CENTENARY the book

The front and back covers of CENTENARY

Finally, I am able to disclose the project that I've been working on during these past few months. And ta-dah....these are the front and back covers of CENTENARY, my latest book, which is about the history of The Old Frees' Association which celebrates its 100th anniversary in 1923. 

To me, this project was the third of a trilogy of books, a continuation of my work which began in November 2011 soon after the OFA annual dinner in October. At that fateful dinner, I was asked to co-edit a coffeetable book for The Old Frees' Association called FIDELIS. I had various areas to look into and one of them was to touch on the Association's history. 

At that time, there was barely four months for us to put FIDELIS together because at the end of March 2012, there was an official function to announce Penang Free School's Bicentenary celebrations in 2016. The highlight of that function was the unveiling of FIDELIS by the Raja of Perlis. 

Despite its triumphant unveiling, I felt that FIDELIS was inadequate in covering the rich histories of Penang Free School and The Old Frees' Association. I mean, how much could be uncovered in four mere months? The actual research and writing probably took only two months; the rest of the time was allocated to proofreading and the printing process.

Soon after FIDELIS, I was tasked with coming out with a book on Penang Free School. For that book, I had the comfort of time to research and write. In fact, I took 30 months to complete all that and everything that appeared in LET THE AISLES PROCLAIM  was the result of my time well spent. LET THE AISLES PROCLAIM was unveiled by the Raja of Perlis in a glittering ceremony in the school field on 21 October 2016 amidst a 5,000-strong crowd of Old Frees.

LET THE AISLES PROCLAIM provided readers with a very comprehensive history of Penang Free School and needless to say, I was immensely proud of my magnum opus, all 360 pages of it. But I still regarded my work as unfinished. There was still the part in FIDELIS on the history of The Old Frees' Association which was much in wanting.  

The opportunity came with The Old Frees' Association's 100th anniversary celebrations. Another book project, this time on the Association's history. So this was the opportunity for me to do real research and basically, go over all my old notes from seven or eight years earlier. 

This book, CENTENARY, is the result of the last 12 months' full work. This morning, I received the sign-off from both the President of The Old Frees' Association and the Chairman of the OFA Centenary Celebrations Committee, and with their sign-offs the book is ready to go to the printers. We shall have it ready by 21 October 2023.

Big Dragon Project

This story has been late in writing. Originally, I wanted to write it in April after Ding Liren had won the world chess championship, making him the first-ever male player from China to become the world chess champion. Something had stopped me from writing then. Anyway, I've now decided to do something with Ding's historical win and what better way to begin than from the beginning? 

Have you heard of the Big Dragon Project? No? Well, it wasn't a complete secret to begin with. Some people in the chess circle knew about it but as it did not involve them directly, they just didn't care much for it. Not until Ding became the world chess champion. But I've seen it happen, from almost the start of it. 

After Ding's win, some foreign journalists became intrigued when they heard about a Big Dragon Project in China. Just about two to three weeks ago, I was contacted by a journalist asking for information, which I have given him. But I thought that I should also publicise it here on my blog for the greater good. So here goes! (I should mention that the version which I gave the journalist was mainly re-written. But this is my original version.)

Myself playing chess with Dato' Tan Chin Nam in 2014

In 1974, Tan Chin Nam was elected as the first president of the Malaysian Chess Federation. He was already a very successful businessman in his own right, a big-time property developer. However in chess, he was a complete newbie but one willing to immerse himself into a totally new world. 

Settling down into this new role, he got to know Dr Lim Kok Ann (Singapore) who in turn introduced him to Florencio Campomanes (Philippines) and other chess presidents from around the Asian region. As part of his scheme to revitalise chess in Malaysia, he agreed to organise the first Asian Team Chess Championship in Penang, Malaysia. It was also the 50th anniversary of the World Chess Federation and somehow, he invited FIDE to hold their FIDE Congress to Penang. So in December 1974, both the FIDE Congress and the first Asian Team Chess Championship were both held at the same time in Penang.

By Tan Chin Nam's assertion, the Big Dragon Project was hatched in December 1974 by Dr Lim Kok Ann, Florencio Campomanes and Yasuji Matsumoto (Japan) and him. He invited the Chinese Chess Association to send observers to the FIDE Congress Penang but instead, two officials from the Chinese Embassy in Kuala Lumpur turned up. On the sidelines of the FIDE Congress, the first meeting of Asian chess presidents took place. As a chessplayer representing Malaysia in that Asian Team chess championship, I remember seeing the Chinese officials arrive for meetings at the Merlin Hotel in Penang. (That old Merlin Hotel is now the City Bayview Hotel.)

The idea behind the Big Dragon Project was simple. An Asian country was selected as trailblazer to narrow the gap in chess technique and knowledge between Asia on one side and Soviet Union, Europe and North America on the other side. India could have been selected but the country sided with the Philippines, Indonesia and Singapore to give the opportunity to China with its bigger population and thus, potential.

On the coat tail of a successful Asian team championship in Penang, Tan Chin Nam convinced FIDE to accept the Chinese Chess Association as a member in 1975. I believe that more than anything else, China's entry into the world chess fraternity helped that country to open themselves up to the rest of the world in every aspect. It was even more significant than the American ping-pong diplomacy in 1971. A very grateful Chinese Chess Association subsequently invited the Malaysian Chess Federation to send an official delegation to visit their country in April 1978. Again, I was in the thick of it as a player.

So the Big Dragon Project was launched with China. It was all about creating a great Asian chess power by raising their level of play and then producing grandmasters. As far back as 1974 or 1975, the objective was to make China the destination for future world chess titles. The strategy would start with the Chinese women players. First, they challenged for the women's individual world title, and then for the women's Olympiad team title. The Chinese men would then follow in the same order in due course.

As a multi-millionaire, Tan Chin Nam was able to throw a lot of his own resources into the project. However, nothing came easy. For the Chinese women, for example, it took 13 years after China's men's team's debut appearance in the Bueno Aires Chess Olympiad in 1978. Who could ever forget international master Liu Wenzhe's demolition of grandmaster Jan Donner in a sparkling brilliancy when China met Holland at the Chess Olympiad?

He financed a united Asian chess team with two players from China and one each from India and the Philippines to play a match with Yugoslavia in 1984. In 1985 he paid for Chinese participants to play in a zonal championship. Next, sponsorship of the First Beijing Chess Open in 1988, followed by funding the Tan Chin Nam Cup for seven years beginning 1995. In 2002, the Tan Chin Nam International Open attracted 22 foreign grandmasters to China.

Also important was purchasing chess books, computers and research materials, as well as sponsoring two chess study trips to Europe for top Chinese players in 1996 amd 1997.

The first big breakthrough came in 1990 when Xie Jun qualified to challenge Maia Chiburdanidze, women's world champion from the Soviet Union since 1978. In October 1991, Xie Jun defeated Chiburdanidze in Manila and ended a 41-year monopoly by the Soviet Union and a 64-year reign by European champions. At that moment when it happened, I was in Genting Highlands for an Asian Cities Team Championship. We were elated and felt very happy for Asian chess. I initiated a congratulatory postcard for Xie Jun, signed by many players and officials in Genting.

The next breakthrough came at the 1998 World Chess Olympiad when the Chinese women's team captured the gold medal and affirmed themselves as the new dominant powers in women's chess. The progress of the Chinese male players has been slower due to the greater competition among male chess players, but the struggle was still there for everyone to see. It must have been some 20 years since The Big Dragon Project ended but nevertheless, China continues to progress on their own momentum. The pinnacle of their success came this year with their grandmaster, Ding Liren, becoming the first world chess champion from China. 

All these would not be possible without the financial resources from Tan Chin Nam. But before anyone started accusing him of favouring chess in China before promoting the interests of Malaysian chess, he had made it very clear that the Big Dragon Project was nothing about chauvinism. In his own words, he said that it was, and it remained, a helping hand on his part to "promote excellence and to hammer out multi-national intellectual friendships on the anvil of honest competition."

  #BigDragonProject #chesshistory #chinachess #chessdiplomacy

A pani puri treat

My wife and I made a short three-day, two-night trip to KL. Took the eight o'clock ETS train that arrived almost on the dot at KL Sentral. I wonder when will KTM get to finish upgrading their dual tracks from the Sungai Buloh station to KL Sentral? It takes so long to travel between these two points on the usable single track. As nobody's actually complaining seriously, KTM is taking their own sweet time to finish this task and in the meantime, the passengers have to endure stopping for what seemed like ages at the stations and moving at a pace not reflective of their electric train service. C'mon, KTM, buck up!

Anyway, the first thing we did was to search for food. With Sushi Tei having closed their outlet at Nu Sentral, we decided to walk Jalan Tun Sambanthan to find this restaurant known as Mr Naan and Mrs Idly. We've been here before, a good four years ago, and we wondered whether they'd still be around post-Covid. Found the restaurant still surviving with lots of patrons. Food is good. I guess good food will always attract the crowd. The wall decorations were still there although they were getting faded.

Ever since about two years ago, I discovered the joy of eating pani puri; those little round balls that you fill with potato masala and accompanying condiments before popping the whole ball into the mouth. Lately however, I haven't been able to find the old man selling this at the China Street-Queen Street road junction in Penang.

So imagine our joy to find pani puri on the menu of this restaurant in Brickfields. No hesitation ordering a set which came with seven pani puri balls, a serving of potato masala, some chopped raw onions (not visible in the picture) and a sweet sourish sauce. 

The highlight, however, was a serving of a chilled mint rasam. The moment we popped a pani puri ball into the mouth, the different flavours simply exploded. An experience quite unlike other pani puri that we've taken before. Just writing about it makes me feel like going back to KL for another treat.

Kutub Khanah Tunku

Using the Kutub Khanah Tunku as the venue for the first day of our eighth student leadership workshop last Sunday brought back some memories of 1969. Not the bad memories of the racial violence in May that year but the good memories of December. The Kutub Khanah Tunku was opened by the first Prime Minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman, on 29 December 1969. As Prime Minister, he had requested the Federal Government to approve a $100,000 grant towards its construction. 

I had written this about the Kutub Khanah Tunku in my book, Let the Aisles Proclaim some seven years ago:

At the School’s Speech Day on 21st October 1967, the Minister of Education, Mohamed Khir Johari, announced that the Prime Minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman, would approve a grant of $100,000 from the Central Government towards the Library Fund. (1) Subsequently, the Tunku visited the School on 17th November to choose a suitable site for the library. Showing great personal interest in the project, he requested the State Engineer to submit a few sketches to him for consideration. (2) On 5th February 1968, the Prime Minister made a second visit to the School whereupon he handed over a cheque of $100,000 to the Chairman of the Board of Governors (3) and in March, the sketch plans were forwarded to the Tunku for his approval. (4) The plan for the new Library would include two conference rooms and two reading rooms, both air-conditioned. (5) As the cost of construction was estimated at about $160,000 by the Jabatan Kerja Raya while the balance in the Development Fund was about $148,000, the School formed a Library Committee to look into raising an additional $40,000 to meet the shortfall and other anticipated expenditure.

References: 

(1) The Straits Times, 22nd October 1967
(2) Minutes of Board of Governors Meeting on 17th November 1967
(3) (October 1968). Penang Free School Magazine (Vol. 5 No. 2)
(4) Minutes of Board of Governors Meeting on 15th March 1968
(5) Minutes of Board of Governors Meeting on 27th September 1968

I remember going to the Library on the 28th, the eve of its official opening, when word got around that the Tunku would visit the place for a preview. True enough, he did turn up at about noon on the 28th of December and we, the schoolboys, milled around him. If there were bodyguards, they didn't make their presence felt or seen. We could approach Tunku from anywhere and asked him questions. He spoke to us about his time at Penang Free School, then located in Farquhar Street, from 1916 till 1919. He gave us some well-meaning advice on our studies and our future. Several days later, I started my Form Five.

Kutub Khanah is a very formal, scholarly Malay term to mean Library. Sometime in the 1990s or 2000s, some wisecrack decided to rename the building as Perpustakaan Tunku, which didn't go down well with many Old Boys. Tampering with the name amounted to tampering with a school value. When 2016 rolled in, the Bicentenary celebrations committee took the opportunity to rename the Library back to its original form, Kutub Khanah Tunku.

Here are a few pictures of the Library's official opening by Tunku Abdul Rahman on 29 December 1969. Also present at the ceremony was Dr Lim Chong Eu, an Old Free who became Penang's second Chief Minister a few months earlier.

How the Kutub Khanah Tunku looked like in 1969. When it opened, it meant the end of the junior library that was located above the porch of the main building. There was also the Pinhorn Memorial Library in the Sixth Form Block. Both closed with the opening of the new Library.

The School Librarian for many years was Ms Tan Joo Sin who taught me Geography. She was the sister of my Form One Supervisor in 1966, Capt Tan Boon Soon, both of them not related to the then Headmaster, Tan Boon Lin. Even after I had left the Free School at the end of 1972, I returned to the Kutub Khanah Tunku very often while awaiting my examination results. I had felt that the collection of books here were on par with the Penang Library. Moreover with a School Librarian that knew me very well, I could spend my hours reading as many books that I wanted. More than that, there were foreign magazines like Spectator and New Statesman from the United Kingdom which afforded me a supplementary viewpoint of world affairs.  

 

In due course, Penang Free School mounted a wall plaque in the Library to acknowledge the individuals and companies that had contributed at least $100 to the Library Building Fund. Of course, the name that topped the list of donors was Tunku Abdul Rahman - pride of place was accorded to him for bringing in the $100,000 - but in reflection, the grant had come not from the Tunku personally but the Federal Government of the day.

Anyway, on the plaque had also appeared the names of Lim Kar Bee ($1,000); Heah Hock Meng and Loh Boon Siew ($500); Chan Siew Teong ($300); Loo Shaik Sang ($250); Dr Ong Huck Chye ($200); Chin Kim Goon, Tan Kiar-Lew and Tan Seng Jin ($150); Koay Teik Swee, Dr Yeoh Cheang Hoe and Dr Yeoh Oon Seang ($120); Tan Phock Kin ($110); C Ponniah ($105); Cheah Jin Teong ($101); Eusoffee Abdoolcader, Dr Husein Abdoolcader, Abdul Aziz bin Muhsin, Dr Haji Abdul Ghani bin Mohamed, Dr Abdul Wahab, MSR Ambrose, Ayob bin Sa'ud, Cheah Eng Guan, Chee Teen Lum, Dr Cheong Mow Lum, David Choong, Dr T Devaraj, Eu Cheow Hin, Haji Fathil Basheer, Geh Chong Keat, Goon Fatt Chee, Haji GM Yusoff, Haji Mustakim bin Haji Abbas, Iskandar Mohd Ismail, Haji CC Ismail, Koh Sin Ghee, Koh Sin Hock, Lee Chye Chow, Lim Boon Hor, Haji Md Ismail KS, Mohd Ismail bin Che Matt, Mohamed Khir Johari, Capt Md Noor bin Mohamed, Dr Oh Kim Seng, Ong Teong Guan, Saw Choo Theng, Saw Hun Eng, Tai Liang Kheng, Tan Ah Ee, Justice Tan Ah Tah, Tan Boon Lin, Tan Khim Hoe, Tan Teik Beng, Teoh Peng Hooi, Tye Cho Chun, Yeoh Oon Huat, Yeoh Tat Thong and Wong Kum Peng ($100); Eastern Smelting Sdn Bhd ($1,000); Dunlop Malaysian Industries Bhd ($250); and Guinness Malaysia Bhd ($200); Guthrie & Co (FE) Bhd, Penang Malay Association, PFS National Language Society and Van Leers Containers (M) Sdn Bhd ($100). That's $10,026 collected from them.

Eighth student leadership workshop

The first weekend of this academic year's student leadership workshop for the Fourth Formers of Penang Free School is over. My friends and I held it over the last weekend, and I must say that we are satisfied with the quality of the boys that attended the workshop. This is the eighth workshop that we have organised since 2017 and every time, we see fresh faces attend, initially feeling guarded over their expectations of us but by the end of the second day, all their inhibitions are gone.

We always start each day by asking them to sing the School Rally, usually more than once in order to get the participants more animated. By the end of the second day when I asked them to sing again, I could detect a different lift in their voices.

For this edition of the workshop, we we forced to seek an alternative venue for the first day. Our normal venue was the Pinhorn Hall, but on Saturday it was used for the MUET examinations. As such, we chose the Kutub Khanah Tunku instead. On the upper floor was a conveniently-sized conference croom to accommodate all of us. Sunday's session was back to the Pinhorn Hall although the boys had to put in an extra effort to clear the space of the examination tables and chairs first.

I arrived a little late on Sunday to find that the workshop had moved to the stage. Using the huge projector screen was a welcome change For once, our presentation materials were large enough for all to see. But there was a distinct disadvantage for me on a personal level. Every time I mounted the steps, I had to walk gingerly and mind where I was to place my foot next. No more bounding up and down quickly.

These pictures below tell the story of the boys' activities over the weekend. Apart from Loh Lean Kang and I, we were assisted by Sue Chan, SK Cheng and Benjamin Aw. Hue Yan Tatt, Malik and Danish from last year's batch, helped out on Sunday.. The second weekend of this workshop will be on 19th and 20th August.

The Headmaster, Syed Sultan, came to address the participants on Saturday. He is very supportive of our endeavour as through the years, he had seen how Lean Kang, Siang Jin, myself and the late Tan Soo Choon had struggled to make the workshops a success.  

Picture by Chan Sue Hay

Picture by Chan Sue Hay

Picture by Chan Sue Hay

Picture by Chan Sue Hay