A lot of older chinese never have a chance to get educated. They forced to work as a kuli at 11-13 years old. Since their job not required to read write and speak, they eventually become what you met that day. I still met 4-5 people like that during 1990 in my home town (they are in their 30-40's at that moment).

The dark side of the community you never know. Actually a lot of people thinking chinese is very wealthy which was not right. There are many of them poorer than the average poor Malays or Indians. This type of unker is very common. Those I met were work with kedai runcit cina or house builder assistance. For the whole day they only need to listen to the instructions given by the boss or supervisor. They don't need to interact with customer nor writing a reports. They bring their own cook food and water to work strictly no teh tarik session. Teh tarik is kind of luxury and if the boss belanja them to drink, they are willing to work harder, faster even overtime also no problem. Their life is just work-sleep-work, rest only 1-2 days in a month. They sacrificed themselves and all the money saved for their children's education. The younger generation of chinese community mostly don't know about this.