Why Is it So Difficult to Use WeChat in Singapore?

Yes, we know that there are many difficulties to overcome when you use WeChat outside China. Many people from China could not understand this, and they often find it difficult to use WeChat with us.

This chapter looks at all of the difficulties and the solutions:

1. People outside China, especially Singapore, use WeChat very infrequently. Most use it at most once or twice a week, and many don’t even use it for months. We know that if you don’t use WeChat for more than 3 months, your account will be blocked and many people don’t know how to unblock it. Besides, friend requests in WeChat has a 3-days validity, so infrequent usage makes it difficult to increase your friends

2. Bias against China and anything from China. Because of years of influence by the Western media, especially Facebook, Google and the media, many people I know view anything from China with a negative bias.

If the things from China are good (eg phones very lasting), they will say it is because they use cheap labour. If the things from China don’t work out, they say this is expected. As a result, many people I know don’t know what WeChat is and cannot be bothered about it. With such a low population using WeChat on a daily basis, there is little you can do

3. Don’t know Chinese and didn’t know that there are many free translation and transcription tools available within WeChat. In fact, I often wrote entire articles in Chinese by not typing a single word in Chinese. I speak in English, I speak in Mandarin and I even use articles in copyright-free official accounts like Kaidan Huoban

4. WeChat account gets blocked and don’t know or cannot be bothered to unblock it. See our earlier chapter on this

5. Use the Facebook way to use WeChat: search for strangers, join groups yourself, advertise for just $0.20, post non-stop advertisements, post non-stop every day and post fake news. All these are forbidden in WeChat and if you do them, your account will get blocked very fast

6. Use WeChat on an iPhone, which has many restrictions and cannot download useful apps like Yingyong bao. Some Samsung phones also have certain restrictions. It is best to use China-brand phones like Vivo, Oppo, Xiaomi (but not Huawei)

The Secret Under the Mattress: Why would a 79-year Man Bet So Big on 4D?

It was 2007 when we discovered his secret. While moving my father’s mattress, we found them: heaps and heaps of Singapore Pools 4D tickets. They were stacked in layers, a paper trail of lost hopes. What shocked us most wasn’t just the volume, but the stakes. He wasn’t betting a few dollars for fun. He was punting hundreds of dollars per draw—nearly ten times a month. At the time, my siblings and I were furious. Our father was a 79-year-old retiree. We wondered, with a mix of anger and confusion, why a man at his stage of life would need to win such "big money." What was he going to do with the money? We saw it as a reckless habit, a sign of poor judgment in his final years. Some of us would say, "If I were to give him money to buy 4D, why don't I use the money and buy 4D myself? At least I have better discipline". It has taken me two decades, and the experience of raising my own three grown-up children, to finally see the truth that was hidden under that matt...

Head Bleeding when the Chair Falls

The Weight of Silence: What Were We Really Arguing About? My earliest memories are punctuated by the sound of shouting. In 1970, when I was barely 6 years old, I stood as a small witness to the fierce quarrels between my father and my late eldest brother Kah Yang (he passed away in 1971 at the age of 17). As I grew up, these contradictions became the soundtrack of our lives, usually centered around our family's shoe shop and clothing stalls in Chinatown. In the court of family opinion, the verdict was almost always the same: my father was "wrong." He was judged as a man who didn't fulfill his role, who wasn't "burdening" enough for the family’s success. But as I look back from the vantage point of 2026, I have to ask: Was that actually true? Let me finally put to rest what my father did right: the truths that were buried under decades of criticism: Unseen Labor: He worked grueling, long hours. I remember him hauling boxes of goods and equipment to set u...

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