Education-at-large: Student Life & Activities in Singapore 1945-1965 by Siao See Teng & Cheow Thia Chan & Huay Leng Lee

Author:Siao See Teng & Cheow Thia Chan & Huay Leng Lee [Teng, Siao See & Chan, Cheow Thia & Lee, Huay Leng]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

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1 A lively variety stage show, including songs, dances and dramatic skits often comedic in nature, which were held every night at the Gay World, the Great World and the World Amusement Park in the 1950s.

2 Not long after World War Two ended, salacious novels published in Hong Kong and Singapore started to pervade the society, novels with American and Japanese prurient films, tabloids and striptease performances of similar nature, such novels are collectively referred to as “yellow culture”. In October 1953, a St Anthony Girls’ School student, Chong Geok Tin, was robbed, raped and murdered. This was regarded to be the poisonous outcome of yellow culture. Students of Chung Cheng High (Branch) later organised a talk on this, which was covered in the press, sparking off a strong “Anti-Yellow Culture Movement”. Through discourses and printed publicity materials, students called for the demise of yellow culture. They also promoted “healthy culture” to the public through theatre and various cultural programs.

3 A director at Chang Feng Xin (short for three film companies; Chang Cheng or Great Wall Movie Enterprises Ltd., Feng Huang or Phoenix Motion Picture Company and Xin Lian).

4 In 1948, the Malayan Communist Party gave up peaceful resistance and turned to guerilla warfare against the British colonial government, operating from the forests of the entire Malayan Peninsula. To deal with this guerilla warfare, the British colonial government declared a State of Emergency in the entire country. Under the emergency law, the government could arrest anyone suspected to be involved in communist activities at any time. The British troops could also search residences, shift residents to new villages and surround the villages suspected to be assisting communist terrorists. After the emergency law was amended in 1960, it was renamed the “Internal Security Act”.

5 Fang Chuang Pi was born in 1924. After graduating from the Chinese High School, he worked as a journalist with the Nan Chiau Jit Pao and later became the editor of The Freedom News, the key mouthpiece of the Singapore branch of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP). In 1950, through the recommendation of Eu Chooi Yip, Fang officially joined MCP. In the early 1950s, the Municipal Committee of the MCP was arrested, dealing a huge blow to the Student Movement Committee, Labour Movement Committee and the armed forces. Nevertheless, after the June 20 event, the units under the leadership of these various committees managed to survive by avoiding face-to-face meetings and maintaining contact with correspondents through secret underground networks. Fang and Eu assumed leadership after they re-established contact with the correspondent of The Freedom News. In 1953, Eu moved to Indonesia and Fang later became the de facto leader of the MCP in Singapore. During the late 1950s, Fang met up secretly for several times with Lee Kuan Yew, the then Secretary General of the People’s Action Party, to request for collaboration. Lee called him the authoritative MCP representative. Fang later escaped to Indonesia for 10 years and participated in guerilla warfare at the Thai-Malaysian bordering forests in the late 1970s.

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