Hakka Chinese - Lee Kuan Yew (Founding Prime Minister of Singapore)

["Dixie" <Dixie@singnet.com.sg>]

Extracts from the book, Lee Kuan Yew - The Crucial Years (1984) by the late
Alex Josey:

Lee Kuan Yew was born at 92, Kampong Java Road, Singapore on 16 September,
1923. His family have lived in Singapore for more than a hundred years and
come from the Hakkas, a northern Chinese tribe of tough wanderers.
..........
The climate of Singapore knows no seasons: the humidity is very high and
the temperature varies between seventy and eighty-seven degrees Fahrenheit.
It is a climate which Lee finds unpleasant because he dislikes feeling hot
and sticky, because it renders him highly suspectible to colds. Lee's
physical structure demands a climate which is cold and dry, as it is in
those parts of China where the Hakkas live.
..........
His own involvement, his participation in politics, stemmed partly from his
absorption of English education and culture which enabled him to think like
an Englishman, and to have English values, and partly because the Hakkas
"are in some ways a people apart". Moreover, said (Victor) Purcell, "they
have a stubbornness of disposition which distingusishes them from their
fellow Chinese.

- Dixie