Mr. Siew, my Chinese and Art teacher

My Sec. 2 Chinese and Art teacher was a certain Mr. Siew (real surname). He had a very queer teaching style that made him popular amongst some students and much hated by the others. You either loved him or loathed him. I belonged to the latter group. This, despite him never ever having a chance to punish or insult (more on this below) me.

His chinese lessons comprised mainly of storytelling. Lots of it. Us students called it "talk cock" session. He would just tell us silly sarcastic story after silly sarcastic story. That was fine by us, except that the sarcasm were mostly directed towards us students and Singapore (as in the country).

If it was directed towards us, it would be indirect jibes at our "poor and still dropping Chinese standards". Hardly anything to fire up our waning interests in Chinese.

If it was directed at the country, it would be usually something to put down our country's achievements. For example, there was once he was talking about a newspaper report on Asia's four dragons, namely Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Korea (remember that those were the heady years when we were still getting 10% annual GDP growth), upon which he stood up, did a tail imitation with his hand against his jutted out butt, and said (he had a high pitched squeally voice),

“新加坡亞洲四小龍？！龍尾吧！”

The whole class went quiet. I myself was bristling and would have loved to retort，

“老師，您對新加坡這麽不滿，爲什麽不移民呢？”

But I didn't dare to. I SHOULD HAVE. Till today, I sometimes wonder what his reaction would be if I had.

This is one of the milder examples, by the way. But strangely, it is also the one that left the deepest impression in me.

Now, don't get me wrong. I am not a super duper patriotic Singaporean. Actually, I am not even sure if I can be called patriotic. But to hear a teacher, a TEACHER, put down your own country like that really touched a raw nerve.

His arts and craft lesson comprised of more sarcasm too. It was fairly obvious that he was not really trained to teach art. So he made up for it with a huge amount of sarcasm for our artwork. Many a classmate of mine had suffered the humiliating fate of having his work thrown out of the classroom and if his throw was strong enough, DOWNSTAIRS onto the school porch.

I was lucky in that it never happened to me. I may not sound it, but my artwork was, and hopefully still is, pretty good. I have quite nifty hands and it runs in the family. He had therefore no reason to insult my work nor throw it out. Instead, I got praise for it, albeit in a very roundabout manner,

“你們的作品這麽差，我只好把最好的擺外面才走出課室。如果別的老師問我的話，我就說這是班上最差的。”

More often than not, he would pick my work to do a "live" demo as he told this insult for the umpteenth time. And I certainly didn't see it as praise for my work as well.

Needless to say, I was really glad to move into Sec. 3 and leave Mr. Siew behind in Sec. 2.


Mr. Siew, if I had learnt anything from you, it is not properly spoken or written chinese nor lovely artwork. Instead, it is a reminder that I should never ever grow up to become a bitter person like you. I'm glad I didn't turn out to be anywhere near to being like you.