Seeking Singapore schools, meeting hostility
By Jane Perlez
New York Times
Tuesday, September 23, 2003

SINGAPORE: Propelled by his parents' ambitions, Han Weiding, 13, left
behind all that he knew in China and decamped this summer with his mother
to this city-state to go to school.

In a cramped apartment, he struggles with English homework. After two
months, the television cartoons are still unintelligible to him, and his
ultimate goal of fluent English seems frustratingly far away. His mother, a
poorly educated woman, remains without a job.

In the past several years, thousands of Chinese women - no one is quite
sure of the precise number - have brought their children for schooling to
Singapore, where the first language is English but where the population is
dominated by descendants of scrappy immigrants who fled the Chinese
mainland generations ago.

Officially, the students and their mothers have been welcomed: The vigilant
Singaporean government grants them official documents on arrival. But
elsewhere, the reception has been chilly, with scarce work for the women
and rude remarks about their true intentions.

In many ways, the reaction to the newcomers reflects the anxieties that
glittering but stagnant Singapore feels as it meets aspiring and
fast-growing China.

For years, Lee Kwan Yew, the founder of modern Singapore and now its elder
statesman, warned his people that their ancestral homeland - "the dragon
with a long tail," he called it - would inevitably become a force to be
reckoned with.

As that reality sets in, Singapore has been taking steps to cash in on
China's relatively new riches.

China is now one of Singapore's biggest export markets. Affluent, smartly
dressed Chinese tourists come here to shop, dropping thousands of dollars
on branded clothes on just one trip. The Economic Development Board has
announced plans to open a private university and specialist schools in
cooking and hotel management to attract fee-paying Chinese students.

In an effort to raise standards in Singapore's classrooms, the Ministry of
Education has offered scholarships to talented students from China to
attend government primary and secondary schools, and universities.

But for some Singaporeans, the determination of the Chinese to succeed, and
their increasing mobility, represents a threat.

The "study mothers," as the women have been called, are one small but
visible example. A book published last year called "The Crows" describes
the newcomers as women who go into the massage business, sometimes into
prostitution. Newspapers have begun writing about the women as
marriage-breakers.

In reality, the Chinese women, who rarely speak English, find it tough to
find work in the recession-plagued economy, said Chen Hua, 35, who came to
Singapore two years ago and has written a book defending the women. If they
do find jobs, they are often accused of elbowing aside Singaporeans. They
find affordable accommodations scarce.

"A lot of the mothers come from the provinces where people do not speak
English, and they want their children to be able to listen to English all
around them and to learn it," said Chen, who arrived with the same goals as
the "study mothers" but has the advantage of a well-to-do husband to
support her and her two children.

"When they get here, the mothers often do not know there will be a lot of
extra expenses for tuition," Chen said. "They don't know how expensive an
apartment will be, or how hard it will be to get a job."

At fault, she said, are unscrupulous agents who place advertisements in
Chinese newspapers with glowing promises of well-paid jobs and easily
affordable schooling. The agents prey on the desire of Chinese parents to
make sure their children get the best, she said.

Also, the Singapore government should be more understanding, Chen said.
Last month, for example, the Ministry of Manpower issued guidelines
restricting the hiring of women from China in the hotel, restaurant and
massage parlor industries.

But as tough as life might be for the newly arrived mothers, they seem
determined to hang on.

Shao Lin Yun, 39, Weiding's mother, delivered newspapers in their hometown
on the Chinese island of Hainan, where her husband is a shrimp farmer. In
Singapore, she found a job washing cars but was soon fired. She depended on
remittances from her husband to pay for their son's tuition.

"The education system in China is good," she said. "But the purpose of
coming here is for my son to learn English." When he returns to China after
high school, she said, he will have an advantage.

An even more enterprising mother, Yang Fang, 32, from Shanghai, has already
moved her son, Qian Qikai, 9, who has mastered colloquial English, from one
Singapore primary school to a better one. Her son's new school, Bukit View
East, agreed that he could skip the third grade, she said.

Yang was agitated, however, because the very top school ended up not being
open to her son. The agent in Shanghai had told her that Qikai would be
able to sit for the entrance exam to the elite Henry Park Primary School,
one of the most sought after primary schools in Singapore. That turned out
not to be possible.

But she seems undeterred by the rejection. When asked what's next for Qikai
after school in Singapore, she replied, "America."

The New York Times