Dr Tan sharing from the pulpit at the Holy Trinity Church in Kuching.
Dr Tan Lai Yong is not only a medical doctor, missionary and university don all rolled into one but is also known as a “wandering saint in Singapore” as Phyllis Wong discovers.
IN 1996, medical doctor Dr Tan Lai Yong and his wife left Singapore for the Xishuangbanna Prefecture in Southern Yunnan Province as part of the pioneering team, involved in poverty alleviation and community development among the rural poor living in remote villages up in the mountainous regions.
To communicate with the local villagers, he launched into a crash course in Chinese language.
Yes, Dr Tan did not know much Chinese then. He recalled how it was a shock to the villagers when he uttered feeding “cow milk” to breast-feeding mothers.
“Don’t we say niu-nai — so it’s cow milk,” he shared in his humourous way.
But soon, he learned the Chinese character for poverty alleviation — fu-pin — which is very rich and fascinating in its symbolism.
The two words are formed by smaller Chinese characters and each has its own meaning:
He learned the wisdom that came with the two Chinese characters – that we had to involve, encourage and empower the local people for any projects to be successful and sustainable.
For 15 years in Yunnan, Dr Tan shared the plights, tears, sorrows, festivals and joys of the people and lived up to true community development based on the wisdom of these two Chinese words.
“Sharing is important and integral,” he maintained and affirmed after living 15 years in the community.
He quoted Shane Claiborne in the book The Irresitable Revolution that to pray for my daily bread is a desecration: we are to pray for our daily bread … for all of us.
Dr Tan conducting a session on ‘Popiah Diversity’
Back to Singapore in 2010, he enrolled at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy to do a Master’s degree in public administration.
Upon graduation in 2012, he took up an offer from National University Singapore (NUS) as senior lecturer at College of Alice & Peter Tan (CAPT), a residential college in University Town, geared towards community engagement.
He teaches a course called Hidden Communities, delving into the plight of the elderly who live alone, the difficulties of ex-offenders, including getting jobs, youths not performing to their best and the living conditions of migrant workers.
“We are trying to complete two pictures in university education. First, the technical competence — that is, if you are a doctor, you are to be a good doctor; a teacher to be a good teacher and an engineer to be a safe engineer.
“Secondly, it’s how to express the high-standard technical competence in the community,” Dr Tan said, painting a picture of a well-rounded person after university education.
At CAPT, students continue to do whatever they choose to do but stay at his college residential.
“The difference is that the hostel is more than an accommodation. We run inter-disciplinary modules. During the day, the students may go to study law, computer science, Asian studies, the so-called faculty, or a chosen Bachelor’s degree.
“Like most universities in the world, students have to do contrasting electives such as engineering students doing art elective. We run our own elective, geared towards community development,
“It’s applying what you know as a law student, a psychology student and the like to a community issue,” Dr Tan said.
What he does is bringing students to the field.
“We bring them to senior citizen centres and tell them to just do what the seniors are doing instead of spending time, listening to me at a lecture. So they hang out with the elders, doing exercise, calligraphy and other health-promoting activities.
“They spend one to two hours every two weeks with a section of the community, listening to them. It’s performance-based, not project-based. They take a step back and listen to the community, their aspirations and anxieties,” he added.
Citing an example of the frailties of senior citizens, he said they were prone to fall and if they fell and broke their hip bones, no matter how brilliant the surgery, their quality of life would just go down.
“So what is the answer to help them avoid fall? The architecture students will have their thoughts on non-slip floorings, lightings and steps while the humanity students may suggest not putting things on the top shelf.
“The students also realise the further you go back in life, the more upstream you go. You solve the problem upstream. You can relate to young girls who are not exercising enough – that’s why bones are fragile.”
Dr Tan said the academic side came in at this juncture when the students would read, ask experts and find information, adding that students became more motivated because this was not just another book to read or another examination to take.
“It’s the discovery process,” he affirmed.
Crossing a river in Yunnan on a rope-held bucket seat that slides along a rope from one bank to the other.
The students had lived with and done so many things with the senior citizens that they had now become friends, Dr Tan said, quoting John Maxwell that people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
“When the students present their solutions to more fall-free living, the senior citizens are ready to hear them because they are now friends,” he said of a relationship with the community that works magically by involvement, caring and sharing.
CAPT adopted the same posture of learning for involvement with students with low performance in secondary examination and found giving tuition was not the only solution.
“Lack of motivation is the symptom to other issues. Often society says you don’t study hard enough, thus your exam results are poor. By giving them tuition, more textbooks, more classes are just the superficial part of it — the bigger part is motivation,” Dr Tan explained.
He said giving these youngsters a vision and academic counselling, encouraging and accepting them, and learning about the background behind their problems were what CAPT was doing.
“Now, we are not trying to make social workers out of CAPT students — if they are engineers, they are still engineers. We are trying to tell them next time when you start your working life, your colleagues or staff come and tell you their parents have a hip fracture or another son has autisim, you can walk with them through this difficult path.
“These employees will be more productive, more engaged, more committed and become better workers because you share, you care and you empathise with them.”
His vision of community development?
Dr Tan puts it simply — getting to know people in your community.
“Knowing people by their character — not their skills. In urban society, we get to know people by performance — how much they earn, what car they drive. We judge people by performance, output and outcome.
“Community happens when we switch back a little and understand the people by who they are — by their character.”
He said this was where good parenting came in.
“If I’m not careful, I may bring my children up to be performers. I emulate that uncle because he is doing very well — he runs a big company — rather than emulating that uncle as a friendly man or a kind person.
“Kindness and friendliness are not rewarded. You don’t get promoted because you are kind in corporates,” he said, adding that the onus was, therefore, on parents to affirm these values.
In another module called community leadership, he puts three or four people in a small group, assigns them to a community and asks them to walk through the community from 6.30am to 11am or from 4pm to 8pm, and gives them a framework based on POEMS — P for meeting people, O to observe objects, E has a sense of environment, M to look at media signs or banners, posters and S to understand the services.
“The students discovered that the community had so much strength themselves to address many issues. We only need to empower the community.
“Of course, empowerment is a very scary thing because your control over the community is being taken away. The community make their decision. But the government needs to switch its parometre a bit — from controlling to empowering — that’s from being commanding leader to community leader which is a more grassroot approach,” Dr Tan noted.
Taking a road less travelled in 1996 into the remote part of China, delivering his best in teaching, equipping, encouraging and nudging for changes through values, had won him numerous awards in China, including one from former Chinese premier Wen Jiabao.
In 2010, Dr Tan chose to return to Singapore with the reason that he was being “treated like a VIP which is dangerous to his soul.” He has made a difference in Yunnan.
Taking another road less travelled in running a course on Hidden Communities for NUS students, he starts making difference in Singapore too.
Robert Frost wrote:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.
So what is Dr Tan’s next less travelled road?
In a casual conversation over coffee, he said SARAWAK or SABAH, God willing.