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Being Chinese
How my Malaysian Chinese education is paying off
Malaysian Chinese have paid a heavy price for Chinese-medium schools, but for my generation, that investment is reaping dividends
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Chee Yik-wai is a Malaysia-based intercultural specialist, a serial social entreprenur who co-founded Crowdsukan focusing on sport for good.
Michelle Yeoh understood enough Cantonese when it mattered. Even though the name “Sing Lung” didn’t immediately ring a bell, she still accepted her first on-screen gig in 1980s Hong Kong – a commercial with, as it turned out, Jackie Chan – which would lead ultimately to her international film career.
Michael Wong was a Chinese-educated choirboy who went on to crack the Mandopop market in 1990s Taiwan and win acclaim as a balladeer in the wider Chinese-speaking world.
Like Yeoh and Wong before me, I grew up in Ipoh, a Chinese-dominated city in Malaysia. For my generation, a wide exposure to Chinese culture and a decades-long emphasis on Chinese-medium education are paying off in a bigger way than I could have imagined, with the transformation of mainland China into an economic and technological power.
Around Ipoh, ethnic Chinese children have often grown up between languages. At home, my parents spoke Cantonese, and we lapped up TVB dramas and Cantopop songs from Hong Kong. But when I went to school, I learned to read and write simplified Chinese – not the traditional script that is used in Hong Kong – and all subjects at the primary-school level were taught in Mandarin. At the public secondary school I attended, the medium of instruction switched to Malay, the national language, but Chinese and English were compulsory subjects.
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