诚·毅, Sincerity and Perseverance. These are the school values of my school, Nan Chiau High School. For the past three years, I have been at the school, I've always wondered "why specifically these two values?" It wasn't just this question too, I had countless questions about why the school was run in such a way, "why is Chinese so important in this school, what's the big deal with the history of our school?" Coming from a neighbourhood primary school, suddenly being bombarded with the history and culture of my new school was quite a shock. Thus when the opportunity arose to visit the hometown of my school's founder and answer those burning questions in my mind, I leapt on the chance to do so.
Let's begin on a short backstory on my school's founder, Mr Tan Kah Kee. Born in the Fujian Province of Xiamen in 1874, he was a strongly respected man both in Singapore and in China. He set up many schools ranging from Hwa Chong Institution to my school, Nan Chiau High. There's a statue of him at the main gate of the school.
Roots, Routes and Shoots is the name of the trip. To sign up for this overseas trip, each interested candidate had to interview our parents and grandparents to find out our ancestral heritage. Following that, we had to prepare a presentation and also get ready for an interview. I prepared a presentation on my heritage and how my great grandparents took a ship over to Singapore from mainland China. The interview was conducted by the teachers in charge, Mr Tan Han Xiong, Mdm Anna Yap and Mr Fu Kaidi. The interview went like a breeze, the questions were mainly about the heritage we presented and some questions to find out more about my character. The highlight of this interview was probably when I used the differences between Teochew porridge and Hokkien porridge to answer a question, it made the teachers laugh. I took that opportunity to find out some of the others who had signed up for this trip as well.
I didn't hear from the teachers for some time, we took our PA2 examinations and I wasn't thinking much about the trip. However, one random school day, Mr Fu came over to my class, and he called out 2 of my classmates and I. Valda, Audrey and I weren't sure what it was about as by this time we had kinda forgotten about the trip. When Mr Fu broke the news to us that we were indeed selected to partake on this overseas trip to China, I was ecstatic. The thought that I was going overseas with my friends, learning about different cultures, it excited me a lot.
The next few months went by and we heard scattered news on the trip, most of it was admin matters, checking passports, creating a WeChat group etc. Every time I missed a day of school I was so excited that I was worried I'd miss a briefing by the teachers or something. It wasn't until October 16th when all of us who are going for the trip had our first meet up. The teachers gave a briefing on the trip, giving us the details on where we would be going, and the objective of the trip. They passed us the itinerary and consent forms, they also included the date for the parents briefing. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to take part in the parents briefing as I had a youth for causes presentation. The most exciting part about that day was that they revealed our roommates and our groupings for the trip. My roommate was Xander, I wasn't close to him whatsoever then, I felt like he didn't like my group of friends back then too, thus I felt a little daunted and awkward. We didn't have many reasons to talk as our paths never really crossed much before this. I had hoped to be roommates with my Secondary 2 classmates, Yu Jun, Kia Hao or Lok Bin.
The group I was assigned to was also people I'd never really talked to before. We were the "Teochew Group", I'm not sure why we were called that as not all of us were Teochew. Nevertheless, it consisted of Nigel, who I had never spoken much to before this, Jia Xin, who I never even spoke to before, Kiele, who I had only talked to during a few parties and of course, myself. As you can imagine, it started quite awkward. The three of them knew each other already so I was quite the outcast. Before the meeting ended, the teachers instructed each group to produce a video related to our dialect group. We were also supposed to prepare a slideshow with an inquiry question for the trip. There was going to be another meet up on the 7th of November for us to present our videos. And we were off.
November 1st, we spent days trying to find a time to meet up. It took so long that we started to call ourselves "随便组", because of how often we would say 随便 when making a decision. Finally, we decided to meet after their Chinese intensive lesson. I felt it was quite a good bonding session, I managed to fit in well with them and we were all seemingly comfortable with each other. The video we decided on doing was a parody on the popular Youtube show "Food King", which we dubbed, "Food Queen". We went to Compass One and the nearby Kopitiam Square to purchase some Teochew food, which we were going to present in the video. After an adventure trying to locate the food, we made it back to school with one singular spring roll, a bowl of chwee kueh and a bowl of bak chor mee. We wanted to shoot the video at a nice table in our school, however, it started to rain, so our plans had to change, we used the canteen tables. Since the canteen table was all the same level, we had to innovate for our food to be seen. We placed coins on one end of the plates so the food can be displayed. We even made little paper plaques displaying the names of the foods. The filming process, as expected, took forever as we all couldn't stop laughing. After we were done filming, we had to rush to the library to complete the slides. We managed to complete the slides quite quickly, we even designed it to have a theme based on the trip. The inquiry question we initially decided upon was "How Teochews are different compared to other dialect groups?"
7th November came and "随便组" aced our presentation. Just kidding, we stumbled through it and it wasn't all that great. At least the teachers and the rest of them had a good laugh. Each group presented their video and we all managed to learn a little from each dialect group. The teachers went through the rules and etiquette for the trip, they made sure we all knew what we needed to pack and told us the meeting time and location for the big day. After our final meeting ended, I went for lunch with my Secondary 2 classmates and we decided, since the trip was only 3 days away, it was time to stock up. We went to the dollar store and bought instant noodles for each of us. We bought a packet of coffee for us to share and we were ready for the trip.
The big day was here,
10th November, Day 1. You know that feeling of excitement that makes you not able to fall asleep, yea I had that. I barely slept when my alarm clock rang at 4 am. I got myself ready and by 5.30 am I was at the Changi airport terminal 1 already. I decided to turn up early so I could have some breakfast before leaving. As I sat down at Burger King, I reminisced on the last time I was here, it was to send my friend off to America. As the meeting time came nearer, more and more people started to arrive. I first saw Xin Yu at Burger King, then when I went to the meeting location in front of the check-in point, everyone slowly started pouring in. We were given tags for our luggage and also our plane tickets. We checked in, had a final briefing by our vice-principal, Mr Ng, and we said our final farewells to our parents. Then all 22 of us were off, on our journey to Xiamen, China. Before boarding the plane, our teachers allowed us to have some time to walk around the airport, go to the washroom etc. We just had to assemble back by their stipulated time. Somehow, my friends and I ended up at the airport swimming pool? We didn't even know there was one.
Not long after, we boarded the plane. It was a Xiamen Airlines plane and the seats were in threes. I sat at the aisle seat, together with Wei Xuan and Zi Hao. It was a 4 hour and 15 minutes ride there, there wasn't any inflight entertainment, so we had to find ways to entertain ourselves. Some highlights were when we played with Wei Xuan's ringtones, messed around with Snapchat filters and of course, most of us slept for a while. Some food and drinks were provided on the flight, they were decent, except the milk. For some reason, Zi Hao and I ordered hot milk and it tasted horrible, like powdered milk which didn't mix properly. Funny enough, Xin Yu slept through the entire flight, missing breakfast completely.
1.10 pm. Touchdown. We arrived at Xiamen Gaoqi International Airport. After exiting the airport, the first thing I could remember wasn't the cooling weather, instead, it was the pungent smell of cigarettes. It went away after we walked towards our bus. The whole time while we loaded our luggage in the bus and headed off for our lunch, I was trying to get my VPN to work. China has many apps that are banned, ranging from Instagram to WhatsApp, thus we had to use a VPN to bypass that.
We began the trip by having lunch at a restaurant. It will dawn on me quite soon that most of the food I eat on this trip was going to be the same, rice, many many dishes of vegetables, fish and so on. Interestingly, since Audrey was vegetarian, they prepared a whole separate set of food for her. It was a lot for one person to finish, thus we always had to eat some of her food. I think we were well fed during this trip. During this meal was also when we started our tradition of toasting our drinks before every meal.
After lunch, we headed towards Quanzhou to visit the Maritime Museum. It was an hour-long bus ride and it allowed me to witness the architecture of the area. By the time we had reached Quanzhou, the museum closed, so we decided to head to the Islamic Holy Tombs instead. It was a blessing in disguise as it lets us experience the cooling weather and beautiful sunset first hand. There was this huge rock that was impossible to push over, despite leaning over the edge. We all tried to push it and indeed we couldn't do it. It was funny to see us try though. Afterwards, we headed towards our humble abode for the night. We checked in at the Quanzhou Chinese Overseas Hotel, we settled down in our respective rooms with our roommates and then we headed down for dinner. Something hilarious happened during dinner when Yu Jun was trying to ask the waiter for salt however the waiter misunderstood and thought he wanted to find a cigarette. Before lights off, we had to do our daily reflections, we all managed to share what we observed so far. This was also the first night we had decided to sneak into each other's rooms, so it was fun. We played a lot of crazy games and bonded together.
11th November, Day 2. Most of us didn't get much sleep, we hung out till late into the night. There was complimentary breakfast that most of us woke up to have though. Day 2 was more slack, the day was filled by visiting temples. We visited the Kaiyuan Temple, Thean Hou Temple, Qingjing Mosque and the Confucius Temple. At the Confucius Temple, we learnt values that were passed down over generations and aptly prayed for better grades. We finished our daily task quite early on thus we could have a short rest at our hotel at around 4 pm. Following that, our teachers allowed us to go to a mall to stock up. We only had 1 hour, thus we had to make it quick. I was enamoured by all the unique things supermarkets there sold. I bought some instant noodles and also a pack of eggs. My friends and I were going to cook the eggs with our instant noodles using boiling water. The queue was quite long so we barely made it back to the gathering point in time, we had to make a mad dash for it. The day would end like how we ended every other, enjoying a bowl of instant noodles for supper and sneaking over to each other's room.
12th November, Day 3. This was our last day in Quanzhou, so we had to pack up our luggage and check out. I overslept on this day so being late was not fun. On this day, we started by visiting Mount Jiuri to see the Qi Feng Inscriptions. We had spare time there and we used that time to interview our tour guide and enjoy the rich culture surrounding us. The Museum for Fujian-Taiwan Kinship and the Quanzhou Museum was next. We learnt a lot about how our ancestors migrated from China over to Singapore and so on. This was also where we found the story of our founder, Mr Tan Kah Kee and we even found our school flag. The teachers allowed us to free roam the museum, thus we explored all the interesting areas, even on the second floor. There was this exhibit that was filled with wax figures and it scared us when we first walked inside.
After that, we took a short stroll at Mount Qingyuan, to visit the statue of Lao-Tze. Lastly, we finally went over to the Maritime Museum, which turned out to be a good summary of the different places that we’ve been to for the past few days. It allowed us to link the migratory routes of ancestors to the things we've learnt at the museums and temples. This museum was especially cool as there was a huge replica ship inside it. As the sky morphed from a vibrant light blue to as gradient of orange and purple, it was time to head back to Xiamen and say farewell to Quanzhou. The hotel we were checking into this time was much more extravagant, it was a 4-star hotel! We checked into Xiamen Park City Hotel, where we would be staying for the rest of our trip. As per normal, we had dinner at the hotel, had our daily reflections and so on.
13th November, Day 4. This was probably the most memorable day of them all. Rise and Shine came early today as we were heading to Yongding to visit the Yongding Tulou Cluster. It was a 3-hour trip, so our teachers brought us to a coffee place, in case we needed it. I tried to buy a hot mocha, yet my aptitude in the Chinese language failed me once again. I had no idea what type of coffee I ended up ordering, it was bitter, to say the least. After the long bus ride, we made it to Yongding. Interestingly enough, we saw the other group of Nan Chiau students visiting Xiamen there too. Thousands of kilometres from home yet we still stumbled upon each other. It was so enlightening to see their way of life, living in such unique buildings.
Our tour guide lived in the Tulou Cluster, thus she brought us to her place to treat us some tea. It was an eye-opening experience to see how people lived outside of the bustling cities. My group interviewed some of the people there so we could understand more about them too. After that wonderful time spent at the Tulou Cluster, another 3-hour bus ride awaited us to return to Xiamen. It was truly a race for time as the sun was setting and we had still yet to have dinner, there were also more activities that we had not done yet.
That long wait was worth it though, the dinner we had that day was probably the best one of the whole trip. There was fried prawns, braised pork, it was scrumptious. We rushed off to Zhongshan Road immediately after. This was a renowned shopping district where we could find all sorts of things. Honestly, to me, it was rather disappointing as I had hoped to find interesting memorabilia I could buy, however, it was filled with branded items. We walked around the different shops, but in the end, I didn't buy anything. The night was still young, our teachers brought us to the nearby shopping mall beside our hotel, and let us go shopping for 1 hour. That was so fun, we rushed to buy Koi, stock up on groceries and so in, it felt like a scavenger hunt. I bought a cup of mango Yakult at Koi, and I would never forget it as little did I know, Singapore doesn't sell the mango variety, leaving me craving it to this day. Anyways, that was a tiring day, thus we had a short reflection session. Of course, the day would end with us sneaking to each other's rooms again.
14th November, Day 5. This was the day it dawned on me, the trip was ending soon. Technically we had another 3 days, however, the last one was just our flight back. On this day, I felt like a tourist. We took a ferry to Gulang Island and visited the many landmarks of the island. It felt like we were heading to Sentosa. We visited Shuzhuang Garden, the Piano Museum and the Haoyue Garden. Our teachers even let us buy fast-food for lunch. I was able to observe the differences between the fast-food in China and those in Singapore. Can you believe it, KFC in Xiamen sells bubble tea! That was a major highlight of my trip there.
We spent the rest of the day learning more about our founder, Mr Tan Kah Kee. We visited the Xiamen JiMei Village, which includes Ao Yuan, Tan Kah Kee Memorial Hall, Gui Lai Tang and Tan Kah Kee Former Residence. The whole experience there was so insightful, learning more about not just Mr Tan Kah Kee's importance to my school, but also towards the community in Xiamen. The most memorable part was when we tried filming our video on Mr Tan Kah Kee, our camera kept getting knocked over due to the wind being super strong. The sun dissolved into an array of vibrant colours once more, indicating the closing of our second last full day in Xiamen.
15th November, Day 6. Our last full day. This day I put close to my heart, I knew our time together was coming to a close. I was tired, but I didn't let this deter me from having fun today. We started the day by visiting the Overseas Chinese Museum. Learning more about ethnic Chinese living abroad.
We then enjoyed a campus visit to Xiamen University, the school Mr Tan Kah Kee had also founded. My friends and I walked across a long tunnel, nearly 1 kilometre long. It was filled with beautiful graffiti. As we walked, we took it all in, the vibe of just us walking across this tunnel together, enjoying our final day together was immaculate.
There was a small shop at the University too. My group took this opportunity to buy matching shirts for each other, so we would always remember this trip and our bond together. The students there were friendly and even let all of us put on graduation robes, as though we were graduating from school. We went to the school field and took pictures, we weren't going to have many chances to do so after today. The student volunteer played bonding games with us.
As the sun cast its golden rays on us, a wonderful blend of purple, pink and orange painted the sky. We all held hands in a circle, acknowledging, this trip was coming to an end. I couldn't have asked for a better ending. Eventually, it was time to leave Xiamen University. The memories we made here will never be forgotten, etched into our memories like the inscriptions we saw on the mountain. Under the moonlight, we had our final dinner together at the NanPuTuo Temple vegetarian restaurant. We were joined by the other group from Nan Chiau that was in Xiamen. That day's toast of our drinks was different, we did it as loud and as long as we could. There wasn't going to be another time, the last toast. We ended off the day like how we always did, reflections. That day was also different though, it was the encapsulation of everything we learnt on this trip. Of course, that day we sneaked into each other's room too. Initially, we planned on pulling an all-nighter, enjoying our last moments together. The past few nights of 4-5 hours of sleep wasn't doing us any favours though. We all knocked out, one by one. I slept for nearly an hour and I didn't even realize. And that was it. Last full day over.
16th November, Day 7. It was the day I never wanted to arrive. The past 6 days were probably the best I've had in the entire year. The fun we had, the memories we made, I'll miss it all. We packed our luggage, saying farewell. We got to the airport, bid farewell once again to our tour guide. After a short wait at the airport where we all slept, it was time to go. We got on board the plane. As I watched the place that had given me so much over the past few days fade into the distance, I felt sad. Would this trip mean as much to the rest as it does to me? I mostly slept throughout the flight, finally feeling the exhaustion of the past 6 days. Somehow, when we arrived in Singapore, Lok Bin left his passport on the plane. Due to that, there wasn't much of a dismissal from the airport. One by one we slowly left. That was it. The trip was over. My friends and I went to have Shake Shack later on, however, that was really it. It felt amazing that I had even gone for that trip, but I felt a sense of longing, to go back and experience it all over again.
3 months later, we were called upon for one final time. We were to present our trip to the school. We collated the videos and interviews we had filmed from the trip and made a video for the students to enjoy.
I want to thank everyone who went on the trip for making it so memorable and fun. I want to thank the teachers for giving us the freedom to have this fun. Lastly, I want to show my gratitude over being selected for this trip, not only for being given the opportunity to learn more about my culture but also because of the memories I made.
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