Gathering at Penang Copthorne Hotel

When I was small I used to be with my late mother while she was having a conversation with a visiting relative. Many a time they would remind each other that “to meet one more time is just another time”[“见一次就是一次。”] At that time I was too young to comprehend and appreciate the wisdom of the saying. As age is catching up, I slowly assimilate this time-tested, inherent truth of the saying. As we are approaching the sunset years of our lives, there is no guarantee that we would live to meet up with our friends for yet another time[没人能担保下次我们还能再见面]. Whether we like it or not, some of them might have already faded from this world long before we had the chance to meet up with them.

Whether it is ‘all wise men think alike’ or ‘all fools never differ’, Siew Sim coincidentally shares the same passion as my mum as she always makes it a point to travel all the way from England to visit friends and relatives in Malaysia bi-annually. It was through her consistent and tireless efforts over the years that I was finally able to meet my ex-classmates in 2008 , after a span of forty years of separation. Since then, we have never stopped to have a series of classmate gatherings at different locations and occasions. Recently Shirley Koay was instrumental in organising a two-night bungalow stay in Penang for our former classmates from the Methodist Secondary School ,Nibong Tebal with the hope of reminiscing and “replaying” ‘the video clip of the happy moments we had shared during a trip to Batu Ferringgi after our Form Five Examinations in 1969’. After checking the rates offered by a number of hotels by the seaside, she finally picked Copthorne Hotel. Six rooms were booked for those of us who would like to stay in on the evening of Saturday, October 23, 2010.
On the following day a buffet lunch was held on the ground floor of the hotel with forty four people in attendance. The participants were mostly students from the Classes of 1969 and 1970 with some teachers as the invited guests. Credit has to be given to Jeng Woon whose efforts saw the increase of participants by two folds.

The participants were from different places in Peninsular Malaysia. Some had travelled from afar, like Siew Sim from England and Kim Beng from the Middle East. All arrived carrying with them the same joyous mood and yearning to meet one another. The highlights of the lunch were a toast of wine and a cake cutting ceremony to commemorate the ‘Reunion Lunch’ of the big family of Methodist Secondary School of Nibong Tebal.

Incidentally, Kim Boon shared the lime light to join in the cake cutting ceremony to celebrate his birthday. Meng Kiang and I were sceptical that that it was Kim Boon’s birthday and thought that he played a joke on us. After ‘double-checking’ his identity card for verification just like a policeman would do to a traffic offender, we congratulated and wished him “Happy Birthday” once again. He admitted that he was over-excited and over-joyed as well on the eve of the buffet lunch that he could not sleep well. He could not thank his lucky stars enough that with a mere thirty dollars he chipped in for the lunch, he was able not only join in a reunion lunch and also celebrate his birthday with a big applauding crowd in a hotel.

After the lunch, all the guests adjourned to the poolside for a photographic session and further chit-chat until four o’clock in the evening when we bid our good-byes.

It could not be denied that most people who attended the lunch had enjoyed the companionship more than the food.

As Rajendran put it, “It was good to get together again and see old friends and teachers. I hadn't seen Miss Yee ,Mr Khor, Mr Lip and my friend Ming Hook for more than forty years.”

In a texted message to me from Chew Ee after the event, she succinctly noted, “The gathering’s awesome!! We had lots of fun and joy.”

Mr. Richard Lye, a former teacher of the school, in his emailed feedback, echoed almost the same message, “It was wonderful; the gathering of old faces was more important than the food. I could have not imagined how much these old pupils of mine have grown. Some are ‘kong kongs’[公公] and ‘Ah mahs’[婆婆]. Looking back, how time flies and how many more times shall we meet again,so it is important that we should meet more often. Just like what the Four Degree singers said ‘ When will we meet again’.”

To the question, “When will we meet again ?”
I think it is better to leave it to Shirley Koay to answer, as she is an accomplished ‘Organising Chairperson’ who would not give a second thought of throwing her subordinate into a pool to the point of drowning him if he dares to defy her orders.

Zhou Enlai
周恩来

‘Zhou Enlai –The Last Perfect Revolutionary’ is a book written by Gao Wenqian which focuses on the complicated, interweaving love-hate relationship between Chairman Mao Zedong[毛泽东] and Premier Zhou Enlai after the Communist Party assumed power in China in 1949. Zhou “lived those years in the shadow of Chairman Mao, performing tireless, like a compliant, docile daughter-in-law, the tasks that his master assigned to him.” [page 63]

Mao and Zhou led a complementary working relationship. Zhou was seen to be “a smooth operator who knew how to handle people; he also had a knack for organization and a good eye for detail.Whereas Mao was a man of immense talent, but he could not run the entire show by himself. He needed Zhou Enlai to perform the task”.[page 88]

Throughout the decades to come and until the waning days of Zhou, Mao was plagued by this paradoxical relationship. He had to keep Zhou at bay to prevent him from ever again gaining the upper hand; at the same time he had to depend on Zhou to run the day-to-day affair of governing the country.

Mao Zedong was a man known to be of jealous, unpredictable and vindictive in nature. He harboured bitter grudges against all those who had either criticized him or out-performed him.

Starting in the late 1950s, Mao launched his program of reform under the title of ‘Three Red Banners’, with the aim of transforming the Chinese society. But it turned into a mass starvation of an estimated twenty million Chinese peasants. Liu Shaoqi [刘少奇],Mao’s heir apparent, came to his rescue by devising an economic readjustment to remedy the blunders made by Mao. However,Mao himself would never admit it as a failure.

In the spring and summer of 1966, a huge tidal wave of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution[文化大革命] swept China under the pretext of preserving the purity of Chinese Socialism. In effect it was a social movement engineered by Mao to take revenge and purge Liu Shaoqi [刘少奇]，Deng Xiaoping [邓小平], Peng Zhen [彭真] and all the other old cadres who were closely associated with Liu.

Although Zhou concurred with the economic policy expounded by Liu, he took a different view to protect himself and safeguard his position as the premier of China. He had to toe the line and support Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution which had created “great chaos under heaven”[天下大乱].

By doing this, Zhou had perfected the art of walking the political tightrope. By avoiding direct confrontation with the Chairman, he could survive the political onslaught and rendered himself the means to protect the other victims of the Cultural Revolution.The following were the steps he took. ‘Some were allowed to leave their homes temporarily; others were sent to People’s Liberation Army hospital 301 on “sick leave”;others still were sent out of town to “recuperate”; and some were provided with public security guards, who were stationed in front of their homes with orders to persuade the marauding Red Guards to spare them.’[page 135]

In reality, Zhou Enlai was fully aware of the double role he was playing in the Cultural Revolution. On one hand, he knew Mao was dragging the country toward unprecedented chaos and disaster and yet he had to be submissive to the Chairman. On the other hand, his personal conscience urged him to do whatever he could to save the country and the people. Somehow he was trying to achieve a psychological balance between what was rapidly becoming two diametrically opposing commitments.

In later years, Zhou came under considerable fire for being too submissive and exhibiting an excessive desire to please Chairman Mao. His critics insisted that Zhou encouraged Mao in his madness by yielding to the Chairman time after time and that by following him, he too was responsible for the disaster that befell China.

When Deng Xiaoping was examining the role Zhou Enlai had played in the Cultural Revolution, he noted: “Without the premier, the Cultural Revolution would have been much worse. And without the premier the Cultural Revolution wouldn’t have dragged on for such a long time.”[ page162]

For Zhou Enlai, he had long realized that if he antagonized Chairman Mao, it would be a form of political suicide. He believed that as long as he remained in the inner circle of the power that be, his presence could make some difference. Someone had to hold the fort and maintain a semblance of order while turbulence spread throughout the country. As long as he remained as the premier, he still had the chance to chart the course which the country would be heading. Indeed, in January 1975, in a decisive speech to the Fourth National People’s Congress, Zhou outlined a new directive known as “Four Modernizations” as a blue print for Deng Xiaoping to implement. From 1978 onwards, Deng emerged as China’s paramount leader. He moved China towards the goals of wealth and power which were all along Zhou Enlai‘s dream and that of most of the China’s Communist Party leaders.

Today the world may remember Deng as the architect of Modern China but we may not be aware that it was Zhou who had lent Deng a helping hand.