Ask any purely Chinese educated Chinese citizen what his number one political concern is, and he will tell you it's the issue of Chinese education. The Chinese language is the number one anchor of his identity as a Chinese Malaysian.

malaysian chinese community people 170807 child with mother On the other hand, the Chinese person who insists that the existence of Chinese schools is a hurdle towards national unity in Malaysia and should be scrapped is probably wholly educated in English or Bahasa Malaysia, and has never any experience in the Chinese school system. Professor Khoo Kay Kim, who is now advocating the one school stream proposal, probably belongs to this category.

The six years of my primary education was spent in a Chinese primary school in Kuching, and I am eternally grateful to my late mother who sent me there. Though I was transferred to an English medium school for my secondary education, I was able to learn the Chinese language throughout my life on my own.

Today, I still do my mental mathematical calculation in Mandarin on my shopping trips.

From an early age, I read profusely Chinese literature, philosophy and history, not because I was considered a Chinese, but because the Chinese cultural world is an ancient and bountiful treasure trove of fascinating pleasures. Later, I had to make a tremendous effort to write in the Chinese language in order to be a columnist for Sin Chiew Jit Poh and Nanyang Siang Pao for many years, until their fell into Barisan Nasional hands.

My knowledge of the Chinese language does not make me more or less Chinese; in fact, I have problem understanding what being a Chinese means really.

It does make me more Malaysian I suppose, because my mastery of the spoken Malaysian Mandarin makes my Malaysian identity stand out, whenever I encounter spoken Mandarin from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and different parts of Mainland China.

It just goes to show that there is no one Chinese universe that encompasses all the Chinese in the world; there are infinitely numerous Chinese worlds with very many political boundaries, including the Chinese domain where the Chinese do not speak or write the Chinese language.

Mandarin in interior

The Chinese educated Chinese Malaysians sometimes would teasingly or contemptuously call those English educated Chinese "banana man", with yellow outside, but white inside. That is a little unfair, and I will never use the term out of spite. Many of my friends who have been exclusively educated in English in those early years still identify themselves strongly as Malaysian Chinese.

malaysian chinese community people 170807 lantern Nowadays, there are Chinese youths who are entirely educated in the government Bahasa school system, and so are not fluent in either English or Mandarin. If they come from different dialect groups, then their only recourse in communicating with one another is through speaking Bahasa Malaysia. Believe me! I have seen such surreal conversation happening before my eyes.

As for myself, one of the greatest delights in life is to meet an Iban-speaking Chinese from Sarawak, and we strike up a great conversation entirely in Iban, sometimes just to impress those Chinese friends present who know no Iban.

But Sarawak is a weird place where linguistic nationalism may find very infertile ground.

Once I had to attend an Iban festival called Gawai Kelingkang, the first one to be held in Sarawak in living memory. It was organised in a kampung that had just had a battle with some samseng group hired by a plantation company to take away their ancestral land.

During the battle, five of these Chinese gangsters were killed, and so many men - including the village chief the Tuai Rumah - were arrested and detained by the police. The Gawai was a means of invoking the spiritual strength and mobilising the collective resolve of all the villagers.

The Tuai Rumah's daughter - a young and attractive lady - took over her father's function as village chief, and this was not uncommon among the Ibans, for their women enjoy the kind of prestige and power in their community that educated city ladies from other races can only dream of.

She started her speech to welcome her visitors from very faraway corners of Sarawak -- especially her Chinese visitors; I was taken aback because she did this in perfect Sarawak Mandarin.

Malays in Chinese schools

On my way out from the village to the main road on my way home, I went into the kedai kampung for some refreshment. The lady boss asked me why I left the Gawai so early - again in perfect Sarawak mandarin.

I stopped over in Bintulu for a night, and sat down for dinner at a coffee shop. Two Iban girls were engaged in a fist fight over a boy friend some distance from us. "Why did you seduce my boyfriend?" Punch! "He came to me himself without my asking!" Punch! The whole thing was so surreal because they were quarrelling in perfect Sarawak Mandarin.

malaysian chinese community people 170807 market Sarawak is a vast and thinly populated state. There are many rural areas where the only schools available for the rural native people are the Chinese schools. That is why the native parents would send their children to the Chinese schools, where they learn everything from math to geography in Mandarin.

The Chinese people are really generous in raising many millions of funds to run and maintain their Chinese school system. They consider such donations to their beloved Chinese schools as their second tax, the first being the income tax they have to pay to the government.

Apparently, many Malay parents consider these Chinese schools superior to the government public schools. At least, Chinese schools are famed for teaching math and science to their students with outstanding results.

Among the more than 600,000 students in the hundreds of Chinese primary schools throughout Malaysia, 10 percent of them are Malay children. Many have gone on to continue their education in the Chinese independent secondary schools, and a few have gone to study in New Era College. I have taught these Malay students in New Era College.

Nowadays, over 90 percent of Chinese parents send their children to the Chinese primary schools, to have their kids learn Chinese for six years at least. After that it's wait and see, though most of these Chinese school children would go on to the Chinese independent secondary schools. Most of the young Chinese you meet everywhere is likely to be fluent in Mandarin and quite literate in the Chinese language.

Does this fact make them less patriotic to Malaysia?

Politics of race

Like their parents, they would consider Malaysia their homeland, even though -- again like their parents - they know very well they would never get a good job in the public service, or any help from the government in making a living.

But they are Malaysians through and through, and most of them would have a good handle on Bahasa Malaysia to converse with their Malay friends, or conduct business with the government departments.

malaysian chinese community people 170807 sundry shop The Chinese community have made this tremendous contribution to the socio-economic progress to Malaysian nation-building: they have educated millions of school children through their Chinese school system with their own funds and their collective civic efforts without much government funding, assistance, or recognition. They have produced literacy and human resource through their own communal effort.

Now we must confront this question: is the existence of the Chinese school system a hurdle to national unity, and is the one stream proposal of mixing school children of various races in one location a solution to our problem of racial alienation?

The answer is no on both counts.

In our public universities, the students from all races are compelled to study together, but they still do not mix, and often not even sharing the same room in the hostel. Different student groups composed of single racial composition form pact along racial line during election for the student union elections.

No, the root cause of racial disunity and communal tension is not the existence of vernacular schools. The root cause of racial fragmentation is the politics of race practised by single race political parties and the racial policies that are institutionalised by them after they have been in power for 60 years.

For national reconciliation and real nation-building to begin in Malaysia, the politics of race has to go first.

[Sim Kwang Yang can be reached at kenyalang578@hotmail.com]