In His Words 他说的话

My story here starts in the year 1954, months before Singapore’s first Legislative Assembly Elections in 1955 when Lee Kuan Yew won his seat in Tanjong Pagar. I was then 16 years old, a secondary student at Singapore’s Victoria School, then located at Jalan Besar. I stayed in Chinatown’s Jiak Chuan Street within walking distance from Tanjong Pagar. Every day I had to travel by public bus transport to and from school.

“I was told that you give tuition in School Mathematics,” a stranger in his thirties confronted me while I was walking towards Tanjong Pagar’s Yan Kit Swimming Pool for my daily swim plus bath. I was staying at my grandmother’s house and to save the water consumed in the house, I was urged to have my baths at the public pool costing ten cents of my hard-earned money giving Maths tuition.

“Yes,” I softly replied.

“Then I want you to teach my two sons their Maths,” came the stranger’s reply. That was how I got involved in working for the ‘zero eight’ gangsters’ den located at Kreta Ayer Street.

Modern Singapore’s early days: LKY’s words: https://youtu.be/DdUcKBkYRzM

During the next two years, I found myself doing a lot of organizing activities for the ‘zero eight’ group.

Every time any Peoples Action Party candidates had a public rally, members of the ‘zero eight’ group had to do the job of erecting the public podium, of setting up the public address system and I headed a group of boys to round up as many attendees as we could master or coerced. We did the running around knocking on doors of houses and on businesses. We cold-called. There were no mobile phones in those days and no home phones either. Businesses had phones at their shopfronts - you know those types of phones where one had to put a ten-cent coin to talk for five minutes. We bullied the businesses to let us use their business phones for free to do our work of ‘hiring a crowd’.

 “This morning with a new constitution promulgated we begin a new chapter in the history of Singapore.  We the people of Singapore have decided to run the affairs of Singapore.  Unlike the previous rulers, we have no compensation or abolition terms. Unlike the previous local ministers, we have no iron mines to provide for a rainy day. We have no personal future apart from your future, your joys, and your sorrows. We share the same future.” 

Lee Kuan Yew blared into the public address system. His speech was clear, his English Language perfect. We (meaning those students in English Stream Schools) were mesmerised. A leader was born, I forced the members of my groups to agree even if they did not understand a word of the message until Lee Kuan Yew continued to speak in the Hokkien dialect.

“This is my country this is my life, this is my people. “

Fast forward to the years 1959. I got through the Cambridge School Certificate the previous year and I was studying at the Singapore Teachers College, Paterson Road when I received this call to the Office of the Public Service Commission. “Is that you, Lai Pang Fee?” “Yes,” I replied in my Singlish (Singapore English). “Please come into this office as soon as possible.”

By 1962, I studied and passed the First Professional Examination of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS). A year later, I was at London’s College of Estate Management, doing the RICS Examinations and working for the London Borough of Southwark as a Property Valuer.

“Buck up, Shut up and come back as soon as you qualified as a Chartered Surveyor,” came the sharp reply of Chan, the Public Services Commissioner of Singapore who happened to be in London at the time when I was about to qualify in 1965.

I was saddened by the news that Singapore had broken away from Malaysia to form a separate nation. “How could we survive?” I wondered. “What was my future?”

“We will never run away from a fight and never will. This is the only country we have.  I say to them they can chase out the British governors because they can all retire with good pensions in Britain but they can’t chase us out because we have nowhere else to go.  We will fight.  So I say over the next few weeks as you see how things progress, remember is the ultimate fight is between the Communists and those who can put up a challenge and give them a run for their money.”

From the year 1966 to the year 1969, I was a civil servant, working to ensure the PAP Government’s projects like those public housing projects in New Towns, the East Coast Reclamation, the Mass Transit Train System and the Tourism Spots at Sentosa, all proceeded within budgets and on time.

“The opposition says yes they are grassroots too.  But words can convey a whole wealth of meaning which,  unless you’ve been through it unless you have seen it, does not have that resonance, does not conjure up in your mind the real significance of what you mean by grassroots.  I don’t have to go down to my constituency every month, or every week. I go there maybe once a year because I’ve been there for 25 years and I’ve seen their successful children leave and I meet them when I visit the new towns.”

“Deng Xiaoping is a great man he fought a great revolution he saw the product of that revolution turn sour.  He was fortunate to live long enough and he had the courage to say “No we change course.  Let us learn and stop trying to do everything by ourselves.”  So they started importing and buying Boeing 707s and Tridents instead of trying to manufacture their own aircrafts.   That is also how we succeeded because we have open minds, common sense, a lot of analysis, careful weighing of the odds, make a firm decision, monitor, implement, modify as it goes wrong, abandon if it is no good.” 

By 1970, I was out of the public service into the private sector but, like all other civil service personnel before me, I did keep close relationships with the civil service and with the politicians.

我的故事始于1954年，紧随1955年新加坡立法议会选举李光耀在丹戎巴葛（Tanjong Pagar）赢得席位后不久。我当时16岁，当时是新加坡维多利亚学校的一名中学生，当时位于惹兰勿刹。我住在唐人街的角川街，步行即可到达Tanjong Pagar。每天我都必须乘坐公共巴士往返学校。

Above: A young Lee Kuan Yew with the then Prime Minister of Singapore, Mr David Marshall.

上图：年轻的李光耀与当时的新加坡总理戴维·马歇尔（David Marshall）先生。

“我知到您有教补习数学课程。” 三十多岁的一个陌生人在我走向丹戎巴葛的Yan Kit游泳池步行时说。 我每天都要游泳和洗澡。我当时住在祖母的房子里，为了节省房子里的水费，我被敦促在公共游泳池里洗个澡，花掉我辛辛苦苦赚来的补习钱。
“是的。” 我轻声回答。
“然后我要你教我的两个儿子他们的数学，” 陌生人回信。这就是我参与为位于克雷塔·艾尔街（Kreta Ayer Street）的“零八”黑帮老大工作的开起。

在接下来的两年中，我为“零八”小组做了很多组织活动。
每次人民行动党候选人举行公开集会时，“零八”小组的成员都必须建立公共讲台，建立公共广播系统，而我率领一群男孩围捕尽可能多的人。我们可以掌握或强迫的参加者。我们四处奔走敲敲房屋和企业的门。我们打了个电话。那时没有手机，也没有家用电话。企业在店面拥有电话-您知道这类电话必须放10美分硬币才能通话五分钟。我们欺负了企业，让我们免费使用其商务电话来开展“招募人群”工作。

“今天早上颁布了新宪法，我们开始了新加坡历史的新篇章。我们新加坡人民决定管理新加坡事务。与以前的统治者不同，我们没有赔偿或废除条款。与以前的当地人不同部长们，我们没有供下雨天的铁矿。除了您的未来，您的喜悦和悲伤之外，我们没有个人的未来。我们拥有相同的未来。”
李光耀（Lee Kuan Yew）陷入了公共广播系统。他的讲话很清晰，英语很完美。我们（英语流派学校的那些学生）着迷了。一位领导者出生了，我强迫我的小组成员同意，即使他们不理解消息的意思，直到李光耀继续用福建话说才明白。
“这是我的国家，这是我的生活，这是我的人民。”

快进到1959年。前一年，我获得了剑桥学校证书，当我接到公共服务委员会办公室的电话时，我正在新加坡帕特森路的教师学院学习。 “是你吗，黎鹏飞？” “是的。” 我用新加坡语（新加坡英语）回答。 “请尽快到这个办公室来。”
到1962年，我学习并通过了英国皇家特许测量师学会（RICS）的第一次专业考试。一年后，我在伦敦的房地产管理学院进行RICS考试，并在Southwark伦敦自治市镇担任房地产估价师。

新加坡的公共服务专员成陈先生（Chan）敏锐地回答说：“加紧，闭嘴，等你有资格获得特许测量师资格后再回来。” 他正好在1965年恰好在伦敦。
令我感到难过的是，新加坡脱离了马来西亚，组成了一个独立的国家。 “我们如何生存？”我想知道“ “我的未来是什么？”
“我们永远不会逃避斗争，永远也不会。这是我们拥有的唯一国家。我对他们说，他们可以赶出英国州长，因为他们都可以在英国获得良好的退休金退休，但他们不能将我们赶出去因为我们无处可去，我们将继续战斗。所以我在接下来的几周中说，当您看到事态发展时，请记住，共产党人和那些可以挑战并为他们争取竞争的人之间的最终斗争是他们的钱。” 

从1966年到1969年，我是一名公务员，致力于确保人民行动党政府的项目（如新市镇，东海岸填海区，地下铁路系统和圣淘沙旅游胜地的公共住房项目）全部进行在预算范围内按时。

“反对派也说他们也是基层。但是言语可以传达全部含义，除非您经历过它，除非您已经看到它，否则就不会产生共鸣，也不会在脑海中浮现出真正的意义。代表了基层的意思。我不必每个月或每周去参加我的选区。我可能每年一次去那里，因为我已经在那里住了25年了，而且我已经看到他们成功的孩子们离开了当我参观新市镇时，我遇到了他们。”

“邓小平是一个伟大的人，他进行了一场伟大的革命，他看到了这场革命的产物变酸了。他很幸运地活了足够长的时间，并且他有勇气说：“不，我们改变路线。因此，他们开始进口和购买波音707和三叉戟飞机，而不是尝试自己制造飞机。这也是我们成功的原因，因为我们有开阔的胸怀，常识和很多分析，仔细权衡赔率，做出坚定的决定，监视，实施，在出现问题时进行修改，如果不好则放弃。”

到1970年，我已经脱离公职而进入私营部门，但是像我之前的所有其他公务员一样，我确实与公务员和政治人物保持着密切的关系。