Memories of Gan Eng Seng School

From an interview with Dr D. M. Dabbs, Author of the History of Gan Eng Seng School - July 2002

Lee Liang Hye was born in Blair Road in 1924. The family were Peranakan - the father, a general medical practitioner, was a Singapore baba an his mother a Penang nonya. Liang Hye and his elder brother Liang Hin were educated in Gan Eng Seng School in Cecil Street from 1930 to 1936. He entered Primary 1 at the age of six and graduated in 1936 from Standard V into Raffles Institution. In those days Gan Eng Seng School was a primary school feeder into Raffles Institution just like Geylang English School and Telok Kurau English School.

The family moved from Blair Road to Tras Street when Lee Liang Hye was four. He and his elder brother, Lee Liang Hin, were at first taken to school from their home, No 43 Tras Street, by a rickshaw puller who would arrive every morning in order to take them to school; the same rickshaw puller would also be waiting patiently at the end of the school day to take them home again. When they grew older, they walked to school - about the distance of one mile - using the back lanes behind the traffic police headquarters at Maxwell Road and the Framroz factory at the end of Telok Ayer Street.