Once Bonded

Yu-Mei Balasingamchow

---

When I was 19, I inked my name on a legal document to affirm that I would enter upon and diligently continue in an overseas university course specified by the government of the Republic of Singapore, complete it to the best of my ability, then return immediately to Singapore to serve the government for a period of eight years (hereinafter called the ‘Bonded Period’) in any body or organisation whatsoever in any appointment which the government might deem appropriate.

Read Full Post »

学语以外 : Beyond Language Learning

李慧玲 : Lee Huay Leng

English version

Translated by Francis Lim Khek Gee, with additional translation by Tan Siok Siok

---

我们回到上海时，赶紧把在汕头买的潮语配音《白雪公主》卡通片拿出来播放，听着皇后用潮州话问那镜子：“魔镜，魔镜，世界上那个芝娘最美丽？”全家人都被逗乐了。

Read Full Post »

New University, Three Generations: China, Malaya, Singapore, 1949-2007

Wang Gungwu

Text of the public lecture given on 8 July 2007 in conjunction with the official opening of the National University of Singapore Bukit Timah Campus.

---

A new University of Malaya was founded in 1949 in the shadow of the Malayan emergency and the communist victory in China. For the next decade, there was for many the shadow of a “third China”. For others, they worked hard for the failed Malaya/Malaysia project. Only those who wished for a separate Singapore got what they wanted.

Read Full Post »

Once Upon a Time, a Mendicant Professor in Singapore: Remembering the Enright Affair (November 1960)

Edgar Liao

---

Few young Singaporeans today would know of Dennis Joseph Enright, a name that might ring only faint bells to some from older generation. As Professor of English at the University of Malaya in Singapore, he had taught for a decade between 1960 and 1970. Enright is inadvertently remembered for his role as key antagonist in the conflict with PAP ministers Ahmad Ibrahim, S. Rajaratnam, and eventually Lee Kuan Yew, over his alleged criticisms of the newly-enthroned PAP government’s cultural policies in November 1960, published in then colonial-owned Straits Times.

Read Full Post »

Education at Large: An Exhibition on Student Activities and Activism In Singapore, 1945-1965

Event announcement by Francis Lim Khek Gee
Organised by The Tangent
Nov-Dec 2007, Singapore Management University

Exhibition blog archive

---

In a recent roundtable on ‘Rethinking Singapore History’, a junior college student posed a poignant question that might be regarded as both an indictment and a rallying cry: why is it that, for such a long time, there has been a paucity of historical work that move beyond, or challenge, the dominant state narrative of the ‘Singapore Story’?

Read Full Post »