Feeling Like in Shanghai - Our Very Poor Chinese Standard 2

I was invited by the Senior Constituency Manager of Teck Ghee Constituency Office to meet up with the Chairman of Teck Ghee Zone 'A' RC and the writer of the Chinese slogan in the banner for a face-to-face meeting. They feel that it is best to meet face-to-face with me so as to allow them to explain the reason why the words were chosen for this banner and also to hear my views regarding the banner wording. I have gladly accepted the invitation.

On the other hand, if an alternative is needed, I have the following suggestion:
德高望远数十载
义勇卫国千百年

I am no expert for coming up with couplets. However, I think to sacrifice the correctness of characters is not the way.

Any suggestions?

Feeling Like in Shanghai - Our Very Poor Chinese Standard

I have a feeling like the first time I was in Shanghai - in a hotel restaurant having my breakfast. On the dinning table, there were these papers with descriptions of the restaurant. I was reading the English version and spotted a lot of spelling mistakes. I was telling myself, fortunately, we Singaporean are strong in both Chinese and English. This is our competitive advantage. It will take time for the mainland Chinese to catch out this advantage.

I have second thought now. We might be good - relatively good - in English, compare to the Chinese from China. However, our English is not so fantastic compare to the Westerner. And our Chinese standard is bad. Look at the banner displayed in Teck Glee shown here, can you spot any mistake?

Please allow me to zone in to the mistake in this photo:

Now this confirm my worry if you still could not spot the mistake. The first character here is wrong. 义气风发 should be 意气风发 instead! The meaning of 意气风发 is high-spirited and vigorous. 义 means righteous. 义气 means personal loyalty. You do not combine 义气 with 风发. I suspected that the writer tried to put the Chinese name of Teck Ghee (德义) as the first word of these couplet (对联). This is a very common practice. Either the writer has forgotten the 义气风发 should be 意气风发 and made this mistake. Or he hope that his readers do not know much about Chinese and could not spot this mistake.

Time to reconsider the standard of our Chinese education.

Singaporean Poor Chinese Standard

I have two marketing staff working for me for more than 3 years. Both staff are non-Singaporean. One of them is from mainland China and the other one came from Malaysia. I recruited them during the time Singapore economy just starting to pick up. Originally I wanted to recruit Singaporean since they are my countryman and should have priority. However, one of the important requirements for this position is to be able to read and write Chinese. Most of the Singaporean applicants told me that they are good at Chinese. To prove that they are what they claimed, I made them write a short autobiography. To my disappointment, none of the Singaporean could write a decent page of autobiography.

Recently, I went into recruitment mode again because the Chinese staff is leaving for his full time MBA. Again, I asked the applicants to write me a short passage about themselves to show me their Chinese capability.

This is one of the many disappointing pieces I have received: (I have removed the name to protect the identity of the applicant.) All the red characters are wrong characters. This has not considered sentence structure and contents yet. See what future do we have, Singaporean?

大家好！我叫XXX。在家里，我排第二。我有一个姐姐和一个妹妹。毕业干南大在二00四年，电子公程系。

起初，我想做一名公程师。为大众发名一系列的产品。但是，当我在国防部做一名公程师时，我发现我不喜欢天天关在试研室里，一个人做工。反而，我更喜欢和人接处。可以说，我是一个非常讥咋的人。就应为这样，我便想尝试一下别的工做。

我能说自己是一个非常有泼力的人。一个时常喜欢挑战自我的人。对我儿言，处非那件事以不能在实我大动脑精，不然，我一定进我十足的能力实它成功。

最后，我想说，无论我是否得到这份工作，我都很高兴有这个机会和您分享我的经厉。在持，我也要说，写这篇文章让我深深僚X了自己华文程度在那儿。在持，谢谢。