lee kuo chuan school - new and old, both gone

i think lee kuo chuan school was started in the 50s. its first location was along 450 thomson road. it was housed in three or four rows of single-storey buildings. today, though the buildings are still around, the place has been converted into an old folk home. it is called the lee ah mooi old age home and the address is given as 1 thomson lane.

around the mid 80s, lee kuo chuan moved to new premises at ah hood road. it did not exist for very long. not long after that, it was used as a holding school for a number of schools undergoing prime (programme for rebuilding and improving existing schools). one of these schools was st andrew's junior school, which squatted there from 2003 to 2005. anglo chinese primary and chij also used the premises when their schools were undergoing rebuilding and renovation. today, it has been leased to some private school, so it is known as the queen margaret university, asia campus.

although i did not study at lee kuo chuan school, i know the old site quite well because i had visited it before. a few of my kampong (chia heng) neighbours attended the school and i remember accompanying one of them to the school one day. it had to be during one of the school holidays. that must have been in the early 60s.

i was not aware that a kampong existed behind lee kuo chuan school at thomson road. all i can remember about the place is that it was like a piece of wasteland which we, kampong kids, ventured to while on an outing one day. it had to be a warm day because the moment we saw a pond, we could not resist jumping into it in our birthday suits.

many years later - four decades or so - i was at a meeting when i thought i knew this person from somewhere but could not place him. then we started talking about the good old days. when he mentioned the 'swimming' incident behind his former primary school, i realised that he was one of the boys from the kampong at gentle road who joined us for a splashing time in the pond.

lee kuo chuan school takes its name after lee kuo chuan, the father of lee kong chian. do not get lee kuo chuan school mix up with kuo chuan presbyterian school.