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I went to a Chinese Primary School in Petaling Jaya in 2006. I never really spoke Mandarin regularly before entering a Chinese school. I grew up in an English-speaking household, and my family was Peranakan from Melaka, so there were just a lot of Malay and English for me as a kid.
I was a completely different person in primary school than I am today. I was quiet, afraid to speak up or make friends because I was afraid to mess up my Mandarin. I spent a lot of my time keeping to myself.
But it was my secondary school days that helped me develop socially, especially with many people of different races. It’s something I have learned to cherish and be grateful for today.
The stories you hear about Chinese schools are true
The crazy workload, the caning — these were prevalent in Chinese schools. More importantly, they were normalised. Imagine getting a ton of homework day after day and then being hit the next day for not finishing it.
There was definitely a standard to uphold, and that made most of us competitive, as cliche as it may be. The goal was to not get caned. In return, it instilled a heightened quality of discipline and work ethic.
The school I went to was also very well-funded. We had rich Chinese businessmen, school drives, donations, and the PIBG supporting us. There was air conditioning in a hall the size of a football field, digital whiteboards, indoor basketball facilities and more.
This is common among the more prominent Chinese schools. Education is a big part of the Chinese identity, and investing in Chinese education is an attempt at maintaining that identity. I just remember thinking it was luxurious compared to the other schools.
Almost everyone spoke Mandarin, and because of that I didn’t have too many friends
It was a school populated by 95% Chinese students, and at least 70% of them spoke primarily Mandarin. But as I mentioned, speaking English was all I knew up to that point in my life, so that introduced a chasm between my peers and I.
Even after familiarizing with the language, I only used Mandarin when I had to. I didn’t like it and I definitely wasn’t comfortable with it.
With that, I ended up sticking to the people I could comfortably communicate with, the English speakers and the tiny percentage of Malays in the school.
It is normal to gravitate toward people we were more comfortable with. At that time, I didn’t think there was an alternative. It wasn’t any individual’s fault. It was simply the environment.
The curriculum in Chinese schools are much tougher to keep up with
Apart from making friends, everything else was also difficult for me because of the language. It just wasn’t natural. Communicating with teachers, understanding homework, and preparing for exams and tests were always twice as hard.
Classes were crazy tough because of that, but we had subjects like science and math in both Mandarin and English, so I used it to help me familiarize with what I didn’t know much of.
Mandarin didn’t appeal to me at all. I just stuck to what I knew and wasn’t open to exploring new dynamics. I was required to memorize Mandarin passages but instead spent that time reading English comics like Archie.
It stunted my academic progression. I didn’t do very well in school.
My UPSR grades were good enough to get me posted to a cluster SMK
I didn’t know what to expect heading into an SMK, so when I first stepped foot into it, I was pleasantly surprised.
I suddenly found myself in the company of different races. It was brand new to me and it almost felt like a culture shock given my young age.
For the first time ever, I didn’t feel obligated to speak Mandarin when I approached someone. There were hardly any language barriers since the kids around me came from all sorts of backgrounds and not just Chinese-speaking ones.
I could belong to any group I wished
At that point, I was so used to gravitating toward the English-speaking people in primary school, and that limited my social capability. Thus the freedom to choose from different friend groups was foreign to me, almost like a new experience of having the ability to control who I wanted to associate with, rather than who I actually could.
This contributed a lot to my social growth. It built my confidence which led to me becoming better with people as I started having more friends. I had friends of all races and it was easier to fit in now that there was less obstruction.
I had multiple friend groups, within and outside my class. I spent a lot of time on the football field, and the players were usually Malays, so I got close to them, which taught me to speak fluent Bahasa Melayu.
The Mandarin-speaking kids had their own bubble of people, yet there was never any segregation. Everyone sort of just got along. That felt nice and comfortable. It opened my eyes to this idea of unity among races.
2. The workload lessened and we had time for a life outside classes
Image: Pretty sure in this picture we were playing when we shouldn’t have haha!
I had all these opportunities to be more involved in co-curricular activities, way more than I ever had in primary school.
It led to longer days, but at the same time also higher productivity. I no longer focused on only school work and I became more versatile.
I would end classes around 2pm, play all the football I could, attend whatever meetings I had to, then walk over to tuition with a few friends at around 6pm. It was a really fun time to say the least.
The activities I partook in exposed me to many different people. It broadened my horizons and ultimately made me more comfortable in my own skin.
3. Unity is truly possible when you mix authentically with different races
My days in secondary school showed me that unity among the different races is possible. We hung out together, with no discrimination or judgment. I’ve carried the warm glow that muhibah feeling gave me until today.
If I didn’t have my secondary school experience, I would be a very different person today. My days in my SMK school shaped the way I relate to people, especially with those of a different race.
I’m not advocating for colour blindness, because ignoring race might also turn us blind to the privileges our skin colour has afforded us. Instead, my secondary school experience has shown me what we can achieve when we embrace each other’s strengths and weaknesses; when we acknowledge that we are more than our skin colour.
And for that, I am forever grateful.
For more stories like this, read: What It’s Like Going To A Chinese School In Malaysia As A Malay and I Was Bullied In An SRJK Chinese School Because I Was A Banana.
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