SECONDARY 3 student Rachel Peh struggled with Chinese when she first went to Nan Hua High.

She was used to an English-speaking environment in Raffles Girls' Primary. To improve her Chinese, she listened to Mandarin pop songs.

On Saturday, Rachel, 15, put her knowledge of Mandarin pop to use when she and two other youths helped Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong during a quiz on the Chinese language and modern China.

Mr Lee aced two of the three questions on his own but was unsure when asked which Singapore singer - the choices were A-Do, JJ Lin, Stefanie Sun and Jocie Guo - had never appeared on China's Lunar New Year Eve television show.

After consulting the three assistants, he answered correctly that it was Stefanie Sun.

The quiz marked the launch of CLing, a new web portal (cling.omy.sg) set up to help raise Chinese language standards among young Singaporeans and expose them to various aspects of modern China through quizzes, web novels and songs.

CLing is the joint creation of omy.sg, Singapore Press Holdings'(SPH) bilingual news portal, and Business China, a business networking group.

At its launch at the Dragonfly nightspot in St James Power Station, Mr Lee said Singaporeans need to speak good Mandarin and take advantage of the opportunities China presents.

Reading Chinese newspapers is a good way to stay in touch with the language, he said. He also urged Singaporeans to speak proper Mandarin.

'If people from other countries cannot understand our Mandarin, it will not be useful to us.'

Read the full report in The Sunday Times.