How many MRT stations can you name? If you’ve lived here for some time, probably quite a lot. Now try listing them in Mandarin.
A content creator in Singapore recently posed that challenge to a New Town Secondary School student, with a reward of S$5.
However, it appeared the student had been waiting for the moment his entire life. He swept the entire purple North-East Line (NEL) with little effort.
The green East-West Line (EWL) proved a tougher challenge, but he still managed to name all but one of them, garnering much respect.
Instagram page@Chinesehackerssg frequently posts videos testing the Mandarin language ability of local students.
In a video posted on 26 Oct, one of the channel’s content creators challenged a student to name all the MRT stations on the purple NEL. If he got it all right, he would get S$5.
Judging by the uniform, the student is from New Town Secondary School.
Starting from Harbourfront, the student rattled off the names in rapid-fire mode.
Even the lesser-known Buangkok’s Mandarin name posed no problem to him. Neither did Boon Keng, which possessed a very different Mandarin pronunciation of ‘Wen Qing’.
His speed and accuracy left the content creator in stunned disbelief.
To nobody’s surprise, he perfectly nailed the rest of the line and ended with Punggol. His fellow New Town students applauded him as they watched on.
Perhaps the NEL was too short and easy, so the content creator asked the student genius to do the same for the green EWL.
After all, the Green Line is the longest MRT line in Singapore, with a great number of obscure stations. One would be hard-pressed to name all of them in English, let alone Mandarin.
The student gave it his best shot anyway, ticking them off his mental checklist at lightning speed.
After listing off the more popular places like Bugis and City Hall, he then cleared through the lesser-known MRT stations. However, it was clear that it required more mental effort on his part.
The student reached some of the westernmost MRT stations but paused as he racked his brain, even repeating Joo Koon.
However, he quickly rallied and continued.
He completed the task with Changi Airport MRT Station, only missing Gul Circle MRT Station, one out of 35, or 51 if you include the NEL stations.
The content creator jokingly told SMRT to hire the talented student.
Impressed netizens said his answer was worth S$500,000 rather than S$5.
Another commenter joked that the student had probably waited all his life for someone to ask him to name all the MRT stations.
In response to another Instagram user’s comment claiming that he had mispronounced some stations’ names, the student himself showed up and said he was reciting them too quickly.
We don’t see him getting his S$5 in the video itself, but hopefully, he got an appropriate reward for that five-star performance.
Earlier this year, a Singaporean took all MRT lines and rated them, giving the brown and blue lines a tied first place.
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Featured image adapted from @chinesehackerssg on Instagram.
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