also established close contacts with University of Malaya students to discuss the attempt by some Malayan students, led by Musa Hitam (who eventually became Malaysia’s Deputy Prime Minister), to break up the Pan Malayan Student Federation. The Pan Malayan Student Federation had come into existence in 1955 and was responsible for the formation of the Malayan national student delegation to the Asian-African Student Conference in Bandung. I was re-elected to the sub-committee the following year.

In July 1958, I was nominated by the executive committee to attend a five-week student leadership course organised by the pro West International Student Conference Co-ordination Secretariat in Sri Lanka. At one session on national independence, I found myself incensed by the words of a University of Malaya delegate, who expressed gratitude to the British for granting independence to Malaya, I stood up and offered the view that Malayan independence was the result of the long struggle of the Malayan people against colonialism and not a gift handed to us on a silver platter. Musa Hitam, who was chairing the meeting, accused me of propounding communist ideas. We had a lengthy discussion at the end of the meeting, but I was unable to convince Musa that a view derived from careful and proper analysis of facts was the correct view, even if it was one that was shared by communists. The communists, like anyone else, did not have a monopoly on correct or incorrect views.

Study tour to India

During the two-month vacation in early 1959, 34 of the 44 students in my class went on a study tour to India. Led by Professor Hsu Yun-Tsiao, and with fellow students Tai Yuen and Chui Kweichiang as monitors, we spent seven weeks on the Indian sub-continent. Tai and Chui had put significant effort into planning the trip, including formulating the itinerary, making the necessary contacts and finding sponsors to help reduce our travel costs. We sailed to Madras, travelled by rail from the southeast coast up the Deccan plateau to Bangalore, down to Bombay on the west coast, then northwards to Simla on the foothills of the Himalayas, before heading the central route along the Ganges Valley, northeast through Assam, to the borders with Nepal and Bhutan. We turned south to Calcutta and then boarded the same ship in Madras to return home.

We saw the major cities and visited universities, historical and religious sites, industrial centres, plantations, development areas and rural districts. One of the highlights of the trip was a visit to Rabindranath Tagore’s International University at Shantiniketan. The trip was truly a lesson in the history, geography, economy and education of a country that had played an important part in the development of Malaya. It was a time of "Hindi Chini Bhai Bhai" (India and China are brothers), so in New Delhi, we were given the privilege of an audience with President Rajendra Prasad and Prime Minister Jawaharla Nehru. We submitted articles to Singapore newspapers during our tour and produced a magazine at the end of the tour that carried reports on what we had seen and experienced.

At the time, the Indian railway system was well laid-out but travel conditions were poor by international standards. Of course, we were not international tourists but humble students visiting India to study a country that had greatly influenced our own historical development. We were able to tough it out after putting Professor Hsu (who unfortunately had his wallet stolen) in a separate cabin and the rest of us in another cabin, with the girls sleeping on the benches and the boys either on the floor or on the luggage rack. The sanitary conditions were much poorer than what we were used to. This, together with the unfamiliar food, resulted in some of us falling sick. We all loved curry and there was a good variety of it as we travelled from one part of the country to another. However, having just curry every day for seven weeks was more than most of us could handle. We had an especially unpleasant experience on our return. After we berthed at Singapore port, we were taken to St. John's Island to be quarantined for three days, ostensibly because we had made a long visit to a diseased area. The ship we were on had stopped over briefly in Penang on the way back but we could go ashore there. Being able to see the lights of Singapore but not being able to have a home-cooked meal or to take a proper shower was not the best way of ending the successful trip.

There was a particular incident that I remember well, which showed the camaraderie that had developed among us with the sharing of hardship. This took place one day in New Delhi. Having grown up in an equatorial climate, most of us were unused to the 15ºC temperature. A small group dropped by a downtown restaurant for some hot Indian tea. We were surprised to find an item called hot dog on the menu. We had all been brought up to believe that dog meat was good for helping one cope with chilly weather. Some of us could attest to that, having consumed dog meat before. We needed little encouragement to order the hot dog to go with our pot of tea. Some volunteered to get the others. Very quickly, the restaurant was filled with naive and ignorant Nantah students consuming tea and what they thought was dog meat, with some even claiming that they were perspiring under its effect.

The study tour was modelled on a widespread practice in the secondary schools at the time, where the secondary school graduating classes would get out of the classroom to discover the world, consolidating friendships among classmates before they stepped out into society. We started this tradition at Nantah and many of the later batches followed our lead.

Graduation

The inauguration ceremony held in 1958 boosted our confidence in our future as Nantah graduates. The Governor of Singapore, William Goode, officiated the ceremony and gave an encouraging speech, witnessed by over a hundred thousand students and supporters. We assumed that things would be smooth-sailing from then on.

The release of the Report of the Nanyang University Commission in our final year thus came as a great shock. The five-man commission, headed by then Vice-Chancellor Stanley Lewis Prescott of the University of Western Australia, was tasked to review the academic standards of Nantah. With no in-depth investigation of the work of the university and her students, and relying solely on the testimony of outsiders unsympathetic to the university as evidence, the commission was so critical of Nantah that it went out of its way to recommend that her degrees not be recognised.

It was natural that a new university would face teething problems and the student union had been at the forefront of giving feedback to the administration and advocating reforms. We even joked about the inadequacies of our alma mater among ourselves. But we felt that given the long-term problems facing Chinese education in Singapore and the disruption caused by the Lin Yutang incident, it was truly remarkable that the university was successfully set up and was on her way to graduate her first batch of students without any major hitches. We welcomed constructive criticism but we certainly did not take kindly to these words by irresponsible foreign academics who not only failed to understand the true value of Nantah to the community, but also refused to do their job of inquiry in taking at face value allegations against Nantah made by those with ill intent. Our confidence in ourselves as worthy members of a well-functioning university was shaken to some degree.

But like many, we all had great expectations of the PAP government that was formed following the general election in 1959. Many of us had worked for the PAP in its political campaigns because we believed in its socialist policies, including its promise of fair treatment to all language-streams in education, and its stand for a united Malaya. I was thrilled that the students’ lawyer whom I had personally worked with would soon become the prime minister. However, we were stunned when this person whom we supported and believed to be on our side expressed his doubts about whether Nantah was really a Malayan institution in his first speech at the university. He, of all people, should have known that the local Chinese community no longer saw itself as a community of sojourners, and that the university founders and students all regarded themselves as Malayan citizens. Moreover, Nantah classes were taught in the three major Malayan languages and she had always made clear that her mission was to nurture talent for the building of the new nation of Malaya.

Still, our graduation was a proud occasion for us all. Wearing my gown and mortar board to receive my degree from then-Vice Chancellor Dr. Chuang Chu Lin at the bottom of the steps of the imposing Administration/Library Building, I almost wanted to shout aloud, To hell with Prescott! This architecturally impressive building was where I had spent most of my four years as an undergraduate and I had never stopped admiring it. It was especially gratifying to me that it was Dr. Chuang who was handing my degree over to me. As the former principal of Chung Cheng, it was he who put me in the same class as Ching, who was also graduating the same day. Dr. Chuang had set us both on the path to realise our Nantah Dream and he was there when we successfully completed our journey.

Those of us who were determined to prove the Prescott Commission wrong felt that we could do so by doing well in graduate studies overseas. As graduation day approached, we rushed to apply to graduate schools. In her first four years, Nantah had not quite built up a student counselling department to which we could seek advice and guidance. We expected British and Australian universities to turn us down because of the Prescott Report, so we concentrated on North American universities. But our knowledge of these universities was limited to what we could learn from the university yearbooks. At the time, we could not even obtain additional copies of our university transcripts, so we took to photographing them. There were so many of us requiring letters of recommendation from our professors that they made us write the letters ourselves and only affixed their seals on them. However, on graduation day, April 2, 1960, many of us had not received any response from the universities, leading us to suspect that the impact of the recommendations of the Prescott Commission had also reached North America.

Reporter for Sin Chew Jit Poh

After I left Nantah, I immediately found a job with two fellow graduates at the Chinese daily, Sin Chew Jit Poh, as reporters stationed in Kuala Lumpur. It was a very enjoyable job for several reasons. The three of us, one a Malay language expert, another with proficiency in several Chinese dialects, and me with no difficulty in the English language, worked together very well. The fact that a Chinese newspaper had hired a batch of Nantah graduates (there were the three of us plus a few more in the Singapore headquarters) was big news and the newspaper’s circulation soared. Our chief reporter was an excellent journalist and mentor. Not having lived in Kuala Lumpur before, there were many areas that we were very curious to explore. There was an absence of the usual cut-throat competition among the local community of reporters as we were all working for newspapers in different languages and many friendships were formed. We were very comfortable working with the young Malay reporters from Berita Harian and Utusan Melayu. Even the reporters from The Straits Times were not too difficult to get along with. Yet I had the nagging feeling that I would not be able to stay too long because of my past student activism, which could cause the Federal government to withhold my press pass. I completely forgot about my applications for graduate studies overseas.

One day in August 1960, my brother called from Singapore with surprising news. The Canadian High Commission had called to say that Canada Council was offering me a non-resident full scholarship for a year to study at the University of Western Ontario, which covered travel, tuition, accommodation and a monthly cash allowance. My brother knew that I was happy in Kuala Lumpur and wondered if I wanted to accept the offer. I did not remember applying for the scholarship and the university was little-known in Southeast Asia at the time. But why would that matter? I would go and regardless of whether I made the grade or not, I would at least have seen the world for a year at someone else’s expense. A geographer never misses a chance to travel, especially if it is someone else footing the bill.

Inferiority complex strikes

I took advantage of the free passage to arrange for as many stops on the way to Canada as time allowed. But at my first stop in Cairo, I almost turned back. The airline lost one of my bags, and the hotel they booked for me was in an unpleasant area. Despite my past travel experience in Malaya, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and India, I was struck by a sense of fear and a loss of confidence at this first setback. What if the Prescott Commission was right and we were indeed second rate? What if I could not make it and was forced to abandon my graduate studies? Would it be better if I did not take up the challenge? On the other hand, how could I face my parents, Ching, who had found a job as a chemistry teacher at Chung Cheng, and the two dozen ex-schoolmates who saw me off at the airport? How could I face those people who could recognise me from my photograph in Sin Chew Jit Poh when it reported that I was the first Nantah graduate to be awarded a scholarship to study in Canada?

I muddled through a pre-arranged tour of the pyramids the next day as I became consumed with self-doubt. The journey back to the hotel through the depressing streets made me decide to get out of Cairo the following day. However, my geographer’s curiosity made me postpone the idea of going home immediately, pushing me to continue on to my second stop, which was Athens. I gave myself one more day to consider the big question of whether to proceed or turn back.

Athens was pleasant, and this settled my emotions somewhat. On a tourist bus, I sat next to a British postgraduate student who was in Greece to study archaeology. When we started talking about postgraduate life, he was most positive and urged me not to give up. He suggested that since I had made the arrangements already, I should not miss London, even if I eventually decide to return home.

On that friendly advice, I flew directly to London, skipping Rome, Geneva and Paris. I caused some panic at home when my younger brother, who was in Geneva representing Nantah at an international student gathering, failed to see me at the lakeside place where we had earlier arranged to meet. But London was exhilarating. Basing myself at Malaya House, I did London with all the curiosity of a geographer. I met some friends from the University of Malaya who were doing advanced degrees at the University of London. They urged me not to give up, warning me that to do so would mean I would never rise from the psychological damage caused by the Prescott Report. One of Ching’s elder brothers, who was preparing for an architecture examination there, gave me sound advice on living in a foreign land. I reminded myself how Tan Lark Sye and the other Nantah founders had soldiered on despite uncertainty and doubts, and told myself that I should not let them down. I finally recovered some self-confidence. In any case, I was curious to see Canada, a place I knew only as the land of lumberjacks.

Wearing a tweed overcoat and two pairs of woollen trousers bought from Burton's, which I could not pack into my bags because they had been taken up by dictionaries and atlases given to me as going-away presents, I boarded the trans-Atlantic flight from London. It was supposed to fly to Montreal by way of Shannon, but headwinds forced it to refuel at Gander, Newfoundland. For reasons still unknown to me, an African student and I were taken off the flight, ostensibly so that our health