Forum Policy | Howto | Asiawind Homepage | China the Beautiful | CTB forum | Forumites' comments | Feedback

Forums : | World2 | ZhengHe | ChineseCulture | Hakka | Overseas | SciTech | Life! | HealthMed | Foods | OurWorld[ReadyOnly]

	Web asiawind.com

Overseas Chinese Forum at Asiawind

Forum List  |  New Topic  |  Go to Top  |  Go to Topic  |  Threaded View  |  Search  |  Log In

Newer Topic  |  Older Topic

My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5)

Author: CHUNG Yoon Ngan  Date:   01-03-12 19:09 My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5) 080. The declaration of the Emergency - 1948 I will go to the forest for justice, For justice and righteousness, And become a green-clad man. The rulers pursue me with soldiers, With riders, chariots and spears. I will go to the forest for justice, The people will flock to me. I right their wrongs from the green shade, And kill the rulers with arrows. The horsemen stumble with fear. I will go to the forest for justice. The wind for my garment I wear. Together with my many companions, The wind for my garment and the rain my drink, We build a new heaven and earth. From the book "...AND THE RAIN MY DRINK" By Han Suyin (韓素音) a world renowned author. ......................................................... During the period of 1946 to 1948 there were a lot of troubles between the ex-MPAJA (ex-Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army) and the British Colonial Authorities. The country was recovering from the war. There were strikes everywhere by the workers for decent pays. However, the British used heavy handed to break up the strikes. The British sent troops to go against the workers. In many instances, the British troops opened fire and killed many workers. The ex-MPAJA took retaliatory action and had the strike breakers, the managers of two rubber estates, killed in Sungei Siput on June 16, 1948. The British declared war on the ex-MPAJA. But they did not use the word "War" but "Emergency". As the author John Gullick, an authority on Malaya and one-time member of the Malayan Civil Service, points out," It was a war - though out of regard for the London insurance market, on which the Malayan economy relied for cover, no one ever used the word". Noel Barber, the author of the book "The War of the Running Dogs" says," This misnomer continued for twelve years, for the simple reason that insurance rates covered losses of stocks and equipment through riot and civil commotion in an emergency, but not in a civil war". The ex-MPAJAs went back to the jungle and took up arms to wage a guerrilla war against the British Colonial Authorities. During the Japanese occupation the British desperately asked for help from the MPAJA[1A] whom they praised as the heroes. After the war the British awarded some many distinguished medals to members of the MPAJA. Their leader Chin Peng (陳平) was awarded two medals, the Order of the British Empire (OBE) and Burma Star by the Supreme Allied Commander, South East Asia, Admiral Mountbatten. Now the British were back to become the Colonial Master of Malaya they turned against the MPAJA whom they considered Communist Terrorists. Chin Peng became Public Enemy No.1 and his head was worth a quarter of a million dollars. Some of the Emergency Regulations The British Colonial Authorities in Malaya introduced Emergency Regulations to give the British more power over the life liberty of the Malayan People. Some of the regulations were as follow: (1) Suspicion for being a Hill People (Communist) could be detailed for up to two years without trial; (2) Traffic and the passage of food along public roads could be controlled; (3) Houses could be searched by the police without warrants; (4) Curfews could be imposed; (5) Heavy penalties could be imposed for assisting the Hill People; (6) Any person found in possession of arms and ammunition and convicted would be sentenced to death by hanging. (From the book "Jungle War in Malaya" By Harry Miller 1972 ISBN 0 213 99454 2) There was one regulation that the Communists hated so much that they launched an out all campaign trying to disrupt it and preventing the government to implement it. It was the system of compulsory national registration and the introduction of identity cards. According to the regulation every man and woman, and every child over twelve years old, must possess an identity card bearing his name, photograph and thumbprint. The British Colonial Authorities were cocksure that the Communists would never register themselves. Thus, at the end of registration, any person without an identity card could be presumed to be a Hill People. This was a way to distinguish between an ordinary citizen and a Hill People. The Communists launched anti-registration campaign. I quote from Harry Miller' s book: "They (the Hill People) described registration as a government plan to conscript men for the British Army, to levy oppressive taxes, to facilitate forced labour, and to requisition food supplies. "Photographers who travelled to villages, reaping a sudden and rich harvest taking head-and-shoulder portraits for identity cards, were threatened with death, and so were people who showed readiness to meet the government's wishes. Some photographers were slashed to death, people with identity cards shot dead, and registration teams were attacked. But the brutal campaign did not stop the photographers or the people turning up at registration centers." In my home town called Pusing, there was a young man called Mak Hon Liang (麥漢良) [2B], who owned a photography shop at Batu Gajah Road. His shop was called See Fa Photo Studio (時化影相店) which was right opposite the Pusing Police Station. A member from the Min Yuen (民運 an organization that supported the Hill People) told Mr. Mak to stop taking head-and-shoulder portraits for identity cards. Mr. Mak reported to the police that the Hill People wanted him to stop taking photos for identity cards. The policemen assured him that they would keep an eye on his shop. One day, a Hill People came and threw a hand grenade into his shop and blew up his photo studio. Luckily no members of Mak's family was inside the studio when hand grenade exploded and no want was hurt. The shop was not on fire. Mr. Mak was really frightened. He did not repair his shop immediately but waited until the national registration was over that was in the spring of 1949. [2B] After the Second World War, the MPAJA leadership and its organizations remained underground. Although the MPAJA was officially disbanded in December 1945 there were still about 3,000 troops living in the jungle throughout Malaya. The MPAJA were actually divided their troops into two armies: the "Open Army" and the "Clandestine Army 秘密軍". The 'Clandestine Army' were to remain underground in expectation that the returned British Colonial Authorities would turn against them. Some of the arms parachuted by the British were buried in the jungle in case of any hostile contingency from the British. The Malayan Communist Party (MCP)wanted to kick the British out so that they could establish a Communist Government in Malaya that the Malays and Indians were totally against it. Eventually the Malays sided with the British to fight the MCP. The war called "The Emergency" that lasted for 12 years from 1948 to 1960. [1A] Mak Hon Liang, eventually, repaired his studio but he did not work as a photographer but leased his studio to a man by the name of Khor Yok Tong (郭玉堂). Mak Hon Liang went to work in an architecture firm in Kampar. Several years later Mak Hon Liang became a member of the Malayan Registered Architect. Mak Hon Liang is the elder brother of Dato Mak Hon Kam who was a Cabinet Minister in Dr Mahathir's Administration for 12 years. Mak Hon Kam and I lived in a two bed-room house together for 4 years when we were students studying in Australia, in the 1960s. He is a businessman now based in China although his home is in Malaysia. He is an Australian trained Architect. We are still in contact with each other by mobile phone occasionally. Posted to Overseas Chinese Forum at asiawind.com By CHUNG Yoon-Ngan (鄭永元) All rights reserved

Reply To This Message

Re: My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5)

Author: CHUNG Yoon Ngan  Date:   01-03-12 20:54 My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1969 (5) 081. The Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA) in our village - 1949 http://yn.chung.id.au/5th.IndependentRegiment.InCamp.jpg There were lots of unhappy incidents in our village, Kampong Sayap (沙葉 村). Sometimes the Hill People (山頂老) or the MPAJA went to the roadside and opened fire on buses belonging to The General Bus Company (普通巴士公 司). The buses were, as usual, running between Ipoh and the two towns of Tronoh, about 10 kilometers, and Parit, about 20 kilometers from our village. I remembered a Chinese businessman from Parit was killed. The Hill People were angry over the refusal of the bus company to contribute donation to their organization. I recalled a group of Hill People hijacked a bus, belonging to the same bus company. They told the passengers to get down and walked to either Pusing or Siputeh. They then told the driver to drive the bus to the village basketball field, near a rubber plantation and lighted it. None of the passengers was hurt. Several weeks after this incident, Zhang Laifu (張來福), our village school teacher, was killed by the Hill People, who accused him of being a police informer. The British were very angry and they came to the village and rounded up all the male adults and took them by army trucks to the police station in Siputeh for interrogation. The villagers were all released and sent back to the village after spending a night in the Siputeh Police Station. Our study at the Overseas Chinese Primary School in Siputeh (埔地華僑小學 ) was often interrupted by incidents in the village and in the town of Siputeh. There was an occasion when a group of Hill People attacked the Siputeh Police Station, at night, wanting to burn it down. A truck load of British troops from the British Regiment in Batu Gajah, about three kilometers east of Siputeh, arrived to rescue the policemen. The Hill People withdrew. The next day, the students from our village were afraid of going to school. Chen Koy Loy, the adopted son of Grandmother [he was from Taiwan and came to Malaya as a Japanese soldier who defected to the MPAJA], went inside with the MPAJA although it was not his war. Since he was with the MPAJA for so many years he was afraid of being arrested by the British and ended up in jail. The Chung family did not see him again until one year later. The Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA) changed their name to the Malayan People's Anti-British Army (MPABA). There were about six thousand fighters in the whole of Malaya. There were many members of the MPAJA in our village of about one hundred families. During the Japanese occupation they belonged to the 3rd Patrol of the 5th Independent Regiment of the MPAJA. The leader of this patrol was Zhong Jianchuan (鐘劍川) and the deputy leader Zeng Gengyou ( 曾庚友 ) who was our neighbor. The MPAJA in our village reorganized their party to fight the British. They asked the village folks for financial and material supports. Father was still the village chief, but he was doing business of dealing rubber and tin ore and lived in Pusing. Other than the regular donation of provisions to the MPAJA by First Elder Brother, Father contributed seven sacks of rice to the MPAJA, without the knowledge of the British, otherwise he would be ended in prison. As I have stated that there were two little grocery shops in the village. The other one belonged to a man called Cao Dai (曹帶). When Comrade Zeng Gengyou asked Cao Dai to contribute seven sacks of rice to the MPABA, Cao Dai was reluctant to donate saying that he could not afford it but he could sell the MPABA for 50% discount. The MPABA were not happy and accused Cao Dai of being too money minded. One night, Zeng Gengyou sent a group of fighters from another village to Cao Dai's grocery shop and forcefully took away seven sacks of rice. The fighters also took Cao Dai along with them back to the jungle to face the severe reprimand by the leader. One day, Zeng Gengyou sent his third younger brother called Zeng Ziyuan (曾子元), who was not a member of the MPABA but a member of the Min Yuen (民運 or Mass Movement), the supporters of the MPABA, to Siputeh town, not far from the village, and had the police corporal, a Sikh, killed while he was having his bear tripped in a barber shop. Zeng Ziyuan took the corporal' s pistol with him. Due to this pistol, later, Zeng Ziyuan paid for his life. Posted to Overseas Chinese Forum at asiawind.com By CHUNG Yoon-Ngan (鄭永元) All rights reserved

Reply To This Message

Re: My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5)

Author: CHUNG Yoon Ngan  Date:   01-03-12 22:44 My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5) 082. A kidnap - 1949 我愛我的馬來亞,---Wo3 ai4 wo3 di2 Malaiya, 馬來亞是我家鄉,---Malaiya shi4 wo3 di2 jia xiang, 日本時期不自由,---Riben shi2 qi bu4 zi4 you2, 如今更苦難.----------Ru2 jin geng ku3 nan2. 誰知狗去猴子來,---Shui2 zhi Gou qu4 Gouzi lai2, 馬來亞成了苦海,---Malaiya cheng2 le ku3 hai3, 兄弟們阿姐妹們,---Xiong di4 men2 a jie3 mei4 men2, 不能在等待.----------Bu4 neng2 zai4 deng3 dai4. I love my Malaya, Malaya is my home, It had no freedom during the Japanese occupation, But now we suffer more. Who knows that after the Dogs[1] have left the Monkeys[2] returned, Malaya has become a sea of bitterness, Brothers and sisters, We cannot wait any longer. The Hill People (山頂老 or the Communists) called the Japanese the Dogs[1] and the British the Monkeys[2] An anti-British song --------------------------------------------------------- There was a tin mine in the outskirts of our village. It was called Sin Hing Tin Mining Kongsi (新興錫礦公司). The Towkay (頭家 or the owner), a Meixian Hakka, refused to make a contribution of one hundred dollars to the newly organized Malayan People's Anti-British Army (MPABA) on the ground that he did not live in the village. Comrade Zeng Gengyou was not happy. One day, Zeng Gengyou (曾庚友), the deputy commander of the MPAJA in our village, sent a few of his underground armed members and had the Towkay of the tin mine arrested. These underground armed members lived in their own homes in the village. Only regular MPABA fighters lived in the jungle. The arrested Towkay was kept in Loh Ah Luk (羅亞六)'s house which was next to the Upper Pond in the village. (Note: there were two man-made ponds in the village, the Upper Pond and the Lower Pond. Originally that area was a big swamp. The British made a road in the middle of the swamp by earth in order to built a railway to their tin mining companies in Tronoh town. Thus two large ponds were formed. A river with a bridge over it was created for the excess water to be flown into another river for other tin mines in the vicinity to use. [please refer to the map]. The water in the Upper was about five or six feet deep, whereas the Lower Pond was much shallower.) One of the workers in the tin mine reported the kidnapping to the Siputeh Police Station which was about two kilometers south of the village. The informer pinpointed the position of Loh Ah Luk's house to the Sergeant who relayed the kidnapping to the British Regiment stationed in Batu Gajah. There were about 500 British soldiers in the regiment. The army barracks was about four kilometers east of our village (please refer to the map). That night, two truck loads of British soldiers came to the village and surrounded Loh Ah Luk's house. Later, according to First Elder Brother, who was a member of the Min Yun (民運), [which was originally called Anti-Japanese Union (AJU) during the Japanese Occupation] in Comrade Zeng's new organization, but he did not take part in the kidnapping, told me that that night there were about twenty armed members of the new organization (Note: the Hakkas in the area called them 山頂老 or Hill People) in the house with the Towkay. It was the rambutans blooming season. At night, there were lots of flying foxes coming from the limestone caves in the nearby jungle, to eat the fruit. Flying foxes slept during daytime and came out at night to prey for fruit. This was how the village folks chasing them away. They hanged an empty kerosene- tin on top of a tree. A short wooden rod was tied inside on one-side opened kerosene tin and a long string was tied to the rod. The string should be long enough to reach the house. At night one could hear the flying foxes eating the rambutan fruit because they were noisy eaters. All that one had to do was to tug the string which was tied to the rod that would hit the kerosene-tin producing a loud clanking noise frightening the flying foxes away. Loh Ah Luk had many rambutan trees. That night the flying foxes were eating his rambutans. So Loh Ah Luk tugged the string and one could hear the clanking noise of the kerosene-tin and the flying foxes flying away from the rambutan trees. However, the British soldiers who were surrounding his house, suspected that Loh Ah Luk was raising an alarm. The British soldiers opened fire. The bren guns, sten guns and the rifles were blasting towards Loh Ah Luk's house. After the first round of shootings, seeing the opposite side did not return fire, the British stopped shooting. All were quiet. It was quiet through out the night because the Hill People did not return fire as they knew they were surrounded and were finding ways to escape. Morning came and the sun rose. The British soldiers approached the house quietly with caution. When they entered the house there were no Hill People inside the house except the Towkay and Loh Ah Luk with members of his family. The British searched the area and captured five Hill People, hiding in the swamp. Apparently these five did not know how to swim and were left behind. The rest of the Hill People escaped by swimming to the other side of the pond. Miraculously no one was hurt or killed in the gun battle. One of the captives was Zeng Ziyuan (曾子元), who had killed the police Sikh corporal a few weeks ago. The British found him in possession of the handgun belonged to the police corporal. Later, Zeng Ziyuan was sent to trial for murdering the police corporal. He was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. Eventually he was hanged. Grandmother, gathered all the members of the family and walked to Pusing to Father's place where he had his rubber and tin-ore dealing business at the shophouse at 19 Main Road Pusing. In fact, the folks of the whole village fled either to Pusing or Siputeh. They were afraid of being caught in the middle when Comrade Zeng launched a counterattack which was not materialized. There were about one hundred refugees ended up living temporarily in Father's shop. Father was still the village chief although he lived in Pusing. Father could not refuse any of the refugees into his shop. That night I could not find a place to sleep as the whole shop from up-stair to ground floor were filled with people, sleeping. They slept anyway where there was a space. I ended up sleeping on the counter table. After staying for a few days in Pusing, Grandmother took the family and all the refugees returned to the village. Luckily, the British or the Hill People did not take any forceful action against the village. Posted to Overseas Chinese Forum at asiawind.com By CHUNG Yoon-Ngan (鄭永元) All rights reserved

Reply To This Message

Re: My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5)

Author: CHUNG Yoon Ngan  Date:   01-04-12 07:49 My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5) 084. First Elder Brother a member of Min Yuen (民運) [1A] - 1949 不求金玉重重貴,---Bu4 qiu2 jin yu4 zhong4 zhong4 gui4, 但願兒孫個個賢.---Dan4 yuan4 er2 sun ge4 ge4 xian2. I do not ask the gold and jade to have high value, But I wish that all my offspring will be wise. A Chinese proverb --------------------------------------------------- Seeing that there were no end of troubles in the village, Father relocated the family to live in Pusing at the shop-house. Grandmother was not happy to leave the village but she had no alternative as there were often gun battles occurred between the British and the Hill People in the jungle near the village. Grandmother left the grocery shop and the house in the care of a man by the surname of Luo (羅), who was a relative of the previous owner of the house that Grandmother bought many years ago. The ex-owner of the house went back to China during the 1930 recession. The 15 members of the Chung family settled quite well in the shop -house in Pusing after the relocation. Father's business of rubber and tin dealing was in downstairs and living rooms in upstairs. The upstairs was of wooden floor and it had three bedrooms and its lounge became a sleeping place for the boys. Father and Step-Mother occupied one bedroom. First Uncle and Aunty Jiang (江叔母) had the second bed room. The third bedroom was for Grandmother and the female children of the family. In fact Grandmother was not happy at all living in a shop-house. She preferred her village house (菜園屋) in Kampong Sayap. She often complained that the shop-house was too hot and without fresh air. First Elder Brother was helping in the business and at the same time learning how to become a businessman. However, he was not interested in learning how to do business. He told his father that he wanted to learn English. So Father enrolled him in a private English school in Batu Gajah. The school was called Royal English School (RES) which was situated right opposite the Post Office (now RES had been demolished and a row of new shop houses were built on the site). An Indian Lady owned the school which cater from standard one to standard six, specially for over-aged students. First Elder Brother was seventeen and he was enrolled in Standard Four. Father was happy to see First Elder Brother finally going back to school learning English which was an official language in Malaya. Father bought him a bicycle so that he could cycle to school in the morning and cycle back in the afternoon with other boys from Pusing. Several months later, one day, Father received a letter from the school principal enquiring why First Elder Brother did not turn up at school although he had paid the school fees. It was strange to Father who knew that First Elder Brother left home for school every morning and returned home in the afternoon. The next day morning, one hour after First Elder Brother had left home for school, Father drove to the school to find out for himself if First Elder Brother was really playing truant. (Note: The previous year, Father bought a small car, Austin 17, and the registration plate was PK 157). Finding First Brother was not at the school, Father went to see the school principal, a highly educated Indian lady, and told her that he had no idea where his son went. He promised the principal that he would find out the truth when First Elder Brother came home. That evening during the family dinner time, Father, (who had never been to any school in his whole life, had asked someone in town who read English to have that letter translated into Chinese) showed First Elder Brother the letter from the principal and asked him where had he been during all those months instead of attending school. First Elder Brother lied to Father saying he was in Kampong Sayap helping Mr Luo in the grocery shop. But the family knew that he was not interested in learning how to be a businessman. Father told First Elder Brother to stop going to school and stay in the shop to help running the business.The matter was thus settled. Father asked someone to fetch his friend called Ah Liao (亞廖 I have forgotten his full name) to come as he wanted to talk to him about First Elder Brother. Father knew Ah Liao had contact with the Hill People. Father asked Ah Liao what his eldest son was doing in Kampong Sayap. Several weeks later, Liao told Father that First Elder brother was a member of the Min Yuen (民運), an organization supporting the Hill People. There was nothing Father could do except trying to persuade First Elder Brother to give up the political activities. Occasionally, First Elder Brother went to visit the camps of the Hill People not far from Kampong Sayap. During the early period of the Emergency the British Colonial Authorities were organizing Home Guards (家鄉自衛團) in all the small towns in Malaya to protect themselves from the Hill People. Huang Renan (黃仁安), Father's business partner was appointed by the British as the leader of Pusing town because he was fluent in Chinese and English and his father was a Dato (title of distinction honoured by the Sultan of Perak). A shop-house in Batu Gajah Road in Pusing was acquired to become the Head Office of the Home Guards (many years later when the organization of Home Guards in Pusing town was disbanded, the shop-house was donated to the two Pusing Chinese schools). One day, First Elder Brother came home with a hand-grenade. He hid it inside a large rice bowl and covered it with a small plate. His action was watched by my younger Step-Brother the eldest son of Step-Mother. At that time younger Step-Brother was about about four years old. First Elder Brother was ordered by the Hill People to kill Huang Renan by blowing him up with a hand-grenade. Without First Elder Brother's knowledge young Step-Brother took the hand-grenade and rolled it about, like rolling a big marble, in the kitchen with a Cousin Brother, the second son of First Uncle, the younger brother of Father. Seeing the two boys playing with the hand-grenade Step-Mother was nearly fainted. She screamed at the boys to get away from it. She called Father to come and see what had happened. Father took the hand-grenade and wrapped it up with a towel and hid it on the cement top of the bathroom. He warned everybody not to go near the bathroom. Father did not report it to the police because under the Emergency Regulations whoever found in possession of firearm would be sentenced to death. When First Elder Brother came home Father scolded him for causing troubles to the family. Father told him to return the hand-grenade to the Hill People immediately. After he had left home Father asked Grandmother what to do with First Elder Brother. Grandmother's recommendation was that the family should convince First Elder Brother to go to China to study. The Chung family still had in possession of a big house in the ancestral village. That evening after dinner, a conference was convened and all the members of the family unanimously agreed that in order to avoid troubles by First Elder Brother, the family should send him to China to study or he should leave home. First Elder Brother chose to go to study in China. By coincident, Zhang Yuansheng (張元生), a grocery shop owner in Pusing, was planning to go back to his ancestral village for holidays. Zhang Yuansheng's ancestral village was not far from the Chung family's ancestral village. In May or June in 1949, First Elder Btother and Zhang Yuansheng were being sent off by the relatives of the two families at Batu Gajah railway station leaving to Singapore and from where they would take a boat to China. [1A] Min Yuen (民運) Min Yuen translated into English as "Popular Mass Movement" or "People's Revolutionary Movement". It was an underground organization that provided money, food, intelligence and communications. It functioned mostly amid the Chinese population among the squatters and in the towns and cities of Malaya. There were estimated to be numbered about 40.000 in the early months of the Emergency. During the Japanese Occupation it was called Anti-Japanese Union (AJU or 抗日同盟會 (抗盟 in short). Posted to Overseas Chinese Forum at asiawind.com By CHUNG Yoon-Ngan (鄭永元) All rights reserved

Reply To This Message

Re: My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5)

Author: CHUNG Yoon Ngan  Date:   01-04-12 16:49 My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5) 085. A daring escapee -1949 鹽不論在哪裏都是鹹的, 醋不論在哪裏都是酸的. The salt is always salty wherever you go. The vinegar is always sour wherever you go. A Hakka Saying ---------------------------------------------------- In the early of 1940, ten shophouses were built next to the only cinema in Pusing. Lin Youmei (林有妹), a rich dulang washer, bought one of them, 19 Main Road Pusing. During the Japanese occupation Lin Youmei's husband was killed by the Japanese and left a daughter behind. Just before the surrender of the Japanese she married Father and she became our step-mother. By marrying Father, now, Father had six children, four sons and two daughters. The cinema was behind her shophouse. Father and Huang Renan (黃仁安), the son of a deceased rich man Dato Huang, formed a partnership and established a rubber and tin dealing business in Lin Youmei's shop house. During the early stage of the Emergency (1948 to 1960 the Communists fighting against the British) there were a lot of fighting in the rubber plantations near our village, Kampong Sayap (沙葉村). In order to escape the fighting, Father moved the whole family to live in the shophouse. Long hours of curfew had not yet imposed on Pusing town. The only cinema in Pusing was behind Step-Mother's shophouse and it continued to operate. It was managed by a man from Ipoh, The kids nicknamed the Manager of the cinema "The Thunder 雷公仔" because he always scolded the kids who were very naughty. The owner of the cinema was Huang Renan. Father's business had installed a telephone. At that time it was extremely difficult to obtain the approval from the Government to install a telephone in a private home or business. The Manager of the cinema used Father's telephone for communication with his family in Ipoh and the cinema business. For the sake of courtesy the Manager gave Father a pass to the cinema show which meant that, every night, a member of Father's family could go and watch the movie free of charge. One night, a Tarzan show was on and I asked Father's permission to allow me to go and watch the movie. It was a full house show. The show was over before 10 pm and the patrons were coming out of the cinema. When they came out they saw the cinema was surrounded by British troops and Malay Special Constables (SC) who were screening the patrons one by one. They allowed the kids to pass through without searching their bodies for weapons. A man was found in possession of a revolver. He was arrested but was not being handcuffed. He was told to sit on the step of a Hainanese coffee shop called Xin Hing (新興) and a SC with a sten gun was watching him, while the rest of the British soldiers and Malay SC were screening other patrons. There were a lot of people in the street and many of them were going home. There was a group of kids including me standing near the Malay SC who was keeping an eye on the arrested man. Seeing so many kids standing next to him the Malay SC shooed us away and lost his attention of watching the arrested man. Knowing that the Malay SC was not watching him the arrested man jumped up and ran into the crowd and continued to run towards a street which was not lighted. The Malay SC kept chase but did not fire his sten gun into the crowd. All the kids ran after the Malay SC to see what would happen to the man, a Chinese. When the man reached the dark street the Malay SC shouted "Halt" "Halt" "Halt". Then followed by a burst of sub-machine gun firing, tack, tack, tack, tack, tack..... The Malay SC missed the man who escaped into the dark. The Malay SC turned around, without pointing his gun at the kids shouting and screaming at us in Malay. He was so angry that he wanted to slap all of us. We all ran home. The next day, the Police Sergeant of the Pusing Police Station came to warn the town residents that whenever there was gun battle all the civilians should go home or lie down on the ground and under no circumstances they should go and see the gun fight. http://yn.chung.id.au/PusingPoliceStation.jpg For this I received a scolding from Father, and a belting from First Uncle. Posted to Overseas Chinese Forum at asiawind.com By CHUNG Yoon-Ngan (鄭永元) All rights reserved

Reply To This Message

Re: My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5)

Author: CHUNG Yoon Ngan  Date:   01-04-12 21:19 My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5) 086 The English tuition class - 1949 Xin Ma Lai Qing Ge 新馬來情歌 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeIhOuTNvM8 （女）有個馬來先生穿件花紗籠 頭戴一頂SONG-KOK站在大路旁 我偷偷地向他身上細打量 果然一表人才給人好印象 敢問一聲CHE-ABANG （男）我名叫HASAN （女）住在那一個KAMPONG （男）KAMPONG在 GEY-LANG （女）再問先生幾多歲 （男）今年二十三 （女）是否有了CHIN-TA （男）還沒有對象 （男）娘惹生來漂亮花容白如霜 RUMBUT長長彎彎披在兩肩上 一對迷人眼睛好比小月亮 PAKAI BAJA BAN-DONG曲線像GUITAR 敢問一聲娘惹 （女）我叫瑪莉亞 （男）再問今年幾多歲 （女）二九一十八 （男）我要跟你結婚 （女）是真還是假 （合）同心合力建造甜蜜蜜的家 .......................................................... Female 女: 有個馬來先生穿件花紗籠, 頭戴一頂宋谷站在大路旁. 我偷偷地向他身上細打量, 果然一表人材給人好印象. 敢問一聲結啊邦........... Male 男: 我名叫阿山 Female 女: 住在那一個甘榜? Male 男: 甘榜在布先 .............................. ............................... There is a Malay gentleman standing on the roadside. He is wearing a flowery sarong and a songko on his head. Stealthily I glance at him. He is ready a gentleman. I am brave enough to ask for his name. He replies that he is called Hasan. I ask where he lives. He says he lives in Pusing. ............................................ ................................................ 馬來情歌 A Malaysian love song -------------------------------------------------------------- The year was 1949 and it was the second year of the Emergency, the war between the Malayan Communist Party and the British Colonial Authorities. First Elder Brother had returned to the Old Mountain of the Anextors to study. Second and Third Elder Brothers and I were enrolled at one of the two Chinese primary schools in Pusing which was called Yi Zhi Primary School (布先益 智小學). In order to prevent Third Elder Brother and I from running wild after school, Father sent us to an English tuition class in the only Malay grocery shop at Batu Gajah Road in Pusing. The town folks called the owner of this Malay shop Haji who married a Chinese wife. Haji spoke fluent Dongguan Hakka dialect and he was obsessed in playing Mahjongg (麻雀). He employed a Malay assistant to run the shop for him while he played Mahjongg. Haji was quite old and during the high of the Emergency he sold off his shop to a Chinese woman who opened a hair dressing business. Haji then retired and played Mahjongg all the time in a Hainanese coffee shop. The English class was held in the upstairs of the Malay shop. The teacher was a young and very handsome Malay gentleman whose name was Hansan and we called him Cikgu. His grandfather migrated to Pusing from Acheh province in Sumatra, Indonesia. Cikgu Hasan spoke fluent Dongguan Hakka dialect (東 莞客家話) because he grew up with Hakka kids. There were about ten pupils, all boys except one Chinese girl, by the surname of Fong (房 forgot her full name), who was about 15 years old. Cikgu Hasan told the us, that we should not go upstairs by ourselves without him. Cikgu frightened the us by saying that there was a hantu (ghost) up there but the hantu was afraid of him. Of course, we believed our Cikgut. Every day, in the afternoon, before the class began the we waited at downstairs for Cikgu to call us to go to the class. Cikgu always came earlier than us. Every time when Cikgu called the us to go upstairs we always saw Cikgu with the Chinese girl when we arrived at the class. We, the students, were just kids and we did not suspect anything wrong with them together after all they were teacher and student. Occasionally Cikgu told the us that Miss Fong needed extra tuition because she was in a higher class at school than us. It had been going on like that for a long time until the Government imposed long curfew hours on the town, because the Hill People had killed two British contractors who were putting up barbed wire to fence in the town. When the town was under curfew, it was impossible for the English tuition class to continue. Then, there was a big quarrel between the girl's and Cikgu's families. It was a very serious matter because it involved a Chinese and a Malay family. It seemed that the quarrel started as a result of Miss Fong telling her parents that she wanted to marry Cikgu who was willing to marry her if her parents would give her the permission to get married because she was underage. Miss Fong was willing to become a Muslim. However, Miss Fong's parents refused on the ground that she was too young. Her parents begged Cikgu to wait for a few more years until she grew up and finished her high school. As the result of this quarrel, we, the boys in the tuition class before woke up to the fact that our cikgu and Miss Fong were having love affair at upstairs while we were waiting downstairs. That was why Cikgu warned us not to go upstairs by ourselves because the hantu would harm us. Shortly after the quarrel, our cikgu left town and went to live somewhere else. None of the us knew what had happened to our Cikgu. When Miss Fong grew up she did not marry our Cikgu but the son of the owner of an ice factory in Singapore. After having a few children her husband divorced her because she was got red-handed having an adultery with her Malay chauffeur. She returned to live in Pusing. Town folks used to tease her by saying "It is impossible for the leopard to change its skin". Soon after she relocated herself to Ipoh. Posted to Overseas Chinese Forum at asiawind.com By CHUNG Yoon-Ngan (鄭永元) All rights reserved

Reply To This Message

Re: My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5)

Author: CHUNG Yoon Ngan  Date:   01-05-12 05:51 My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5) 087. Grandmother passed away - 1949 山中也有千年樹,---Shan zhong ye3 you3 qian nian2 shu4, 世上難逢百歲人.---Shi4 shang4 nan2 feng2 bai3 sui4 ren2. There are trees as old as one thousand years in the forest, It is hard to meet an one hundred-year-old man in the world. A Chinese Saying ---------------------------------------------------------------- As I have stated before that in the 1920s, Grandmother worked as a labourer carrying sand and bricks (做泥水) in the building site on building a shophouse in Siputeh. She worked there from the inception of building until the shophouse was completed. She used to say to her fellow workers that she would ask her eldest son to buy her that shophouse when her son grew up. The address of the shophouse, which is still there, is 47 Main Road Siputeh. Currently my sister-in-law lives there baby sitting her grandchildren. When it was completed it was bought by a wealthy man called Zheng Yuanfa (鄭元發) who did not establish a business but use the shophouse as a residential house. Next to his resident was a barber shop. At the beginning of the Emergency a Sikh police corporal was killed by Zeng Ziyuan (曾子元), the third younger brother of Zeng Gengyou (曾庚友), now, the new leader of the Hill People of the third patrol. Zeng Ziyuan was a member of the Min Yuen (民運) when he killed the Sikh police corporal who was having his bear trimmed. The wife of Zheng Yuanfa asked him to sell off the house and relocate the family to Ipoh. But Zheng Yuanfa refused on the ground that he was an old man and he would like to live in Siputeh until he died. Zheng Yuanfa (鄭元發) died at the end of 1948. His children decided to live in Ipoh and they sold the shop house to Father. So Grandmother's dream had come true. Father formed a partnership with a Malay called Haji (I can't remember his full name) from the town called Parit, about 6 kilometers south of Siputeh, to open a rubber dealing business as Haji had a licence for dealing rubber. All the rubber sheets collected from Siputeh and Pusing were transported to the smoke house in Kampong Sayap for smoking. The smoke house was disused when the Chung family relocated to Pusing. Later Haji and Father bought a small boat giving a service on the Perak River ferrying passengers from Parit town to the Malay kampongs on the other side of Perak River. Haji and Father even bought rice from Ipoh and resold them to the Malays living in the Malay Kampongs. I recalled that my two elder brothers and I used to visit the shop after school and Haji was very kind to us by giving us some pocket money. At that time Grandmother only give us 5 cents per month as pocket money. Any thing or lollies that we wanted to eat we could always obtain them from our own grocery shop. In September, 1949, Grandmother passed away at the age of 66. She was sick for sometimes. Grandmother would not have passed away so soon if she did not have to move to live in Pusing. In actual she did not like to live in the shophouse that she often complained that it was too hot for her and it had no fresh living in town. She preferred her village house (菜園屋) in Kampong Sayap (沙葉村). However, there were often gun battles between the Hill People and the British troops in the rubber plantations near our house. Sooner or later some members of our family could get hurt. There were no other alternatives for Father other than to relocate the family to Pusing. Grandmother's health was greatly affected by the death of our only younger sister, Dingjiao (丁嬌) who died of appendicitis eruption, just before the family shifted to Pusing. Dingjiao, the only daughter of Father, was eight years old and was studying year two at the Overseas Chinese Primary School in Siputeh. One afternoon, when she returned home from school she complained of stomachache. Grandmother did not realize that Dingjiao was really very sick. As usual Grandmther gave her some Chinese herbal medicine and told her to have an afternoon nap. Dingjiao was screaming of stomachache when she got up from a short nap. It was late in the afternoon and was getting dark. Grandmother told Aunty Jiang, the wife of First Uncle, to go and fetch the village herbalist. Before the herbalist could arrive Dingjiao was dead. Later it was discovered that she suffered from severe inflammation in the appendix and it burst. Grandmother was so upset that she fainted. Dingjiao was only a few months old when our mother died of diarrhoea in the mid of the Japanese invasion of Malaya. Grandmother brought up Dingjiao like 掌 上明珠 a pearl in her palm or a beloved grand-daughter. After Dingjiao's death Grandmother often went quietly to the man-made little stream in front of the house to cry. She was so sad and she cried and cried softly as she did not want to disturb the family. She cried so much that her health was deteriorating and she was becoming blind. We really felt sad for her and we could do nothing other than consoling her. In fact she died of broken hearted. During the funeral ceremony the next night, Chen Kon Loy (陳官來), the adopted son of grandmother, came to pay his respect to Grandmother. Kon Loy was with the Hill People in the jungle and he took the great risk to come out to town. He did not stay long for the ceremony. But he managed to have a hush-hush conversation with Father in a room upstairs. Kon Loy told Father about life in the jungle and said that he wanted to go back to Taiwan to be with his family whom he missed very much. Father told him to surrender but Kon Loy was afraid that Zeng Gengyou, the new leader after Zhong Jianchuan was killed, might not allow him to go. Father told him that Huang Renan, his partner, would arrange for his surrender as Huang Renan had connection with the police chief in Batu Gajah. Besides, Huang Renan was the chief of the Home Guards in Pusing. On hearing the name of Huang Renan, Kon Loy told Father that the Hill People wanted to kill him and he also told Father to warn his partner to be careful. Shortly after the secret conversation Kon Loy left and returned to the jungle. Grandmother was buried in the Chinese cemetery in Papan Hill (甲板義山). With the death of Grandmother it was the passing of the 23rd generation of the Chung family. Posted to Overseas Chinese Forum at asiawind.com By CHUNG Yoon-Ngan (鄭永元) All rights reserved .

Reply To This Message

Re: My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5)

Author: CHUNG Yoon Ngan  Date:   01-05-12 11:42 My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5) 088. The Hill People attempted to kill Father's business partner - 1949 易漲易退山溪水,---Yi4 zhang3 yi4 tui4 shan xi shui3, 易反易覆小人心.---Yi4 fan3 yi4 fu4 xiao3 ren2 xin. Rising and ebbing easily is the small stream, Changing ideas easily, is the small mind. A Chinese proverb ---------------------------------------------- Several weeks after Father had settled all the matters in regard to Grandmother' s funeral, he had a long conversation with his business partner Huang Renan (黃仁安), telling him in what Chin Kon Loy (陳官來), an adopted son of Grandmother, had told him that the Hill People (Communists) wanted his head. Father advised him to shift to live in the upstairs of Strait Trading Company at Lahat Road, a British company in collecting the tin ore produced in Pusing. The collected tin ore was transported to Penang for smelting and the tin ingots were sent to England. The shophouse was, and still is, the property of the two Chinese primary schools in Pusing. Originally the shophouse belonged to the Pusing Branch Kuomintang (KMT 布先國民黨). When the Emergency started both of the parties of KMT and MCP were banned and all the properties belonging to the KMT and Malayan Communist Party (MCP 馬來亞共產黨) were donated to the two schools. The Strait Trading company rented it from the schools. Huang Renan agreed to shift from his bungalow to the shophouse which is near the Pusing Police Stations. Huang Renan and his family lived in a big bungalow in Pusing next to the ten zine houses which people call (十間白鐵 屋 or The Ten White Iron Houses) built in the 1930s. One night, the Hill People attacked the Pusing Police Station which was just only a diversion. Their aim was to kill Huang Renan. A few of them smashed the backdoor of the shophouse where Huang Renan was living upstairs with his family. He heard the smashing noise. As he was the head of the Home Guards and knowing that the Hill People wanted to kill him the Officer-in- charge of the Police Department (OCPD) in Batu Gajah gave Huang Renan a revolver and a Sten gun for his protection. Using the Sten gun he fired at the intruders " tack, tack, tack. tack. tack....". The Hill People ran off. Huang Renan (黃仁安 Ooi Eng An in Hokkien) was about three years older than Father. When Huang Renan had completed his English education at Anglo Chinese School Ipoh in the 1920s, his father, Datuk Ooi, sent him to Medan, in Sumatra of present day Indonesia to wind up the family's business there. Datuk Ooi had two sons - Huang Renan and Huang Renzu (黃仁祖). Huang Renan was the elder son. While he was in Medan he felt in love with an Eurasian girl whose mother was a Dutch woman and father Hokkien Chinese. In the early 1930s he returned to Malaya without marrying the Eurasian girl, knowing that Datuk Ooi would against the marriage. His father assigned Huang Renan to be in charge in building a cinema in Pusing. Huang Renan married a Cantonese girl from Batu Gajah. Datuk Ooi's business in tin and rubber dealing was in the shop at Lahat Road where the Straits Trading company was. Datuk Ooi died just before the Japanese occupied Malaya. After his death Huang Renan and his younger brother inherited the property. Datuk Ooi had two bungalows in Pusing. Huang Renan inherited the big one behind the Pusing town near the ten zine houses and his younger, Huang Renzu (黃仁祖) inherited the one next to the Cinema. After his father's death, quietly, Huang Renan sponsored the Eurasian girl from Medan to Malaya and married her as his second wife. Huang Renan rented the upstairs of a shophouse next to the police station of Menglembu (萬里 望). That was before the war. After the war, the two brothers did not continue the family's business in dealing tin ore and rubber. The two brothers sold the shop to the KMT or Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Party, the Pusing Branch (布先國民黨支部). The KMT established their Head Quarters at the shop. The two parties of KMT and MCP in Pusing were rival parties. In the office of the KMT there were photos of Dr. Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek, whereas in the MCP office the photos were Mao Zedong and Karl Max. Huang Renan leased the business licence to Father in dealing with rubber and tin-ore. Huang Renan was more or less like a sleeping partner. But Huang Renan was given a large allowance by the British Authorities to run the organization of the Home Guards in Pusing which was housed in a shophouse at Batu Gajah Road. In 1960, when the Emergency was over the Home Guards in Pusing was disbanded and the shophouse, their Head Quarters, was donated to the two Chinese schools. Father was one of the trustees of all the school properties. The Home Guards were used to protect Pusing town from the Hill People. Since it was not safe to live in Pusing, Father advised him to move his family to Ipoh. Huang Renan bought a house in Pasir Pinji and relocated his family there, but most of the time he stayed in his second wife's place in Menglembu. After the war, when the Pusing Branch KMT was first organized, Zeng Ruisheng (曾瑞生), the former village head of Kampong Sayap, was elected the chairman. The KMT was the deadly enemy of the Pusing Branch MCP, the Head Quarters of which was at 17 Main Road, Pusing, next door to Step-Mother's shophouse at 19 Main Road, Pusing. Chin Kon Loy, the adopted son of Grandmother, who was not a member of the MPAJA, was in charge of the Head Quarters of Pusing MPAJA branch. Taking me along, First Eldest Brother often visited the MPAJA Head Quarter. The two groups, KMT and MCP, often fought among themselves in the streets. Whenever, one group staged a demonstration against the British Colonial Authorities, the other group would stage an anti-demonstration. At the end both sides ended up fighting each other. Then the Malay policemen led by British officers would arrived and suppressed both sides. It had been going on like that very often for a long time. When the Emergency was declared the British banned the KMT and the MCP in Malaya. The shops that were the Head Quarters of both parties donated to the two Chinese schools. Originally, the business premises of the Straits Trading Company was near Papan. In order to avoid trouble from the MCP, the company shifted to Pusing and leased the former KMT office to continue their business in dealing tin ore. The shop that formerly belonged to the MCP was leased to Zhang Laibo (張來伯) who established a rice shop. In the beginning of the Emergency, members of the MCP damaged the tin mines belonging to Zeng Ruisheng, the chairman of Pusing KMT. Zeng Ruisheng did not repaired his mines but closed them down and ceased operating the mines. With his first wife and their children he relocated to Ipoh and opened a wine shop. Zeng Ruisheng had three wives. His second and third wives with their children remained in Pusing, living in his Chinese herbal medicine shop administered by his second son. His eldest son called Lian Zai (連仔 which was only his nickname and I forgot his full name) was a tin miner and his mines were not in Pusing and he was not involved in politics. So the Hill People gave him no troubles. In the 1955, Father leased a few acres of his mining land in the outskirts of Pusing for mining. Posted to Overseas Chinese Forum at asiawind.com By CHUNG Yoon-Ngan (鄭永元) All rights reserved

Reply To This Message

Re: My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5)

Author: CHUNG Yoon Ngan  Date:   01-05-12 19:25 My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5) 089 Round the clock curfew - 1950 好鐵不打釘,---Hao3 tie3 bu4 da4 ding, 好男不當兵.---Hao3 nan2 bu4 dang bing. Good iron will not be made into a nail, A good son will not become a soldier. A Chinese proverb --------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://yn.chung.id.au/24HoursCurfew.jpg This was Tanjong Malim a small town about 50 kilometers west of Kuala Lumpur. Pusing was like this town that the British Colonial Authorities often imposed 24 hours curfew on it. Someone wrote a book about it which was made into a movie title "Virgin Soldier". In order to prevent the Hill People (山頂老 or members of the Malayan Communist Party MCP) from coming into the town to obtain food stuffs, the British Colonial Authorities wanted to put up a barbed wire fence to round in Pusing town. The Hill People gave notice that they would kill anyone who dared to help the British to put up the fence. No Chinese contractors dared to do the job. Seeing that no one wanted to answer the tender the British engaged two planters from a rubber estate from another town to do the job. The planters employed Tamil Indian rubber tappers from their estate to put up the barbed wire fence. The job of fencing went on smoothly without any incident for the first day. However, the next day morning the Hill People came down from the jungle and put a bullet to each of the British contractors' heads. They died instantly on the spot. The Indian workers were unharmed. The British Colonial Authorities were furious. They imposed a twenty-four curfew on Pusing town. Many families ran out of water and food because they never expected this kind of incident would happen. The residents put up sign board in front of their houses saying they were without food and water. With military trucks full of food and water, the British soldiers went round distributing food and water to those in desperation, according to the number of members in the families. The British soldiers with Malay interpreters, no Chinese dared to work for the British at that time, in Malay language, telling the residents to close all their windows. As the Pusing residents were almost 100% Dongguan Hakka (東莞客家) many of them did not understand Malay language they did not do what was told. The British threatened to arrest them. In the end the British had no alternatives but to employ a few Cantonese Chinese as their interpreters. The Pusing residents understood Cantonese dialect. The British imposed a fine of forty Malayan dollars ($40) on each adult (over the age of 18). Those who had no money to pay for the fines the British forcefully removed their bicycles or any of article, that worth forty dollars, in the family and stored them in the Pusing Police Station. The owners of the articles received receipts for their articles. They were told to redeem their articles when they had the money. The Pusing residents thought that the British were too harsh on them and they also thought that the fines were to compensate the widows. Actually the British did not touch the money at all but deposited in the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank in Ipoh earning a compound interest of ? %. In the early 1957 before the British left Malaya and before Malaya became an independent country, they paid the money back to the Pusing residents who used half of the money to build an English primary school so that those children who wanted to study English did not have to go to Batu Gajah to study. They used the other half to build a Chinese public library (民眾圖 書館). I was one of the residents who went to Ipoh to help buying Chinese books for the newly built library. A few of us wrote to the Embassies of the U.S.A. and Australia for books and magazines. We received tons of them from these two Embassies, but all of them were in English language. [*1] The Star Online > News > Friday, April 19, 2002 Pusing's Hakka delights By Foong Thim-Leng IPOH [怡保]: Pusing [布先] a town in the Kinta Valley, has certain secrets that will fascinate visitors if they look hard enough. The town's founders, Hakka immigrants who came to work in tin mines from Dongguan county [東莞縣] in the Guangdong province [廣東省] of China during the 19th century, brought along their culinary and ethnic delights. The Hakkas are famous for preparing stewed pork and exotic dishes sold in the town's restaurants. Stalls in coffeshops serve curry or soup noodles with fresh prawns, the famous Hakka yong tau foo, wantan mee and paan mee (broad noodles in soup served with ikan bilis, prawns, pork and leafy greens [刀痲切]). However, nothing beats the nyonya and Hakka kuih [cakes] made by local residents. The kuih sellers on tricycles are found daily by the main road. Most of the kuih are prepared the traditional way using wood-fired ovens. The recipes are passed on from generation to generation. The more popular ones are kuih talam, kuih with paste made of beans, coconut or groundnuts, kuih lapis, dumplings with shrimps and shredded mengkuang, sweet potato balls, tapioca cakes, sago kuih, yam cakes and the townós specialities ǔ pink hei paan (made of glutinous rice) and the black chuh yip paan made of glutinous rice and ramie leaves. The chuh yip paan [抽葉粄 Zhu Ye Pan] is most popular during Qing Ming [清明] festival. Kuih maker Chong Yoo Thai, 40, who learnt how to make the kuih from her mother-in-law, said that, according to folklore, those who ate the kuih before paying homage to ancestors at graveyards would not be disturbed by wandering spirits. She said that herbalists used the ramie plant for its medicinal properties in treating certain women's illnesses. Chong said the plant, once considered a weed, was found growing in gardens of houses and vegetable farms in Pusing. While Chong specialises in Hakka kuih, Loo Chee Keong, 67, and his wife Liew Soo Peng, 62, make nyonya kuih. Liew said her mother-in-law learnt how to make nyonya kuih like kuih talam and kuih lapis from a Hokkien neighbour. Liew said her family also produces sago cakes, tapioca cakes and yam cakes. Lahat state assemblyman Lee Kon Yin said that kuih from Pusing was supplied to hawkers in other towns. He said that Pusing, initially called Xi Di which means tin land, would have become a sleepy hollow, when the tin mines closed in the 1980s, if not for its hardworking residents. Hakkas are known for their ability in withstanding hardship when bringing up their families. "There's a Chinese saying that they will work until their ten fingers are blunt, to survive" he said. Lee said there were several versions of how the town was named Pusing, which in Malay means spin, turn around, change direction or whirl. The popular version is that the town occupied a central location among mining towns in the old days. "The town has roads linking Menglembu, Lahat, Papan, Siputeh, Batu Gajah, Tanjung Tualang, Tronoh, Gopeng and Kampar," he said. "There are residents who believe the townós name was derived from the circular movement of a stone mortar pulled by cows at a sugar factory which once existed at the fringe of the town." "Others claimed the town was named after the swirling movement of pans previously used by hundreds of dulang washers in nearby rivers," he said. Lee said that Pusing was a major mining town even in the 1960s. Most of the residents were from Kampung Gunung Hijau which locals called Chow Mun Loong, the name of an early "mountain rat miner" who dug for tin ore by using rough timber shafts and tunnels in soft ground. "At the peak of the tin mining industry in the late 1950s and 1960s, hundreds of bicycles with large baskets would be parked near the market and along the main road while their owners, cooks and their assistants from the tin mines, did their shopping daily," said Lee. He said that prominent tin miners who made their fortunes operating mines in the surrounding areas included Choong Sam [鐘森], Foong Seong [馮相], Leong Hon Nyean [梁漢元] and Datuk Cheah Fah [謝華 father of Dr Jeffery Cheah, the President of the Federation of Hakka Associations of Malaysia]. "Elaborate feasts were held to celebrate at the mines and in restaurants on every excuse. The residents and villagers had a happy time as they spoke the same dialect and could communicate well. Even Malays, Indians and Sikhs in the town could speak Hakka then," said Lee. "However, tin mining ponds were a concern to parents as there were cases of children drowning while swimming in them," he said.[See my postings "Tales of a Hakka town"] Apart from mining ponds, signs of the town's glorious mining days included the remains of a smelting furnace in a farm and the last of a kongsi which once housed the office, store and quarters of a tin-mining company near the town. The kongsi has now been converted into a motor-mechanic workshop. Farmer Cheong Choong Choong, 79, said, "Pusing, like other towns, went through hard times during the Japanese Occupation and the Emergency. After surviving the atrocities committed by Japanese invaders, the Emergency brought a new wave of terror. The entire town and villages were surrounded by an electric fence in the early 1950s to prevent residents from providing supplies to communist terrorists operating in hills at the back of the town. One had to be careful in what one said even in coffee shops as one would not know who would be listening. Several residents were shot dead because they said the wrong things or were believed to be supporters of the Kuomintang, the Nationalist Party founded by Dr Sun Yat-Sen which was involved in a civil war with the communists in China. Pusing was declared a 'black area' by British authorities. On one occasion, the British authorities fined residents aged above 18 years $30 each for failing to provide information on the killing of a British officer by terrorists*. Part of the money was used to set up a public library while the rest was given as compensation to the family of the murdered officer," he said. Lee said that current development in Pusing was slow with its population of about 20,000 comprising farmers, petty traders, mechanics and rubber smallholders. Many of the younger generation had left the town to work in the city, but occasionally, they returned to their hometown to enjoy its tranquillity and taste the familiar authentic Hakka food and delights. By Foong Thim-Leng ................................................ Posted to Overseas Chinese Forum at asiawind.com By CHUNG Yoon-Ngan (鄭永元) All rights reserved

Reply To This Message

Re: My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5)

Author: CHUNG Yoon Ngan  Date:   01-05-12 19:31 Correction on 089 http://yn.chung.id.au/24HoursCurfew.jpg This was Tanjong Malim a small town about 50 kilometers west of Kuala Lumpur. Pusing was like this town that the British Colonial Authorities often imposed 24 hours curfew on it. Someone wrote a book about it which was made into a movie title "Virgin Soldier". CHUNG Yoon-Ngan

Reply To This Message

Re: My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5)

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. ------------------------------------------------------- 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) All rights reserved

Reply To This Message

Re: My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5)

Author: CHUNG Yoon Ngan  Date:   01-05-12 22:41 My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1969 (5) 091. The Killing of our school teacher - 1950 多少少年亡,---Duo shao3 shao3 nian2 wang2, 不到白頭死.---Bu4 dao4 bai2 tou2 si3. How many juveniles die, Before their hair turns gray. ------------------------------------- 世事明如鏡,---Shi4 shi4 ming2 ru2 jing4, 前程暗似漆.---Qian2 cheng2 an4 si4 qi. The affairs of human life are as clear as the mirrors, The future is as dark as the lacquer. Two Chinese Proverbs ------------------------------------------------------ The year was 1950. The place was at the Yi Zhi Chinese Primary School Pusing (布先益智華文小學). One school day, in the morning, there were a group of male students playing basketball and the referee was a teacher called Liu Jihong (劉基宏). The students were playing happily and teacher Liu was in earnest as a referee. Along there came a group of armed Hill People (山 頂老 Communists). They came to the school by cutting the barbed wire fence surrounding Pusing town. The school was near the barbed wire fence. The leader of the group stopped the basketball game and told the students that they wanted to talk to Teacher Liu (劉老師). After a short conversation Teacher Liu began to argue with the leader who took out a revolver and told Teacher Liu to remove his watch and his Parker pen. In front of the students the leader of the armed group shot Teacher Liu at point-blank. Teacher Liu fell to the ground and died instantly. About 100 meters away was the Pusing police station. The policemen heard the gun shot and saw the group of armed men in the school compound. The policemen did not come out from the police station to challenge the armed men. Instead, they opened up their guns including a Bren Gun (a machine gun) aiming at the school. The Principal and other teachers of the school shouted at the students: "Lie on the ground! Lie on the ground!" The students did what the Principal and other teachers told them. In order not to draw more firing from the police to the school, the Hill People did not return fire but escaped through the toilet building at the back of the school. After the Hill People had left and when the shooting was over it was all quiet. None of the students was hurt. But poor Teacher Liu was lying on the ground, dead. The school wall was scarred with bullet marks by the policemen's gun fire. The English language teacher by the surname of Wu (伍) was afraid of being the next person to be killed. He ran out from the side of the school and hid in a house near the school not far from the police station. Teacher Wu was from Batu Gajah. He was so frightened that he lost his voice and could not teach anymore. It was useless for a teacher who had no voice. He later made a living by becoming a wood sculptor as he was very good in drawing. He used to go to the tin mines to obtain old wood that had been buried underground for a long time. With the old wood he sculptured Chinese ancient folk heroes to sell. Thus the school was without an English teacher. The school eventually had to employ an English teacher from Ipoh to replace teacher Wu. Teacher Liu was only in his early 20s and he passed the Junior Middle Three Examinations at Yoke Choy High School in Ipoh (怡保育才中學) before the war. He was a member of the Malayan Nationalist Party (Malayan Kuomintang 馬來亞國民黨). Occasionally, Teacher Liu taught music. He had been warned by the Hill People not to teach pro-Kuomintang songs to the students. Teacher Liu thought that those songs were anti-Japanese songs. He did not take heed to the warning seriously and continued to teach the students anti-Japanese songs. All the students of Yi Zhi school, some student representatives from Guang Han school (光漢小學) which was renamed Gunong Hijau New Village Primary Chinese School 布先喜州華文小學), friends of Teacher Liu and his relatives turned up in the funeral procession. Almost all the students, particularly the girl students were crying. It had never seen so many girls and boys crying before in Pusing. In fact, all the Pusing folks felt sorry for Teacher Liu. The Pusing residents said, "Why they killed him" "He was so young and handsome." "What a waste of talent" One of them said that it was a shame to our town. No one dared to blame the Hill People, but in their hearts they were angry for what they did to Teacher Liu. Pusing folks lost the credibility of the Hill People who were supposed to be their Liberators from the British Colonial rule. If you happened to come to the school you still can see Teacher Liu's photo hanging on the wall in the teachers' room. He was wearing white shirt and white trousers with a flowering necktie. There were so many incidents like this one that had happened to this little town that the British Colonial Authorities nicknamed it "Little Yanan 小 延安"[ the capital of the Chinese Communist Party in Shaanxi province 陝 西省 in China, from 1936 to 1947]. The British Authorities often imposed long curfew hours, food restriction, and many other restrictions on this little Hakka town. I had lived through all kinds of nasty incidents that had happened in this little Hakka town during the Emergency period from 1948 to 1960. Posted to Overseas Chinese Forum at asiawind.com By CHUNG Yoon-Ngan (鄭永元) All rights reserved

Reply To This Message

Re: My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5)

Author: CHUNG Yoon Ngan  Date:   01-06-12 01:09 My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5) 092. Pulai village in Kelantan State - 1950 During the reign of Emperor Qian Long (乾隆皇帝 1736AD to 1795AD), 謝高清 (Xie Gaoqing), a business man, wrote a book, called 海錄 Hai Lu. The book mentioned about a country by the name of Ji Lan Dan (吉蘭丹 the present day State of Kelantan in Malaysia) where there were many Hakka Chinese (客 家人) lived near the source of the Kelantan River. The main occupation of these Hakka Chinese was digging for gold in the region near the Kelantan River. Xie Gaoqing also mentioned about some Min Chinese (閩人 Hokkien or Fujianese) living further down the Kelantan River where they grew peppercorns and owned grocery shops. The Hakkas lived up in the hill and their settlement was called Pulai village (布賴村 or a village of a large tree with milky sap). During the Emergency (1948 to 1960) there was a battle fought near the village of Pulai. It was called "The battle of Ulu Semur". There stood a temple in Pulai village. The temple was called The Goddess of Mercy (觀世音菩薩 or Guanyin temple). The Goddess of Mercy's birthday falls on the 19th of Second Month every year which is equivalent to the end of March in Solar Calender. The Hakka folks in Pulai village intended to celebrate the festival by staging an opera show. They required attap (palm leaf roof) to make a makeshift hall for the show.There were plenty of attap deep in the jungle about ten miles away from the village. They requested the British Authorities for an escort to protect the village folks when they were going inside the jungle where the soldiers of the Malayan Races Liberation Army (MRLA or Malayan Communist Paty) had their bases. It would take them three days to collect the attap. A scouting platoon from D Company of the 3rd Battalion of The Malay Regiment and 16 Malay Special Constables were given the assignment to scout 18 Hakka Chinese from Pulai village to an area a few hours walk to collect attap. On Thursday, 23 March 1950 they left Pulai village. After the Hakka Chinese had reached their destination the Malay platoon trekked on, leaving behind the 16 Special Constables with the attap-gathers. The platoon camped that night deep in the jungle and the 16 Special Constables stayed with the Hakka Chinese. At 9.15 am on Saturday morning the officer-in-charge, a Second Lieutenant, of the Malay platoon told the Sergeant of the Special Constables that the platoon was going back to Pulai. But the attap- gathers had not yet finished their job. So the Lieutenant instructed the Sergeant and his men to stay with the Hakka Chinese and to lead his men to return to Pulai as soon as they had completed their job. An hour and a half later the Malay platoon suddenly came under heavy attack from the soldiers of the Malayan Races Liberation Army across the Semur river. Many Malay soldiers, including the Second Lieutenant, were killed in the initial burst by the MRLA. The Sergeant of the Special Constables heard the firing and he knew that the Malay platoon was in some engagement. He told the Hakka Chinese to stay where they were and he led his men to the place where the firing came from. When the Second Lieutenant was killed the Corporal took charge. Now the whole platoon was under fire from a short range. The Corporal ordered the mortar team into action. After firing two bombs the two soldiers firing the mortar were killed. The MRLA stopped firing. In a lull the MRLA shouted to the platoon to surrender. The soldier of the MRLA did the shouting was brought down by a bullet. Three or four soldiers of the MRLA, trying to pull back the wounded comrade, were hit. The soldiers of the MRLA charged towards the platoon and three of them were killed. Altogether the MRLA made four attempts trying to persuade the platoon to surrender, but they refused. Four hours had passed. Meanwhile, the 16 Special Constables had arrived at the battle scene. The Sergeant ordered 7 of his men to cross the Smur to fire. Only three of them made across the river. The Sergeant and his eight men lay low until night fell. Under the cover of darkness the Sergeant and his eight men moved off for Pulai. They reached Pulai village the next morning with the news of the engagement. The MRLA captured the rest of the Malay platoon. Altogether 18 soldiers of the Malay platoon were killed, six wounded and three were captured alive. They also rounded up the seven Special Constables who were separated at the river crossing. The leader of the MRLA, after giving a lecture to the captured survivors, told them to go home and leave the army and the police. Carrying their wounded comrade in arms the soldiers and the Special Constables left the battle scene for Pulai. The MRLA soldiers went to the place where the attap-gathers were waiting for the Special Constables. The leader of the MRLA soldiers, after giving them a lecture, told them to go home. The celebration of the Goddess of Mercy's birthday was canceled. Later the British Authorities, by digging up the graves made by the MRLA, found that 29 soldiers of the MRLA were killed. Posted to Overseas Chinese Forum at asiawind.com By CHUNG Yoon-Ngan (鄭永元) All rights reserved

Reply To This Message

Re: My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5)

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 --------------------------------------------------------------------- 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) All rights reserved

Reply To This Message

Re: My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5)

Author: CHUNG Yoon Ngan  Date:   01-06-12 08:07 My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5) 094. Chin Kon Loy surrenders - 1952 Better to die young, worn out Than to get old, decaying. From the book "...AND THE RAIN MY DRINK" By Dr, Han Suyin (韓素音) -------------------------------------------------------------- Without food and constantly harassed by the British in large groups hunting for them the Hill People had to move camps from place to place. Many of them could not stand the hardship and surrendered to the British who rewarded them handsomely for surrendering plus bonuses for the weapons they took with them. In other words the British were paying them to come out from the jungle. They were then sent to the camps specially established for surrendered Hill People. In there they were re-educated and each one of them was trained with a trade, like carpentry, hair dressing etc, preparing themselves to be a good citizen when the Emergency was over. Several months had lapsed and the long curfew on the rubber plantations was lifted. People were going back tapping rubber. The British used "Voice Aircraft"[1A] calling the Hill People to surrender. One day in the morning, rubber tappers heard the "Voice Aircraft" calling for Chin Kon Loy (陳官 來 the adopted brother of Father) to surrender explaining to him that it was not his war and the government promised to send him back to Taiwan. Several weeks later, with the permission from Zeng Gengyou (曾庚友), the leader of the Hill People in Kinta District, Kon Loy picked up a "Safe Conduct Leaflet" and came out from the jungle and walked into the Pusing police station and surrendered. Zeng Gengyou did not allow him to take his weapons along. Father went to the Batu Gajah police station to see him. Eventually, as promised, the British repatriated Kon Loy to Taiwan. Actually, it was Father, who told his business partner, Huang Renan, the story of Kon Loy. Huang Renan was the leader of the Pusing Home Guards and he had strong connection with the police chief in Batu Gajah. Huang Renan related the story of kon Loy to the police chief who the told the story to his boss in Ipoh. Thus the British used the "Voice Aircraft" to tell Kon Loy to surrender. When Kon Loy returned home in Taiwan he was shocked to find that his wife, Chong Siew Lan (張秀蘭), had already remarried to another man. Why she did not wait for Kon Loy to return home?. According to Chong Siew Lan it was a mistake made by the Japanese Colonial Authorities in Malaya. Before the end of the war the Japanese Authorities told his wife that Kon Loy was kidnapped and killed by the Communists in Malaya. Siew Lan thought that it was much easier to bring up the two boys by Kon Loy with another man. So she remarried and had a boy and a girl by the second husband. Seeing Kon Loy came home in one piece Siew Lan had a great shock. It was more than 10 years since he conscripted by the Japanese into the Japanese Imperial Army. All the time she thought that Kon Loy was killed in Malaya. The poor woman did not know what to do with two husbands. His two sons were amazed to find their long lost father alive and well. The last time Father heard from Kon Loy was that his two sons were living with him. He took up the profession of raising ducks. His wife was still married to her new husband. [1A] A "Voice Aircraft" was a small airplane carrying a recorded message flying low over the rubber plantations or the jungle playing the recorded message to the Hill People explaining to them why they had to surrender and the Government would not punish them but promise to give every surrendered a new life. The voice, usually a surrendered Hill Person calling his comrades to come out from the jungle to surrender for a better life, was very loud and easily could be heard by people working or hiding in the jungle. Posted to Overseas Chinese Forum at asiawind.com By CHUNG Yoon-Ngan (鄭永元) All rights reserved

Reply To This Message

Re: My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5)

Author: CHUNG Yoon Ngan  Date:   01-06-12 17:32 My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5) 095. The Hill People kill Father's business partner - 1952 入山不怕傷人虎,---Ru4 shan bu4 pa4 shang ren2 hu3, 只怕人情兩面刀.---Zhi3 pa4 ren2 qing2 liang3 mian4 dao. Going into the mountain I am not afraid of the dangerous tiger, But I am afraid of double-dealers A Chinese proverb ................................................ Father could not understand why the Hill People (Communists) wanted to kill his business partner, Huang Renan (黃仁安). It was the policy of the British Colonial Authorities to establish a Home Guard Force in every town and new village throughout the country. Huang Renan was appointed by the British to administer the Home Guards (1A) in Pusing. If it was not him the British would appoint a Malay to take charge of them. The British knew that the Hakka Chinese would not be happy under a Malay leader in a Hakka town. The British wanted the cooperation from the Hakka Chinese to defeat the Hill People. Huang Renan listened to Father's advice and shifted with his family to live in Pasir Pinji near Ipoh town where he had bought a house. However, Hunag Renan preferred to live with his second wife, an Eurasian woman, originally from Medan, Indonesia. Her father was Hokkien Chinese and her mother was a Dutch woman. She lived in the rented upstairs of a shophouse next to the Menglembu police station. Only a wire fence divided the shophouse and the police station. He thought that it was safer to live near a police station. Huang Renan was a Hokkien Chinese and his Hokkien dialect name was Ooi Eng An. He loved to eat curry mee (curry noodle) selling in the Menglembu market. Occasionally he went with his second wife to the market to have curry mee for breakfast. He did not realize that he was being watched by the members of the Min Yuen (民運 Mass Movement), an organization that supported the Hill People. The Min Yuen members marked and informed the "Traitor-killing-squad" stationed in Lahat. This "Traitor-killing-squad" was very active during the Japanese occupation. Major, later Colonel, Spencer Chapman, the military instructor of the Malayan Peoples' Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA) visited that camp. [Please refer to chapter 16 in his book "The Jungle is Neutral".] One morning, in 1952, without knowing that he and his wife were being followed by two members of the "Traitor-killing-squad" disguised as tin mine workers, Huang Renan and his second wife went to the market for curry mee. While they were having the delicious curry mee the disguised tin mine workers, by using their little sharp axes, hacked open his head and his brain spilled out on the ground. Huang Renan died instantly. His wife was not hurt. What could she do except screaming out hysterically. Father was very sad and could not believe the Hill People could be that cruel. During the Japanese occupation the Hill People were looked upon as the Freedom Fighters protecting the people. They were the pride of the Chinese people in Malaya. Now they had turned into murderers. Father paid for all the funeral expenses. Members of his family buried him in the Chinese cemetery in Batu Gajah near the Batu Gajah Convent English School. As the Hill People had killed so many innocent civilians suspected for being cooperators of the British, ordinary people had to be very careful what they said about the Hill People who were losing the war and becoming desperate. They became ruthless and cruel, particularly towards the police informers. In Pusing, there was a "private taxi man" (that means a man who does not have a licence to run his taxi, in Malay it is called Curi Ayam or stealing chicken) by the surname of Cai (蔡 I have forgotten his full name but I remember him walking with a limp. Knowing that he was running his taxi without a taxi licence yet the police did not give him any trouble at all. Pusing folks spread rumour that he was a police informer because people saw him frequently sneaked into the police station in Batu Gajah. He was very friendly to everyone in town specially to those who lived in Gunong Hijau New Village (喜州新村). One day, he was having Chinese tea with a few friends who were talking about how to smuggle tin food out of the town to the Hill People. One of them mentioned about how Mr so and so (I forgot the name) smuggled ten tin food out by hiding them among the night-soil for his vegetable patch about a kilometer away from the barbed wire that fence in Pusing. On arrival at the police post, the policemen not only did not check the night-soil in a large bucket on his bicycle carrier but told him to get out as fast as possible because the night-soil was stinky smelly. The policemen covered their noses with handkerchiefs and chased him away. At his vegetable patch he washed the tin food and gave them to the Hill People. It was another ordinary story about smuggling food to the Hill People. The listeners laughed and Cai also pretended to laugh. A few days later, that Mr. so and so was arrested by the police and was charged for smuggling tin food out to the Hill People. Under the Emergency Regulations, the police did not have to prove anything. The guilt was a suspected Hill People supporter. Those who were present in the conversation knew that Cai had informed the police about this man. Someone told the Hill People that Cai informed the police and as a result that Mr so and so was arrested. The Hill People were angry and they went after him. But Cai did not leave town for quite sometime and the Hill People could not capture him. A member of the Min Yuan tricked Cai's pregnant wife for going to Bamban New Village (民萬新村)[2B], about two kilometers south of Pusing. While on her way to Bamban New Village,Cai's wife was captured by the Hill People who tied her to a tree in a coconut plantation, not far from the main road to Lumut, a jetty town, and cut off her throat and slit opened her stomach with the foetus spilled out on the ground. The British Authorities were furious with this gruesome killing and rounded many adults, male and female, from Pusing and trucked them to the scene to see for themselves the death body of Mrs. Cai and the foetus. Many of them vomited and a few of them fainted after seeing the grisly corpse and the foetus. They returned and spread the news of the inhumane atrocity committed by the Hill People who lost their credibility in Pusing as the freedom fighters. I was too young to be herded to see the gruesome scene. However, no one felt sorry for Cai and some of the people even blamed him for the death of his pregnant wife. The Hill People would never try to kill him if he was not proved to be a police informer who had made many people being arrested by the police and later being banished to China. Months later he was not wanted by the police as everyone knew he was a police informer and no one wanted to hire his private taxi. He was in great financial difficulty and it seemed no one was willing to help him. He became depressed and felt guilty for causing the death of his wife he committed suicide. Pusing folks said that it was his retribution for causing so many families suffered. I am not sure if he had any children. Note: [1A] from a Pusing townsman Author: Lean Yen Loong Date: 07-28-06 08:13 Dear Yoon Ngan, During the Emergency, the barbed wire fence was just a stone throw away in front of my maternal grandparents' house in Kampong Pinang, Pusing. My parents' house was, and still is diagonally behind my grandparents'. As a kid, I used to play near the fence with other kids, unaware of the tension looming in everyone's mind. At the end of the fence stood an army check point, which was blocking the main truck road running from Ipoh-Pusing-Batu Gajah-Tanjung Tualang. Everyday, I used to see village folks on their way to work being asked to enter a small hut and came out a few minutes later. The adults were saying that the army were checking them to make sure that they were not bringing out food items to supply to the communists. They were allowed to bring only cooked food enough for one person which was their lunch. I often heard adults complaining how rough they were being treated by the soldiers at the check point. Outside the fence, soldiers made frequent patrols. Sometimes village folks in green uniform were also seen patrolling. I was told they were called Homeguards, a group formed by the village folks who also helped to prevent people from crossing the fence. A few times I heard loud gunshots beyond the fence. Adult said that was because the Homeguards were doing shooting practice at the tin mining area outside the fence. Adults flocked towards the tin mining area to see the shooting practice. Out of curiosity, I joined in the crowd only to be shooed away by the adults, saying that children were not allowed to go near. I have also seen air plane flying low above the village houses, with papers raining down from it. That was a great scene to behold for a kid like me. I had picked up some of those papers with many words printed on them. I could not read but adults told me that those were leaflets asking the communists to surrender to the authority. Those days, there were few private cars around. The most common vehicles passing the trunk road once in a while were buses, armoured cars and army trucks. At times, a convoy of 20 to 50 army trucks and armoured cars might come thundering pass the road. Excited children playing by the roadside would shout and wave frantically to the British soldiers in the truck. Often the soldiers would smile and wave back. Occasionally, to the children's delight a friendly soldier would throw down a big packet of sweets that caused the children rushed to grab it. In fact hoping to get a packet of sweets was one of the reasons why we liked to wave to the convoy of military vehicles. Regards, Lean Yen Loong ---------------------------------------- [2B] A lady originally from Bamban New Village Author: Chai Lee Fung Date: 04-17-05 19:29 I'm a Hakka now residing in Singapore. I originate from Bemban New Village (that's half way between Siputeh and Batu Gajah) but my great-grandmother used to live in Pusing. http://yn.chung.id.au/BembanNewVillage.jpg I was always told that I am "Dongguan Hak" but when I tell people, they gave me a puzzled look. "Not Moi Yen or Ka Yen Jiu or Hor Por?" they would ask. I am also confused and often feel sheepish. Can anyone advise me what sub-group of Hakka am I? My best guess is the typical Pusing type of Hakka. My grandmother like to say" Poi Tiok" whenever she got irritated and I remember hearing many of the womenfolk use that expression. Any help is appreciated. ---------------------------------------------- Author: CHUNG Yoon Ngan Date: 04-18-05 08:44 Dear Lee Fung, If you are not from Yuk Kwan Chinese High School (育群中學), you must be a SYS boy. It was Batu Gajah English School before it was moved to the present site at the foot of Changkat. The British Colonial Authorities changed it to SYS (Sultan Yussof School). Batu Gajah English School at the old Market (which was demolished for other development), has now become a Malay school. Many a time I was invited to your school sport days as I am a friend of many of the teachers who live in Pusing, my hometown. Two of my younger brothers a few nephews attended SYS. But my sisters and nieces attended Convent School next to the Chinese cemetery. Originally Bemban village (Grape Garden) was called Hong Mao Lu (紅毛路 Red Hair Road). There were about 500 or 600 British soldiers in the army barracks at Batu Gajah. They built a road from the barracks to Siputeh and then to Lumut jetty. It was a short cut to Lumut bypassing Pusing. It was a track road and no name was given by the British for recording. So the Dongguan Hakka called it Red Hair Road (Hong Mao Lu or European Road). I used to go swimming in the pond near your village. I had written a story about the Chinese Primary School in your village and posted to the Forum. I used to frequent your village when I was at high school. I think you are still young and you don't know how the "Hill People (Communists)" came down from the hill to get food from your village. Next time when you go home ask your parents or grandparents to tell you the many stories of your village. CHUNG Yoon-Ngan Author: Chai Lee Fung Date: 04-18-05 19:09 Dear Mr Chung: Thank you for a little history lesson of my village. I've always enjoyed your post on Tales of a Hakka Town--maybe you can consider writing a novel. I'm female so I studied at BG Convent, next to the cemetery. Graduated from CHIJ in 1972, so you may have some relatives who may be my peers. I remember the barracks very well cos I used to push my bicycle up that slope. There used to be beautiful bungalow just a stone's throw from the barracks that people believe was haunted. During my last trip back to BG (last Dec), I noticed it was torn down. What a shame, eh? You are right. I don't know much about the "Hill People" but for years I could not understand how an uncle of mine was 'enlisted' to fight for the communist and was deported to Mainland China. Today, he resides in HongKong. There were lots of disused mining ponds in my village and boys used to swim there. Not uncommon to find families with children drowned in these ponds. I used to sit by the pond, pondering... And admiring the beautiful wild orchids that seem to grew and bloomed profusely in what seemed to me harsh environment. I taught in Yuk Kwan as a temporary teacher in 1975. I must say it was challenging. I get students coming from the village who attended school after tapping rubber. They used to sleep in my class. I've encountered a student who threatened a male teacher with a pen knife, dropped out of school, and whiled his time away gambling beneath the trees in the village. When the school sent a convoy to talk to his parents, they were threatened with a huge iron pipe. The teachers fled. My father was a school teacher in Bemban New Village all his life. You may even have heard of him ( Chai Kwong Yap). It's nice to meet people who share similar experiences with you in the past. Write more tales. I've really enjoyed them. Posted to Overseas Chinese Forum at asiawind.com By CHUNG Yoon-Ngan (鄭永元) All rights reserved

Reply To This Message

Re: My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5)

Author: CHUNG Yoon Ngan  Date:   01-06-12 22:17 My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5) 096. Third Elder Brother[1A] leaves home to study in Penang - 1952 世上萬般皆下品,---Shi4 shang4 wan4 ban jie xia4 pin3, 思量惟有讀書高.---Si liang2 wei2 you3 du2 shu gao. Every thing in the world is inferior, In consideration the highest thing is studying. A Chinese Saying ........................................................... There were about forty students in the two Chinese primary schools in Pusing completed their Primary Standard Six (year six) education and they were preparing to study at Yoke Choy High school in Ipoh (怡保育才中學). A representative of the parents of six of the students wrote to a music teacher in Chung Ling High School in Penang (檳城鐘靈中學) asking him if he could help to enroll the six students from Pusing. The music teacher was called Cai Bolun (蔡伯倫) who was born and grew up in Pusing. Mr Cai Bolun replied saying that the six students from his hometown were accepted and they would be welcomed to study for one year Pre-High School Class at Chung Ling High School. He also mentioned that it was the policy of the school to prepare outstation students for one year before they were enrolled into Year One Junior Middle High School. One of the students was Third Elder Brother. Within a week the six students left for Penang. Several weeks later, in February 1952, all the newspapers all over the country carried the news that David Chen Chung En (陳充恩), the 51 year-old Principal of Chung Ling High School in Penang, was assassinated by one of his students who was a Hill People. According to Chin Peng the decision for killing David Chen was taken at the district level and Chin Peng himself, the Secretary-General of MCP, did not known about it. Chin Peng read about it on the newspaper. Chin Peng was not happy with the killing. Eventually the killer was hunted down and killed by the police. I forgot his full name but I knew his surname was Lee (李). The Penang Branch of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) allegedly accused Principal David Chen of being a police informer. Until today, Chin Peng says that he could not find any evidence that Principal Chen was a police informer. http://yn.chung.id.au/DavidChen.jpg [The photo is from the book "My Side of History 我方的歷史" By Chin Peng 陳平]. Third Elder Brother wrote long letters home talking about the reaction of the students in the school over the assassination of the principal. He was killed by one of his own students who was a Communist. In his book "My Side Of History", Chen Ping admitted that he was greatly disturbed by the killing of the popular principal of the Chung Ling High School in Penang by this student. It all happened that a student activist in the school reported to the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) Penang Branch that Principal Chen was not only a member of the Kuomintang (國民黨) but also a police informer. The MCP Penang Branch decided to eliminate him. David Chen was killed by this student while he was parking his car in the school car park. One day, the Police Chief (Officer-in-charge of a Police Station O.C.P.D.) from Batu Gajah came to the house with First Elder Brother's letter and a photo of him in Chinese Volunteers' Army uniform. At that time the Chinese Volunteers Army were fighting the Americans and the United Nations in Korea. The Korean War started in June 1950. Since 1950, the family had not received any news from him living in the ancestral village. The Police Chief asked Father whether the Chinese soldier on the photo was his son. Father replied that he looked like his eldest son. The Police Chief gave First Elder Brother' s letter to Father who asked someone to read it to him because Father was illiterate. After hearing what was written on the letter Father admitted that it was his eldest son's letter. The Police Chief told Father that his eldest son was an enemy of Malaya and the British Government was going to ban him for life from returning to Malaya. No Government action was taken against Father because the family could not control what First Elder Brother was doing in China. After giving the photo and the letter to Father, the Police Chief left. Then the family knew that First Elder Brother was fighting in the Korean War. Cai Bolun was born and grew up in Pusing. While he was teaching music at Chung Ling High School he had other elder brothers living in Pusing. As far as I know all the children of the three brothers play musical instruments. The Cai family had a band of their own in Pusing that people employed them to play in wedding celebrations or funeral processions. In the 1980s, the Yi Zhi school formed a school band which had become so popular that towns and cities from all over Malaysia engaged it to play in their functions, particularly in funeral processions. All the members of the band were from the students in Standards Five and Six and they were only about 11 or 12 years old. Note: [1A] Third Elder Brother Third Elder Brother's family name was Shiyang (石養) and I called him Shiyang Ge (石養哥) or elder brother Shiyang. He was born a sick baby boy. A Buddhist priest adopted him as Buddha's son and gave him a new name called Shiyang meaning his parents were the stone which was like the Monkey King (孫悟空 ), the main character in the famous novel "西遊記 Journey to the West", whose parents were the stone. But his official name remained as 元勝 Yuansheng. When Third Elder Brother came home for holidays he got hold of First Elder Brother's letter and photo. He then began to correspond with First Elder Brother. All First Elder Brother's letter to the family had been censored by the British Colonial Authorities. Nothing much was written in his letters but only about the ancestral village and the ancestors house. Third Elder Brother only wrote casual news about the family in Pusing. Knowing that their letters were being censored by the Chinese and Malayan Governments the two brothers did not talk about politics. Eventually, Third Elder Brother was influenced by First Elder Brother to go to China to study. Later, a family friend informed Father that Third Elder Brother was among a group students who were on their way to China to study without their parents consents. Posted to Overseas Chinese Forum at asiawind.com By CHUNG Yoon-Ngan (鄭永元) All rights reserved

Reply To This Message

Re: My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5)

Author: CHUNG Yoon Ngan  Date:   01-07-12 03:09 My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5) 097. Father ventures to tin mining - 1952 讀書好,------Du2 shu hao3, 耕田好,------Geng tian2 hao3 學好更好,---Xue2 hao3 geng hao3 To study is good, To cultivate the land is good, Learning to be good is the best. 創業難,------Chuang4 ye4 nan2, 守業難,------Shou3 ye4 nan2, 知難不難.---Zhi nan2 bu4 nan2 To start a business is hard, To maintain an established business is hard, Knowing it is hard is not hard. By Wu Jingxin (吳敬梓 1701 to 1754) -------------------------------------------------------------- The little Hakka town, Pusing, in the State of Perak was still under long hours of curfew. Rubber tappers were not allowed to go into their rubber plantations to tap rubber. Dulong washers for tin ore were restricted only to certain areas to do their dulong washing. Under such circumstances there would be no business for Father since his business was solely depending on dealing with rubber sheets and tin ore from the dulong washers. His business had almost come to a standstill. How was he going to support such a big family?. My 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). Together they leased a piece of mining land from a British dredging company at about 20 kilometers south of Pusing on the way to Tanjung Tualang. [http://yn.chung.id.au/Pusing1942.jpg Tanjung Tualang is at the bottom on the map] The name of their tin mining company was called Hup Fatt Kongsi (協發錫壙 公司). The mine started operating in March 1952. According to the Emergency Regulations the mine had to employ ten Special Constables (SC - all of them were Malays) to protect the mine from the Hill People (山頂老 Communists). The clerk in charge of the mine had to report regularly to the Batu Gajah Police Head Office about the amount of food consumed by the 30 odd tin mine workers. Every day when the Hung-Kong[1A] went to buy foodstuffs in the market in Tanjong Tualang he had to be accompanied by two (SC) making sure that he would not drop off any foodstuffs from his van on the roadside for the Hill People to be picked up later. It was rather expensive to keep the ten SC in the Kongsi with their families. As they were Malay SC they had to do their own cooking. It was almost as expensive as running a tin mine by keeping the ten SC. The mine was too far from Pusing and the three partners were family men and none of them could live in the mine. They had to employ a manager and two Kepala[2B] to look after the mine and the partners had to trust them. Although the three partners were best of friends, there were many disagreements in running the mine because none of them had any experience in mining before. There were too many arguments. About one year they agreed to dissolve the mine. They calculated that the mine had made some money. Before they officially dissolved the mine the three of them took their families to Penang for holidays for a few days, with the compliments of the profit they made from the mine. It was my first time to Penang. The war between the British Colonial Authorities and the Malayan Communist Party continued. In February 1952, Lt General Sir Gerald Templer arrived at Kuala Lumpur to take up the post as the new Malayan High Commissioner. The previous Malayan High Commissioner, Sir Henry Gurney was killed by the Communists in October 1951 on a road near a little hill about a few kilometers north of the township of Tras in Pahang. Sir Henry was on his way to Fraser's Hill, a Hill Station holiday resort. The leader of the platoon of 36 Communists was Xiao Ma (小馬Little Horse), of the Eleven Regiment of the Malayan Races Liberation Army of Pahang. Sir Gurney's wife and the police escort were not hurt. It was like a thunder in a blue sky in Malaya. For quite sometime, Father was looking around for a piece of mining land to start a new tin mine. This time he wanted to open a mine all by himself and no more partnership with anyone. Having gained some experience in running a tin mine from Hup Fatt Kongsi (協發公司), he had confidence that he could run a mine all by himself. Eventually, he found a piece of mining land at the foot of Kledang Hill about two or three kilometers from a town called Menglembu (萬里望), where his business partner was hacked to death by the Communists, near Ipoh (怡保) [Please refer to the map of Pusing]. The mining land belonged to a well known Hakka tin miner named Yap Kee Yen (葉期衍) who lived in Ipoh. His eldest son Yap Ying Fah (葉英華) was the President of the Perak Branch of the Malayan Chinese Association, a political party. Yap Ying Fah wa a prominent personal in Ipoh at that time. His youngest brother Yap Sing Fah (葉新華), a doctor, a General Practitioner in Perth, is a friend of mine. Father employed 20 male tin mine workers from Pusing and rented a shophouse in Menglembu. The shophouse became the workers quarters. Since food was restricted outside the town the workers had to have their breakfast, lunch and dinner in the shophouse. A cook was engaged to cook for the workers. Early in the morning and after breakfast the workers cycled to work and cycled back for lunch at noon and cycled to work after lunch. They returned for dinner after 6 pm and they lived in the shophouse. Father employed his brother-in-law, Chen Guiren (陳貴仁), as the manager to run the mine and a Chinese educated man (forgot his name) as a clerk to keep the accounts of the mine. The mine was operating smoothly without any incidents. It had been going on like this for about six months. As a little boy I used to follow Father to the mine. Father was happy because he was making quite a bit of money. However, there was a Hill People's (Communists') camp in Kledang range. The Hill People often came to the mine asking for food and the manager, Chen Guiren could not oblige because food was not allowed to leave the town under the Emergency Regulations. They also asked the manager for rubber shoes and workers clothing. That Chen Guiren could not refuse. Having agreed to supply what the Hill People requested, Chen Guiren was thinking how to bring those stuffs to the mine without being discovered by the police. He was a bit worry because the Hill People might disrupt the mine if he could not meet their request. Finally he devised a method to smuggle those stuffs to the mine without suspicion by the police. Every morning, Chen Guiren wore a new pair of rubber shoes and new working clothe to work. At the mine he changed to old clothe and old rubber shoes and kept the new rubber shoes and clothe in an appointed place near the Kongsi (a small building for the workers to rest) for the Hill People to come and collect at night. It had been going on for sometime. One day, one of the Hill People came out from the jungle and surrendered to the British. The British, seeing him wearing new rubber shoes and new working clothe, asked him from where he obtained the new rubber shoes. He told the British that Chen Guiren, the manager of the mine supplied them. Immediately, the British soldiers went to the mine and had Chen Guiren arrested. Father also had been interrogated by the British and was later released. Chen Guiren was found guilty by the Court for supplying essential materials to the Communists and was sent to jail awaiting for deportation to China. Chen Guiren was the husband of Third aunty, the third younger sister of Father. Something had to be done to save Chen Guiren from being banished to China. Third Aunty and her children were crying day and night begging Father to get him out of jail. Father assured his sister that he would try his very best to get her husband out of jail. Father stopped operating the mine and returned the land to Yap Kee Yen , the land owner. All the workers were paid off and they returned to Pusing. Father removed all the mine equipment and kept in his shophouse in Siputeh. Several months later, Third Aunty received an official letter from the British that her husband was about to be deported to China and he had been transferred to Port Klang, near Kuala Lumpur, awaiting for a ship going to China. Third Aunty was crying all days and Father went to Ipoh seeking for advice from his friends how to save his brother-in-law for being deported. A friend of his told him that there was a blind lawyer he was very good in dealing with this kind of cases. His friend introduced Father to this blind lawyer who demanded five hundred dollars to write a letter that would guarantee that Chen Guiren would not be banished. Without alternative Father paid the blind lawyer the five hundred dollars for the fee for writing one single letter. In the meantime the blind lawyer told Father to take his sister and her family of four daughters and one son to Port Klang to see her husband and he would arrange someone there to interview his sister. But the blind lawyer also advised Father to tell Third Aunty that she should refuse to go to live in China with her husband because she was born in Malaya and all their children were born in Malaya too and Malaya was their home and China was a strange country to them. Father did what the blind lawyer told him to do and went to Port Klang with Third Aunty family. Father took me along too. Third Aunty, after a brief family reunion, was indeed interviewed by an officer from the Special Branch in Port Klang. Eventually, the boat taking the deportees to China had left Port Klang without Chen Guiren who was, later, transferred to Taiping Prison awaiting for a retrial that resulted in sentencing Chen Guiren to 10 years jail. However, he was released within a few years before the end of the Emergency in 1960. Note: [1A] Hung-Kong (行光) It is a Malaysian Hakka tin mine slang. It means the full-time 'commissariar officer' in a Chinese tin mine; he makes the daily purchases of vegetable, meat, etc. [2B] Kepala (sorry I don't know the term in Chinese) Literally "head" (Malay); the title of a foreman. Posted to Overseas Chinese Forum at asiawind.com By CHUNG Yoon-Ngan (鄭永元) All rights reserved

Reply To This Message

Re: My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5)

Author: CHUNG Yoon Ngan  Date:   01-07-12 16:18 My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5) 098. Third Elder Brother on his way to study in China - 1953 訓教不嚴師之惰,---Xun4 jiao4 bu4 yan2 shi zhi duo4, 學問不成子之罪.---Xue2 wen4 bu4 cheng2 zi3 zhi zui4. When the training and teaching is not strict the teacher is lazy, When the son fails to complete his education it is his own fault. A Chinese saying ------------------------------------------------ One day, in the end of 1953[*1A], Zeng Zixin (曾子新)[*2B], a young friend of the Chung family told Father that his Third son who was studying in Chung Ling High School (鐘靈中學) in Penang, was among a group of students who were on their way to China to study. The students were leaving by train. Zeng Zixin knew about it because Third Elder Brother wrote to him for financial help to support him of going to China. Zeng Zixin was against Third Elder Brother's idea on the ground that Third Elder Brother should stay in Malaya and finish his education. First Uncle, the younger brother of Father, immediately, rushed to the Batu Gajah Railway Station hoping to meet Third Elder Brother. But the train had already passed through Batu Gajah. Without any alternative, First Uncle drove to Kampar with the intention of arriving in Kampar before the train arrived at Kampar Railway Station. At that time, with the money he had made from the tin mine in Menglembu, Father bought a new car and the model was Austin Forty - British made - and the registration was AA2489. On the way, First Uncle prayed that he could meet Third Elder Brother. He must be driving very fast. It was his lucky day. When First Uncle arrived at the Kampar Railway Station he saw the train was stopping at the Railway Station awaiting for passengers to get in. He found Third Elder Brother inside the train. He told Third Elder Brother to return home to say goodbye to all the members of the family and also the relatives wanted to give him a farewell dinner party before leaving for China. Third Elder Brother agreed and followed First Uncle back to Pusing. That evening before the curfew began, Father invited all his relatives for the farewell dinner in honour of Third Elder Brother's going to China to study. That night after the dinner, Father congregated all the members of the family including members of First Uncle's family. Father told members of the two families the family history and about his parents, our grandparents, how they struggled to survive when they first arrived in Malaya. Father also told us that he did not have the opportunity of going to school as his parents were so poor. That was reason that he was an illiterate businessman. He and First Uncle worked very hard to support the two families. He also reminded us that he and First Uncle were still working hard in order to have better days for the two families. On hearing Father's story every one cried and some of them cried to sleep that night. The next morning, Third Elder Brother decided not to go to China and he promised that he would follow Father to become a businessman and a tin-miner. Father asked Ah Liao (亞廖), a Chinese scholar living in Gunong Hijau New Village, to write a long letter to scold First Elder Brother. Father told him to leave the members of the family alone and he required his siblings to help him in his business, particularly in tin mining. Father also told him that he was disappointed with him for showing bad examples to his younger brothers. The year was 1953 For a long time, Pusing had been under curfew from dusk to dawn, that was from 7.pm to 6 am the next day. In order to give some entertainment to the residents, occasionally, the Information Department of Perak would give a movie show in the Padang (children's playground) next to the market. Usually, at about 5 pm a van from the Information Department would go round the town and Gunong Hijau New Village 布先喜州新村 informing people by loud speaker that the curfew would be lifted for that night until 11. pm and there would be a movie show in the Padang starting at 7.30pm. All the residents were happy, particularly the children. Suddenly, the atmosphere in town was erupted into a happy mood. The residents also knew that it would not rain that night because the Information Department had consulted the Weather Bureau before they decided to give Pusing a free cinema show. The housewives were busying cooking and wanted to have early dinner and made sure that they would not missed the fun as, for a long time, they had never been out of their houses before after dark. Children were rushing to have their bathe and running about in town getting excited for the upcoming show. It was like a festival. After the van of the Information Department had adjourned to the Padang, armoured cars and many soldiers in the army trucks passed through the town to take up positions in the outskirts of the town to prevent the Hill People coming down from the jungle to disturb the free entertainment provided by the Information Department. Before 7.30pm the Government Officers giving the show erected a big white clothe screen for the movie. The children were already running about in the Padang playing chasing. The movies they showed were usually either Tarzen or the Cowboys and the Red Indians. The residents, young and old, of the whole town turned up to watch the show. Half way through the show it would be an intermission for about 20 minutes. One or two Surrendered Enemy Personnel or the ex-Communists would tell the residents how bad it would be under a Communist Regime and how they suffered while they were in the jungle and gave the reasons why they came out to surrender to the government. They were genuine ex-Communists because they were the former residents of Pusing. Of course they did not reveal their real names but they knew almost all the names of their ex-comrades who were still inside the jungle. They called upon them to come out and gave up fighting for the lost course. They also called upon the residents to support the government. After that the show would continue until it was over. The police give the residents an hour to go home and the curfew would resume at 11 pm. After 11 pm, one could see the armoured cars and the army trucks taking the soldiers back to Batu Gajah. It seemed that the residents were quite happy after a few hours night outing. Notes: [*1A] By the end of 1953, the Korean War had ended and First Elder Brother returned to the ancestors' village as a War Hero. After resting for sometime the Chinese Government sent him to study as he had interrupted his study to go to the Korean War. First Elder Brother must have persuaded Third Elder Brother to join him to study in China. [*2B] Zeng Zixin (曾子新) Zeng Zixin was the fourth younger brother of Zeng Gengyou 曾庚友), the leader of the Hill People (Communists) in Kinta district. Third Elder Brother and Zeng Zixin grew up together in Kampong Sayap and they were best of friends. In 1956, Zeng Zixin went to the jungle trying to persuade his eldest brother to surrender to the police. Zeng Gengyou was not only refused to listen to his younger brother but later ordered his fighters to have his own younger brother killed. That was a very sad case. Zeng Zixin was married and had a little baby boy and they lived in Siputeh. The residents of Siputeh and Pusing felt sorry for his wife and their baby boy. They all said that the leader of the Communists was wicked and cruel. They said, "How could you kill your own younger brother? Is this the policy of the Communists Party?" Eventually, Zeng Gengyou and all his comrades were killed by the government soldiers in a gun fight in the jungle in 1958. Posted to Overseas Chinese Forum at asiawind.com By CHUNG Yoon-Ngan (鄭永元) All rights reserved

Reply To This Message

Re: My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5)

Author: CHUNG Yoon Ngan  Date:   01-07-12 20:25 My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5) 099. I begin to learn English - 1953 讀得書多勝大坵,---Du2 de2 shu duo sheng da4 qiu, 不須耕種自然收.---Bu4 xu geng zhong4 zi4 ran2 shou. Studying is better than a big plot of land, One does not have to till the land to earn a living. A Chinese proverb ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, after seven years, even though with the interruptions of long hours of curfew and the gunfight between the Hill People (armed Communists) and the British, I had completed my standard six Chinese primary education. I had the intention of continuing my Chinese education in Ipoh. However, First Uncle told me that he would give him five cents pocket money every school day if I were to go and learn English in the private English school in Batu Gajah. The school was called Royal English School (RES) [Now it had been demolished to make way for a row of shophouses on the site which was just right opposite the Batu Gajah Post Office and behind which was the Malay School, formerly Batu Gajah Government English School]. This school was established by a very kind Indian lady, who had the respect of all the students, for those overage students who wanted to study English, after their Chinese education. It was great for me because I would travel to school by bus and would be given five cents pocket money. I was not given any pocket money while I was studying at the Pusing Chinese Primary School called Yi Zhi (布先益智華僑小學). Due to my age I was put in year five which was called Standard Five. I was allocated in the afternoon session that was in an afternoon class because the school was a five classroom school and was too crowded for morning classes. The afternoon classes began at 1. pm and finished off at 5.30. pm. Third Elder Brother was learning how to drive as he agreed to learn from Father how to become a tin miner. The previous year Father bought a car, Austin Forty with the registration number A2489, when he and his two friends, Hu Zu (胡祖) and Zhang Bao (張保), were operating a tin mine near the town of Tanjong Tualang, about ten miles south of Pusing. He also made a bit money from the mine in Menglembu. Three months later Third Elder Brother obtained his driving licence and became Father's driver as well. Father leased a block of mining land of about five acres which was about a mile from Siputeh near the road to Tronoh. By using the equipment that was originally used in the mine in Menglembu, Father began to mine for tin ore. The curfew was still on from dusk to dawn, that was from 7. pm to 6.am, the next day. Food was restricted. Father set up the mine's kitchen in the shophouse in Siputeh. Those workers from Pusing had to cycle to Siputeh, 3 miles away, after 6.am, to have their breakfast in the shophouse before they went to the mine. They cycled back to Siputeh for lunch. They also had their dinner at Siputeh before they cycled home. It was rather inconvenient but, under the Emergency Regulations, that was the only way for all the tin mine workers throughout the country. Third Elder Brother was learning hard of how to run a tin mine and he learned well from the Kepala (工頭 the foreman of the workers) how to direct the workers to do various kind of jobs in a mine. Father was the treasurer as well as one of the trustees of the two Chinese schools in Pusing. He was also responsible to pay the teachers from the two schools. The British Colonial Authorities never subsidized a cent in administering the two Chinese schools. It was the donations by the Chinese community and the small amount of school fees from the students to keep the schools going. At that time the British Colonial Authorities did not support the Chinese schools throughout Malaya. The British left the Chinese Community to run the Chinese schools. The expenses of Chinese schools were depending on the donations by the Chinese community[*1A]. As the previous English language teacher Mr Wu had lost his voice by the fright of the killing of teacher Mr Liu Jihong, the school recruited an English language teacher from Ipoh. His name was Yao Xinhua (姚新華) and he was also the supervisor of the afternoon section of the Anglo Chinese School (ACS) in Ipoh. Mr Yao had a big family to support. So in the morning he taught at Pusing until 11.30.am and then he rushed to ACS to teach in the afternoon session. Pusing was about nine English miles from Ipoh. Mr Yao Had arranged with Father to pay him on the 15th and the end of each month. It was how he managed his family's expenses. One morning, in mid 1953, Father told me to take the half monthly pay to Mr Yao at the Yit Zhi Primary Chinese School, my former school. Mr Yao was surprised to see me not attending school like all other children did. He asked me why I did not go to school. I replied that I was attending an afternoon school in Batu Gajah. Mr Yao told me to go and study in his school in Ipoh the following year. He also told me that it was called Anglo-Chinese School the afternoon session. It was a very big school with more than one thousand students. I went home and told Father what Mr Yao had told Me. First Uncle promised to give me fifteen cents pocket money per school day if I were to study at ACS in Ipoh. I was very happy because fifteen cents a day was a lot of money for me at that time. Besides I was only given five cents a day. I was looking forward for the next year to come. [*1A] From Hakka Forum by KM Hew, a retired practicing medical doctor. The British established trading posts in Prince of Wales Island (Penang) in 1786, in Malacca in 1795 and in Singapore in 1819 to form the crown colony of the Straits Settlements.When the Governor in Singapore requested approval from higher authorities in London to intervene in the Malay states he was given the doctrine developed in London for his guidance. It was: (1) to acknowledge the sovereignty of the Malay Sultans, (2) to recognize the "special rights" of the bumiputras (sons of the soil or indigenous people namely the Malays.) The British were to be in the Malay states to trade only and, if need be, to protect their trading interests .Thus the British had a paternalistic interest in promoting education for the Malays. They felt no duty to provide education, a non-profit exercise, for the children of the Chinese and Indian immigrants. It was up to the Chinese and Indian communities to establish schools to teach their own vernacular languages. It was left to the Missionaries to introduce English schools for the education of all children irrespective of religion, race or creed. The British established Malay schools in the rural centers where the Malays predominate. The Malay schools provided free education for 6 years at the primary level. Beyond that the Sultan Idris Training College located in Tanjong Malim provided post-primary education for teachers and Inspectors of Malay Schools. The colonial government was structured in three levels. The top level was the Malayan Civil Service which was exclusively British. The second level was the Malay Administrative Service which was exclusively Malay. Where there was a British District Officer there was a Malay Assistant District Officer. The third level was the General Clerical Service (GCS) which was open to Indians, Chinese and others. The GCS was dominated by Indians and Ceylonese (Sri Lankans) who were ahead of Malaya in colonization and who were recruited to start up the Railway, Postal and the clerical services in the Malay states. The Chinese were poorly represented and in any case prefer to make money on their own in business. Accordingly the British made a late start in establishing English schools to produce English educated Malays to serve the needs of the colonial government. The King Edward VII School was started in the state capital of Perak, Taiping (太平 Great Peace, later in 1937 the State Capital was transferred to Ipoh), the Govrnment English School of Batu Gajah (later renamed Sultan Yusuf School) was built in the district capital Batu Gajah (stone elephant) and Government English Schools were started in the district centers of Tapah and Telok Anson. The Big Hakka Town Ipoh was neither the state capital nor the district capital but it was too big to ignore as it was the commercial center of the state. So Ipoh had its Anderson School. The school was named after John Anderson who was the Secretary to the Penang government. He was sent to 'sell' the benefits of the Pangkor Treaty to the Malay Chiefs. The Pangkor Treaty in 1874 led to British intervention in the Malay states. The first British Resident (de facto administrator) James Birch sent to implement the terms of the Treaty was insensitive to the feudal powers and dignities of the Malay Chiefs and antagonized the Malay Chiefs by imposing his rule over them resulting in his assassination by the disaffected Malay Chiefs. The turmoil was quelled by "gunboat diplomacy" in 1876, reminiscent of the Opium War in China in 1839. After the dust had settled John Anderson was given the unenviable task of once more coaxing the Malay Chiefs to sell the idea that British intervention was good medicine - bitter but good for health. He succeeded so well that a major arterial road in Ipoh was named after him, Anderson Road. At the end of the road the biggest English School was named Anderson School. In contrast James Birch was remembered by Birch Street a short street tucked away in an obscure corner of the Old Town. From the inception the enrolment of Anderson School was predominantly Malay. Chinese and Indian students were taken in to make up the numbers as there were not enough Malay students to fill the classes. But as the Malays lived in the rural areas which were too far for them to attend school as day boys, a Hostel was built to accommodate the Malay students.The Malay students not only received free education they were also given an allowance to defray the other costs of schooling such as school books, uniform, pocket money and travelling expenses to and from home during the school holidays. From the generous allowance the thrifty Malay boys were even able to "subsidize" their parents for the loss of their sons labour in the rice-field. Anderson School soon became the incubator of candidates for the Malay civil service, judiciary, customs service, police, army and the other government agencies. After Malaya achieved Merdeka (Independence) in 1957 and the British bureaucrats were "malayanised" Malay Old Andersonians filled the top posts in the administration, army and police forces.The Indian and Chinese Old Andersonians made their mark elsewhere in the profession and in business. Posted to Overseas Chinese Forum at asiawind.com By CHUNG Yoon-Ngan (鄭永元) All rights reserved .

Reply To This Message

Re: My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5)

Author: CHUNG Yoon Ngan  Date:   01-07-12 22:38 My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5) 100. I begin to study in a big school - 1954 1954 came and I was very excited because I was going to study in a big school in Ipoh. The school was called Anglo Chinese Continued School (ACCS). It was an afternoon school and the morning school was and still is called Anglo Chinese School (ACS)[*1A], situated in Lahat Road, just before the big roundabout. Indeed it was a big school and when I arrived at my new school, I was holding Mr Yao's letter of introduction. I was allocated to study in the afternoon session. Since it was my first day at such a big school I did not know where to go to look for Mr Yao. I asked someone where was the Principal's office. I was showed the way and I went in to see his secretary. The Principal, Mr Wong Wai Nam was already been told by Mr Yao that I was a new boy from Pusing. The Principal was a very busy man. After reading the introduction letter Mr Wong told his peon to call for Mr Yao who came to meet me and registered my name in the school register. I was taken to a Standard Six class as there were five or six Standard Six classes. Mr Yao introduced me to the form teacher who was called Mr Sohoh, an Indian. I was surprised to see all my new classmates were so young. I was much older, taller and bigger size than all of them. I recalled that I was taller than Mr Sohoh who allocated me to sit at the back of the class. Every Friday all the Standard Six classes would attend chapel. I had never been to such a big a church before. There was a little Methodist Church in Pusing at Lahat Road and I had attended Sunday school a few times. After Sunday school the priest would distribute biscuits or cakes to those who had attended. Usually, a few days before Sunday school a notice would be put up in the notice board in front of the church saying that cakes would be provided after Sunday School. Then that Sunday School would be crowded with kids including me. If no cakes or biscuits were mentioned then it would be an empty Sunday School. Just like those "Rice Christians in China in the old days". I remembered that a widow and her daughter lived in the church. Years later, the widow remarried when her daughter grew up and she worked and lived in Ipoh. Then nobody lived in the church. There was piano in the church and there were many kids went to play the piano until it was spoiled. The church was then locked up until there was a Sunday School. When I first entered the school church I was excited as I had never been to such a big church, a Wellesley Church, although I had been to Chinese temples. I learned how to sing hymns. It was the first time that I heard about Jesus Christ. Since I was a new boy in the school, the teacher in charge gave him a little red book about the life of Jesus Christ. I studied a lot about Confucius but had never heard about Jesus. I told the teacher in charge that I had no idea who was Jesus and I thought he was a Chinese and how come I never studied about him in Chinese school. The boys laughed at me. My command of English was not so good therefore I did not read the little red book. As years went by I learned how to sing many hymns. I also learned many English and Scottish folk-songs All the subjects were easy for me except English as I was from Chinese school and my command of English was hopeless. However, by the end of the year, after the three terms examinations my position was third in the class. A Hakka boy called Ho Kam Ho (何金和) from Chemor town was the first boy and Lim You Shan (林友山), a Ipoh boy, was the second. Due to my age, I did not want to be promoted to Form One but wanted a promotion to Form Two that meant double promotion. I went to see Mr Yao Xinhua, the school supervisor and told him that I wanted to skip Form One and wanted a double promotion. I was very happy because Mr Yao agreed. Therefore I was promoted to Form Two the following school year. I had a good friend by the name of Wong Kon Nam (黃官南) who was same aged as I am. He was studying Standard Six in Royal English School (RES) Batu Gajah. We played badminton in the afternoon after school when we were at Chinese school. Since I started studying at ACCS in Ipoh in the afternoon session, and he continued his education in RES in the morning we could only played badminton during the weekends. Seeing me studying in Ipoh he told his father that he also wanted to study in ACCS. One day, during school day I went to see Mr Yao and told him that my friend Wong Kon Nam wanted to study at the school too. Mr Yao said that it was a good idea because I would have a friend to keep me company since I was the only student from Pusing. When I told Kon Nam what Mr Yao had told me he was very happy. He told his father, Wong Yun (黃雲) that the next year he would follow me to study in Ipoh. Wong Yun was happy too because RES was only a small school with a student population of about 300, whereas ACCS was a big school with more than one thousand students. We continued to play badminton during the weekends and awaiting the the next year to come. During this period, there were fewer gunfights in the jungle between the Hill People (Communists) and the British soldiers or the police. Many Hill People came out from the jungle and surrendered to the police, due to the shortage of food in the jungle as the rubber tappers could not bring food out from the town. The police manning the checked points on the road leading to the jungle were very strict. They checked all the rubber tappers' bags and even searched their bodies and making sure that no food was smuggling out, before the rubber tappers left the checkpoints. Owing to this restriction the Hill People were receiving less and less food. The Hill People had come to the point of starving. It was between starving to death or leaving the jungle camps to surrender to the police. Occasionally, one could hear the 'Voice Aircraft' flying overhead calling the Hill People to surrender through loudspeakers. Usually it was broadcast by one of the former ex-Hill People who had surrendered. He could introduce himself and calling his ex-comrades to come out from the jungle. The aircraft would fly round and round over the rubber plantations. Usually the aircraft came in the late afternoon when all the rubber tappers had returned home. During this period the armed Hill People in Kinta district had lost the war and the main force had retreated north to the Thai boarder. There were very few Hill People left in the jungle and their leader, Zeng Gengyou (曾庚友) was still alive leading his men fighting the British. [*1A] From Hakka Forum by KM Hew, a retired practicing medical doctor Anglo-Chinese School Ipoh The Treaty of Pangkor in 1874 led to British intervention in the Malay States. The British took over control of the state of Perak where Ipoh the Big Hakka Town was located in the centre of the richest alluvial tin ore deposits in the world.The British colonial authorities were only interested in exploiting the natural resources like tin and later on rubber. They were not interested in non-profit making activities like education. It was left to the missionaries to introduce English education to the Malay states. In this respect the American Methodist Mission played a leading role. The American Methodist Mission had already started evangelical and educational activities in China following the first Opium War in 1842. They started the Anglo-Chinese College in the treaty port of Foochow (福州 Fuzhou) not only to impart English education but also to train the local staff in evangelical work. Similar activities soon spread to Nanyang (南洋 Malaya and Singapore). In 1891 the Anglo-Chinese School was started in Penang, followed by the Anglo-Chinese School in Singapore. In 1897 the Methodist Boy's School was started in Kuala Lumpur. Reverend Horley then went to Ipoh to start up the Ipoh Anglo-Chinese School. A large piece of land (4 acres) in the Old Town bounded by Lahat Road at the front and by the railway line at the back was chosen as the site. An imposing brick and stone building sitting on top of a small rise overlooking Lahat Road was erected to house the secondary school. Separated by a playing field at the back a two storey timber building was built for the primary school. Along the railway line and adjacent to a football field a smaller two storey wooden building was used as a hostel for boarders and this was named Horly Hall after the founder. From the start the Ipoh Anglo-Chinese School enjoyed the wholehearted support of the Chinese community. The school was blessed by a succession of dedicated and able Principals.After Reverend Horley came Dr Proebstel, then Reverend Ralph Kesselring. Reverend Percy Bell took over in 1936 until the outbreak of the Pacific War that ended English education for the duration of the Japanese Occupation, (three years and eight months). Posted to Overseas Chinese Forum at asiawind.com By CHUNG Yoon-Ngan (鄭永元) All rights reserved

Reply To This Message

Re: My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5)

Author: CHUNG Yoon Ngan  Date:   01-08-12 06:17 My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5) 101 The Tunku comes to Pusing -1955 Burung kakak tua---The parrot http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUY5abYIqAg Burung kakak tua------Parrot Hinggap di jendela----Perched on the window sill Kake sudah tua--------Grandpa is getting old Giginya tinggal dua---He only has two teeth left Trek dum trek dum trek dum lalala---Trek dum trek dum trek dum lalala Burung kakak tua----Parrot Burung kakak tua-----Parrot Hinggap di jendela---Perched on the window sill Nenek sudah tua------Grandma is getting old Giginya tinggal dua----She only has two teeth left A Malay folk song ---------------------------------------- Being third in the class after the previous year's examinations and also due to my age, I was allowed to have a double promotion from Standard Six to Form Two instead of going to Form One. My good friend, Wong Kon Nam (黃 官南), who later in life graduated as a civil engineer from Malayan University and in the 1980s designed the Penang Bridge from Butterworth to Penang Island, was admitted to ACS afternoon session to study Form One. Seeing me to be promoted to Form Two, Kon Nam asked the school supervisor, Mr Yao Xinhua (姚新華), but not the principal, to allow him to study Form Two too, because he was the first boy in his class in Royal English School Batu Gajah. Mr Yao refused and later changed his mind and allowed Kon Nam to study Form Two if he could pass the entrance test for Form Two. Since the afternoon session of ACS was a well-known private English school in the State, every year, there were many overage students wanted to study there. So the school set up the entrance tests for Standard Six, Form one, Form Two. Kon Nam sat for the Form Two entrance test and he passed. Thus he was allowed to study in Form Two and we became the only two Pusing boys studying in the school, but we were in different classes. Kon Nam's father, Wong Yun (黃雲), was a carpenter and his family lived in a wooden house at Siputeh Road. We built a badminton court in front of his house and we used to play there regularly. His father's workshop was near their house and his elder brother Kon Wah (官華) was helping his father. Kon Nam had an uncle, his mother's cousin brother by the surname of Cai (蔡 I forgot his full name), who owned a grocery shop in Pusing. But his cousin uncle's family lived in Bamban New Village (民萬新村) which was about four kilometers from Pusing. Every evening, at about 6.30. pm, half an hour before the curfew began he cycled home. It had been going on like this for a long time. However, the Hill People (Communists) asked a member of the Min Yuen (民運 an organization that supported the Hill People) to ask him to donate five sacks of rice by dropping from a lorry on a certain spot on a road side at a certain time. Kon Nam's cousin uncle refused because if he were caught by the British soldiers he could go to jail and could be banished to China. One day, in the late afternoon, while he was cycling home he was kidnapped by the Hill People. Seeing him did not return home his wife reported to the police. The next day, the soldiers came and searched the surrounding area and they could not find him. A member of the Min Yuen spread the news that he would return home safely late at that night and the policemen at the checkpoint should not open fire as he would be holding a little lamp while walking towards the checkpoint. Indeed, that night the policemen at the checkpoint saw a small light approaching them. The police found him safe and sound. He revealed his story to the police and emphasized that he did not give the Hill People anything because he was a poor business man. The police believed him and the matter was settled and recorded in the police book. A few months later, he sold off his grocery shop to Kon Nam's father. It was believed that he gave the Hill People half of the money he received from the sale of the shop. Kon Nam's father sold off his wooden house and the carpentry business and shifted to live in the shophouse. Thus Kon Nam's father became a grocer. So Kon Nam and I went to school and returned home together. We became intimate friends. Kon Nam, I and a few other boys used to play badminton in his wooden house at Siputeh Road. Since his father had sold off the wooden house and the family shifted to live in the grocery shophouse, we then played badminton at the Pusing Yi Zhi Chinese Primary School (布先益智華僑小學), our Alma Mater, not far from the Pusing Police Station. One afternoon on Saturday, while they were playing badminton we saw a commotion in the police station. All the Pusing folks were rushing to the police station because something big was happening there. We stopped playing and followed others to rush to see. Everybody was shouting: "東菇來了! 東菇來了! The Tunku is here! The Tunku is here!". It was Tunku Abdul Rahman the leader of the Alliance Party, a party consisting of the United Malays National Organization [UMNO], the Malayan Chinese Association [MCA] and the Malayan Indian Congress Party [MIC]), was passing through Pusing on his way to Ipoh. He stopped at Pusing Police Station to say hello to the policemen and put his signature on the visitors book. The people were shouting, "We want Tunku! We want Tunku!". Tunku Abdul Rahman came out smiling from the police station and shook hands with the people. He gave the people a short speech advising them to vote for the Alliance on the upcoming election in July. Tunku's secretary told him to move on to Ipoh otherwise he would be late for an important meeting. That was the first time that the Pusing people saw Tunku Abdul Rahman although they heard about him everyday. The first general election of Malaya was held on July 31, 1955. The Alliance Party won 51 out of 52 seats. Tunku Abdul Rahman became the Chief Minister of Malaya. On September 9 the Tunku offered Chin Peng (陳平), the leader of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP), an amnesty. The Tunku promised: "Those of you who come in and surrender will not be prosecuted for any offence connected with the Emergency which you have committed under Communist direction either before this date or in ignorance of this declaration". The Tunku's offer led to the Baling Talks on the 28th December 1955. The representatives of the Malayan people were Tunku Abdul Rahman, the Chief Minister of Malaya, David Marshall, the Chief Minister of Singapore and Sir Tan Cheng Lock (陳禎祿), the President of the Malayan Chinese Association. The representatives of the MCP were Chin Peng, the Secretary-General of the MCP, Chan Tien (陳田), a member of the Central Committee of MCP and Rashid Maideen, a Malay member of the Central Committee of MCP. The meetings lasted a few days. http://yn.chung.id.au/BalingTalks.01.jpg http://yn.chung.id.au/BalingTalks.02.jpg Meanwhile, Father obtained a piece of mining land near Pusing. He sold off the mine near Siputeh and used the money as capital to start a new mine near Pusing. He named his new tin mine Yat Cheong Kongsi (日昌公司). Yat (ri 日) was my grandfather's generation name and Cheong (chang 昌), my father' s generation name. The dusk to dawn curfew was till on. Posted to Overseas Chinese Forum at asiawind.com By CHUNG Yoon-Ngan (鄭永元) All rights reserved

Reply To This Message

Re: My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5)

Author: CHUNG Yoon Ngan  Date:   01-08-12 16:59 My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5) 102. School days in a big school - 1956 Yue4 Guang Guang, Xiucai Lang2 月光光, 秀才郎 月光光, 秀才郎,---Yue4 guang guang, Xiucai lang2 船來到, 轎來扛.---Chuan2 lai2 dao4, jiao4 lai2 kang2. The moon is shining brightly and there is a scholar, The boat has arrived and sedan chair is used to carry the scholar. 扛扛到了河中心,---Kang2 kang2 dao4 le he2 zhong2 xin, 蝦公老蟹拜觀音.---Xia gong lao3 xie4 bai4 Guanyin. When the boat has arrived in the middle of the river, Prawns and crabs come to pray the scholar as if he is the Goddess of Mercy. 觀音腳下一朵花,---Guanyi jiao xia yi duo hua, 拿到阿妹轉外家,---Na dao a mei zhuan wai jia 到了外家笑哈哈.---Dao le wai jia xiao ha ha There is a flower at the foot of the Goddess of Mercy, The girl brings the flower and goes to her parents' house, On arriving at her parents' house the girl laughs loudly. A Hakka Nursery Rhyme -------------------------------------------------- Wong Kon Nam (黃官南) and I studied English in Anglo-Chinese Continued School (ACCS) Ipoh [*1A]. We had to go back to school on Saturdays morning to do science experiments as our science periods were too short for any experiments during weekdays. After the science class, in order to save the street bus fares, we used to run to Rex Theatre for its cheap matinee shows (I think, it was 40 cents and no distinction for classes. First come would get the 1st class tickets. The last comers would get the tickets next to the screen which was awful to watch the movie). The two big cinemas of Cathay and Lido were not built yet during my high school days. After the show we adjourned at the Tanjong Rambutan Bus Station for the yammy ice kacang (紅豆雪水 ice red beans soup). I wonder if those ice stalls are still there. There was an occasion, Wong and I stayed back in Ipoh to watch the afternoon show on Moses. We did know that it was a long show lasting 3 to 4 hours. We watched the show up to the part that Moses opened the Red Sea. It was so exciting, but unfortunately, we had to go and catch the last bus home to beat the curfew. At that time Pusing was still under curfew from 7 pm to next morning 6 am. If we missed the last bus we had to stay overnight on the streets in Ipoh. After almost ten years later that I managed to watch the ending of the movie Moses in Australia. Sometimes, we wondered how we managed to study and completed our high school education during the Emergency when there were a lot of gunfights and killings going on in the rubber plantations in the outskirt of our town. Sometimes I thought it could be a blessing in disguise. Since after 7. pm no one was allowed to leave the house, as the curfew was and there were nothing to do at home (during those time there were no TVs or mobile phones) except by killing our time on doing our school home works and read books. Reading books and newspapers had become our habit. Whenever I had time I would sit down and read and read until I was screamed at by my father or step-mother for dinner. Later, after high school, while working in Father's tin mine I read profusely and had read all the books written by Pear S Buck and a few by Dr. Han Suyin. I had read lots and lots of Chinese books which were banned in Malaya and they were smuggled into Malaya from China by Communist agents. However, in order to improve my English I began to correspond with overseas pen friends, mostly from England. Note: [*1A] Anglo Chinese School in Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia The Treaty of Pangkor in 1874 led to British intervention in the Malay States. The British took over control of the state of Perak where Ipoh the Big Hakka Town was located in the centre of the richest alluvial tin ore deposits in the world.The British colonial authorities were only interested in exploiting the natural resources like tin and later on rubber. They were not interested in non-profit making activities like education. It was left to the missionaries to introduce English education to the Malay states. In this respect the American Methodist Mission played a leading role. The American Methodist Mission had already started evangelical and educational activities in China following the first Opium War in 1842. They started the Anglo-Chinese College in the treaty port of Foochow (福州 Fuzhou) not only to impart English education but also to train the local staff in evangelical work. Similar activities soon spread to Nanyang (南洋 Malaya and Singapore). In 1891 the Anglo-Chinese School was started in Penang, followed by the Anglo-Chinese School in Singapore. In 1897 the Methodist Boy's School was started in Kuala Lumpur. Reverend Horley then went to Ipoh to start up the Ipoh Anglo-Chinese School. A large piece of land (4 acres) in the Old Town bounded by Lahat Road at the front and by the railway line at the back was chosen as the site. An imposing brick and stone building sitting on top of a small rise overlooking Lahat Road was erected to house the secondary school. Separated by a playing field at the back a two storey timber building was built for the primary school. Along the railway line and adjacent to a football field a smaller two storey wooden building was used as a hostel for boarders and this was named Horly Hall after the founder. From the start the Ipoh Anglo-Chinese School enjoyed the wholehearted support of the Chinese community. The school was blessed by a succession of dedicated and able Principals. After Reverend Horley came Dr Proebstel, then Reverend Ralph Kesselring. Reverend Percy Bell took over in 1936 until the outbreak of the Pacific War that ended English education for the duration of the Japanese Occupation, (three years and eight months). In the mid-1930s the Ipoh Anglo-Chinese School produced some outstanding athletes. In particular the school relay team not only won the annual FMS (Federated Malay States of Perak, Selangor, Pahang and Negri Sembilan) AAA (Amateur Athletic Association) 4x yards relay race but broke the games record as well. It was unprecedented for a school boy team to beat all-comers at the state annual sports. The four boys became instant heroes. When school re-opened after the weekend the heroes were given a triumphant ride in an open sports car around the school campus lined by wildly cheering school-mates. The team was made up of the brothers Hector and Johnny Ritchie, Veerappan and Chee Hoi Voon. What happened to these superstars after they left school? As was the custom of the time the best boys usually stayed with the school. For instance, Chin Kee Onn [Note; he was a Meixian Hakka and was also a writer. I possess two of his many books - "Malaya Upside Down" and "Ma-rai-ee" , meaning Malaya in Japanese. He was a non-Communist guerrilla fighter during the Japanese Occupation. After the war he went to teach in Batu Gajah Government English School which was later moved to the new buildings at the foot of Changkat Hill. The school renamed it Sultan Yusuf School (SYS), the alma mater of our friends Zhao Yun, Abdullah, one of my younger brothers, Tan Seri Dr, Jeffery Cheah, the billionaire in Malaysia] the Hakka state tennis champion stayed on as a teacher). In the case of Hector Ritchie he joined the school administration as the School Clerk. After the War he married a Chinese lady teacher in the school and eventually they moved to Penang where Hector was appointed Registrar of the newly founded Penang Science University. Johnny was more adventurous. He joined the police force and 30 years later retired as Commissioner of Police of the state of Sarawak. Veerappan came from a Chettiar Family who hailed from the Nuthukothai district near Madras in South India.The Chettiars were traditional money-lenders or small business financiers whose business was conducted in a unique set-up called the Hindu Joint Family which is akin to the western concept of corporate body where the business does not die with the individual but continued with the Family perpetually. Veerappan was non-conformist and did not join the family business. Instead he went to London to study law. But he later turned up as a fighter pilot to participate in the Spanish Civil War! Chee Hoi Voon was more conformist. He ended up as a prosperous Hakka tin miner. Ipoh Anglo-Chinese School not only excelled in sports but produced some outstanding scholars as well.The British instituted the Queen's Scholarship to commemorate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria. There were two Queen's Scholarships for the FMS, one 'reserved' for Malays and the other Open to all comers.The brightest post-school certificate boys in the major schools were retained in a special class in the school and carefully groomed by selected teachers to gain one of these coveted Scholarship.Winning such a Scholarship brought great honour and prestige to the school and the teachers involved. In the mid-1930s the brothers Ng Wah Hing and Ng Yok Hing won the Queen's Scholarship in successive years. This was a unique achievement for the Ipoh Anglo-Chinese School. Ng Wah Hing went to London and qualified as a doctor and returned to practise in Ipoh after the War. Ng Yok Hing went to Cambridge and qualified as an engineer and headed the engineering department of a major British conglomerate corporation in Singapore. Just before the outbreak of World War II the authorities changed the system of award. Instead of awarding the Scholarships at the post-secondary school level the awards were made at post- tertiary level to the top graduates from Raffles College and the King Edward VII College of Medicine in Singapore (later to become the University of Malaya in Singapore).The 1941 Queen's Scholarship was won by Maurice Baker who attended the Ipoh Anglo-Chinese School as a boarder in Horley Hall before he went to Raffles College in 1938. Maurice Baker's father was an Englishman who was a civil engineer in the government service. Maurice Baker's mother was a Tamil who spoke only Tamil and a little bit of Malay and totally illiterate in English. According to Maurice Baker his father conversed with him at home in Malay because Maurice Baker could not speak English. Maurice Baker was sent to Ipoh Anglo-Chinese School as a boarder where he learnt his English. Because of the War Maurice Baker could only go to London after the War to read English at King's College, University of London. He returned to teach in Singapore and ended up as Professor of English in the University of Singapore. After the Malay leadership 'expelled' Singapore from the Federation of Malaysia relationship between the two countries became tense. Maurice Baker was tapped by the Singapore government 'to build bridge' (like his father!). Maurice Baker was appointed Singapore High Commissioner in Kuala Lumpur. In this capacity he was an unqualified success. When Maurice Baker was a final year 'senior' in Raffles College he was held in high esteem by 'fresher' Lee Kuan Yew who subsequently became Prime Minister of Singapore. Maurice Baker was held in equally high esteem by 'fresher' Abdul Razak bin Haji Hussein who later became Prime Minister of Malaysia. At that time the cadets to the Malay States administrative service had to undergo a course in Raffles College before confirmation in their appointments. So when Maurice Baker became Singapore High Commissioner in Kuala Lumpur he found not only the Prime Minister but the Attorney-General, Chief Secretary to the Government, and the Secretary-General to the Treasury, the Foreign Affairs Department, Defence Department and Heads of other Agencies were all 'old friends'. Maurice Baker was able to convey messages from the Singapore Government in carefully chosen words and with quiet diplomacy which were well received by the Malayan Government. Whereas the sensitive Malay leadership felt overwhelmed by Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew's style of playing to win all the time and every time. Maurice Baker's term was extended again and again but finally he had to move on to be Singapore High Commissioner in New Delhi, India. Finally, he returned to the job he loved best - academia. Ipoh Anglo-Chinese School earned a well deserved reputation as the center of excellence, a fertile ground which produced crop after crop of outstanding students. Higher education in the Straits Settlements of Penang, Malacca and Singapore started with the establishment of the King Edward VII College of Medicine in 1905 in Singapore which trained doctors, dentists and pharmacists. On July 22, 1929 Sir Hugh Clifford the Governor of the Straits Settlements and High Commissioner of the Malay States formally opened Raffles College which was established to commemorate the centenary of the founding of Singapore by Sir Stamford Raffles in 1829. The Working Committee reported that 'while fees were kept reasonably high a number of scholarships were provided to enable promising students to pursue further studies'.The FMS (Federated Malay States of Perak, Selangor, Pahang and Negri Sembilan) government which had strongly supported the institution with large donations to the Endowment Fund at its foundation commenced to award ten Federal Scholarships, five 'reserved' for Malays and five Open to all-comers starting from 1939. In 1938 Wong Poh Lam and Goon Sek Mun from the Ipoh Anglo-Chinese School won scholarships to the King Edward VII College of Medicine, Singapore. Wong Poh Lam later qualified as an Eye Specialist and practised in Penang for a few years before migrating to Melbourne. Goon Sek Mun ended as Professor of Gynaecology and Obstetrics in University of Singapore. In 1939 Tsang Ah Liat and Toh Chin Chye from the Ipoh ACS won Federal Scholarships to study science in Raffles College, Singapore. After graduation Tsang Ah Liat became a schoolmaster. Toh Chin Chye won another scholarship after the War and went to London University for his Ph.D. Toh Chin Chye met up with Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Keng Swee in London to form the Malayan Forum a student group which showed nascent interest in politics. They returned to Singapore to form the PAP (Peoples Action Party) with Toh Chin Chye as President and Lee Kuan Yew as Secretary-General. When the PAP won government Lee Kuan Yew became Prime Minister and Toh Chin Chye Deputy Prime Minister. Goh Keng Swee who earned a Ph.D. in Economics with First Class Honours from the famous LSE (London School of Economics) became Minister of Finance. Together with the other equally able and talented Ministers the city state of Singapore was transformed from what the Hakka Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew described as 'from Third World to First' in just one generation. After the War the Ipoh ACS again produced two outstanding scholars. Thong Saw Pak and Ho Peng Yoke both won Federal Scholarships to Raffles College to study Physics. Thong Saw Pak first achieved eminence when he won a Silver Medal in weight-lifting at the Commonwealth Games in Auckland.On graduation he won the Queen's Scholarship and went to Belfast University where he obtained his Ph.D. in nucleur physics. He lectured for a while at the University of Malaya and then decided to join the team of Chinese scientists then experimenting to produce 'nucleur bomb'. Thong became disenchanted with his work in China and returned to Kuala Lumpur and rejoined the University of Malaya. He retired to live in London. Ho Peng Yoke studied physics on his Federal scholarship but along the way he turned himself into a sinologist. He headed the Department of Chinese Studies in the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur. Later he took on the job of starting up the Asian Studies Department in the newly founded Griffiths University in Brisbane, Australia. Later Ho was appointed Vice-Chancellor of the Chinese University in Hongkong. After serving his term Ho retired to Cambridge to join the team completing the magnum opus of his mentor Dr Joseph Needham - a multi-volume encyclopedic monument on Science and Civilisation in China. In the 1950s the Ipoh ACS produced yet another super-scholar in the person of Ng Cheok Hing. After graduating from the University of Malaya in Singapore in medicine Ng Cheok Hing was awarded the Queen's Scholarship. He went to London and took post-graduate studies and qualified as a Surgeon and returned to practise in Kuala Lumpur. He was the third brother in his family to win the Queen's Scholarship! For a school to win one Queen's Scholarship was an honour much envied by other schools. To win two Queen's Scholarships was unprecedented in the history of the Queen's Scholarship awards. But for a school to produce a third Queen's Scholar was a feat that could never ever be replicated. And that was to be the case. After Malaya achieved Merdeka (Independence) and Singapore became a Republic, the Queen's Scholarship became part of the colonial relic. There was no equivalent scholarship in Malaya but Singapore created the equivalent President's Scholarship for Singapore citizens only.This put it beyond reach of the Ipoh Anglo-Chinese School! Posted to Overseas Chinese Forum at asiawind.com By CHUNG Yoon-Ngan (鄭永元) All rights reserved

Reply To This Message

Re: My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5)

Author: CHUNG Yoon Ngan  Date:   01-09-12 08:28 My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5) 103. Third Elder Brother gets married - 1956 Mo4 Zuo4 Yang2 Mei2 An4 Kai Hua 莫作楊梅暗開花 妹的山歌是本情,---Mei4 di2 shan ge shi4 ben3 qing2, 哪有荳子唔纏藤?--Na3 you3 dou4 zi3 wu2 chan2 teng2? 潑水也有轉頭浪,---Po shui3 ye3 you3 zhuan3 tou2 lang4, 哪有情妹唔戀郎?--Na3 you3 qing2 mei4 wu2 lian4 lang2? My shan ge is from my heart, Which bean does not twine the cane? Even the poured out water will come back with the returning wave, Which lass does not long for her lover? 新搭竹棚種苦瓜,---Xin da zhu2 peng2 zhong4 ku3 gua, 苦瓜結籽在棚下;---Ku3 gua jie2 zi3 zai4 peng2 xia4; 妹愛戀郎快開口,---Mei4 ai4 lian4 lang2 kuai4 kai kou3, 莫作楊梅暗開花.---Mo4 zuo4 yang2 mei2 an4 kai hua. I build a new bamboo shed to plant bitter gourd, The bitter gourds bear fruit under the shed, If the lass is longing for lover please say so, Don't be like the arbutus blooming in the dark. 高山頂上種棵梅,---Gao shan ding3 shang3 zhong4 ke mei2, 樣得梅花開開來?--Yang4 de2 mei2 hua kai kai lai2? 樣得梅花結梅子,---Yang4 de2 mei2 hua jie mei2 zi3, 樣得阿妹金口開.---Yang4 de2 a mei4 jin kou3 kai. Planting a plum tree up in the high mountain, I hope it will blossom, And bear plum, So that my lover will say something to me. 一樹楊梅半樹紅,---Yi shu4 yang2 mei2 ban4 shu4 hong2, 你做男人膽愛雄;---Ni3 zuo4 nan2 ren2 dan3 ai4 xiong2; 只有男人先開口,---Zhi3 you3 nan2 ren2 xian kai kou3, 女人開口面會紅.---Nu3 ren2 kai kou3 mian4 hui4 hong2. Half a tree of plum is blooming, Being a man you have to be brave, Man has to open his mouth first, When a girl opens her mouth first her face flushes.. A Hakka Chinese love song --------------------------------------------------------- Father's new tin mine was in full swing, but the restriction of food was still on. Therefore, his workers had to have breakfast, lunch and dinner in Pusing. Father set up the kitchen in the shophouse. His workers had their breakfast before they cycled to the mine to work. The mine was about three kilometers south of Pusing. They cycled back to Pusing for their lunch at noon and again cycled back for their dinner before they returned to their homes. It was very inconvenience and wasting time. The kitchen in the shophouse was too congested for cooking and must have a few tables for the workers to dine. Soon after Father shifted the kitchen to the house that built on the old railway site in 1950 during the resettlement. Third Elder Brother had to become Father's driver as well as learning how to become a tin miner, because Father's driver, Zhang Jincai (張進財) whose nickname was Opium Cai (煙死財) because he smoked a lot, had gone to Suriname, in South America, to do business. Step-mother often felt sick. Whenever she was unwell, the cooking for the morning meal was to be done by the shop assistant Huang Guoqing (黃國清) and me. However, I could not help in cooking the evening meal because I had to go to school in Ipoh at noon and would not be home until about 6.30 pm. The shop assistant was doing the cooking alone by himself. There was a Hakka girl by the name of Zhang Pingtai (張平娣) who was a rubber tapper and used to sell her rubber sheets to Father's shop. Seeing the shop assistant and I were doing the cooking, she, a good cook, felt sorry for us and very often came to the kitchen to help out. Zhang Pingtai was a very beautiful girl and Third Elder Brother was interested in her. Thus Zhang Pingtai and Third Elder Brother became friends and he used to take her out as he knew how to drive. Months later they felt in love with each other. Eventually they got married. Occasionally and usually in the afternoon, one could see an aircraft flying very low over the rubber plantations broadcasting messages calling the Hill People (Communists) to surrender. At that time of the day, other than the Hill People, there were no one in the rubber plantations as all the rubber tappers had finished their works and returned home. Sometimes the aircraft showered Amnesty Passes, in Chinese, English and Malay, on the rubber plantations and the jungle. Each of the leaflet guaranteed that the an Amnesty Pass was a safe passage to the nearest police stations. On each of the leaflets it was printed with this message: "The holder of this pass wishes to accept the general amnesty arrangement declared by the Federation Government. Instructions have been given to all security forces, police, military and government officers, to look after the holder of this pass carefully and treat him fairly. They will be held responsible for carrying out these instructions." Everybody in these two little Hakka towns of Pusing and Siputeh, knew that the leader of the Hill People (Communists) in Kinta District was Zeng Gengyou (曾庚友) and his nickname was Geng Pai (庚派). He was the eldest son of a couple (forgot their names) who had six sons (including him) and three daughters. By the end of the Emergency in 1960, four of their sons were killed, one banished to China. The couple's 6th son, the youngest, was too young to get involved in the Communist Movement, and he survived to this day, working as a security officer in a financial company in Ipoh. He was same aged as me and I had met him once or twice in Ipoh in 1960s when I was working in the Public Works Department. Two of the couple's daughters were also killed and one survived because she came out from the jungle to surrender. Later she married her ex-comrade and had a happy family living in Ipoh. Zeng Zixin (曾子新), a tall and very handsome man, the fourth younger brother of Zeng Gengyou, was a rubber tapper. Zixin did not follow his four elder brothers to become a Hill People, but married and had a happy family with one son. One day, after worked he told his wife that he was going into the jungle to see his eldest brother. His wife did not know that the British Authorities in Batu Gajah had been in touch with him for quite sometime and promised to give him a big reward if he could convince his eldest brother to come out from the jungle to surrender to the Federation Government. His wife told him to return home before the curfew began that was 7. pm. Zixin knew his eldest brother's camp well because many a time he smuggled food to him. So, off he went cycling towards the rubber plantations. According to the two Hill People who were captured by the British in Father's tin mine in 1958, there was a big argument between the two brothers for a long time, as Zixin tried to talk his eldest into coming out to surrender to the Federation Government. Eventually, Zeng Gengyou became very angry and so much so that he called his younger brother a traitor and a running dog of the British. Zeng Gengyou chased him out of the camp. Zixin then went off, but he did not know that there were a few fighters following him. Just about a kilometer from Siputeh in a rubber plantation the fighters bound on him and tied him up to a rubber tree and sliced off his throat. Zixin died instantly. No one knew if Zeng Gengyou had actually given the order to have his younger brother executed. Seeing her husband did not return home for the night, the next morning, the wife of Zeng Zixin reported to the Siputeh police station which related the report to the police Head-Quarters in Batu Gajah. The Central Intelligent Department (CID) took up the case because the Department knew in advance that Zixin was going into the jungle to see his eldest brother. Two lorries of soldiers were dispatched to the area searching for Zixin. The soldiers found Zixin's corpse tied to a rubber tree. The British were very angry and they went in a van with a loud speaker telling the residents of Pusing and Siputeh that Zeng Gengyou had murdered his own younger brother. People were surprised to see the Hill People should commit such a crime and they lost their heart to support the Hill People. The Batu Gajah Authorities imposed a 24 hours curfew in all the rubber plantations in the towns of Pusing, Siputeh, Papan and Tronoh with the intention of depriving the Hill People of food and any help. British soldiers set up camp in the jungle and their commander ordered them if they see anyone in the rubber plantation to shoot on sight and asked questions later. That was the order of the day. The Hill people were running out of food and they came out at night to look for food. Many of them were killed. The Authorities estimated that there were only about 20 to 30 Hill People in the whole area. The leader was still Zeng Gengyou. Curfew was lifted after a few weeks. People were going back to tapping rubber in their plantations. Posted to Overseas Chinese Forum at asiawind.com By CHUNG Yoon-Ngan (鄭永元) All rights reserved

Reply To This Message

Re: My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5)

Author: CHUNG Yoon Ngan  Date:   01-09-12 16:18 My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5) 104. The Pusing basketball and badminton teams - 1957 快快活活活了命,---Kuai4 kuai4 huo2 huo2 huo2 le ming4, 氣氣惱惱成了病.---Qi4 qi4 nao3 nao3 cheng2 le bing4. Live happily and have a good life, Getting angry too often will make you sick. --------------------------------------------------------------- Before and after the 2nd World War there were two rich tin miner brothers in Pusing. The older brother was called Zeng Jitai (曾吉泰 in Hanyu Pinyin) and the younger one was called Zeng You (曾友). Zeng Jitai married a very beautiful wife and had many sons and three daughters. In later life his wife was very sick. Eventually she recovered but her voice box was damaged and she could not pronounced any word properly. Zeng Jitai lived right opposite Cheah Fah, Tan Seri Jeffery Cheah's father in Batu Gajah Road. Zeng You also had many children but more daughters than sons, I think only two or three the rest were all daughters. Zeng You had two bungalows one brick and tile and the other a wooden bungalow in the Old Ipoh Road. During the Emergency Zeng You and the family lived in the wooden bungalow and the one further away from Pusing town was not inside the wire fence that surrounding Pusing fence. As the brick and tile bungalow was outside the wire fence, the British Authorities disallowed the Zeng family to live there because the Hill People would come down from the hill demanding food from the residents living in the bungalow. Therefore it was locked up. In the 1960s when Cheah Fah had made a fortune from the tin mine just behind Zeng You's brick and title bungalow, he bought the bungalow from Zeng You's children and used it for his workers quarters and office which was air conditioned. By then Zeng You had passed away. There was a pond behind the bungalow. My childhood good friend Wong Kon Nam (黃官南) and I used to swim there. The land near the pond was the old railway line and no one knew that it was it was full of tin ore under it. That was the land that Cheah Fah made his fortune[1A]. The sons of these two brothers were very interested in playing basket ball. So when they were in high schools all the sons of these two brothers grouped together and formed a basketball team called Ji You (吉友, [Charliz would you please ask your father to tell me a brief account of this basketball team so that it can be included in my story on Pusing. It is unfair not to mention about it].) Ji (吉) was for Zeng Jitai, Charliz's grandfather. You (友) was for Zeng You, Charliz's granduncle. I knew many of the players, Chen Sin Ngan (曾 新元), Gao Lao Seng (高老成), Xie Jinyou (謝進友), Liu Lincong (劉靈聰), Lei Jinrong (雷錦容), Lao Hai (老蟹 his surname is Cheah, forgot is full name) and few others whom I can't remember. I loved to watch them playing although my favourite game was badminton. I remembered the basketball team of the Chinese newspaper called Nanyang Siang Pau (南洋商報) in Singapore also came to Pusing to challenge the Ji You Team. You see how popular was this basketball team. I am not sure if the team had won any competition in the Perak State Basketball competition. In around 1957, before Malayan became an independent (Merdeka) country the children of Zeng Jitai and Zeng You formed the Pusing badminton team. They built badminton court at the side of Zeng You's wooden bungalow which had a big compound. They installed light so that they could play at night which is cooler. There were girl players too. One of the girl player was Chong Siew Lan (張秀蘭), who lives here in Perth Australia. She was a good player and had won many medals here in the female badminton competitions. At that time the curfew hours in Pusing had relaxed a bit because there are very few Hill People in the jungle. The curfew hours were from midnight to 6.am the next morning. The badminton players usually practice at night which was cooler and least windy. There were many male or female competitions with teams from other towns. Practically, there was a competition on every Saturday night if it were not raining. Teams from other towns loved to came and play in Zeng You badminton court at night because the competitions were held at night and attracted many Pusing workers went there to watch the games. Sometimes, especially female players were challenging a female team from other town, it became very crowded until the whole compound were filled with spectators that night. It was a good entertainment for Pusing and every body talked about the beautiful players. They cheered and clapped hands for the home team only until the coach came out and asked the spectators clapped hands for the visiting team as well and he said Pusing audience should not be too biased after all it was only just a game. I was one of the spectators cheered for the home team because one of he girl players in our home and I were corresponding secretly. I was in Form Four at that time. Note: [1A] How Cheah Fah made his fortune Cheah Fah had been working for Choong Sam, a very rich tin miner, for a long time. In the later 1950s, when there were very few Hill People in the jungle, Cheah Fah started his own tin mine just behind Papan town. His mine was at the foot of a big hill. His mine did badly because there were often avalanches from the big hill and he had to spend a lot of money to remove the earth. He did not make much money from the mine. Choong Sam and another tin miner were fighting a court case for mining Papan town that people believed it was full of tin ore under the town. Choong Sam asked Cheah Fah to swap his (Cheah Fah's) mine for a few acres of land behind Zeng You's brick and tile bungalow so that he (Choong Sam) had land for the tailing for his mine if he were to mine Papan town. Choong Sam opponent could not find any land for his tailing. So Choong Sam won the case. Thus Cheah Fah gave his not making money tin mine to Choong Sam in exchange for a few acres of land behind Charliz's granduncle's bungalow. At the inception of his new mine Cheah Fah manage to make a bit of money. One day in around 1964, Cheah Fah's eldest son saw a large area in the mine filled with black sand. He though they were the "Mang - a kind of black useless sand". With a curiosity mind he went and scooped up a handful of them to see. They were heavy 'Mang". He quickly took a "dulong - a kind of wooden basin" to wash some of the "Mang". To his greatest surprise in his life he discovered that they were not "Mang" but pure tin ore. He directed his kepala [2B] to point the two monitors to that area. To his happiness the whole area was full of pure tin-ore which was not necessary to pass through the "Palong [3C]". The workers just dished them into the buckets and took back to the Kongsi- House[4D] to dry them to sell to the "Strait Trading Company" in Pusing. At the same year Jeffrey Cheah finished his Form Five. Cheah Fah sent him to Melbourne to study matriculation. Eventually Jeffrey obtained his Commerce degree major in Accounting from a university. I met Jeffrey a few time in Melbourne when I was working as a trainee after I had graduated from Perth. ------------------------------------------------- Charliz, I knew your father started as a Hung-Kong[5E] riding a bicycle carrying a big basket. When I finished my study and returned to Pusing and I met him in Ming Foong restaurant he had become a Towkay[6F] tin miner with a driver driving him around. He put his two arms round my shoulders and said "Pusing has produced another scholar". He was much taller than me as if he was holding a little boy. These words are Hakka tin mining slang [2B] kepala means 'the title for a foreman' [3] Palong A huge framework, built of strong attap-poles, which supports a large, gently sloping trough in which the tin is deposited after being washed clean of earth, sand, and stones by water pumped up the trough. Most Chinese mines have the palong. [4D] Kongsi-House A large wooden building, usually roofed with zinc, built in a Chinese tin-mine; it contains office, storeroom, dinning-hall, and a large dormitory for the mine-workers. [5E]Hung Kong The full-time 'commissariat officer' in a Chinese tin-mine; he makes the daily purchases of vegetables, meat, etc. [6F] Towkay "Head of a family" (Chinese). Malays and other Asiatic races in Malaya refer to every Chinese of fairly good means as towkay. This has become a complimentary form of salutation used only when addressing Chinese. Posted to Overseas Chinese Forum at asiawind.com By CHUNG Yoon-Ngan (鄭永元) All rights reserved

Reply To This Message

Re: My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5)

Author: CHUNG Yoon Ngan  Date:   01-10-12 06:43 My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1969 (5) 105. Fishing (1957) Bengawan Solo (Solo River) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwwosLT07dg Bengawan Solo--------------(Solo River,) Riwayatmu ini-----------------(From the beginning) Sedari dulu---------------------(Your history) Menjadi perhatian insani---(Has fascinated people.) Musim kemarau---------------(In the dry season,) Tak b'rapa airmu--------------(Your water is low.) Di musim hujan air------------(In the wet season,) Meluap sampai jauh----------(Your water overflows far.) Mata airmu dari Solo---------(Your source is in Solo.) Bergunung-gunung seribu---(A thousand mountains embrace you.) Air mengalir sampai jauh----(Your water flows far) Akhirnya kelaut-----------------(And finally reaches the sea.) Itu perahu-------------------------(Those boats) Riwayatnya dulu ---------------(Your history tells us of) Kaum pedagang---------------(Traders sailing down you) S'lalu naik itu perahu----------(In those boats.) An Indonesian folk song which was very popular during my high school days. We always sang in either Malay or the Chinese translation when we went fishing, because it is about a river in Indonesia called Solo. --------------------------------------------------------------- Wong Kon Nam (黃官南), Chong Chin Kam (張進金), Chong Foo Yun (張富雲 nickname Oong Guu or a big drum), Zou Cheng (鄒城), I and a few others were a group of high school students in this little town called Pusing. Kon Nam and I had shifted to study English in an English school called Anglo Chinese School Ipoh, Chong Chin Kam was in an English school called Sultan Yusuf School in Batu Gajah, and the rest of them were in Yuk Choy Chinese High School Ipoh (怡保育才華文中學). We loved to go bush walking. At that time, although the curfew was still on, from dusk to dawn, that was from 7.pm to 6. am., the restrictions were a bit relaxed as people were free to go in and out of the town without being thoroughly searched by the policemen at the police checkpoint. There were still a few active Hill People (Communists) in the jungle under the leadership of Zeng Gengyou (曾庚友). But we did not wander into the jungle. At times we rambled barefooted aimlessly for hours in the bush and the rubber plantations near the town. We did this in order to toughen ourselves. The family of Chong Foo Yun had many dogs and Oong Guu, who was the son of the youngest sister of my grandmother, would come with a few family dogs. Many an occasion, when it rained, while we were walking in the bush, we took off our shirts and let the rain beat on our bodies and we called it rain bath. On one Sunday, we walked across a little stream and saw a lot of fish in the water. We decided to come back to catch the fish the next time. For a few days we were discussing ways to catch the fish. One of us suggested to use tuba (魚藤 derris trifoliata) roots to poison the fish, but where to get them. I asked the rubber tappers when they came to sell their rubber sheets to my father's rubber dealing shop. They told me that there were plenty of tuba roots in the fringes of Kledang Range which was about four or five kilometers west of the town. Determining to get some tuba roots, the next Sunday morning our group of high school students cycled to the jungle. We were not afraid of the Hill People and besides the Hill People did no harm to young students like us. The Hill People were only fighting the British. We rode on the uneven road and passed through thousands of rubber trees before we arrived at the fringe of the thick forest. We found various types of creeping vines. Eventually we found some tuba roots as the rubber tappers had told me how a tuba root looked like. We cut the roots into the length of two or three feet and bundled them behind our bicycle carriages. We did not go fishing that day, but stored the tuba roots in my father's palung (tin mine). I told the kepala (工頭 the leader of the workers) not to throw them away as we would be coming back to fetch them the next Sunday. The following Sunday morning, we picked up the tuba roots and borrowed a few hammers and buckets from the pulang together with their homemade scoop nets, we cycled to the little stream where there were a lot of fish. We chose a big flat rock and pounded the roots with the hammers. The roots produced a kind of milky juice. We put he milky juice in the buckets. Having pounded all the roots we emptied the juice into the river and it flowed down stream. Several minutes later we saw a lot of fish floated on the surface of the water. It was a great joy to scoop the big and small fish into the buckets. We got a few buckets full of fish. However, we were disappointed to see that we had killed all the water creatures in the river. Before we poured the tuba juice into the river no one realized that we could kill all the living creatures in the river. We were happy that we had scooped up a lot of fish but we also felt sad for killing all the creatures living in the river, especially the little tortoises. We promised we would not do this kind of fishing again. Posted to Overseas Chinese Forum at asiawind.com By CHUNG Yoon-Ngan (鄭永元) All rights reserved

Reply To This Message

Re: My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5)

Author: CHUNG Yoon Ngan  Date:   01-10-12 06:52 I forgot to post the Chinese version of the song - Bengawan Solo http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=JBgFpqwst6M CHUNG Yoon-Ngan

Reply To This Message

Re: My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5)

Author: CHUNG Yoon Ngan  Date:   01-10-12 16:39 My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1969 (5) 106. On the eve of Merdeka (Independence) - 1957 有錢無錢無相干 甘願愛郎不怕窮 總愛兩人同甘苦 黑夜盡頭天就紅 With money or without money it does not matter, As long as I love him. Loving each other we share the joys and sorrows, After the dark night the sunrise will arrive. A Haklka Mountain Song -------------------------------------------------------- The year was 1957 and the British Colonial Authorities had promised that Malaya will become an independent country on August 31. One day, the British District Officer of Kinta District in Batu Gajah sent a representative to tell Fong Fatt (房發), the mayor of Pusing town, that the British Colonial Authorities were giving the money back to the Pusing people. Fong Fatt asked the representative what sort of money. The representative told Fong Fatt that it was the fine monies that the British Authorities forced the Pusing people to pay when the Communists killed the two British contractors in 1950. Fong Fatt, the chairman of the local council, requested an urgent meeting of the local councillors to discuss how to make use of the money for the benefit of the Pusing people. Li Dingcong (李定聰), the clerk of the Local Council, was the secretary, who later told me some of the history of Pusing town. The local councillors unanimously agreed that, with the money, they should build an English Primary School and a Public Library. The reason for building the English Primary school was that there were already two Chinese Primary Schools and a Malay school in Pusing. The student population of the Malay school was only about 30. The Department of Education had already closed down the Malay School and transferred the students to study in the Malay School in Batu Gajah. There were two Malay mosques in Pusing serving about 20 Malay families who were originally from Acheh Indonesia. There was no English Primary School in Pusing and those children whose parents wanted them to study English had to travel to Batu Gajah study. It would be much convenience if Pusing had its own English Primary School. There was no libraries in the two Chinese Primary Schools and the other half of the money should be used to build a Chinese Public Library (民眾圖書館). All the Pusing folks supported the decision made by the councillors. When the English Primary School was built the Pusing folks elected a school board of Governors and Zhong Yonlian (張永連) was elected the Chairman of the board. The councillors decided that the students should run the library. Notice was put up in the market and other place to inform the high school students to form a committee to run the library. A meeting of all the high school students were convened at night in a classroom in Gonong Hijau Primary school. Zou Cheng (鄒城) of Kampong Pinang was elected the Chairman of the high school student committee. Wong Kon Nam (黃官南) and I were not elected because some of the students voted against us on the ground that we were studying English in Anglo Chinese School Ipoh. They wanted it to be solely Chinese high schools. Although we were not elected we continued to help the Student Committee to establish the library. Regarding the plan of building the library the members of the Student Committee wanted an independent building that had nothing to do with the local council. However, Fang Fatt, the mayor and Chairman of the local council wanted the library building to be built parallel to the local council building. The Student Committee wanted the ceiling of the library building to be about thirty feet high so that a badminton court will be built inside the library. Fang Fatt against it and insisted that it should the same high as the local council building and he reminded the Student Committee that they had to enter the library through the local council door. In order word the building was to be controlled by the local council and the Student Committee as no say in the affairs of the library. We were all disappointed but since it was to be our Pusing Public Library we swallowed our anger. When the Public Library was completed the Pusing Local Council delegated authority to a group of high school students to purchase Chinese and English books from the bookstores in Ipoh. Wong Kon Nam (黃官南) and I, who were responsible for purchasing English books because we were learning English in an English school, were among the group. Hundreds of Chinese books and some English books were purchased for the library. Kon Nam and I wrote to the Embassies of the U.S.A. and Australia in Kuala Lumpur for English books. About a few hundred books and magazines were received. On the eve of Merdeka (Independence) - 1957 少時離家老大回,---Shao3 shi2 li2 jia lao3 da4 hui2, 鄉音無改鬢毛催;---Xiang yin wu2 gai bin4 mao2 cui; 兒童相見不相識,---Er22 tong xiang jian4 bu4 xiang shi2, 笑問客從何處來?--Xiao3 wen4 ke4 cong2 he2 chu4 lai2? Since I was young I left home, and did not returned until I was old, Although my hometown accent had not changed my hair had turned grey. When the children in my village met me they did not recognize me, Laughing they asked me where I was from? A Tang poem (唐詩) titled 回鄉偶書 Hui Xiang Ou Shu by He Zhizhang (賀知章 659AD to 744AD) -------------------------------------------------------- The year was 1957 and the British Colonial Authorities had promised that Malaya would become an independent country on August 31. One day, the British District Officer of Kinta District in Batu Gajah sent a representative to tell Fong Fatt (房發), the mayor of Pusing town, that the British Colonial Authorities were giving the money back to the people of Pusing. Fong Fatt asked the representative what sort of money. The representative told Fong Fatt that it was the fine money that the British Authorities forced the Pusing people to pay when the Communists killed the two British contractors in 1950. Fong Fatt requested an urgent meeting of the local council, of which Fong Fatt was the chairman, to discuss how to make use of the money for the benefit of the Pusing people. Li Dingcong (李定聰), the clerk of the Local Council, was the secretary, who later told me some of the history of Pusing town. The local councillors unanimously agreed that, with the money, they should build an English Primary School and a Public Library. The reason for building the school was that there were already two Chinese Primary Schools and a Malay school in Pusing. The student population of the Malay school was only about 30. The Department of Education had already closed the Malay School and transferred the students to study in the Malay School in Batu Gajah. There were two Malay mosques in Pusing serving about 20 Malay families who were originally from Acheh Indonesia. There was no public library in Pusing. It was most appropriate to build an English Primary and a library for the people. This is the story of how this money came about. In 1950, during the high of the Emergency, in order to prevent the Hill People (山頂老 or members of the Malayan Communist Party [MCP] who were waging a war against the British Colonial Authorities in Malaya), from coming into Pusing town to obtain food stuffs, the British Colonial Authorities wanted to put up a barbed wire fence to round in Pusing town. The Hill People gave notice that they would kill anyone who dared to help the British to put up the fence. No Chinese contractors dared to do the job. Seeing that no one wanted to answer the tender the British engaged two planters from a rubber estate from another town to do the job. The planters employed the Indian Tamil rubber tappers from their estate to do the job. The fencing went on smoothly without any incident on the first day. However, the next day morning, the Hill People came down from the jungle and put a bullet to each of the British contractors' heads. They died instantly on the spot. The Indian workers were unharmed. The British Colonial Authorities were furious. They imposed a twenty-four curfew on Pusing town. Many families ran out of water and food because they never expected this kind of incident would happen. The residents put up sign board in front of their houses saying that they were running out of food and water. With military trucks full of food and water, the British soldiers went round distributing food and water to those in desperation, according to the number of members in the families. Besides the 24 hours curfew, the British imposed a fine of forty Malayan dollars ($40) on each adult over the age of 18. Those who had no money to pay the fines the British forcefully took away the family's bicycles, clocks, sewing machines or any item that was worth forty dollars. The articles were stored in Pusing police station awaiting from the owners to redeemed then when they had the money. The Pusing residents thought that the fines were to compensate the widows. Actually the British did not touch the money but deposited in the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank in Ipoh, earning a compound interest of ? %. Now the British were planning to go home they reckoned that they should pay the money back to the Pusing residents. When the Public Library was completed the Pusing Local Council delegated authority to a group of high school students to purchase Chinese and English books from the bookstores in Ipoh. Wong Kon Nam (黃官南) and I, who were responsible for purchasing English books because we were learning English in an English school, were among the group. Hundreds of Chinese books and some English books were purchased for the library. Kon Nam and I wrote to the Embassies of the U.S.A. and Australia in Kuala Lumpur for English books. About a few hundred books and magazines were received. Walking in the streets at night 天上下大雨---Tian shang4 xia4 da4 yu3, 地上濕踏踏---Di4 shang4 shi ta4 ta4. 必須要穿靴---Bi4 xu yao chuan xue. 不要穿木屐---Bu4 yao chuan mu4 ji. 穿上了木屐---Chuan shang4 le mu4 ji. 會踢踢踏踏---Hui4 ti ti ta4 ta4. The sky rains heavily. The ground is wet. You must wear boots. And don't wear clogs. Wearing clogs Will be slip-slop in walking. (And wet your back with dirt) A Pusing ditty - Wearing clogs ------------------------------------------------ Since the curfew had been relaxed to midnight to dawn the next day at 6. am, many people came to town just standing around in groups to chit-chat until about after 9. pm. It was indeed a novelty to stand around in the street because this town had been under curfew from 7. pm to 6. am the next day for almost 10 years. It was a new environment and fun to leave home coming to town after 7. pm. It was of no exception for Wong Kon Nam (黃官南) and I. Usually at about 7. pm we started to go for our walk. We walked from my house to Ipoh Road after to the police checkpoint. We could see the policemen were not stopping any cars to search for foodstuffs. Even the mobile wire gates were removed away from the road. The policemen were standing around to chit-chat. They did not even wave the cars to pass. For months there were no gunfight in the out skirts of Pusing, but the Government estimated there were still about 20 Hill People in the jungle. From the Ipoh Road police checkpoint we walked back to the town and to Siputeh until the police check point. It was about one and half miles from Ipoh Road police check point to Siputeh Road police check point. We walked and walked until about 9. pm and then we went home to do our school home works. There was something strange in this little town. There were thousands of sparrows perching on the electrical wire lines in town, especially near the market place. We reckoned that it was due to the fact that, since 1950, at the high of the Emergency, Pusing was always under curfew from dusk to dawn, that was from 7 pm to 6 am the next day that the birds were being let alone perching on the electrical wire without any interference the town folks. In around 1957, when the curfew was relaxed starting from midnight to dawn the next day. The residents of Pusing, in order to have a bit of night nights, came to town just standing around chit-chating. Some people set up food stores near the maket place. Stores like frying noodles, pisang goreng (fried bananas)and many others. They used firewood to heat up the frying pans an woks for the fried bananas. It seemed that the birds perching on the wire did not like the smoke produced from the food stores. Gradually they found their resting place in some of the trees nearby. Eventually, soon, all the birds disappeared from the electrical wire at night. This is the story of how the monies came about. In 1950, during the high of the Emergency, in order to prevent the Hill People (山頂老 or members of the Malayan Communist Party [MCP] who were waging a war against the British Colonial Authorities in Malaya), from coming into Pusing town to obtain food stuffs, the British Colonial Authorities wanted to put up a barbed wire fence to round in Pusing town. The Hill People gave notice that they would kill anyone who dared to help the British to put up the fence. No Chinese contractors dared to do the job. Seeing that no one wanted to answer the tender the British engaged two planters from a rubber estate from another town to do the job. The planters employed the Indian Tamil rubber tappers from their estate to do the job. The fencing went on smoothly without any incident on the first day. However, the next day morning, the Hill People came down from the jungle and put a bullet to each of the British contractors' heads. They died instantly on the spot. The Indian workers were unharmed. The British Colonial Authorities were furious. They imposed a twenty-four curfew on Pusing town. Many families ran out of water and food because they never expected this kind of incident would happen. The residents put up sign board in front of their houses saying that they were running out of food and water. With military trucks full of food and water, the British soldiers went round distributing food and water to those in desperation, according to the number of members in the families. Besides the 24 hours curfew, the British imposed a fine of forty Malayan dollars ($40) on each adult over the age of 18. Those who had no money to pay the fines the British forcefully took away the family's bicycles, clocks, sewing machines or any item that was worth forty dollars. The articles were stored in Pusing police station awaiting from the owners to redeemed then when they had the money. The Pusing residents thought that the fines were to compensate the widows. Actually the British did not touch the money but deposited in the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank in Ipoh, earning a compound interest of ? %. Now the British were planning to go home they reckoned that they should pay the money back to the Pusing residents. ------------------------------------- Pusing Public Library Author: Lean Yen Loong Date: 12-08-06 08:20 Dear Yoon Ngan, I remember in one of your postings, you mentioned about the public library in Pusing. Only after reading that particular posting that I realized you are one of the pioneers who started the tiny library which was sharing the same wooden building with the Pusing Local Council. I did not know when and who started the library. Around 1960, when I was a standard 4 pupil in the Wah Kiew Primary School (now called Yat Chee Primary School), someone told me about the Pusing Public Library (布先民眾圖書館 ) and asked me to join as member so that I could read books for free. It was a small library with only a few shelves of Chinese books. There was not much of a choice for me but I could not have asked for more as resources were so limited then. I could recognize some of the librarians were big brothers from my school. I remember the library ruled that all members must wear proper attires before entering the library. In several occasions, I was denied entry because I was always wearing singlets while string to gain entry. As far as I could remember, the library did not run for long . Before I finished Standard Six, the library has ceased operation, for reason unknown to me. Regards. Lean Yen Loong Posted to Overseas Chinese Forum at asiawind.com By CHUNG Yoon-Ngan (鄭永元) All rights reserved

Reply To This Message

Re: My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5)

Author: CHUNG Yoon Ngan  Date:   01-10-12 18:58 My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5) 107. Merdeka (Independence) - 1957 送哥送到天井邊 天上烏雲遮半天 只望天公落大雨 留轉情哥住幾天 I send off my love one as far as the well in the courtyard, Half of the sky is covered with black clouds; I wish it will rain, So that my love one will stay for a few more days. A Hakka mountain song ----------------------------------------------- The Second World War in Asia ended after Japan was defeated and surrendered in August 1945. The following year in 1946 the Malay Nationalists formed a party called the United Malays' National Organization (UMNO). On December 5 1948 Tan Cheng-lok (陳禎祿) formed the Malayan Chinese Association (MCA). http://yn.chung.id.au/Tan.Cheng-lok.jpg In 1952, the UMNO and MCA formed a party called the Alliance Party (聯盟 ) to contest in the first local council election of the municipality of Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaya. Tunku Abdul Rahman, the president of the UMNO, was elected the leader of the Alliance Party. The result of the election was that the Alliance Party won all the seats contested. Ong Yoke Lin (翁毓麟 Weng Yulin), a member of the MCA and one of the founders of the Alliance Party, was elected as a councillor and became the first Mayor of Kuala Lumpur. The party formed by the Malayan Indians called Malayan Indian Congress Party (MIC) joined the Alliance Party which became a party belonging to the Malays, Chinese and Indians in Malaya. In the first federal election in Malaya in 1955, the Alliance Party won 51 of the 52 seats contested. Malaya became a self government and Tunku Abdul Rahman became the First Chief Minister of Malaya. In April 1957, Tunku Abdul Rahman, the Chief Minister of the Self Government accompanying by the representatives of the members of UMNO, MCA and MIC went to England for the conference on the independence of Malaya. The British agreed to give Malaya back to the people of Malaya. So on 31st August 1957, Malaya became an independent country. Meanwhile in the small Hakka town of Pusing (布先), in the State of Perak, curfew was still on but the curfew hours for the town Pusing and Gunung Hijau New Village (喜州新村) had changed, that was from mid-night to 6 am, the next day. However, the curfew hours for the rubber plantations remained the same, from dusk to dawn, that was from 7 pm. to 6 am the next day as there were still about 20 to 30 Hill People in the jungle according to the British Colonial Authorities. The Pusing residents were free to move about within the fences that protecting the town and the village. There were three layers of fence surrounding Pusing and Gunung Hijau New Village. The center one was an electrified fence. Anyone or a strayed cow or a goat that touched the electrified fence would be burnt to death. It was very, very dangerous. The purpose of putting up this electrified fence was to prevent the Hill People from cutting through the fence and coming into the new village or the town to obtain food and other provisions. From what the information gathered from the surrendered Hill People, the British knew that there were residents throwing tin-food out beyond the fences. So the British put up the three fences far apart so that on one could be strong enough to throw out any tin-food. As the curfew hours had been changed, the Chinese high school students in town obtained permissions from the authorities of the police department in Batu Gajah and the school governing body of Yi Zhi Chinese Primary School (益智華文小學) to conduct night classes to teach those illiterate or semi-illiterate rubber tappers, mostly young girls who had never been to school. A few of the night school teachers belonged to the Min Yuen (民運 an underground organization supporting the Hill People). I took part in organizing the night classes and got involved with the members of the Min Yuan. The night classes went on smoothly. I and a few members of the Min Yuen became good friends and we began to stay overnight in one of the members house. After the night classes the Min Yuen members gathered together to learn Communists songs and read Communist literature books that were smuggled into Malaya from China. None of the Min Yuen members knew that one of us was a police paid informer. One night, after the night classes this member, whose nickname was Russia (it is not nice to reveal his name), suggested that we should change the place of the discussion for that night. Usually we stayed in Lee's house in Kampong Pinang (檳榔園). But that night we changed the meeting to Loh's house, in the old site of the railway line, not far from the Yi Zhi School. That night after mid-night, the police from Batu Gajah conducted a clean up operation with the intention of picking up all the Min Yuen members and those who supplied food and other provisions to the Hill People. A few friends and I were supposed to be picked up. But our friend, Russia, the informer, purposely changed the place of discussion for the night so that we could escape from being picked up. Russia must have a clear conscious mind, after all we were all friends and school mates for many years and he did not want us to end up in jail. The police came to my father's house looking for me but I was not at home. They picked up my sister-in-law, Zhang Pingtai (張平娣), the wife of my Third Elder Brother, who had just given birth to a baby girl for about a week. The baby girl was named Chung Soo Chin (鄭素珍). It was revealed that my sister-n-law used to make uniforms for the Hill People when she was a rubber tapper before she married my Third Elder Brother. I was lucky because I was not at home that night. My sister-in-law was put in a cell with her baby girl and a female high school student from Yuk Kwan High School in Batu Gajah (華都拿也育群中學 ) by the surname of Mo (莫 it is not appropriate to reveal her full name). Student Mo was about 17 years old and was very beautiful. A distant relative of mine, Police Inspector Chung (I am not sure about his real name, as it happened so long ago.), was a Police Inspector in the Batu Gajah District Police Department and he knew what was going on in Pusing. Since Zhang Pingtai was the daughter-in-law of Father she became a distant relative of Inspector Chung who went regularly and too often to the prison cell to see my sister-in- law, the baby girl and particularly Student Mo. Inspector Chung, a bachelor, felt in love with Student Mo. Inspector Chung made sure that they were being well treated. My sister-in-law wondered why Inspector Chung came to see them so often after all they were prisoners. One evening, Inspector Chung invited Student Mo for a cinema show in Ipoh. It was good for a change after being locked up for a week in a cell with a crying baby girl and a new mother. Student Mo accepted the invitation. Inspector Chung gave Student Mo a few new dress to wear as she was wearing prison clothing. Inspector Chung had planned in advance of taking Student Mo out. So he bought a few new dresses for her to go out with him at night. However, Student Mo must remain as a prisoner during daytime. Then my sister-in-law realized that Inspector Chung was in love with Student Mo. About a month later, my sister-in-law and Student Mo were released from prison. A several months later Student Mo gave up studying and married Inspector Chung. Seeing me got involved with the Min Yuan Organization Father was afraid that I might follow the footstep of First Eldest Brother, who was sent to China to study, Father sent me to live in Ipoh as I was studying in Ipoh. I was studying Form Four at that time. I continued to live in Ipoh until I finished my Form Five and after the Cambridge Overseas School Certificate Examinations I returned to live in Pusing. Posted to Overseas Chinese Forum at asiawind.com By CHUNG Yoon-Ngan (鄭永元) All rights reserved

Reply To This Message

Re: My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5)

Author: CHUNG Yoon Ngan  Date:   01-10-12 23:40 My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5) 108. An ambush in the mine - 1958 松下問童子,---Song xia4 wen4 tong2 zi3, 言師採藥去.---Yan2 shi cai3 yao4 qu4. 只在此山中,---Zhi zai4 ci3 shan zhong, 雲深不知處.---Yun2 shen bu4 zhi chu3. I go up the mountain looking for a friend who lives in seclusion, but he is not at home. I go under the pine tree and ask a boy, He replies that his master has gone to pick herbs. The boy also says that his master is somewhere in this mountain and his master would not go elsewhere, But the cloud and mist is very thick in this mountain and where to look for him. A Tang Poem titled 尋隱者不遇---Xun2 yin3 zhe3 bu4 yu4" By Gu Dao (賈島 788AD to 843AD) -------------------------------------------------- The time was the beginning of 1958 and I was in Form Five, my last year in high school. In December of that year I will be sitting for the Cambridge Overseas School Certificate Examinations conducted by the Cambridge University in England. The previous year seeing me got involved with the Min Yuen (民 運 or Masses Movement that supported the Hill People or Communists), Father sent me to live in a friend's house in Ipoh so that he could concentrate on my study preparing for my final examination at the end of the year without fooling around in Pusing. Father bought me a bicycle and sent me to an English tuition class in the morning since I was in the afternoon session. On Saturday morning I had to attend science class for practical experiments. In the afternoon when I was free I usually went to movie with my classmates and played badminton in the late afternoon. On Sunday morning, after breakfast I usually cycled back to Pusing. The next day, on Monday morning I would cycle back to Ipoh to attend my English tuition class. It had been going on like this for about a few months. One Sunday morning, as usual, I cycled home. When I arrived home I was shocked to see that none of the members my family was at home. I asked a neighbour what had happened to my family. I was told that my third elder brother was missing somewhere in the vicinity of the mine. Cycling as fast as I could, I rushed to my father's tin mine which was about three kilometers from Pusing. On arrival at the mine I saw many people, all Pusing folks, in Father's mine and some of them were combing the area. There were even two policemen helping in the search. Before noon, suddenly there were many British and Malay soldiers appeared from nowhere running and shouting, "Stop! Don't Run! Jangan lari!". I saw two men running away and the soldiers were chasing them. The two men were cornered near a muddy pond and they thought that it was an ordinary water pond. They jumped in trying to swim to the other side of the pond. They got stuck in the mud and were arrested by the soldiers. The soldiers told the folks that the two men were the Hill People (Communists) and told the people to go home. According to my father it was like this: One day, there were two Hill People came to Father's tin mine, Yat Cheong Kongsi (日昌公司), and gave He Cai (何財, the husband of my aunty, a younger sister of Father who was in charge of the mine), some money and wanted him to buy five pairs of rubber shoes for them. They also told He Cai that they would come to collect the shoes the following Sunday morning. In the afternoon of that day when Father came to the mine He Cai asked him what he should do. Father told him not to worry and he would buy the shoes and would take care of the matter as he was the mine owner and he should take the responsibility. It was believed that Father informed the British about that matter. Father asked the British to promise him not to kill anyone of them but capture them alive and free them after rehabilitation otherwise Father would not cooperate. The British agreed and promised not to kill any of them but capture them alive. On the appointed day to collect the shoes, very early in the morning, the British and Malay soldiers laid an ambush near Father's tin mine. Third Elder Brother went to the mine very early in the morning and saw the British and Malay soldiers laying an ambush. The soldiers invited Third Elder Brother to join them. So he left his car on the track road near the mine. On his way to the mine, the Kepala (工頭 the head man of the workers), saw Third Elder Brother's car abandoned on the track road and he was nowhere to be found. The Kepala went straight to the mine looking for Third Elder Brother but he was not in the mine. The Kepala was worry and cycled to Pusing to inform Father that his third son was not in the mine and the car was abandoned on the track road. Immediately, Father went to the police station to report that his son was missing. Cheah Fah (謝華, the father of Tan Seri Dr Jeffery Cheah, the current President of the Federated Hakka Associations of Malaysia), led a group of Pusing folks to the mine in search of Third Elder Brother. Cheah Fah had a shotgun and a handgun for protection because the Hill People wanted his head. Two policemen also went with Cheah Fah and joined the search thinking that Third Elder Brother was kidnapped by somebody. Incredibly, no one saw the British and Malay soldiers and Third Elder Brother laying ambush in the bush. Cheah Fah and the Pusing folks saw two strangers wearing, approaching the mine. Cheah Fah was holding a shot gun and First Uncle was also holding his shot gun, which was used to protect the mine, and the two policemen were also ready to do a gunfight. Suddenly, from nowhere the British and Malay soldiers shouted to the police, Cheah Fah and First Uncle not to shoot because they wanted to capture the two men alive. When the two men saw the soldiers they ran towards the bush. The soldiers shouted , "Jangan lari! Stop! Don't run!" The two men fell into a mud pond near the mine and they were captured alive. The soldiers gave Third Elder Brother back to Father and thanked Third Elder Brother for his cooperation. The British officer was in command, speaking in Malay and apologized to the Pusing folks for their inconveniences. This incident was carried by all the Chinese newspapers in Malaya, but not the English newspapers. A few months later I met one of the captured Hill people in a dinner in a friend's house. After the capture of the two Hill People (Communists) in Father's tin mine called Yat Cheong Kongsi (日昌公司), the next day, the "Voice-Aircraft" calling Zeng Gengyou (曾庚友)[1A], Chen Youfu (陳有福) and another one to surrender. The aircraft also showered leaflets carrying the photos of the two surrendered Hill People dressed in plain clothe with the intention of showing Zeng Gengyou that his two comrades had actually surrendered. I knew all these names because they were former from my village Kampong Sayap. Several weeks later, it was alleged that one of Zeng Gengyou's body guards surrendered to the police while he was on his assignment to obtain food from the town of Siputeh. The surrendered comrade led the Security forces to the camp where he supposed to return with the provision. Comrade Zeng Gengyou and his other bodyguard were killed by the Security Forces. The story about his family was published by all the newspapers in Malaya including the English newspaper Straits Times. The residents of Pusing, Papan, Siputeh and Tronoh were expecting the Government to declare their towns "White Area" (白區) that meant there were no more Hill People in the jungle. Indeed, several weeks later, the whole of Kinta District was declared a "White Area" and the curfew was lifted. I was living in Ipoh and preparing for my Cambridge Overseas School Examinations. I read the news in the Chinese newspapers and the English newspaper Straits Times. It was also the time that Malaya was playing against Indonesia for the badminton Thomas Cup tournament. Eddy Choong from Penang was the captain of Maslaya. He was in seriously physical trouble and Tay Kew Shan tried desperately to save the cup from leaving Malaya. In the end Malaya lost the cup to Indonesia. It was coincident that one of the Indonesian players was called Chen Youfu (陳有福) from Indonesia. The newspapers also introduced the background of his family. To read the retrospect of Zeng Gengyou (曾 庚友的回顧), please read the chapter of the formation of the 5th MPAJA (Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army) Independent Regiment 馬來亞人民抗日軍第五獨 立隊的成立 Posted to Overseas Chinese Forum at asiawind.com By CHUNG Yoon-Ngan (鄭永元) All rights reserved

Reply To This Message

Re: My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5)

Author: CHUNG Yoon Ngan  Date:   01-11-12 01:15 My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5) 109. I become a tin mine worker - 1959/1960 讀書志在聖賢,---Du2 shu zhi4 zai4 sheng4 xian2, 為官心在君國.---Wei2 guan xin zai4 jun guo2. The aim of studying is to become a man of sage and virtue, To become an official is to serve one's country and ruler. A Chinese Saying ------------------------------------------------------------- During the Emergency, the policeman in the Pusing Police Station would hit the rim of a lorry wheel suspended in front of the Police Station on the hour. If it was 5 o'clock the policeman would hit 5 times. In the evening, when the residents heard the gong 7 times it meant it was the beginning of the curfew. The next day morning, when they heard 6 times it meant the curfew had lifted for the day. However, when they heard the policeman hitting the rim non-stop for one minute or longer it meant (打亂鐘 hitting the gong in confusion), telling the people that there was emergency in town and all the residents should return to their houses or temporarily stay in friends' houses. This tradition discontinued after all the Hill people were dead, captured or surrendered. The curfew was lifted for good. Since there were no Hill People to support in the district the Min Yuen (民運 Masses Movement) was secretly dissolved. Ironically a few of the members went to Taiwan to study. Father recalled me back to live in Pusing. While living in Pusing, I went to school with best friend, Wong Kon Nam (黃官南 ), by bus. Sometimes we discussed our school works together because Kon Nam was also preparing for the Cambridge Overseas School Certificate Examinations. On the first Monday of December in 1958, Wong Kon Nam and I sat for our final examinations. All the papers were set from Cambridge University in England and all the answers were sent back to Cambridge University for marking. The results would not be published until February the next year in the Malayan English newspaper, The Straits Times. Within two weeks the examinations were all over. Kon Nam and I were free from studying for the time being. As Wong Kon Nam and I had no worry about studying, we played hockey in the morning and badminton in the afternoon at the badminton court at Yi Zhi Chinese Primary School (益智華文小學). During weekends we organized fishing and picnic near one of the mining ponds near Father's tin mine. Since the restriction of food had been lifted Father set up the kitchen in the mine for the workers who did not have to go to Pusing for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I borrowed pots and pans from the cook to cook the fish we caught from the pond. There were plenty of firewood in the bush. We fried the fish and cooked fish porridge and boiled red beans soup with sugar and ate with bread that Kon Nam brought from his father's grocery shop. It had become a very popular outings and many school boys from Pusing joined us but the girls were too shy to come. Our friend Chong Chin Kam, who loved to admire beautiful girls, invited a few girls from Batu Gajah Convent School to the picnic. The news of the picnic spread like wild fire among the school girls in Convent School. Since then there were many girls from Batu Gajah joined the fun on weekends. Sometimes there were not had enough food to share because there were too many boys and girls turned up. They swam in the pond. Fortunately none of them were drowned since not all of them knew how to swim. The girls from Convent School sang songs and danced. They all really had a good time. The picnic continued until the Overseas Cambridge School Certificate results came out. Kon Nam did very well and was allowed to continue to study Form Six. However, I did not do that well just managed to get through but was not allowed to continue to study Form Six. The picnic was all over. Father asked me what I should do. I said I wanted to become a surveyor and Father disagreed with my idea because it was a very tough job as I had to work in the bush and swampy area. Then I wanted to open a bookshop in Batu Gajah. Again Father disagreed saying that he would not make much money by selling books in a small town. Eventually, Father told me to work in the mine and learn from him how to become a tin miner. I agreed. Thus I became a tin mine worker because I had to follow the Kepela (工頭 the head of the worker in a tin mine) to learn how to do various kind of jobs. I worked as a mine worker in Father's tin mine. Each week, I took Saturday and Sunday as my days off so that I could see my friends and go swimming, fishing and picnicking with them. However, I was not interested in becoming a tin miner. Whenever I was free I would sit quietly under a tree to read my books. I enjoyed reading so much that the mine workers called him a bookworm. I did not pay much attention to Father's instructions and he was disappointed. In August of that year, Chung Guomin (鄭國民), who lived in Kampar and a distant relative of mine, came to Pusing to visit me. The previous year, Guomin and I lived together in a flat that belonged to the Public Works Department (PWD) of Perak State. It was a one large bed room, one lounge, one kitchen, one bathroom and one toilet flat which was allocated to the family of a man by the surname of Ye (葉), who had been working for PWD for a long time. This man was the father of a classmate of Guomin. Since it was too small for the Ye family it was rented out to Guomin who invited me to stay with him so that they could study together preparing for their final examinations in the coming December. I stayed with him for three months, that was one school term, before I was recalled back by Father to live in Pusing. The purpose of Guomin's visit was to ask me if I wanted to go with him to Australia to study. He stayed in Pusing with me for two days and two nights. He gave me a lot of information about studying in Australia from the Australian High Commission in Kuala Lumpur. He encouraged me to go as he had decided to make application to the Education Department in Australia. I was tempted to follow him to Australia but I was not sure if Father would support me. I asked Guomin to talk to Father trying to convince him to support me and also to tell Father, who was illiterate, the advantages of obtaining a tertiary education. Actually, Father did not know much about the important of education as he himself had never been to school. Father told Guomin that he could not make up his mind and he had to talk it over with his wife, my stepmother. Guomin went back to Kampar without a definite reply from me. Several days later, I overheard a conversation between Father and Step-mother who told Father that he should allow me to go to Australia to study. Step-mother reminded Father that his first, second and third sons had all dropped out from schools. Father's eldest son did not want to study and went back to China and ended up fighting in the Korean War, the second son was a primary school dropout and the third son was a high school dropout. She told Father that the only one who had a chance to obtain a tertiary education was me and after all the monthly expenses for studying in Australia was only about $200 Malayan dollars. It was not much and the tin mine could support me in Australia. She also told Father that to let me showed a good example of going to university so that my younger step-brothers and sisters could follow my example and going to universities too. After listening to Step-mother Father realized that it made sense and agreed with what she said. Father told me that he would support me to study in Australia. Immediately, I applied to the Australian High Commission in Kuala Lumpur saying that I wanted to study in Western Australia. The Australian High Commissioner in Kuala Lumpur replied me by telling me to apply direct to the Education Department in Perth. Several weeks later, I received a reply from Perth that the 1960 Academic Year had closed, but the Department would enroll me for the 1961 Academic Year if I could confirm that I would definitely wanted to study in Perth. The Perth Education also informed me that June 30th of each year was the closing date for new application. I replied and made my confirmation to the Perth Education Department that I would definitely turn up in 1961. Thus I was late by three months as it was in early of September 1959. There was nothing I could do but to work as a mine worker and wait for 1961 to come. Note: Wong Kon Nam graduated as a civil engineer from Malayan University KL. In later life he designed the Penang Bridge from Butterworth to Penamg Island. Posted to Overseas Chinese Forum at asiawind.com By CHUNG Yoon-Ngan (鄭永元) All rights reserved .

Reply To This Message

Re: My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5)

Author: CHUNG Yoon Ngan  Date:   01-12-12 06:06 My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5) 110. Even the longest and grandest feast must breakup at last - 1960 千里搭長棚,---Qian li3 da chang2 peng2, 盛筵席必散.---Sheng4 yan2 xi2 bi4 san3. Even the longest and the grandest feast, Must break up at last. A Chinese Saying ------------------------------------------------------------ http://yn.chung.id.au/Pusing.Girls&Boys.jpg I wonder if you have heard of this song before. I still can remember and sing this song. When I was a high school student in Malaya, now Malaysia, we usually sang this song to say farewell to a friend who was going overseas to study. A few years later, it was my turn that my friends sang to say goodbye to me as I was going to Australia to study (Please see the photo of Pusing girls and boys in my book. They are now all grandfathers and grandmothers). It is only in music. I wish someone sings it and put it in youtube. The tune is very good. 別離 - Bie Li - Farewell http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5KxYpzm9cU It was November 1960 and I continued to work as a mine worker in Father's tin mine. I continued to take Saturdays and Sundays off so that I could see my friends and go swimming, fishing and picnicking with them. One day, a few friends of mine; Wong Kon Nam, Gurdip Singh, Chong Chin Kam, Bapia Singh and a few others went to build a little dam on a small stream behind the small town of Papan. The dam was built by quite reasonable big stones. Near the small stream there was an unused quarry which was formerly belonged to the Public Works Depart of Perak State. We carried the stones from the quarry and block off the flow of the stream until it became a dam of about 5 or 6 feet deep. It became a big swimming pool. The news of this man-made swimming pool traveled far and wide. It became very popular among young students and there were a lot of boys and girls went there to swim. During Sundays there were many young students from other towns, like Ipoh, Batu Gajah, Tronoh and other small towns came for picnic and swam in the dam. Wong Kon Nam passed his Form Six Examinations and was waiting to go to Malayan University the following year. I had received my Australian Student Visa and was leaving for Australia the next month. Chong Chin Kam was contacting his relatives in Suriname in South America and he was going there to do business the following year. Gurdip Singh, the Sikh friend was applying to study in England. Loh Kon Chuan (羅官傳)'s brothers were helping him to establish a Chinese herbal shop in Penang where he had been studying in Chung Ling High School (鐘靈中學) for five years. For the sake of our future and knowing that we would be separated in a month' s time, members of our group climbed up a hill to watch the scenery of Kinta Valley. We could see many tin mines. There were 39 of them when we counted them from afar. How many more in the far distant that we could not see with our naked eyes we had no idea. There could be about a hundred of them that they could not see. Everybody of us knew that it was time to say goodbye to each other. Within one month, members of the group were separated. I went to Australia, Wong Kon Nam went to Malayan University in Kuala Lumpur, Chong Chin Kam was preparing to leave for Suriname in South America, Gurdip Singh was preparing to go to England to study Cost Accounting. In the early morning of 30th December 1960, I said goodbye to all his relatives and friends at Ipoh airport. A small aeroplane took me to Singapore where I changed to a bigger plane that flew me to Perth, Australia where I began to receive my tertiary education. From Hakka Forum by Lean Yen Loong (連元龍) Dear Yoon Ngan, I am pleasantly surprised to learn from your posting that the popular picnic spot at the waterfall at the back of Papan town was first developed by you and your group of friends. In my secondary school years, I used to go there with my friends during weekends. There was no proper road, only a narrow jungle path that led us a few kilometers upstream. We used to ride our bicycles or our parents' motorcycles to spend the whole afternoon playing in the chilly water. The rocky river bed and shallow water did not pose much risk to us, except that we might fall off the slippery rock if not careful. At some stretches where the gradient was right, we could even slide down from the top to the pool of water at the end of the slope. School children like us from nearby areas really had great fun there every weekend and especially during school holidays. You may not be aware of what changes had taken place in that area. A narrow tarred road following the stream leads all the way up from Papan town to a few kilometers upstream where there is a fenced area belonging to the Forestry Department which operates a plant nursery there. The areas in and outside the fencing are well kept by the Forestry Department as a nice picnic spot. There are basic amenities for the public and a few buildings inside the fenced area. Other organizations can apply to use the facilities for various activities. There, the Malaysian Nature Society of which I am a member runs yearly Children Nature Camp where we teach children the basic knowledge about plants and animals in the forest with the aim of strengthening the message of conservation. Quite often you can see bus loads of school children and tourists visiting the picnic area. Regards. Lean Yen Loong Dear Yoon Ngan, The year was 1960, when I was a Standard 4 student in the Yit Chee Primary School in Pusing. Pusing, like many other towns in Malaya was declared a 'white area", i.e. it was free from the communist threat. To celebrate the occasion, the authority organized a big function at the town field near the market. Every houshold was asked to send a representative to attend the function. My mother, after coming back from the rubber plantation, went to attend the function with me. She asked me to wait for her at the corner of a shop near the police station. She said she would make her way home after having done the shopping for dinner at the market. At the function, VIPs were making lengthy speeches which I did not understand. While waiting for my mother, I saw women stealthily left the town field and headed for home. Then I saw a few of my classmates also in the field. I joined in the group to roam about in the field. The speeches were followed by a procession around the town. The procession started from the town field, went to the town centre, up Gunong Hijau village and back to the field again. I joined in the fun with my classmates and by the time I got home, it was already dark. My mother was so mad at me for not following her instruction to wait for her that I received a good round of caning. Posted to Overseas Chinese Forum at asiawind.com By CHUNG Yoon-Ngan (鄭永元) All rights reserved

Reply To This Message

Re: My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1960 (5)

Author: CHUNG Yoon Ngan  Date:   01-12-12 07:07 My Family in the British Colonial Malaya - 1858 to 1969 (5) The End 111. Reference books: (01) 馬新抗日史料 By 郭仁德 (02) The Jungle Is Neutral By F. S. Chapman (03) Malaya Upside Down By Chin Kee Onn (04) Red Star Over Malaya By Dr. Cheah Boon Kheng (05) My Side of History 我方的歷史 By Chin Peng 陳平 (06) ...And The Rain My Drink By Dr. Han Suyin (07) the War of the Running Dogs By Noel Barber (08) Sinister Twilight The Fall of Singapore By Noel Barber (09) Malayan Postscript By Ian Morrison (10) The British in Malaya 1880 to 1941 By John G. Butcher (11) Sold For Silver By Janet Lim 林秋美 (12) Out East in the Malay Peninsula By Dr. G. E. D. Lewis (13) The Chinese in Malaya By Dr. Victor Purcell (14) Menace in Malaya By Harry Miller ------------------------------------------ Posted to Overseas Chinese Forum at asiawind.com By CHUNG Yoon-Ngan (鄭永元) All rights reserved

Reply To This Message

Forum List  |  New Topic  |  Go to Top  |  Go to Topic  |  Threaded View  |  Search  |  Log In

Newer Topic  |  Older Topic

Forum List  |  Need a Login? Register Here

User Login  User Name:  Password:

All messages are the expression of the contributors, who are solely responsible for the content. The forum does not endorse any views.

	Web asiawind.com

The Asiawind forums are provided to you by InTechTra Inc.