Eleanor Lee Once Did So Badly For Chinese, Quan Yifeng Tore Her Exam Paper Up And Threw It Out The Window

The host then took out a stack of exam scripts (yes, she kept them over the years) and pulled out the first one. “When she was in Primary One, she scored 59 out of 100 for her Chinese exam. It was really simple and the teacher helped her, yet she made so many mistakes,” Yifeng sighed.

Eleanor, who studied in Tao Nan Primary School before attending Nexus International School, chimed in with a story of her own. “There was once I did really badly for my exam. I brought it home for my mum to sign, but she ripped it into shreds and threw it out the window. She screamed, ‘Go pick all of it up! Don’t come home if you don’t pick all of it up by 5pm.’”

So Eleanor went to the foot of her block to do just that. “Some of the pieces of my exam script had fallen on to the balconies of the other apartments so there was no way I could pick them up,” she laughed. “I gathered what I could, went home and showed it to my mother. She signed it and walked away. That night, my helper and I stuck them back piece by piece.”

“When I went back to school, I kept looking at my bag when my teacher told us to take out our exam papers. I slowly pulled out what looked like trash and put it on the table. Everyone looked at it, trying to figure out what happened. When my teacher walked by, she didn’t say anything, picked it up and moved on.”

Eleanor continued to fare poorly in the subject and it got so bad that Yifeng “wanted to hide [Eleanor] away or enroll her in an international school”. The plan was to send her daughter to England, Canada or the United States so that she wouldn’t have to deal with the language any more.

Yifeng said: “I told her ‘This means you’ll have to be apart from me from a young age. You can’t be by my side and I can’t be there for you too.’” When Eleanor asked why they would be separated, Yifeng said it's because she would need to stay in Singapore to earn enough money to pay for Eleanor's expenses overseas and also to help fulfill her daughter's dream, which was to be an artiste.

“Life is short and we should pursue happiness rather than results. The only downside is that we would have to be apart,” she continued.

According to Yifeng, Eleanor, who was crying at the thought of being apart from her mum, then asked a really unexpected question: “Mum, do we really have to be apart? When can I leave?”. It was then that Yifeng realised how much Eleanor hated learning Chinese.

So how did Eleanor eventually master the language?

“Most of it was because I didn’t want to disappoint everyone,” she revealed. “Part of it was also because I wanted to fulfill my dream of finding my place in showbiz, and this was the only way for me to do so. I couldn’t excel back then because of my personality. I’m very stubborn. Even if it’s something that I like, be it my studies, learning piano, art or singing, I won’t be able to learn if someone tries to teach me.”

Yifeng concurred with her daughter, bringing up the time when Eleanor played the piano amazingly well at a neighbour’s place, only to choke when an instructor came to their house to teach her.

“I want to be able to play a song and not learn everything from scratch," added Eleanor. "Piano instructors teach you the most basic techniques when you first start, but I don't like that. I want to get [straight] to the point.

Click here to watch Part 1 of Eleanor Lee's interview on Hear U Out.

Photos: Mediacorp

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