Author: CHUNG Yoon Ngan
Date: 01-06-12 05:40
My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5)
093. The British imposed long curfew hours - 1951
一年動刀兵,---Yi nian2 dong4 dao bing,
十年不太平.---Shi2 nian2 bu4 ta4i ping2.
For using military force in one year,
It will be without peace for ten years.
A Chinese proverb
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The year was 1951 as it had happened so long ago. Occasionally, the Hill
People cut the barded wire that fenced in Pusing and came to the town at
night. One night, as usual, they came into the town and killed 2 policemen
who were on their way back to the police station after night duty. They
took away their rifles and ammunition too. The killing spot was on the place
between the Pusing Methodist Church and the Malay mosque. The Police Department
in Batu Gajah, in which Pusing was under its jurisdiction, was furious.
A dusk to dawn curfew was imposed on Pusing. In order to stop the Hill People
from coming in and the residents from throwing tin food out of the fencing,
the police put up another barbed wire fence to fence in Pusing. Thus Pusing
was fenced in by double barbed wire of about 50 meters apart. In spite of
that the Hill People still cut the barbed wire and came into the town to
attack the police station at their leisure at night. It seemed that there
were no ends to the attacks. I could remember that occasionally I could
hear bullets flying about in the street. Residents in the New Village were
advised to put up a four-feet brick wall or sand bags around their houses.
In order to stop the night attack, a life electrical fence was installed
in between the two barbed wire fences. Anyone who touched the electrical
fence would be electrocuted to death instantly. Sometimes, a strayed dog
by accident ventured in the area in between the two lines of bared wire,
and if it touched the life wire it would be burned to death. The life electrical
fence would produce a long burst of siren. The siren would continue until
the carcass of the animal dropped off from the fence. It seemed that that
had stopped the Hill People from coming into the town.
The Police Department stopped the system of changing of guards at night.
That meant the policemen and the members of the Home Guards who were on
duty, mainly Hakka Chinese, had to remain inside their posts and take care
of themselves from dusk to dawn during the curfew hours. Anyone who moved
about during the curfew hours could be shot at without warning. The police
believed that only Hill People walked about during curfew hours and no one
would risk his life walking about at night.
There were three such police check points in Pusing: one on Batu Gaja Road
about 2 kilometers from the police station, one on Siputeh road, about 3
kilometers away and one on Lahat Road, about a kilometer away, on the way
to Ipoh. In each of the check point a telephone was connected to the police
station. The policeman in charge in each check point would inform the police
station when there was an attack, practically every night. Occasionally,
one or two British armoured cars with machine guns from the Batu Gajah British
Regiment would come to rescue the policemen and the Home Guards. Again,
it seemed that there were no ends on the attacks.
The British Authorities then imposed 24 hours on all the rubber plantations
in the Pusing and Siputeh areas. According to the British the Hill People
would soon be run out of food as they had no contacts with the rubber tappers
and the residents living in the towns and villages. In spite of that the
Hill People continued to attack the police posts in Pusing and Siputeh.
During the attacks the British soldiers would come to rescue the police
posts in armoured cars firing away their machine guns. The British even
called in the Spitfighters warplanes from the British Royal Air Force to
bomb the rubber plantations. Searchlights were turned on shining to the sky
showing the locations of Pusing, Siputeh and the villages. Some Pusing folks
said that it was much noisier and more bombings than the time during the
Japanese invasion of Malaya. The next day the British would led the soldiers
to the rubber plantations searching for the death Hill People left behind.
The corpses of the Hill People were being carried like hunted dead animals
to Pusing police station to display to the town folks. If too many Hill
People were killed and it was too troublesome for the British to carry the
corpses back to their head-office for identification the British just chopped
the heads off and put them to a bag and the buried the headless bodies.
It was much easier by doing this.
I was just a kid and was not afraid of the dead bodies or only the heads
of dead people. Like other kids in Pusing we rushed to the police station
to watch the display corpses counting the number of bullets holes on each
of the corpses and the heads if there were any on display, the souvenirs
of the British soldiers. The British were just like the hunters showing
off their hunted animals. Eventually, the Hill People stopped their attacks
on Pusing town which was officially declared a black area that meant there
were many Hill People in the area.
Since no one was allowed to go rubber tapping or even go near the fringes
of Kledang Range, occasionally, war planes came, flying over Pusing town,
to bomb the forest. Residents would come out to the open to watch the planes
flying pass. If the bombing was at night some of them would climb up to
their roof top to watch the explosion of the bombs.
The British soldiers also set up artillery at about two kilometers south
of Pusing in the tailing of an unused mining land. Within every twenty or
half an hour the soldiers fired one round. One could hear the explosion
in the forest. To the town folks it was really annoying because they not
only fired blindly into the forest but it disturbed people from sleeping
at night. The folks did not mind if they fired during day time. The solders
made sure that they would fire into the rubber plantations to destroy the
rubber trees. It had been going on like that for a few months until the
curfew imposed on the area was lifted.
As no one was allowed to go tapping rubber, Father's business of rubber
and tin dealing was greatly affected. There were few women going dulang-washing
and Father's business was as good as closing down. Father and Haji had already
closed down the business of dealing rubber in Siputeh and concentrated on
rice dealing. But Haji was a shrewd Malay businessman. He kept two sets
of books; one for himself and the other for the partnership. The business
account book was kept in English and Father was illiterate in Chinese and
English. He just trusted Haji. When Father discovered that Haji was not
honest to him he sold off his share to Haji who was happy to pay off Father.
By then Father was in difficulty to find ways to support the big family.
Without the businesses operating how he was going to support the three
big families. The ingenious Father formed a partnership with a Pusing foundry
owner called Hu Zu (胡祖) and a Pusing timber merchant called Zhang Bao
(張保) to start a tin mine at about 20 kilometers south of Pusing on the
way to Tanjung Tualang.
Posted to Overseas Chinese Forum at asiawind.com
By CHUNG Yoon-Ngan (鄭永元)
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