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Before I started to go to school, we spoke Chinese exclusively at home, using the Heong Shan dialect, but I was able to understand much of the Nam Long subdialect (derived from Fukien Province) spoken in Father's village, and to speak it through the process of osmosis. Since my parents seemed concerned that their children become proficient in Western studies, my attempts to learn Chinese have been erratic and comparatively brief. Ching I Sun, a scholarly gentleman, conducted a small one-room neighbourhood school on Vineyard School and to him Father sent Ruth and me to study Chinese. It was learning chiefly by rote. When we were not memorizing aloud, we were practising calligraphy, something I did quite well. We did not attend school very long. Ruth went on to study under another teacher, Chang Garm Bo, but I did not resume studying Chinese until I was in my early teens when I went to Wah Mun School for a short time before transferring to Mun Lun School, where classes were held in the afternoons and Saturday mornings.
Our programme here also included history, geography, composition, calligraphy and the classics. Once a week one of the teachers would entertain us with stories from the historical romances, the most famous of which was the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. I was very happy and proud to use the set of Ancient Classics that Father had used when a student in China, and he was pleased and patient in explaining the difficult passages.
The principal of Mun Lun School and some of the younger teachers were staunch supporters of the Loyalist Bow Wong Party, which supported the preservation of the imperial regime, and was opposed to the Revolutionary Party led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen, whose supporters favoured Wah Mun School for their children. The teachers were also anti-Christian and were always making derogatory remarks about Christians, referring to them as "pigs, dogs and robbers", and being immature and sensitive, I took it as a personal affront. One day when I was late arriving from high school, the principal humiliated me by stopping his teaching to write on the blackboard that I was late. Having been conditioned not to fight for my rights, I decided to quit Chinese school in order that I could continue my afternoon typing class without further anxiety. This was the extent, about four years altogether, of my formal education in Chinese. The kindly and benign attitude of some of the other teachers, such as Tsze, Yee and Seto, elderly and scholarly...
169
Before I started to go to school, we spoke Chinese exclusively at home, using the Heong Shan dialect, but I was able to understand much of the Nam Long subdialect (derived from Fukien Province) spoken in Father's village, and to speak it through the process of osmosis. Since my parents seemed concerned that their children become proficient in Western studies, my attempts to learn Chinese have been erratic and comparatively brief. Ching I Sun, a scholarly gentleman, conducted a small one-room neighbourhood school on Vineyard School and to him Father sent Ruth and me to study Chinese. It was learning chiefly by rote. When we were not memorizing aloud, we were practising calligraphy, something I did quite well. We did not attend school very long. Ruth went on to study under another teacher, Chang Garm Bo, but I did not resume studying Chinese until I was in my carly teens when I went to Wah Mun School for a short time before transferring to Mun Lun School, where classes were held in the afternoons and Saturday mornings.
Our programme here also included history, geography, composition, calligraphy and the classics. Once a week one of the teachers would entertain us with stories from the historical romances, the most famous of which was the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. I was very happy and proud to use the set of Ancient Classics d that Father had used when a student in China, and he was pleased and patient in explaining the difficult passages.
The principal of Mun Lun School and some of the younger teachers were staunch supporters of the Loyalist Bow Wong Party, which supported the preservation of the imperial regime, and was opposed to the Revolutionary Party led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen, whose supporters favoured Wah Mun School for their children. The teachers were also anti-Christian and were always making derogatory remarks about Christians, referring to them as "pigs, dogs and robbers", and being immature and sensitive, I took it as a personal affront. One day when I was late arriving from high school, the principal humiliated me by stopping his teaching to write on the blackboard that I was late. Having been conditioned not to fight for my rights, I decided to quit Chinese school in order that I could continue my afternoon typing class without further anxiety. This was the extent, about four years altogether, of my formal education in Chinese. The kindly and benign attitude of some of the other teachers, such as Tsze, Yee and Seto, elderly and scholarly
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