Author: CHUNG Yoon Ngan
Date: 01-05-12 21:20
My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5)
090. The resettlement of 600,00 Chinese squatters into New Villages - 1950
人民是水,我們是魚
The people are the water and we are the fish
The Hill People said.
沒有水魚就會死.
Without the water the fish will die.
The British Colonial Authorities said.
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http://yn.chung.id.au/Raiding.A.House.jpg
http://yn.chung.id.au/A.NewlySettledVillage.jpg
http://yn.chung.id.au/A.fence-inTownship.jpg
In 1950, the mixture of the six million people in Malaya can best be explained
by Dr. Han Suyin (韓素音) in her book, "...AND THE RAIN MY DRINK". I quote:
"The word Malay means Javanese, Sumatrans, Indonesians, people from Minangkabau
and many another East Indies island, Arabs and Arab-educated Mohomedans,
as well as Malays proper from Malaya itself;
"The word Chinese means..Chinese include half a dozen sub-groups from the
southern provinces of China, by feature and emotion Chinese, but divided
by dialect into Teochews, Hokkiens, Hakkas, Cantonese, Hainanese and smaller
groups.
"The word Indians include Tamils, Punjabis, Sikhs, Pathans Bengalis and
many others."
At that time there were 600,000 Chinese squatters, ten per cent of the population,
living on the jungle fringe on land which they had no real title. As almost
all the Hill People were Chinese, these squatters, willing or unwillingly
helped the Hill People who were fighting the British. As the Hill People
said that the squatters were the water and they were the fish. The British
thought that if they could drain off the water the fish would not survive.
So the British devised a plan called the "Briggs Plan" to resettle the squatters
into New Villagers under guard to deprive the Hill People from getting help
from them. Thus my beloved village Kampong Sayap was demolished and disappeared
from the map for good. Half the villagers were relocated to Pusing and the
other half to Sungei Durian near the town of Tanjung Tualang about fifty
kilometers south of Pusing. Father's grocery shop was relocated to Sungei
Durian and Grandmother's house was to Pusing. Father re-built a new grocery
shop in Sungei Durian and sold it to a Hakka (I have forgotten his name).
Father also built a new house in the Pusing New Village for First Uncle
and his family. The site was allocated by the British to build the house
on the old railway road. The New Village was named Pusing Gunong Hijau New
Village (布先喜州新村) which was built on top of a flat land that was once
used for the tailing by a tin mine (I can't remember the name of the tin
mine because it happened so long ago). The Chinese primary school called
Guan Han (光漢) became the school for the New Village and it was renamed
the Chinese Primary School of Gunong Hijau (布先喜州華文小學). The British
Authorities built an additional ten new classrooms to the school. Education
was free for the children of the re-settlers. New schools were built for
those New Villages that were without them.
The British installed standpipes to provide free drinking water to all the
New Villages throughout the country. One standpipe for every 20 or 30 families.
The residents had to use buckets to carry their own water home and hosts
were not allowed to be connected to the standpipe. There was plenty of water
for every family. As far as I can remember there were no troubles among
the residents for getting water from the standpipe. Electricity was provided
for each family but each house had to pay one or two dollars minimum charges
per month to compensate the Electricity Board and the residents were quite
happy because they did not have to burn kerosene lamps at night. Street
lights were installed. The British also provided other amenities like healthcare
centers, new roads, new markets etc,.The British wanted to convince the
re-settlers that New Villages were much better off than their attap huts
on the fringes of the jungle. Throughout the whole of Malaya the resettled
squatters were provided with such amenities.
All the New Villages were fenced in by barbed wire and guarded by police
with the help of the Home Guards who were the residents of the New Villages.
The British organized young male adults into Home Guards Force and trained
them how to handle weapons. There were police posts on all the roads that
led to the New Villages. All residents leaving the New Villages were searched
by the police for food which was forbidden to leave the New Villages. Without
food supplied by the re-settlers the Hill People would starve and became
weak and suffered physically and morally, that was the aim of the British.
The Hill People were forced to come out from the jungle to obtain their
own food. They usually came at night to cut the barbed wire and slip into
the New Villages asking the re-settlers for food. The police were waiting
for them. That was why there were so many gunfight in Pusing.
After my village, Kampong Sayap, was demolished in 1950 my family was resettled
in Pusing. One or two hours after a gunfight, as we could hear the gun fire,
in the rubber plantations not far from Pusing we could see the soldiers
carried out the dead or wounded to the police station. We kids would rush
to the police station to count the bullet holes on the body of the Hill
People or the soldiers killed. I remembered one case when a Government Chinese
soldier was wounded with a big hole on his chest with blood oozing out all
over his body, lying on the ground waiting for the ambulance to come to
take him to the hospital. He was talking to us telling the history of his
family, he was a Hokkien, and we could not understand what he was saying.
After a while he just stared at us without saying a word. A policeman chased
us away. Later we heard that he died on the way to Batu Gajah District Hospital.
I was only a kid. At that age I had no idea about politics. Pusing was just
a small town with a very small police station. Most of the police families
lived in the compound. It was situated in the junction of 3 roads: Batu
Gajah Road, Lahat Road and Siputeh road. It had no frontage except a little
space at the junction of the three roads. The space was converted into a
fortress with coconut-tree trunks and oil drums filled with sand to protect
the station.
The highest ranking officer at that time was a sergeant with a few Malay
and 2 Chinese policemen. Everyone knew that there were two Bren guns and
a few Sten guns and many rifles in the police station. There was a big lorry
wheel hanging on a wooden frame at the side of the police station. A policeman
would hit the lorry wheel with a hammer on the hour. For example if it were
three o'clock in the afternoon the policeman would hit three times. The
sound was very loud and it could be heard throughout the town. If there
was an emergency, particularly when the Hill People were coming to attack
the station, a policeman would hit the big lorry wheel none stop for one
or two minutes that meant everybody must leave the street and go home. We
called it 打亂鐘 hitting the bell none stop - meaning 'emergency'. Pusing
is only about three English miles away from Batu Gajah where there was a
British regiment of 500 soldiers in the army barracks. If the sergeant could
just make a phone call to the army barracks and within half an hour two
truckloads of British soldiers would come to rescue the police station.
But usually the telephone line was cut off by the Hill People before they
attack the Police Station. In the 1980s the little police station was demolished
for a 10 storey big modern building.
There were about 15 Acehese families from Indonesia living in Pusing and
they were considered Malay families after Merdeka (Independence of Malaya).
There were two mosques, one in Batu Gajah Road and the other one in Lahat
Road, serving the 15 Muslim families. I don't know when the small Methodist
Church was built. As far as I know there were only three Christian families
in the whole town. In the 1990s, the old Chinese temple called Tam Gon Ye
(譚公爺) was demolished for a housing estate. A new and larger Tam Gong
Ye was built near the Gunong Hijau Primary Chinese School. There is a badminton
hall inside the temple that has attracted many youngsters to the temple.
First Uncle continued to help Father in running the tin and rubber dealing
business. Second and Third Elder brothers and I were enrolled to study at
the other Chinese Primary School called Yi Zhi Chinese Primary School (布
先益智華文小學). Step-Mother had given birth to her second son. By then,
Father had six sons and one step-daughter.
Posted to Overseas Chinese Forum at asiawind.com
By CHUNG Yoon-Ngan (鄭永元)
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