WHEN Deputy Prime Minister Wong Kan Seng's parents first came to Singapore to look for a better life in the 1930s, they sold sundry provisions.
But business was not good after World War II, so they returned to their village in Zhongshan prefecture in Guangdong, China, taking their young daughter and son who were born here with them.
After six months, they returned here in 1949. Mr Wong was three years old.
'I don't think the conditions in China were favourable,' Mr Wong, 63, tells Insight.
'Having been in Singapore for some years, my parents thought Singapore was a better place to make a living.'
What led them to move here is no different from why many of today's migrants decided to come here.
Back in their village, his parents and others lived off the soil as farmers.
When they came here for the second time, they became hawkers in what is today Farrer Park, selling noodles at a coffee shop at the corner of Race Course Road and Owen Road.
Life was tough, for they had to move from one rented room to another in the area - including a converted garage - each time the rent went up. They also had three more daughters.
'Since life was still not very good in China in the 1950s, and the children were all here, my parents decided to make Singapore home,' says Mr Wong.
They could speak only Cantonese, but picked up bazaar Malay and Hokkien to get by at the market.
After several years, they took over the tenancy of a pre-war single-storey terrace house in Race Course Road, and set up a stall in front of their home.
They were determined to give their children a good education, even though Mr Wong's father had only a few years of education and his mother, none.
There were not many English-medium schools then, but the former tenant of their new house helped register Mr Wong in the Rangoon Road Primary School, where he began his education.
He also attended a Chinese school for the other half of the day. He went on to Outram Secondary School and the University of Singapore before joining the Administrative Service. He entered politics in 1984.
Mr Wong's younger sisters went to Methodist Girls' School. One became a nurse, another a legal clerk, and the youngest an accountant.
When not at school, they would help out at the noodle stall.
To earn extra income, their father would travel around selling sundry goods, cloth and fruits from a tricycle cart. He also helped friends and fellow migrants from his village write letters home.
As Singapore moved towards self-government, the law was changed in 1957 to allow those born here or who had lived here for 10 years to become citizens.
Like many of the 220,000 China-born Chinese here, Mr Wong's parents registered as Singapore citizens.
This entitled them to vote in the May 1959 elections, which brought the People's Action Party to power.
Mr Wong remembers accompanying his parents to the polling station at his old school and listening to the results over the radio.
Many of his classmates had parents who were born elsewhere, but this was never an issue, he recalls.
He notes that not many Singaporeans can really claim to have been here for more than five generations.
'Now, we feel foreigners who come here are intruding into our space. But we forget that that's what our parents did before - intruding into the space of those who were here before them.
'We should remember that immigrant children will one day be like us,' he adds.
Mr Wong speaks from experience when he says: 'Many of us are first generation. When you are born here, your friends are here in the same school, with the same language, you will feel Singaporean.'
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