The Inquirer – Grace Shangkuan Koo
“I REMEMBER my first day in Kindergarten when we learned Mandarin. The first lessons went: rensilang; shousichiu; tian sitsan … We were learning the first three vocabulary words: ren (man), shou (hand), tian (rice field). Each character was first spoken in Mandarin followed immediately by Hokkien, which was familiar to us at home. Even today I can still recite these words and continue on until the 20th word. I could even hear the sound of us children reciting together in tempo. And that was our book in Kindergarten I—the first time we were in school at age 5.”(more)