AsiaOne: Debunking the myth of the Chinese-educated

Debunking the myth of the Chinese-educated

Teo Han Wue Sun, May 18, 2008 The Straits Times

For many of us in Singapore, the Shanghai Book Company store is living history. It's so entrenched in our memories that recent media reports of it being under threat of closure came as a shock in Chinese-speaking circles. Whether the 83-year-old shop will conclude its final chapter and fade into oblivion will be decided on Thursday, when the two main shareholders - Mr Chen Mong Tse, the son of its founder, and a China book export company - meet to settle their disputes. Whatever the outcome, those of us who went to Chinese schools in the 1950s and 1960s will remember it fondly. <p> &amp;lt;A HREF=&quot;http://ads.asia1.com.sg/event.ng/Type=click&amp;amp;FlightID=16520&amp;amp;AdID=19898&amp;amp;TargetID=2065&amp;amp;Segments=1,81,238,564,1000,1543,1779,1780,2000,2355,2404,2410,2428,2431,2433,2472&amp;amp;Targets=2065,1720,2838,2847&amp;amp;Values=30,50,60,80,93,101,110,130,150,186,196,209,266,942,990,1480,1487,2253,2446,2807,2865,2908,2920,4074,4103,4118,4120,4334,4337,4342,5599,5611&amp;amp;RawValues=&amp;amp;Redirect=http:%2f%2fclk.atdmt.com/SJK/go/snxxesia0820000001sjk/direct/01/&quot; target=&quot;_blank&quot;&amp;gt;&amp;lt;IMG SRC=&quot;http://view.atdmt.com/SJK/view/snxxesia0820000001sjk/direct/01/&quot; WIDTH=300 HEIGHT=250 BORDER=0&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/A&amp;gt; </p> Ask any 50-something person literate in Chinese - especially graduates of the former Nanyang University - where they went at the weekend when they were students or young working adults, and most will readily say: 'Shanghai Shuju.' The more romantic ones will recall how they dated and met friends for long afternoon chats in the coffee shop on North Bridge Road at the junction with Cashin Street, called Yuelan Ting (Moon Orchid Pavilion), after browsing in the Shanghai Book Company store next door and upstairs. Yuelan Ting was a salon of sorts where many an intellectual issue was debated, ideas of a new book born and even matrimonial matches made over a cup of coffee. Apart from the works of authors like Lu Xun, Ba Jin and Guo Moruo, on the shelves of the bookshop were Chinese translations of the works of Shakespeare (complete plays), Goethe, Tolstoy, Pushkin, Balzac, Cervantes, Whitman, Twain, Tagore and so on. There were also Chinese books and magazines on local subjects, including Malay language and literature. Way back in 1925, two young men - Mr Chen Yoh Shoo and Mr Wang Shu Yang - started the bookshop. They had arrived in Singapore from Shanghai two years earlier, and noted that the exciting new books and magazines they had seen in the Chinese city, a trading port and a hotbed of modern ideas, were not available here. It was the era of the May Fourth Movement (1919), and students in the many Chinese schools in Singapore and other parts of South-east Asia were inspired by the new cultural trends taking place in China. The movement called for intellectual revolution and socio-political reform to rebuild society and culture, after China became a republic in 1911. As the young were thirsting for new literature by writers from China, the bookshop's business grew rapidly. Its founders found their new venture so successful that they quickly opened branches in Kuala Lumpur (1926), Surabaya (1928), and Jakarta (1935). The shop sign Shanghai Shuju, designed with characters in the art deco style fashionable then in Shanghai, bears the evocative logo with the shop's name propping up an open book from which grows a tall coconut tree. It expressed the aspiration to nurture the intellectual growth of the community in the Nanyang (South-east Asia). True to its mission, Shanghai Book Company started its publishing business after World War II because supplies of books from China for the Chinese schools had been disrupted. Besides, with emerging nationalism in the region, the Chinese community began to identify more with their adopted homeland by publishing books and textbooks relevant to local conditions. It was during this time that Shanghai Book Company made even greater contributions to educational and cultural development in South-east Asia. The textbooks it produced were distributed to countries such as Malaya, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Laos and Cambodia. From 1957, in line with the growing importance of Malay as the national language of Malaya, the bookshop also published a significant number of books, dictionaries and magazines on the Malay language, literature and culture. Malay language expert Lim Huan Boon wrote Singapore's first Malay-Chinese dictionary and had it published by the bookshop. He also helped edit some of its other Malay books. Those books were a great help when I myself was learning Malay as a student in a Chinese school in the early 1960s. I remember reading about modern Malay writers such as Masuri S.N. and Usman Awang in a magazine published by the Shanghai Book Company. Such efforts showed a distinct awareness of the multicultural reality of Singapore and Malaya on the part of the bookshop. They also reflected the Chinese-educated's enthusiasm for learning about a language and culture other than their own. That explains why, almost without exception, all the non-Malay Malay scholars in Singapore are Chinese-educated. Today, Shanghai Book Company is only a bookshop, just like many others in Bras Basah Complex where it is located now, and no longer what it was in its heyday when it published books not only in Chinese but also in English, Malay and Tamil. It ceased its publishing function due to changes in education policies and the phasing out of Chinese schools in Singapore. If it closes, I will not be sad, as long as its history as a Singapore cultural institution is not forgotten. Its history eloquently debunks the popular myth that the Chinese educated are inclined to be conservative, less open and less cosmopolitan, or worse, chauvinistic. Shanghai Book Company has fulfilled its mission in history. Like the coconut tree it aspired to be, Shanghai Book Company has borne many fruits that have grown into trees in various places. The writer is the executive director of Art Retreat, a private museum.