My Alma Mater

My father and all my siblings and I went to the same school, Chiang Kai Shek College in Manila, Philippines. The school was named after General Chiang Kai Shek later became the President of Republic of China.

As I look at this picture of the old building, I have many fond memories. It seems to make me feel younger!

I started going to Chiang Kai Shek College in 1966 when I was 5 years old. The building was still there when I visited this summer. In fact we were able to locate a teacher who retired already but went back to help out. One clear memory of my days during kindergarten was walking to this old building and sat side by side with the first graders. They were getting us ready for elementary school. In kindergarten, we started learning Chinese characters, learning them in both Mandarin and Hokkien.

Most of my elementary day classrooms were in that building. I remember the library which was on the second floor towards the right corner. At that time, we each have a library card. The most fun I had was to get a new card because I borrowed so many books. I read Sherlock Holmes in Chinese and many other well known Chinese novels like the Journey to the West.

From elementary school on, we had English class in the morning and Chinese class in the afternoon. After school, I would have two sets of home work to do. I would always do the Chinese ones first. Memorization is a big part of our Chinese education. the teacher would ask us to stand in front of the class and memorize a certain paragraph from the book. The test also includes writing out certain paragraphs. Most of the time, we had double exposure, meaning learning algebra in English in the morning and the same subject in Chinese in the afternoon.

A favorite game at that time is called sipa. In China, they used feather. In the Philippines, we used a corduroy like thread attached to a tin washer. During recess, even when it is only 15 minutes, we would race down to the playground and play a game. Usually it was a group against a different group. A person would kick the sipa twice where on the second kick, he would pass it to the other team. Someone in the other team would have to catch it either with the inner shoe or the thigh, then on the second kick, pass it to the opponent. If anyone misses the catch, it was a point against them. It was always fun to play except that I would ruin my leather shoes early. When it is time to get a new pair, dad was not very happy!