Milton Shoong Chinese Cultural Center

Back in the 60’s, it was Chinese School, which my parents made my sisters and brothers attend after American School (Lincoln).
As Victor mentioned in his review, «it was called chinese community center… in the late 1960’s or phonetically in Cantonese… juong wah min fa yuen… correct me on this, Victor… LOL.
What do I remember about this school? There was the banana tree in the small courtyard in front…“yes, we have no bananas» on that tree. I can’t forget that mean principal, Chow Hop Ming or something like that… the young men were the ones getting in trouble… getting hit with the metal yardstick on both hands, the fingers snappings on both ears… it wasn’t abuse back then… they called it discipline.
While the class was in session, no words in English could be spoken or we got penalized 1 cent for each non-​Chinese word. It was all good because by the end of the semester, the class had enough money for a party with chow mein and fried chicken.
I did not mind the spelling test and writing sentences in Chinese, but writing the essays and calligraphy were not my strong points. I liked the geography (dei lei), but history (lik tse) was so-​so. Then as I reached the higher grade, I had to learn another dialect — mandarin. I did okay with that, but now I can only count from 1 to 10 and say thank you in mandarin.
There were the Chinese debates and calligraphy competitions… neither one of them was my forte. I’m glad I wasn’t chosen to compete and/​or participate in those activities. Another thing I remember were some of the guys were pretty good at playing basketball — the Look brothers, Robert and I don’t remember his brother’s name, Kwock Yee, Richter Kong… just to name a few. These guys eventually played high school basketball — the Look brothers at Oakland High, Kwock at Oakland Tech and Richter at Castro Valley High.
Lastly, I enjoyed decorating the bulletin board with crêpe streamers, which displayed our artwork and essays. That was for open house and I know all the classes had to do this in their respective classes. Aah… memories of my childhood and the yesteryears. I may not be as fluent in Cantonese as I was, but I can still write my name in Chinese… LOL.

chinese lessons mandarin
3200 commentaries (reviews) san qian er bai ping lun
it was called chinese community center when it went there in the late 1960’s
Milton Shoong Chinese Cultural Center was created with monies from milton shoong who made his monies in National Dollar Store. Before oaktown was «redeveloped», this was the only place besides lincoln school and local churches to hold community events.
i attend many cultural events here, film showings, and chinese language classes here. topics in school included
–chinese history (b.c. stuff, warring warlords…)
–chinese calligraphy
–mandarin lessons (all classes were taught in cantonese)
–geography
–letter writing (proper words for each person, way beyond der, die, or das on german).
–chinese culture (confucius and them old guys)
in chinese classes, i was considered a bad apple. f
for punishment i was seated in the girl’s section. (the girls didn’t seem to mind). boys and girls were segregated then in class.
note:
–many other programs also are here. just don’t know what they are.