Why must we learn Chinese when Nantah was killed.

[scroobal]

Please la.... Nantah was supported by the people of Singapore even the rickshaw men contributed to the university. Tan Lark Sye donated $5million (in 1950, that's f88king lotsa money !!) and a piece of land to build Nantah. It was the only Chinese school then, and gosh, the students were vocal. It definitely irks LKY when he was in power !!

Don't have to convince me. I am aware that even dancing hostess donated their takings and it was a massive exercise by the entire community from Singaopore and the neighbouring countries. Even after it started having clases in 56, the students between and after classes would form work teams hauling construction materials in the hot sun in erecting other structures and buildings. Their passion, diligence and total commitment is best described by Michael Thorpe who lectured in Nanyang during that era who described what he saw

"the student union building was built on a indefensible hill, itself largely an artificial product, its top flattened, its slope graded and smoothed with baskets of soil and rubble borne by ant-like battaltion of students. Slim girls toiled on the slopes under their own weight of earth." ​

The camaderie of the alumni is well known and is spread across the seven seas.

One common perception was that Nantah would be the base of political opposition to PAP and Old man. Guess what - PAP cadres in the majority comes from Nantah. So is the PAP grassroots until the early 90s. Why do you think that PAP membership is so secretive. Old man had penetrated Nantah quite comprehensively as he learnt it from the middle school riots issues. There is even a joke on this - for every 5 nantah students, there will be 6 isd informants.

Do you ever you wonder why the PAP monopoly was broken in 1981 by an Indian who was trained in england. The senior most PAP cadre of Anson at that time was Ong Ah Heng, a 1972 graduate of Nantah who is now an MP. Where were the Nantah militant and vocal Nantah students? How the fuck did an Indian break a long standing monopoly of the PAP.

The pressure to merge Nantah with NUS came from PSC and the many people that carried out countless interviews and saw the despair. Old Man had to yield.

One wonders who truly lives in a fantasy world.

 

[Ramseth]

How could any thread about Nantah be still missing any mention of Tan Lark Sye after 20 postings?

 

[myjohnson]

南洋大学校友讯息
http://reunion.nantah.org


Note: If this website does not take the hard decision to post the following message, then it fails to do its job as a source of information. Hope that alumni understand. Thank you.



NTU's Incredible Lies About History of Nantah


By Anonymous Author



I found the following paragraphs in NTU's website:


"The university has a distinguished lineage with roots that go back to 1955. We began as Nanyang University (Nantah), the first Chinese-language university in Southeast Asia, through donations from all walks of life, with the Yunnan Garden campus donated by the Singapore Hokkien Huay Kuan.

Nanyang Technological Institute was reborn on the same campus in 1981 with government funding to educate practice-oriented engineers for the burgeoning Singapore economy. In 1991 we became Nanyang Technological University with the absorption of the National Institute of Education."


Anyone with a sense of history can tell you Nantah was founded by late Tan Lark Sye in 1953 but unfortunately closed down by Lee Kuan Yew in 1980. (PAP supporters among Nantah alumni always insist that Nantah was "merged" with Singapore University to form the NUS -- make it more palatable to public perception). On the other hand, NTU was founded by Lee Kuan Yew in Nantah's old campus as NTI in 1982 initially and upgraded to NTU in 1992.

And don't forget that Nantah was a real CHINESE university (the only Chinese university outside of China and Taiwan so far) while NTU is an English university with a non-significant "Department of Chinese". (NUS has one too, nowadays, which decent university in the world does not have a Chinese Department?).

So you see, other than sharing the same premise, the two universities have no commonality AT ALL, what "lineage with roots" are they talking about?

The fact of the matter is this: the property of now defunct Nanyang University was confiscated and given to NTU, the whole campus was ransacked and almost demolished, many old buildings were torn down and replaced by new ones, the beloved Nantah Gate was defaced and cut off from the campus by the highway (They wanted to tear down the Gate but no contractors dared to take the contract).

After Nantah was closed down in 1980, no one heard about Nantah or Tan Lark Sye on media until 1989 when someone in PAP sensed that China was going to be reckoned with as another powerful country on earth. They started to see the economical value of Nantah's name (which they hastenly discarded in 1980) in pursuing the Chinese business, but the regime had been most unkind to Nantah and Tan Lark Sye, the big question was how could they erase this thorny historical blackmark in people's mind ? The whole PAP propaganda machinery with the help from media has been working on this single idea ever since. They seemed to have found the solution to their problem, namely, to modify and distort the history of Nantah and NTU.

First they changed the Chinese abbreviation of NTU from LiDa to NanDa (i.e. Nantah) on Chinese media which created an illusion on the mind of Chinese readers and audience as if Nantah was still alive. Later, Dr. Su Guaning started to push renaming of NTU's official name to "Nanyang University" which naturally met opposition from silent Chinese community in Singapore and Nantah alumni. Consequently the idea was dropped in 2004 (the rumor has it that Lee Kuan Yew was annoyed by comments made by oppositions of renaming. and requests by some supporters of renaming to rehabitate his most hated enemy Tan Lark Sye) while they were planning a huge ceremony to be held in June of 2005.

With name-change or no name-change, now they just want you to sincerely believe that this angmo NTU is the same Nantah built in 1953 by Tan Lark Sye with the help from Chinese people of southeast Asia, and it has been operating since 1955, as if nothing had happened in the year of 1980 ("No, no, no, we never closd down Nantah, what happened in 1980 was just your imagination, honey").

My friend gave me a metaphor to compare with what is going on here: "Someone killed your poor Chinese mother and confiscated your little atap hut. A twenty-ish Angmo woman now occupies the hut. They come and tell you in straight-face that this "50 years" old angmo jarbo is your old mother you missed so many years and she really never get killed!"

How can people believe such shameless fabrication and distortion of history?

6th July 2005.

Will this fit into the quest for the equation of the truth?

 

[Nomad]

the government is trying to get it back and place some urgency into getting people to learn chinese.
maybe should said LKY,cos now he is old,he scared the traditions of chinese here and different dialects will forget their roots and cultures. when he kick the bucket,he scared no one will "tiao sung" for him.

 

[helicopview]

Who killed Nantah? Why was it killed?

LKY. I might disclose the probable reasons

 

[darememore]

the government is trying to get it back and place some urgency into getting people to learn chinese.
maybe should said LKY,cos now he is old,he scared the traditions of chinese here and different dialects will forget their roots and cultures. when he kick the bucket,he scared no one will "tiao sung" for him.

When Sg companies started to invest into China, NONE of our so call elite could write a proper letter of correspondence in Chinese( all are english educated ), many business opportunities were lost. whereas the western countries were doing so well with their 2nd class citizen that can writes and communicate so well with the chinese official.

Shame and lost to old dog when he realized that those 2nd class citizen from Western countries were no other than those chinese who had completed their education at the Nanyang University and left Singapore when they were being marginized and treated unfairly.

 

[Ah Guan]

.........
AFTER HE SAVED THE KINGDOM FROM DOOM, THE HEROIC WHITE KNIGHT STORMED INTO THE BURNING CASTLE AND RESCUED THE BEAUTIFUL CHINESE PRINCESS.

THEY MARRIED AND LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER.
..........

One wonders who truly lives in a fantasy world.

Ok now for a bedtime story... please tell us the tale of how Nanyang Shangpao was axed because of dwindling readership.....

Pleeeeeeese?

 

[eeoror88]

Ok now for a bedtime story... please tell us the tale of how Nanyang Shangpao was axed because of dwindling readership.....

Pleeeeeeese?

Because Nanthakumar became chief editor ??

 

[kuntakinte]

I do not wish to convince anybody.... That's not my job, sorry.

And, I thought you never knew....... However, I'm not sure about the dance hostess part and your initial posting seemingly like whitewashing the history when you jumped into the last page of the book.

Don't have to convince me. I am aware that even dancing hostess donated their takings and it was a massive exercise by the entire community from Singaopore and the neighbouring countries. Even after it started having clases in 56, the students between and after classes would form work teams hauling construction materials in the hot sun in erecting other structures and buildings. Their passion, diligence and total commitment is best described by Michael Thorpe who lectured in Nanyang during that era who described what he saw

"the student union building was built on a indefensible hill, itself largely an artificial product, its top flattened, its slope graded and smoothed with baskets of soil and rubble borne by ant-like battaltion of students. Slim girls toiled on the slopes under their own weight of earth." ​

The camaderie of the alumni is well known and is spread across the seven seas.

One common perception was that Nantah would be the base of political opposition to PAP and Old man. Guess what - PAP cadres in the majority comes from Nantah. So is the PAP grassroots until the early 90s. Why do you think that PAP membership is so secretive. Old man had penetrated Nantah quite comprehensively as he learnt it from the middle school riots issues. There is even a joke on this - for every 5 nantah students, there will be 6 isd informants.

Do you ever you wonder why the PAP monopoly was broken in 1981 by an Indian who was trained in england. The senior most PAP cadre of Anson at that time was Ong Ah Heng, a 1972 graduate of Nantah who is now an MP. Where were the Nantah militant and vocal Nantah students? How the fuck did an Indian break a long standing monopoly of the PAP.

The pressure to merge Nantah with NUS came from PSC and the many people that carried out countless interviews and saw the despair. Old Man had to yield.

One wonders who truly lives in a fantasy world.

 

[scroobal]

I do not wish to convince anybody.... That's not my job, sorry.

And, I thought you never knew....... However, I'm not sure about the dance hostess part and your initial posting seemingly like whitewashing the history when you jumped into the last page of the book.

Sorry If I was presumptious. The dance hostess part is factual. The Dance hall in chinatown was called Nan Tien and for the first time, married patrons went away without feeling guilty.

I have no doubt it holds a rich tapestry of culture and the bond between the students were very strong but it was not going to put food on the table for all. The reality is that they could not carry on in that manner.

Would be good if you and others share your views.

 

[Ramseth]

This topic began with the question, "Why must we learn Chinese when Nantah was killed?" It may be a chicken-or-egg-question if we ask, "Was Nantah killed because too few of us were learning Chinese?"

First thing first, why the founding of Nantah? Because there was demand for Chinese tertiary education in Singapore after the fall of China to the communists. With it's dense concentration of Chinese population, Singapore was the natural choice location for the Chinese diaspora in South-East Asia, then without a China to go back to anymore, not even for higher education. Tan Lark Sye took the lead with a generous lump sum donation, followed by smaller donations from all walks of life in Chinese communities. Yes, even from dance hostesses and prostitutes.

We must keep in mind, in those days of the 50s and 60s, Chinese education had value and future in Singapore, as most of the economy comprised of small to medium businesses owned and controlled by Chinese bosses and managers. Nobody was talking about a career in an MNC, GLC or civil service as ambition then.

Independence in 1965 started to change all that. By the early 70s, English has become glaringly obvious as the ticket to a good future, as the MNCs and GLCs started to spring up all over Singapore. The image of the civil service and even the police as a deadbeat routine job without any bright prospect was also eradicated from Chinese prejudice. Singapore was to be run on English, and there's no China to go back to now, even no China to do business with with the Cultural Revolution.

The tide turned among Chinese parents, and more and more kept sending their children to English schools instead of Chinese schools for their primary and secondary education. The enrolments in Chinese schools dwindled till many were forced to closed, except a few more prestigious ones, those were saved and revived by the SAP school scheme in the late 70s, after the closure of Nantah.

Now you see why I call this a chicken-or-egg-first question. Without a sizeable cohort of students educated in Chinese fundamentally, how to sustain a Chinese-stream university? Without a Chinese-stream university to go to, what for study Chinese academically? The terms of so-called merger of UniSing and Nantah into NUS did try to address this problem, by requiring all Singaporeans seeking admission to pass their mother-tongue language at least at O Level.

Does it work in preserving basic literacy in Chinese for Chinese Singaporeans, Malay for Malay Singaporeas, Tamil for Indian Singaporeans? To a certain extent, yes. Basic literacy, yes. However, not in the realm of academic proficiency of course.

 

[scroobal]

This topic began with the question, "Why must we learn Chinese when Nantah was killed?" It may be a chicken-or-egg-question if we ask, "Was Nantah killed because too few of us were learning Chinese?"

The tide turned among Chinese parents, and more and more kept sending their children to English schools instead of Chinese schools for their primary and secondary education. The enrolments in Chinese schools dwindled till many were forced to closed, except a few more prestigious ones, those were saved and revived by the SAP school scheme in the late 70s, after the closure of Nantah.

Does it work in preserving basic literacy in Chinese for Chinese Singaporeans, Malay for Malay Singaporeas, Tamil for Indian Singaporeans? To a certain extent, yes. Basic literacy, yes. However, not in the realm of academic proficiency of course.

Thanks for that.

It should be mentioned that the Malays and Tamils were doing exactly the same and their vernacular schools ended getting emptied real fast. No persuasion was needed.

In the 70s, there was an article in the press about a Nantah grad who became a bus conductor to survive. Soon enough people started sharing their views including the fact that Nantah grad showed their O and A level cert at job interviews but not their grad qualification as employers were not prepared to pay grad salaries.

To improve intake qualitiy, an attempt was made to curtail admission numbers but this fell to the wayside as no could explain to a poor family or the clan why their kid could not be admitted despite finishing his A levels as they too contributed to the consruction of Nantah.

In the last ditch attempt to save Nantah, the joint tertiary admission scheme was launched in the late 70s where the entire admissable tertiary cohort for common subjects for that year will be distributed on a proportionate basis - 1st 50 students to university of singapore, the next 50 to nantah and so on. This was to allow distribution of quality and the first attempt by old man on social engineering.

Interestingly it led to Nantah beating Uni of Spore for the first time in the English debate series.