A thirst for learning

A thirst for learning and a relentless drive to improve. He learned how to use the computer at age 70.

At 19, Mr Lee Kuan Yew taught himself Mandarin through two sets of books “Mandarin Made Easy” by Chiang Ker Chiu, and a 4-volume booklet produced by the Prinsep Street Chinese School, teaching Chinese through English. 

In 6 months, he had learned to write 2,000 characters, and understand their meanings as individual words and in some phrases. But he could not speak Mandarin.

In the 1955 general elections where he contested in Tanjong Pagar.he made his first speech in Mandarin.

I got a friendly reporter from Sin Pao, Jek Yeun Thong, to write him a 1-page speech.

He spoke to a crowd of over 20,000 people and was barely understood. But the crowd was with him and they cheered me.

Elected as an Assemblyman and being Secretary-General of People’s Action Party, he decided to learn Mandarin, both spoken and written, so that he could understand and speak to the people around him

He studied for 1 hour every day during lunch. His teacher was a young pro-communist activist from his branch. The text books were Marxism made easy in Chinese.

By the May 1959 general elections, 4 years after his first Mandarin speech at Kreta Ayer, he was able to make Mandarin speeches off the cuff.

In 1961 PAP’s best Hokkien speaker, Ong Eng Guan resigned his seat in Hong Lim.

" Goh Keng Swee came to see me in my office at the City Hall, dolefully, he looked me in the eye and said, 'Learn Hokkien, you be our Hokkien speaker, no other way'. I did so, furiously and assiduously, spending 1-2 hours a day in between my work as PM.

After a few weeks I made my first Hokkien speech based on my Mandarin and the snatches of Hokkien I remembered from my youth.

My teacher was Radio Singapore producer of Hokkien programmes, Seah Cheng Tit. His enthusiasm and skills plus my determination and total concentration, made for progress.

My first street rally in China Street was unforgettable. The little kids around the lorry from which I spoke, laughed hilariously as I spoke in Hokkien.

I took them seriously. I said, children don’t laugh I want to learn in order to speak to you because I have something important to say to you. At the end of 3 months by polling day of that by-election campaign I had mastered enough basic Hokkien to stop them laughing at me." - Lee Kuan Yew, speech in Parliament, 24 Nov 2004