Re: hakka: Tales of a Hakka town (1)

[KONG-KHEN_KOO@HP-Singapore-om1.om.hp.com]

     Hi I would like to add on to the tale of Pusing.
     
     My hometown is in Menglembu, which is about 8km from Pusing.
     When I am back in my hometown for holidays, I would often take the 
     opportunity to drive around the area, and get to understand more of 
     the history of the early Hakka folks that came to this region.
     
     In Menglembu  there is a Wan Li Moong Kayin Ng Sook Fee Guon - the 
     Menglembu Kaying Hakka Association (Wanliwang - Jiaying Wushu 
     Huiguan). The Hakka folks that started this Fee Guon came mainly from 
     Moiyan region, (Guangdong, Meixian). 
     
     The Menglembu Kaying Association was formed around 1936.  The majority 
     of the early Hakka folks were engaged in tin mining activities then.  
     The members of this association had also build a Zhong Foon - Main 
     Grave - in the Menglemb Old Cemetry.  Annually, the association 
     committee members still conduct the tomb sweeping ritual at the Zhong 
     Foon.
     
     I visited the association last month when I was back there. It seems 
     to be in a very sleepy state.  This is the state of most clan 
     association, especially in the smaller towns.  New and young members 
     are hard to come by. On the wall of the association is hung an old 
     picture of Tsungkeow (Soonkou-Jen) taken around the 1930s. Tsungkeow 
     is a village in Meixian. It is located on the Meijiang, the river that 
     runs thro the Hakka heartland.
     
     Menglembu, Pusing, Batu Gajah, Papan, Lahat  is situated in the Kinta 
     Valley, which has one of the riches tin deposit area in the world. The 
     towns are sitting on the foothills of the Kledang range.  I would 
     guess that the hills around the Kinta Valley reminded the early Hakka 
     folks of their hilly villages back home.
     
     The centre of the Kinta Valley is Ipoh. The city has a population of 
     about 500 thousand inhabitants.  The early Hakkas played an important 
     role in the development of Ipoh town more than a hundred years ago.   
     This is evident in the Ipoh Kaying Association, which has its 
     association building located in centre of the old town of Ipoh city. 
     
              


______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Re: hakka: Tales of a Hakka town (1)
Author:  chungyn (chungyn@mozart.collective.com.au) at HP-Singapore,mimegw19
Date:    7/13/98 3:03 PM


     
     
   Tales of a Hakka town
     
   The name of my hometown is Pusing which is sixteen kilometers south of 
Ipoh, the capital of the State of Perak in Malaysia. Over ninety per cent 
of the residents in Pusing are Hakka, the offspring of the immigrants who 
came from Dongguan county in Guangdong province China during the ninetieth 
century. These immigrants came to this area to work in the tin mines. 
They built their settlement and called it Xi Di which meant Tin Land. 
Later a Malay penghulu or chieftain in Batu Gajah, four kilometers away, 
renamed it Pusing, ater a little stream near the settlement because there 
was a shape bend of about ninety degrees on it. Pusing in Malay means 
turn, rotate or whirl. 
     
 More and more Hakkas arrived from Dongguan at the turn of the twentieth
century. Due to the increment of the population Pusing prospered. Many new 
shop houses were built and it became a small town. There is a saying in 
Pusing that more than hundred per cent of the Pusing Chinese speak Hakka. 
Why is it so? The answer is that the few Malay and Indian families in 
Pusing speak Hakka too. 
     
  The Hakkas in Pusing acquired a little hill about two kilometers west 
of the town. They used this hill as the burial ground for their deceased 
relatives and it became a cemetery. Before they began to use thier 
cemetery they first buried the things they brought along with them 
from Dongguan. Things like clothing, soil, water, the golden urn 
containing their ancestors bones, and many other things. This was what 
they called Zong Fen or Main Grave which was to be the substitution for 
their Hakka villages in Dongguan. Every year on the 14th day of the 7th 
moon, according to the Lunar Calendar, the Hakkas in Pusing would go to 
the Main Grave to pray. After the ceremony they would adjourn to a 
restaurant for a grand feast.    
     
  I recalled an occasion when my father invited an Indian Sikh who was a 
bullock cart owner to the feast. In order to create a harmonious enviourment 
in the town sometimes non-Hakkas were invited to the feast. This Sikh spoke 
Hakka as if he was from Dongguan. My father used to hire his bullock cart 
to carry tin ore from the mine to Pusing to sell to a British company called 
Eastern Smelting Company. During the feast this Sikh jokingly told the 
dinners that he was a Dongguan Punjabi. This made every one roared. From 
then on he was nicknamed Dongguan Punjabi.  
     
CHUNG Yoon-Ngan
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
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