Mr Seng Thai Chong aka Cheng Jun recounts how his secondary school Chinese teacher introduced him to the world of poetry. Mr Seng Thai Chong is a veteran of the Chinese book industry, notably as the former managing director of The Commercial Press (Singapore) Pte Ltd, the former chair of the Singapore Literature Society and as a published writer under the pen name Cheng Jun. His latest bilingual poetry collection, Dreams in the Foliage of Poetry 《落叶的怀想》, was published in 2022.

Mr Seng was interviewed for the National Archives of Singapore’s Community-driven Oral History Project in 2017. “Stories from Our Communities” is a video series to mine these rich interviews for heartfelt anecdotes of an earlier era of Singapore.