After passing by the Chinese Heritage Centre  so many times on my bus journeys back home, I finally entered the building for once and got to know its history.

Nanyang University was the first Chinese university outside China, hence the Chinese Heritage Centre’s was heavily influenced by Chinese Architecture with a twist, the ‘Nanyang Style’. When I entered the building I can’t help but to compare its interior with that of a Chinese pagoda, where an air well is present at the centre of the building.

From the Nantah Pictorial exhibition that was on-going there, I gained insights on the hardships and challenges that the chinese committee in Singapore had gone through just to set up Nantah and a glimpse of how it was like to live on campus as a student or staff during those days. Being literally involved in building the foundations of the school, it is no wonder that both students and teachers in Nantah developed such a deep attachement for the school. For example, the Nanyang Lake was dug by the students and professors during the establishment of Nantah. It was definitely an enriching experience to know more about the history of this distinct architecture building in school and to realise the significance of it in Singapore’s tertiary education history.