VIGNETTES FROM CHILDHOOD: “BAD WOMEN”

The Petaling Street Beauty Parade

PETALING STREET in the early 1920’s. I’m out on an evening stroll with my maternal grandmother. To my surprise, on both sides of the road, I can see a dazzling parade of attractive women, perched prettily on high wooden stools. I find them thoroughly fascinating; they seem to a curious seven-year-old the very epitome of something secret and forbidden. I can barely resist staring at each one of them as we pass…

“Come on, come on, hurry up!” my grandmother’s gruff voice would reach me from a little distance ahead. “What’s there to see? Come on, quickly, it’s late already!”

And as I caught up with her, she’d mutter in a low voice, “Bad women!” I always hoped she would elaborate, but she never did.

I was fourteen when “Second Aunt,” the former sing-song girl, finally enlightened my naivete about these women. She commented that one’s fortune depended not so much on looks as on intelligence (referring to women like herself). But the slow-witted, like “Ah Lan,” usually amounted to nothing. Life for them held only drudgery.

Every day, just before dusk, Ah Lan and her colleagues would gobble down a frugal meal before attending to their make-up. They daubed their faces with chalk-white rice powder and added colour to their cheeks and lips with red-paper dye (rouge and lipstick may have been in vogue in Europe but they certainly weren’t in evidence on Petaling Street, Kuala Lumpur, in the 1920’s!) Ah Lan had plucked her entire brow and face clean of hair so that the make-up would stick better.

Next, she would change her bodice – an undergarment with elbow-length sleeves and gold or silver buttons. Two large pockets on the front of the bodice provided support for her breasts. Brassieres were nowhere in sight in those days, which seems quite remarkable, in view of the veritable mountains of padded bras on sale along Petaling Street today!

Women like Ah Lan usually wore long, black silk trousers and wooden clogs. When it was time to start work, they brought out their wooden stools and took their places on the five-foot-way, posing for invisible photographers. Most of Ah Lan’s colleagues (she called them her “sisters”) were by no means familiar with the concept of elegance. They were streetwalkers – or, rather, streetsitters – of the lowest grade and, at fifty cents a “go,” their clients could hardly expect elegance.

Of course, Ah Lan had been worth much more in her prime – but that was many years ago. She was never much good at saving, though. Besides, a sizeable cut of her takings had gone to the upkeep of her “mummies,” and she, like her working sisters, had two of these – one natural and the other strictly professional. Apart from her natural “mummy,” Ah Lan also had to support a whole string of natural brothers and sisters.

Now she was left with only a few gold teeth, a handful of bracelets and chains, and a small collection of good silver buttons; just about enough, nevertheless, to make her feel more fortunate than some of her really down-and-out customers. With these, Ah Lan could, if she was in the mood, extend a measure of charity by way of a few friendly words, or a few extra minutes, or even a genuine display of warmth.

No doubt there wasn’t much of a future for Ah Lan and her sisters, apart from the prospect of ending their days in the local poorhouse. But this would only happen if Ah Lan was unlucky enough to have to sell all her gold ornaments to pay for exotic herbal cures. True, the government had started licencing the streetsitters, making it compulsory for them to report regularly at the general hospital for hygienic inspections. With any luck, Ah Lan might be able to retire gracefully in a few years, perhaps even become a “mummy” herself.
Luck, however, wasn’t something that featured prominently in Ah Lan’s horoscope. Not “good” luck, at any rate.

Years later, when I found out what the Petaling Street Beauty Parade was all about, I used to wonder why my maternal grandmother had called those poor streetsitters “bad women.” Unfortunate, yes… but “bad”?

It is we who are cruel, not life.

The Sing-Song Girl

IN OLD CHINA, the Courtesan was generally regarded as a highly accomplished person. Among the many skills required of her was the ability to sing and play on a zither-like instrument called the pei-pai. Her clientele usually consisted of nobles and rich landlords, sometimes even royalty.

Kuala Lumpur in the Roaring ‘Twenties boasted no Courtesans (at least, not in the proper tradition of Courtesanship as practiced in China), but we had the pei-pai chai or sing-song girl. She was often to be found in the more established Chinese restaurants, providing entertainment while the customers dined.

The pei-pai chai, unlike the cultured Courtesan, was usually a girl of little education, taught to sing and play by an older man (more often than not a guardian or uncle), who accompanied her on a lute or violin. As to be expected, he would also function as the pei-pai chai’s manager or agent, especially after hours.

“Second Aunt” was once a pei-pai chai. She wasn’t really our aunt as such, but she lived next door to us and liked us addressing her as Second Aunt. Her husband was a government servant, and she must have been quite a celebrity among sing-song girls to have caught his eye and captured his heart. After all, in those days, a government servant was considered an excellent match; he could easily have married someone from a respectable background.

Of course, Second Aunt could quite as easily have become a tycoon’s concubine. But she was smart enough to realize that being a rich man’s concubine often meant a slavelike existence by day at the merciless hands of the principal wife, despite all the endearments heaped on her by a doting husband in the privacy of the bedroom. As a concubine, she would have had very few rights outside of the nuptial chamber; even her own children would have been required to address her as “aunt” as long as she lived.

Every time Second Aunt came over to chat with our mother, we noticed that she would be displaying a new ornament around her neck or on her wrist or on her well-manicured fingers, We enjoyed the way she flaunted her assets; the coquettish movements of her eyes and hands, her elegant clothes, the vivacity of her expressions. The mannerisms of a sing-song girl, in the case of Second Aunt, were a lifelong trademark.

When Second Aunt’s marriage proved barren, she adopted three children who called her “mother.” She also gave generously to charities, for the Chinese believe that such acts of kindness will ensure that one ends one’s days surrounded by grandchildren. Perhaps Second Aunt was simply grateful to the gods for her good fortune in being someone’s principal wife rather than a mere concubine.

The Japanese Doll

IT WAS ONE OF THOSE DAYS when Maternal Grandma would take my sister and me on her rounds, collecting interest from her various debtors. She would drag the two of us with her from one end of the town to the other, because we had been entrusted to her care, and she didn’t dare leave us locked up in the house in case we played with matches and burned the house down. Like all young children, we found it hard to resist striking matches and watching them ignite. And, like many old ladies in her day, Grandma found it hard to resist playing the neighbourhood usurer – something my mother would never have approved of.

But I loved walking along Petaling Street with Grandma, There was always something unusual to catch my attention. Grandma usually had my younger sister’s hand firmly clasped in hers, and a large parcel in the other, and she made a point of walking very briskly down this particular street, to minimize our contact with the sordid side of life. This ploy worked with my younger sister, who remained innocent of the adults-only goings-on in this part of Kuala Lumpur.

At eight, I was intensely curious, and a practiced dawdler. Somehow I always managed to lag behind Grandma and catch a fleeting glimpse of a world beyond my ken.

On this occasion, I spotted an assorted assembly of men bunched together against an open ground-floor window of a shophouse. They seemed to be engrossed in a show. I had to see what the excitement was all about, so I squeezed in amongst the men and peeked in the window.

I saw a life-sized Japanese doll (that’s what I thought she was) combing her long hair and tying it up in a coiffure. She was seated daintily on a tatami mat on a raised plank floor. Her bedding was rolled up nearby and the mirror in front of her was surrounded by little bowls containing the paraphernalia of her toilette. Her kimono featured a low neckline and her eyes and lips were exquisitely made up. Her feet were demurely clad in cloth socks, and she performed her patient task of hairstyling without the slightest sign of perturbation. It was as if her audience did not exist, Could she be a very life-like doll? I was totally fascinated by the tableau in front of me and could have gazed for hours along with the men… but I felt a hard, knobbly hand on my arm, which pulled me roughly away from the window.

All the way home I was lectured on how wicked I was; this was the umpteenth time she had caught me looking at bad women, and I would surely burn in hell with all of them, unless I mended my ways.
Finally, Grandma made me promise not to breathe a word of this entire outing to Mama, and I agreed, knowing I had a useful trump card in hand. Grandma knew Mama would be livid if she ever found out about her unlicenced money-lending habit – and that she had risked corrupting her grandchildren by taking them on a walking tour of Petaling Street!

Too bad my sister let the cat out of the bag one day, which resulted in our being sent to a boarding school, to keep our young minds unsullied. At least we would be safe from Grandma’s unwholesome influence.
We could have wound up behind the high walls of a convent, were it not for the fact that Mama, being a loyal Methodist, chose for us a stolid Anglican institution, St. Mary’s Boarding School for Girls. There were no high walls around St. Mary’s – but we would soon learn that there were much subtler ways to confine young minds than mere walls of brick or stone.

I REMEMBER ST. MARY'S

"DO YOU KNOW of any robust high-spirited girl of eleven who has never been tempted to run down a flight of steps, at least once?" I asked a friend one day, out of the blue.

She looked at me with surprise before replying: "Certainly not!"

More than six decades have passed since I left St. Mary's Boarding School for Girls, but I still feel a twinge of indignation at the injustice of the punishment meted out to me by the Superintendent of the boarding school (i.e., the hostel) whom we nicknamed Birdy.

Her surname was Bird, and she had a sharp beak of a nose, set off by green, piercing eyes. She firmly believed that adults could do no wrong, and fervently enforced the dictum, "Spare the rod and spoil the child."

My father was stationed in Temerloh, in the backwoods of Pahang, and there were scarcely any schools around, not to mention good ones. My mother had envisaged my sister and I growing up well-educated and refined. If she put us in a high-class boarding school run along the same lines as those in England, we had a better chance of turning into respectable young ladies. And so she scrimped and saved to achieve her ambition for us.

St. Mary's was indeed "high-class" in terms of fees. Each month, it took more than a Chinese school headmaster's salary to keep us both there. And the rules, to say the least, were unbelievably strict.

Boarders were only allowed three changes of every thing in their wardrobe, e.g., three cotton dresses for school, three silk ones for church, three pairs of underclothes, three pairs of socks, and so on. The idea was to have one set in the wash, one set in the wardrobe, and one on the body.

Senior girls were addressed as Miss, and they had no problems, but we Juniors had to be on our toes the whole time. To add to our discomfort, we had to run errands for the dignified seniors and end up dishevelled and sweaty. Between the Seniors and the Juniors there was no love lost. How does it feel to be constantly discriminated against? Especially at bath time, when an impatient knock on the door meant we had to come out at once and let them use the bathroom first.

This unwholesome rank-pulling seems prevalent everywhere - not only in the army, but also in schools and offices. No doubt a similar sort of pecking order occurs in the animal kingdom, but surely we can  invent a better way of achieving social harmony?

I recall flashing my eyes in defiance when Birdy punished me for using the rickety sewing machine on a Sabbath. No one had informed me that on the Sabbath only hand-sewing was permitted. Furthermore, Juniors were forbidden to operate a sewing machine. The penalty was six strokes on the cushy part of one's anatomy with a hairbrush, or Birdy's slippers.

As an "Asiatic" child in a white expatriate environment, I was subjected to treatment which aroused in me a sense of inequality and injustice. It was easy to suspect that the white race was prejudiced against everybody else, even if they didn't actually despise us. At any rate, this early exposure to the insidious humiliation of racial discrimination made me shun anything Anglican - schools, churches, clubs. When it was time for me to find employment, I chose to teach in a Chinese school. This loathing lasted many decades.

On weekdays, we played croquet and tennis, and on Saturdays we went on long walks in the evening. Here again, if I lagged behind the group, the penalty would be to do forty sums. Ironically, I fared very badly in my math exams. And I barely passed my Religious Knowledge, on account of the numerous penalties I had to endure for failing to memorize the scriptures correctly. I suppose in those days no one had heard of "positive feedback"!

There was no way of describing the oppression my sister and I felt at St. Mary's, and no way of even informing our parents that we were miserable, for all letters home were censored by Birdy. And we couldn't go home till the end of the term.

My mother probably suspected that all wasn't well with her daughters, but she was a great believer in perseverance. One day, Birdy carried her disciplinary notions a little too far. My sister Loy, who was only nine, arrived late for dinner and was sent to bed without it. Later, a jug of milk was delivered to her. No questions were asked as to why she was late (she had to let all the almighty Seniors use the bathroom ahead of her). The next morning, Loy was too sick to have breakfast or attend school. She was a frail child and, like most "Asiatic" children, she disliked milk. The Asian way would have been punishment after dinner - at least the child would be well fortified!

This incident led to our being released from St. Mary's. Our stay there had caused my mother more hardship than her daughters. She had had to commute between Temerloh and Kuala Lumpur (on one of the most hazardous roads in the country), and she had had to rent a house in Kuala Lumpur because of us. This had put a terrible strain on her physically, emotionally, mentally and financially; with her having to budget for two separate households, including maids, while constantly worrying about our well-being.

If Birdy had possessed the most rudimental insight into child psychology, or if only she had been inspired by the feeblest promptings of the heart, my memories of St. Mary's boarding school would have been as happy as those of the mornings I spent in the classroom with the day students. I greatly enjoyed learning literature and history. I also loved the chances I had to perform on stage. The role of a buccaneer inspired strength and courage. I was also a terrible prankster. In class, the standard mischief among us junior girls was to hide the senior girls' high-heeled shoes when they changed into rubber ones for games.

On reflection, then, I should allow my happy school hours to offset the unhappy times in the school hostel. To quote Jean Juares: "We should take from the past its fire, and not its ashes."

TO MADGE, WITH LOVE

SCHOOLS AND FACTORIES have much in common: they are places where "raw" materials are methodically processed into useful products - hopefully of some quality.

This was very much the case even in the early 1920's. In my school, the students were expected to be prim and proper, scrupulously clean at all times. We had to keep a straight back and a straight face - unless the teacher happened to be telling a joke, which wasn't often. It was, in fact, just like being in the army; it's hardly surprising that soldiers tend to go berserk in times of war!

In later years, there were moments when I considered myself fortunate to have been educated in such a mechanical, military fashion. Perhaps the discipline inflicted on me did equip me with an inner strength, which has served me well in the face of many hardships and setbacks I have experienced on the road of life. Yet I sometimes wonder: isn't it possible to cultivate the necessary grit and determination, to learn how to accept challenges without flinching, by less painful means?

My teachers were all efficient robots, save one - and she was looked upon as the weak link in an otherwise steely chain of command. It is conceivable that these "robots" might have had a soft spot in their hearts - even for us "Asiatics" - but they had to maintain the hallowed tradition of the army and keep us all in our places.

A rigid sense of decorum and dignity established and widened the gulf between the British teachers and their Asian students. We knew nothing of one another's background, culture and religion, and had absolutely no inkling of one another's personal opinions and expectations.

It was during the last stage of my school life that Madge showed up and radically changed the meaning of education for me. Madge was our literature teacher, and the whole class fell headlong in love with her almost on sight.

She could have passed off as a Brit except for her dark hair and eyes; but not being indisputably British, she didn't have that air of sternness, that stiff upper lip, that subtle sneer of condescension. Madge was Anglo-Indian, and exquisitely lovely blend of cultures and genes.

Miss McNeil, our crotchety missionary Principal, and Miss Bird, the seedy-looking Superintendent of St. Mary's Boarding School, did not approve of Madge one bit. They took particular objection to Madge's style of dressing and her lively mannerisms. Madge, you see, dressed comfortably for the tropics, in collarless, sleeveless, unfrilly dresses - just long enough to cover her knees. Moreover, Madge didn't wear a straw hat, nor did she ever don a white cocked hat when leaving the school building.

Madge had been accepted as a teacher on account of her excellent qualifications. As a part-Asian, her salary was probably about half that of a "full-blooded" B.A. imported from England.

She couldn't have been more than twenty-three: fresh as a lily she was, and she walked with such a bouncy step, she appeared to be bobbing, especially when she was in a hurry. She was just a little under five feet, and slightly rounded. Her tailor-cut outfits matched her petite form to a "T" - in enviable contrast to our own sack-like attire (designed by our thrifty mothers to last us several years, and therefore deliberately sewn three sizes too large). While we girls had to wear three-quarter length sleeves, Madge wore daring sleeveless dresses that revealed her fair and shapely arms. Her hair, so smooth and sleek, was tied in a neat knot at the nape of her neck; ours had to be plaited or cut very short. In comparison with our completely outdated appearance, Madge was a veritable fashion plate. And apart from being so approachably small, she had the most enormous heart ever.

Because of her, we all made excellent progress in English and Literature. We learned to appreciate poetry without being forced to commit every line to memory. My enthusiasm soared to such giddy heights that I even attempted to read Milton's Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained.

When I think back on my final year at school, I can picture Madge sitting so prettily behind her desk, which seemed too large for her. The chair had been specially modified for her and held an extra-thick cushion, without which we would all have towered over her. Our gaze often rested on her lips and not on our books as she read to us our favourite poems: The Miller of the Dee, Young Lochinvar, Casablanca, Longfellow's Psalm of Life.

We acted out Shakespeare's plays with great delight - A Midsummer Night's Dream, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night. We shed tears over Dicken's David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, and laughed uproariously or wept over his Pickwick Papers. We were so very human during our Literature lessons. It was indeed wonderfully therapeutic for our souls to feel such a range of emotions. However, we had to restrain ourselves whenever we heard the "squeaky approach" of our Principal. Thank goodness she had those shoes - otherwise hers would have been a "sneaky approach"!

Madge typified the Ideal Woman for us. When we heard she was going on leave, we immediately suspected that she was planning to get married and we rejoiced on her behalf, for in our hearts we all harboured hopes of someday being allowed to choose our own spouses. Some of my classmates were already betrothed to young men they had never met. Alas, they were compelled to be obedient and filial daughters, as tradition dictated.

Those few months with Madge were the happiest period of my school life. But the Chinese have a saying: "Let us not be too happy lest the gods begin to envy us!" And sure enough, we were soon deprived of our ecstasy. Madge came in one morning, her cheeks pale, eyes hollow and dull. The sun seemed to have disappeared behind the clouds. We stood up in silent discomfort as she entered the classroom, all of us instinctively aware of her distress, and so we spared her the customary chorus of cheery greetings. With a grateful nod, she bade us be seated.

The lesson began in an unexpected way. One of the girls was asked to read a particular scene from Twelfth Night. Our minds were definitely not on Shakespeare. How could we savour the Bard when it was so evident that some terrible tragedy had befallen our favourite teacher? But what the nature of the disaster was, we could only speculate. Madge didn't utter a sound until the girl had reached that excruciatingly poignant line:

She never told her love,
But let concealment, like a worm i' th' bud,
Feed on her damask cheek. She pin'd in thought;
And with a green and yellow melancholy
She sat like Patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief.


Then, struggling to control her emotions, Madge thanked the girl and asked her to sit down. saying she had had a bad night and was suffering from a splitting headache, Madge told us all to carry on reading quietly. But we knew it was her heart that ached and not her head.

As soon as class was over, we urged one of the Eurasian girls, whom everyone called The Official Reporter (as she was well-connected to "reliable sources"), to investigate the exact cause of Madge's grief.

Early the next day, our Official Reporter turned in a story that generated a tidal wave of shock and anger throughout the entire class. Our hearts were moved to profound outrage at the injustice done to our beloved Madge.

This was what we learned: Madge had a beau of French and Dutch descent whose family had strongly objected to his wanting to marry an Anglo-Indian girl. Such a case of unmitigated bigotry! The young man's family was known to be wealthy, but that didn't make them a better class of half-breed than Madge! Or was it simply because half of Madge was asian? The young man had suggested elopement - but Madge felt that such an unseemly recourse went against the grain of her character. Was it wrong to be in love? Why must they run away and hide their faces from society? In any event, Madge must surely have felt deeply stricken by such overt rejection.

We debated this topic amongst ourselves for over a week. What would constitute a morally impeccable solution? The more impulsive or romantic ones argued that true love should triumph over all else, and that Madge would be perfectly justified if she threw convention and social mores to the winds. The more sober or timid ones maintained that love was far too noble a thing to be sullied with scandal, and that the truly high-minded lover must sacrifice love for the sake of love.

In the end, we jointly penned a letter a message of sympathy to Madge, in which we promised to pray hard for her future happiness. We added that it might be a blessing in disguise for her not to have anything to do with such a snobbish family, and reminded her that time would heal all wounds.

We never knew how she felt about our letter, which she graciously accepted, thanking us for our heartfelt concern. But Madge was never the same again. She had lost her effervescence, her buoyancy and bright confidence. We could only hope that she would meet someone worthy of her and live happily ever after. She certainly deserved it.

Our Official Reporter had overheard that Madge intended to resign at the end of the term and emigrate. We couldn't help but regret that she wasn't going to be around to congratulate us for the wonderful results we were going to obtain in English and Literature. Still, we were glad to think that we would soon be graduating from school. The experience of losing such a good teacher and friend was too traumatic to bear for long.

Without Madge, I might never have acquired a taste for literature, for drama and poetry. She evoked sympathy and understanding for our fellow-beings by her sheer generosity and vitality of spirit. These are what I consider the best things in life - the rightful heritage of all humankind.

THE BRIDE

Dai Moong Yang, 18, and her bridegroom Lee Kong Beng, 23

SHE SAT QUIET as a mouse in her bridal chamber while the guests were feasting in the garden. The wedding party was being held in the groom's family house: in the early 1930's, hotels hadn't got into the business of catering for such affairs.

How she wished she could tuck in with the rest of the crowd. She had started the day early after a very scanty breakfast, and hadn't had another bite since. At the ceremony, the wedding cake had looked extremely tempting - but she hadn't had the nerve to help herself to a piece. To do that was unthinkable, and her lack of restraint would have been the talk of the town. Already, she was considered brash for walking into the hall with her head held high instead of looking demurely at the floor. She was a Christian bride going through a traditional Chinese ceremony; she had to know her place.

She was so hungry she could almost see the tables spilling over with exotic delicacies - oh, for just a morsel to tickle the palate! (She later found out that the banquet cost $6 per table of ten heads, not including children. A real bargain!) The food must be excellent, judging from the noisy gaiety of the guests. Or was it the drinks and the multicoloured lights? The Bridegroom and his family were busy mingling with the guests. Each member of the family had invited their own friends.

"You don't marry an individual, you marry an entire family!" That's what I always tell the sweet young things who come to me for romantic advice or to pour out their marital woes.

Halfway through the dinner, the Bride's presence was required.  Accompanied by the bridesmaid, the Bride did her rounds, smiling and inviting everyone to eat and drink their fill, all the while acutely aware that her own belly was growling. The Groom drank to the guests' health from table to table - in contrast to the Western custom, where the guests are expected to toast the Bride and Groom. (Nowadays, most Asians have settled on a compromise: they toast one another!)

After dinner, the Bride was requested to entertain the guests with a little performance on the pianoforte. She played a semi-classical piece she had learned by heart, and the audience, though unused to such musical fare, seemed appreciative enough. The bridesmaid went up and sang a popular love song. So sweet was her voice, she received a marriage proposal that very night! The ardent bachelor conveyed his proposal through the Bride's mother-in-law, but the bridesmaid was not interested. (The word "incompatible" hadn't entered the vocabulary of romance. After all, a wife was expected to be obedient, so there was no real need to get to know one's future wife; as long as she had a pretty face, that was good enough.)

Finally, the garden was quiet once more, and the newlyweds could retire to their private chamber. When they were alone, the Bride woefully confessed that she was starved, which surprised the Husband greatly. Wasn't it up to the Bride's family to look after her right until the moment she was married off? When his brother had gotten married, the  bride's family had supplied her with homecooked food for a whole month. But then, this Bride wasn't a Cantonese and, even if she were, would her "wicked stepmother" bother with such a tradition?

A slave girl was sent off to the kitchen to fry a couple of eggs and warm up the rice, and thus the Bride had a midnight snack for the first time in her spouse's home. It was heavenly. Anything tastes fine when one is hungry enough.

Two weeks went by and the husband's relatives were still in the house. The Bride wondered when they were going to leave. She had to serve tea at both main meals before she could sit down and eat. This went on for a month, and then her mother-in-law instructed her to stop doing it for the other in-laws, but she was to continue serving the mother-in-law indefinitely.

By now the Bride understood: all the in-laws were permanent residents, part of the extended family. The various maids or slaves belonged to the in-laws, except for two who were directly answerable to the Matriarch. These two had been bought specially for her by her late husband, the self-made tycoon. The cook and the laundry women, however, were shared by the whole household. There were forty people in that household and at least ten domestics. The entire operation was funded by earnings from the late Patriarch's rubber estates, crockery shop, provision stores, and so on. Still, it was a wonder that his resources could stretch that far.

In a household this huge, it was difficult for an expectant mother to be given preferential treatment at meals, as the Bride soon discovered. The other women seemed to have no problems. The sister-in-law spent all her time with her rich mother and had access to all sorts of delicacies. The other two women were always out playing mahjong somewhere in town, within easy reach of whatever food they fancied. But the Bride hadn't established her own connections and had nowhere to go apart from the school where she taught, and the food sold in the tuck shop left much to be desired. In the end, her new husband solved the problem by routinely smuggling all kinds of goodies into their bedroom, where she could indulge her cravings in perfect privacy.

Being married was turning out to be quite an experience. Did all brides have to go through such quaint initiations? It began on the second day of her marriage: she was expected to pour out a basin of water for her mother-in-law to wash her face in, making sure that all her paraphernalia were in their usual places - her big mug of mouth-rinsing water, toothbrush, tooth powder, silver tongue-scraper, face towel. This had earlier been the responsibility of the first daughter-in-law who, assuming that the new daughter-in-law knew the custom, had happily left the assignment to her.

Later, after breakfast, the Matriarch asked to be shown "the white handkerchief" (the traditional proof of one's virginity). The Bride had been unable to comply, for she had taken a bath first thing in the morning, and had no stains to display; she hadn't realised that in some quarters such a custom still prevailed. The Matriarch was tolerant of this oversight, knowing the Bride had lost her mother before she could be taught these things. The less said about it the better - so the Bride refrained from pointing out to her mother-in-law that her late mother, a devout Christian with progressive ideas, would never have dreamed of being party to such a crude and humiliating test.

As it turned out, the early-morning toilette ritual for the Matriarch happened only once. As a school teacher, the Bride had to leave the house quite early, and so was exempted by her mother-in-law from carrying out the expected duty, which fell to one of the maids.

Come to think of it, we Asians never used to go on honeymoons. After the wedding, the Bride and Groom had only the weekend to spend together before each went back to work, she to her teaching and he to his office.

Grateful to her mother-in-law for letting her off lightly on all the old customs, the Bride decided to donate the handsome sum of $5 per month to the Matriarch - "cake money," they called it. Considering that her monthly salary was only $25, there wasn't too much left after deducting food and transport expenses. Still, it was much better than staying at home all day. Apart from the resident army of domestics who took care of day-to-day chores, the fact remained that the Bride didn't even know how to boil water. Her late mother had wanted her to become a school teacher or a music teacher, so as a child she had never been allowed in the kitchen! That was the new middle-class lifestyle practised in Hong Kong, where her late mother grew up.

Her mother-in-law, on the other hand, was a nyonya, and believed that girls should primarily be taught to be good cooks; education was of secondary importance.

But most important of all was respect for the mother-in-law! In fact, the first time the newlyweds went out to see a movie, the Bride was expected to ask the Matriarch's permission just to go out with her own husband. If the old lady remained silent, it meant NO! Fortunately, the Matriarch was in a good mood and replied, "By all means!" But, before leaving the house, the Old Lady had to inspect her daughter-in-law's apparel, to make sure she brought no disgrace to the family. On several other occasions, the Bride had to go through at least two changes before receiving the Matriarch's seal of approval. Nothing too old or too loud or too solemn. The Bride understood that the entire ritual served mainly to establish the parameters of matriarchal power. The husband, of course, refused to see it as such: for him, his mother could never be wrong!

It took some time to adjust to the new situation, but at last the Bride could feel she had settled down comfortably to a happy married life, having been put through a crash course in what the Chinese call "the Art of Living."

REFUGEES

"... we lugged our belongings along three miles of rough estate road..."

IT WAS, to say the least, a truly agonizing period, fleeing from one temporary abode to another. We had thought life would be peaceful and safe in our hut in the Karak Estate among newly-planted rubber trees, bananas and sweet potatoes. No possibility of starvation, at any rate. A few more dreadful months, perhaps. The British would soon recapture Malaya from the "Japs."

Alas, it wasn't to be!

The estate workers were at the end of their tether: gangsters were taking advantage of the chaotic conditions and robbing all and sundry. Former government servants such as my husband could consider themselves very well off, with the three-month bonus they had received just before the invasion. But, on the other hand, that made the likes of us fair game for the armed gangs. The gory heads on display in the marketplace were no deterrent to these desperate criminals.

Around three o'clock on a cold, eerie morning, with the help of three young men (nephews of the estate manager), we lugged our belongings along three miles of rough estate road to a concealed lorry parked near the trunk road. Estate workers had dug up the already rough estate road to deter the Japanese army trucks from entering. Little good this did, for the Japs later marched right in and ordered all the able-bodied men to serve as porters, hauling out the entire hoard of foodstuffs there (tinned food and rice from the kongsi) on foot!

We got our baggage and ourselves on the lorry and by dawn were approaching Kuala Lumpur. My brother-in-law had offered us shelter in his house, which was already packed to capacity. Safety in numbers, that was the general idea. A room had been prepared for our family of four. Unmarried members of the clan slept where they could in the sitting and dining rooms. My sarongs and gold jewellery were sold to feed the Lee family - about a dozen of us in all.

The Japs were conducting sporadic search-and-arrest operations. No one could feel safe in that atmosphere of uncertainty. One morning, my husband had a craving for something different in our daily menu, and insisted on going marketing. I pleaded with him - another few days of lime rice and ikan bilis (preserved anchovies) wouldn't kill anyone! But there was no stopping this die-hard gourmet.

He was gone for hours. Word reached us that the Japs were hauling up young men in house-to-house inspections along Bukit Bintang Road. Finally, my husband returned with some fresh provisions, and a hair-raising account. As he was leaving the market with one of our neighbours, the Japs had stopped them and ordered them to squat by the roadside. Just then, a cyclist appeared and, seeing the Japs, began peddling furiously away. While the Japs were in hot pursuit, my husband had the presence of mind to whisper to our neighbour, "Now or never!" They hastened down an alley and disappeared. That day itself, several hundred men were taken away and never seen again.

We decided that it was time to move again. It would not do to have too many men in one house. But, before we could arrange our departure, the Japs came knocking on our door. It was too early to get drunk and rape a few women - so the females in the Lee household were spared. The menfolk were scrutinised and found to be a respectable, well-fed lot - obviously no communists, secret agents, or gangsters in their midst - so they, too, were spared.

By now, it looked as if the Japs were here to stay. The soldiers must have been under orders to avoid antagonising the locals too much. After all, it is one thing to invade another country - but quite another to try and govern it smoothly.

My father, who had been posted to the Kuala Selangor District Court, decided to resign and move to Sepang, a Foochow stronghold. There, amongst his fellow countrymen, he would be much safer - or so he thought. But no sooner had he arrived in Sepang than he found himself robbed of all his money and clothes!

I was tired of being a refugee. I suggested that my husband apply, in person, for my father's former position as court interpreter. At least, in Kuala Selangor, we would have a house of our own and our children could lead a more normal life. They were now aged six and seven-and-a-half: they needed a proper home routine, some tuition to prepare them for school; and they needed milk and eggs.

Life in Kuala Selangor was idyllic by comparison to what we had left behind in Kuala Lumpur. We had a she-goat to provide milk - just one cup daily and a bit extra for my "face cream." Chickens provided eggs and fresh meat, and we had our own vegetable plot. Despite the constant water shortage, we had little cause for complaint, though we had to make our own oil (from coconuts) for lighting as well as cooking.

"Punchuri" was my immediate neighbour and closest friend. (She was quite a character; you can read about her in the next chapter!) In return for my helping her in various ways, she taught me a little Tamil and explained Hindu culture to me. Even in war-time, I was getting extra education!

In fact, we were all getting a lot of education, in the most unexpected fields. Kuala Selangor was rich in seafood, especially cockles, which the Japanese loved; they would soon can them and ship them back to Japan. My brother-in-law Kong Soon and his friends came to Kuala Selangor to gather shellfish for a living.

It wasn't at all difficult. They rented a small boat, paddled out along the muddy banks of the river, and simply scooped up the shellfish with two shallow buckets, mud and all. They sat at one end of the boat and kept scooping up their catch until the boat was full. Then they would sell the entire boatload to a middleman and call it a day.

We were rather fond of our peaceful lifestyle in scenic old Kuala Selangor, but, towards the end of the war, we were advised to move again. Word had arrived via the "underground network" that a British submarine was sailing into position for an offensive against the Japanese. Our little house was at the foot of the hill on which a Japanese fortress stood, overlooking the sea. It was directly in the line of fire, and certainly not likely to survive the heavy shelling.

And so, after nearly three years in Kuala Selangor, we were refugees once more - this time to a tiny village a few miles away named Parit Besar, literally, "Big Drain"! We had to dig a well for water and build a makeshift bath and toilet behind our new shanty home.

The other residents, mostly "Anchoon" Hookiens, were amused by our genteel touches. Why couldn't we do like them and use the nearby rubber estate as our toilet? And why didn't we bathe at the well like everybody else?

Nevertheless, they soon became very friendly when they discovered how versatile I was: I could teach their children the rudiments of English, sew for them when they managed to obtain some cloth, diagnose their ailments and dispense free medicine (which wasn't too complicated, since malaria was rampant in the village!) I even played midwife when their daughters had babies.

The villagers were generous with sweet potatoes and vegetables and sometimes even rice - so I never really had to slog in the fields under the hot sun.

We remained in "Big Drain" till the British returned. As we loaded our possessions onto the lorry, the entire village came to send us off. We had a live goat, bought with the last of our Japanese Occupation Government currency (a crisp one-thousand banana-dollar note donated by Uncle Ho on his last visit to Kuala Selangor!) I sat up front beside the lorry driver, and as we were about to begin our journey to Kuala Lumpur, a lady whom I knew only as Ah-Mmm ("aunty" in Hokkien) threw a red packet onto my lap. I thanked her and she waved us off, smiling and dabbing her eyes.

When I opened the red packet, I was overwhelmed. Ah-Mmm had put in $20 (British Malayan currency) - a whole month's salary for some people. It could well have been her life savings!

Some years later, when I revisited Kuala Selangor to enjoy a reunion with old friends, Ah-Mmm came with her granddaughter (whom I had delivered) to see me. The poor child had a squint. She must have been left alone all day in her rattan cradle with nothing to look at but the colourful wooden toy attached to a spring!

For some reason, this brings to mind an incident which occurred when we were part of the Parit Besar community. A woman had offered her six-year-old granddaughter as a child bride for my eight-year-old son. The woman added that, if my son didn't fancy her when he grew up, I could keep her as an extra daughter or maid to look after me in my old age. It was a great surprise for me to find such a custom being practised so far away from China, and in that day and age. Yet the practice was not as uncivilized as one might think. A village female didn't have much chance of personal fulfilment: she would be raised as a workhorse, a breeding machine for the family she married into (where, of course, the menfolk would eat first and the womenfolk were welcome to the leftovers). Indeed, it was because the woman loved her granddaughter that she had made me the offer.

My son, like most boys his age, hadn't acquired an interest in the opposite sex, and was visibly upset when he heard about the offer. (We turned it down, of course.) What a narrow escape! But thereafter the child-bride was put to effective use as a threat by our cook Ah Wong. Whenever he was less than obliging in helping her with her errands, she would say:

"Maybe your mother will change her mind and accept a child-bride for you - at least I'd have someone to help me once in a while!"

"PUNCHURI"

MY CEYLONESE NEIGHBOUR in Kuala Selangor was a lady from Jaffna with an extremely long name and a very small stature. We lived in one half of a wooden semi-detached house, and she and her family lived in the other.

She was fastidiously clean - inwardly as well as outwardly -so much so that all the other Jaffnese around avoided her like the plague. "She's trying to be a Brahmin!" they would sneer. Then they would shake their heads and ask me: "How do you manage to tolerate her nonsense?"

True, she could be quite a nuisance at times, but I found her fascinating. Whenever she was happy, she would experience religious ecstasies; when provoked by her husband or her sons, she would let fly with a fluent stream of Tamil curses. She walked very slowly and and always had plenty of time to chat - sometimes leaning on her balcony, and other times popping round for a long visit. But she was definitely a source of mental stimulation for me; indeed, Punchuri was an entire "library" for my inquisitive mind.

In 1944, the only book in my possession was a midwifery manual which helped me to deliver three babies under less than ideal conditions. I can still recall Ah Mmm's slippery eight-pound granddaughter. Rice being hard to come by, the mother had eaten too much tapioca during her pregnancy, which is why the baby turned out so heavy. There were no towels, so I used the father's new singlets. No proper thread, so I used pineapple fibres, which kept breaking. No rubber mat, only old newspapers strewn on the hard floor for the first-time mother to give birth on. Ah Mmm didn't want to soil the precious mattress.

IT WAS ANOTHER pleasant evening in our government-issue wooden bungalow in Kuala Selangor during the third year of the Japanese Occupation. My two children were waiting for their dad to come home for dinner. They had been quietly observing as I chatted with our neighbour. Suddenly, my daughter asked: "Mum, how come her teeth pun choot lay?" ("Pun choot lay" is Cantonese for "to protrude"!)

I ignored her question, but from that moment on my children kept referring to her as "Punchuri" - which, I suppose, did sound a little like her Ceylonese name. After a while, she picked this up, and she asked me, "Why your children calling me 'Punchuri'?"

I managed to change the subject, but the nickname stuck. Children don't know how to be discreet... but they were right; Punchuri's teeth did protrude in a remarkable way.

PUNCHURI'S HUSBAND was a chief clerk in a government office. She herself wasn't expected to do any work, owing to her "condition."

She had been a lively, healthy teenager until her widowed mother married her off to a man twice her age. At that time, she was fifteen. Her health gave way after the birth of her two sons, and the treatment she received at the hands of her in-laws only caused her more mental anguish. Eventually, she suffered a nervous breakdown, and was now regarded by the family as "psychologically unsound."

Punchuri's mother had had a son and two daughters. She had laid careful plans for her son and the fairer daughter. Punchuri, being dark and not as pretty as her sister, had been foisted off on an older man who was willing to accept a much smaller dowry. Punchuri's mother had promised to send the dowry after her son's graduation. However, no dowry came - not even after Punchuri's sister had snared herself a doctor. Now, every time Punchri's sisters-in-law came to the house, they would demand to know when they could expect the dowry. The only blessing was that Punchuri didn't have to cope with a mother-in-law as well; she had died before her son's marriage.

The nasty sisters-in-law were in the habit of arriving at Punchuri's home without any luggage. This way, they had an excuse to borrow all her good saris. (Perhaps they had once been guests at a Japanese hotel! I was holidaying in Hokkaido some thirty years later when something reminded me of Punchuri's sisters-in-law; a whole busload of Japanese women checked in at my hotel empty-handed apart from their handbags. Not long afterwards, I encountered them in the village, and they were all clad in identical kimonos and clogs taken from their hotel rooms. Another group of women, also in identical kimonos, but of a different colour, suddenly appeared. At first, I thought that there must be a political convention in the vicinity. It took me a while to realise that it was all part of the hospitality Japanese hotels offered their guests, both male and female, who were thus free to travel unburdened with suitcases. They didn't even need to bring underwear - who would know under those robe-like kimonos?)

Shortly after her marriage, Punchuri found that she couldn't eat meat without feeling nausea. So she turned vegetarian, which presented some problems: she felt she couldn't prepare vegetarian food for herself in the same kitchen where carnivorous meals were being cooked. Finally, a solution was worked out: the panjaran (temp;le keeper) would cook her meals, while their own cook supplied her husband and sons with meat dishes.

ONE NIGHT, Punchuri had a dream. In her dream, she heard the clash of cymbals and the booming of a gong, which signified the arrival of a Royal Personage. Sure enough, Lord Krishna appeared before her bedroom window - and he didn't seem very pleased with her. She knew right away that it was on account of her failure to keep her promise, which was to dress the temple deities in new clothes.

The same night Punchuri had her dream, a large brass ornamental plate fell off the mantel shelf in our living room. It made a terrible clatter as it rolled across the room, before coming to a halt with a thunderous clang. Could the brass plate have entered Punchuri's dream as a sound effect? I decided not to mention this at all; the poor woman seemed so distraught that I found myself volunteering to help her fulfill her promise. Little did I know what I had let myself in for.

First, I had to clean and polish my sewing machine before starting work on the deities' new clothes. Then I had to bathe myself and change into clean clothes before cycling two-and-a-half miles to the temple and dressing up Punchuri's gods. Some of my Christian friends, I know, will raise their eyebrows at this concession to "paganism," but I had no qualms about performing this service for my neighbour because I was acting out of concern for her health.

WHENEVER Punchuri had a monthly period, I was roped into special service. I had to go over to her house each time I heard her knock on the plank wall, and deliver food and drink to her on a tray. She would be seated on the floor near the bathroom, in the middle of a circle drawn with chalk. Apparently, her religious beliefs dictated that menstruating women must have an early morning bath and wash their hair before they could enter any part of the house. Since Punchuri was usually too sickly to carry out this ritual, she was required to spend the day just sitting in one spot, like a leper. Punchuri certainly knew how to make life difficult for herself. She would sit only in the children's cane chairs whenever she visited us; she felt the grownups' chairs were "unclean" since we observed no elaborate rituals during our monthly periods.

One day, she invited her son's Tamil teacher over to read my children's palms. According to his reading, my daughter had God's gift of healing, but my son had the gift of the gab and would make a good lawyer or preacher. Thereafter, Punchuri always insisted that my daughter measure out her medicine for her. The palmist proved correct about my daughter; she did become a doctor. He was completely wrong about my son, however. His job is putting people to sleep (he became an anaesthetist)!

Punchuri told me many stories about Hindu gods and goddesses and how they relate to Man. From her accounts, it would seem fairly hazardous for a Hindu god to commit any injustice, for all it takes is the curse of a righteous woman to burn down the god's heavenly abode!

I kept in occasional touch with Punchuri after the war years. She must have valued my friendship greatly, for when my daughter departed for her medical studies in Singapore, Punchuri sent her husband to the airport bearing a sovereign gold coin as a gift. This was indeed a generous gesture, from a man who had always been very careful with his money.

I heard that Punchuri's elder son married a girl from a lower caste and moved to Sarawak, and that the younger, more obedient son remained a bachelor. Over the years, Punchuri seemed to have grown stronger, while her husband eventually developed a heart condition. The last time I tried to visit Punchuri, her home in Brickfields had been demolished to make way for redevelopment, and I lost touch with her.

MY DAUGHTER DIXIE

Dixie & Sonny, circa 1941

She was pretty chubby as a child and always insisted that she was born in Shanghai. The truth was, her father was in Shanghai as a participant in the China Olympics the day Dixie was born: November 6th, 1935. She must have heard him speak of the excitement and wonder that was Shanghai, the precocious thing, and felt that Kuala Lumpur wasn’t exotic enough a place to be born in.

Anyway, her father (like every typical Asian father) had expected his first-born to be a boy and returned from China with heaps of beautiful suits for a baby boy! Fortunately Dixie managed to charm him the moment he held her in his arms – and before long he was getting out of bed to administer her night feeds while I slept like a log.

Dixie was scarcely ten days old, and her father was still on the slow boat home from China, when she developed a sore throat and couldn’t drink her milk. My mother-in-law promptly took charge of the situation. She saw white specks in her granddaughter’s little mouth and immediately ordered her adopted daughter to fetch the jar of preserved vegetables. I watched as Dixie’s mouth was cleaned out with bits of salted vegetable. What else could I do? I was an obedient, frightened, nineteen-year-old mother, an alien in my husband’s household, where his mother’s word was law. She was fond of telling me that she had eaten more salt than I had eaten rice. And she was right – at least on this occasion – for Dixie got better with impressive speed.

Nonetheless, I was overjoyed when my husband received a posting in Temerloh the following year. It was a Godforsaken town, but it gave me the chance to be mistress-of-the-house, and there was ample space in our quarters for a toddler to enjoy free range. But these were hard times, and permanent postings were hard to secure. We soon found ourselves back in Kuala Lumpur under matriarchal rule.

Around this time, Dixie had an abscess in he right arm which, I thought, required simple surgery. But my mother-in-law forbade me to take Dixie to a hospital. Instead, she applied a poultice of ginseng slices on the abscess until it ripened and burst. When the wound still hadn’t healed after a few days, I began plotting ways to take Dixie to a Western doctor without the matriarch’s knowledge.

Fate intervened, and my husband was posted to Kuala Lipis on short notice to replace another court interpreter who was on leave. And so I was finally able to take my own daughter to see a doctor! As it turned out, the “doctor” who attended to Dixie’s unhealed wound was only a hospital assistant – but he certainly didn’t object to being addressed as “Doctor.” The daily dressing of the wound was so simple that I could have done it myself, but one couldn’t risk offending the almighty hospital assistant (particularly if one happened to be a woman), so one had to act dumb and play along with his game. Bear in mind that there were no private clinics to be found – even if one could afford such a luxury!

The Kuala Lipis District Hospital was situated on a hill – and our government-issue bungalow was atop another. Buses and taxis were an idea that hadn’t yet reached this particular neck of the woods. And the area was too hilly for trishaws or bicycles. So I walked – or, rather, trudged – the distance between our house and the hospital every day with a well-fed one-and-a-half-year-old around my waist. I thought of all the frontier women I had seen with one child on their hips or backs, another child clutching their hands, and an unborn one bouncing around in their bellies (I myself was in the family way again!) – and though the reality was certainly no picnic, the image was picturesque enough to make it all seem very worthwhile.

Dixie’s wound was stubborn, and I lost count of the times I had to negotiate those hills. But by God’s grace it finally healed, though it left an ugly scar on Dixie’s arm. The little hardships I had to endure were more than made up for by the many happy moments we had in that rambling old house with its long, wide verandah. Dixie loved to explore every nook and corner of that beautiful and comfortable bungalow.

Her little brother Choong Keet arrived on the 8th of July, 1937. My husband bought us a push-cart, as Dixie was getting too heavy to carry for long, so I used it to wheel her around on little visits, especially to our good friends, the nurses who lived nearby.

One evening, they invited us to tea at their quarters – a rare treat indeed, for it would be Dixie’s first “grown-up” party! She was all dolled up in her favourite outfit, and I left her to attend to my own dressing up – but when I was ready to go, I noticed to my horror that she had plastered her entire head with Vaseline from he dad’s dressing table! We had to cancel the tea but – since only doctors and high-ranking civil servants were supplied with telephones – I had to travel up hill and down dale to the nurses’ quarters to explain why we had to miss the tea party.

My husband’s next posting was in Bentong, Pahang. Dixie was by now four-and-a-half, and she had mastered the alphabet. She also knew her Chinese primer (Book One) by heart and could recite the whole thing in Cantonese. She was bored with all her books (she had never cared for dolls and other toddler toys) and longed to join all the kids she saw going to school on the public bus. I was apprehensive about her wanting to commute to school at such a tender age – but realised she was ready for more learning experiences than could be found at home.

Government servants were held in high esteem in those days, and the bus drivers all knew what position Dixie’s dad held in the Secretariat. At any rate, they were extremely friendly and helpful, and that eased my mind about letting Dixie set off by herself to school each day. There she was, a stickler for punctuality with her little suitcase holding her drink, her biscuits, and one cent as pocket money. Dixie had asked for the suitcase and the pocket money; she knew exactly what it took to be an adult!

One day, Dixie missed her regular bus and was left behind in school. She had run off to ease herself just before the bus arrived. Her schoolmates, whose ages ranged from eight to twelve, for some reason were all afraid to speak up, coming as they did from families where children were not encouraged to display any initiative – at least, that was how the school principal explained it to me later. What did Dixie do? Rather than knock on the principal’s door (she lived just above the school), Dixie decided to cross the road to the bus station, where she managed to board another bus – after assuring the bus driver that she would pay the five-cent fare upon reaching home.

We were in the middle of lunch when Dixie charged in, breathlessly asking for five cents to pay the bus driver. Then she came back in and burst into tears. I should have just picked her up, put her on my lap and comforted her. Instead, I told her there was no reason to cry, since her small ordeal was over. I was an ignorant mother, only twenty-four, and I knew absolutely nothing about child psychology.


DIXIE WAS FIVE and Choong Keet three-and-a-half when the Japs landed on the east coast of Malaya in rubber dinghies – smack in the middle of the monsson season. For us, World War II had arrived. No one had ever dreamed the invasion would happen so swiftly. The British had been totally complacent – after all, no boats could survive the rough seas at that time of the year! Well, the Japs did very well in their rubber boats, and then they jumped on collapsible bicycles and pedalled down the length of the peninsula!
My husband and I were volunteers in the St. John’s Ambulance. We witnessed the fear and confusion all around us and saw many families scattered by sheer panic. As a safeguard against such an event, I had two large silver pendants inscribed with the children’s names, their parents’ names and address, and other particulars. Dixie and Choong Keet were instructed to wear these pendants around their necks at all times, and I also equipped them with two miniature knapsacks containing milk powder, biscuits, a change of clothes, and some money.

On top of all the anxiety of the times, both children and I came down with chicken pox. We survived by boiling and drinking large quantities of chee chou yong (a species of crystallised red herb). All semblance of routine existence had broken down. Rumours were rife, and well-meaning friends offered their advice, most of which only served to bewilder us even more. At last, we decided to accept the offer of refuge extended by the manager of a rubber estate in Karak. Mr. Ho Chee Cheong had recently constructed additional labourers’ quarters, and was kind enough to accommodate our entire family, along with those of other government servants.

Bananas and sweet potatoes grew in abundance on the estate, and my husband had managed to procure some government warehouse rice, mixed with lime as a preservative. Life in the Karak estate seemed peaceful enough on the surface – but we were constantly on our toes.

The Japanese advance guard had an uncanny instinct when it came to ferreting out stores of food and other valuables. Watches and jewellery were highly prized: some of the Japs wore “confiscated” watches all the way up their arms! Each time a Jap patrol entered the estate, all the womenfolk ran and hid in the wild undergrowth. My domestic, Ah Wong, carried Choong Keet on her back and disappeared behind the bushes, while Dixie and I buried ourselves under the tall weeds. Sometimes we had to remain in hiding the better part of a day. The Jap patrols enjoyed lazing about the estate, demanding to be served hot meals and drinking whatever they could lay their hands on.

Our supply of lime rice was soon exhausted. We had been sharing it with the estate labourers. Now, we could sense a ripple of discontent amongst them; we heard reports that the labourers were whispering conspiratorially about all the cash the government servants had on their persons (it was true that my my husband had received a three-month bonus just before the British administration collapsed in disarray). We no longer felt safe on the estate, what with all this covert talk about the virtues of “sharing wealth.”

So we arranged, through the good offices of Mr. Ho the estate manager, to move ourselves and all our belongings in the middle of the night, over several miles of uneven track, in pitch darkness, to a hired lorry, which was waiting to pick us up by the main road and take us to Kuala Lumpur. As we drove through Bentong in the eerie predawn light, we could see human heads stuck on spikes all over the marketplace. These had belonged to people executed by the Japanese for robbery and looting.

We chose to go to Kuala Lumpur, thinking that in times of chaos and terror it was best to be in a big town, where we could lose ourselves in anonymity. Into a single-storey, three-room house we crammed ourselves with all my husband’s brothers. And all of us had enormous appetites. I had to sell my gold jewellery to keep the extended family fed. We had such heaps of foodstuffs that we seriously considered going into business, retailing much-sought-after provisions. Alas, the merchandise was quickly consumed before any of it could be sold!

God has always helped us out of a tight spot – although in my youth I never quite perceived it that way, not being particularly religious. But I realise now that God blesses and takes care of each of us in His own way. Just as things were becoming difficult in Kuala Lumpur, my husband was able to take over my father’s post in Kuala Selangor. My father had decided to move to Sepang, where there was a high concentration of his countrymen, the Foochows.

The Japanese Occupation Government was now in the process of consolidating its rule over Malaya – and that meant retaining as many civil servants in their original posts as possible to ensure continuity of services.

Our sojourn in Kuala Selangor was a badly-needed relief from the stresses and strains of the preceding months. We had it so good in Kuala Selangor, in fact, that soon our relatives began sending their children to stay with us. At least they were assured of some wholesome food until better times prevailed.

There was talk that a large amusement park was about to open in Kuala Lumpur; they would need entertainers, waiters and waitresses by the score. Since Dixie had learned a few Japanese songs, some of her aunts suggested that she try her luck as a professional songbird in Kuala Lumpur. I dismissed such an outrageous suggestion immediately. My daughter was hardly ten! I also voiced my objection to the whole idea of my young nieces being sent out to work as waitresses; it was the best way to ensure their meeting the wrong sort of men. The amusing irony of it all - when you consider that my own father would later be part of the regular clientele a the very same amusement park.


AROUND THE MIDDLE of 1945, we received word on the grapevine that British submarines were about to shell the Japanese military headquarters on a hilltop overlooking Kuala Selangor. Our humble wooden bungalow was right at the foot of that hill! The attack could happen at any moment, so there was no time to waste. By now, we had had lots of practice packing up quietly and quickly. This time, we relocated to a remote village which everyone called “the Big Drain” – a literal translation of “Parit Besar.”

There we learned that fresh toddy (coconut wine) contained lots of Vitamin B.* So we didn’t object to Dixie’s habit of wandering off into the coconut groves, where she would drink her fill of the sweet, intoxicating grog, before returning home with a huge jug for us. Whatever we couldn’t finish was kept till it fermented, and then used in lieu of vinegar. Dixie was fond of helping us scrape coconuts: we had a pedal-powered contraption that worked very efficiently, though it was none too safe for the butter-fingered. From the coconut scrapings we could obtain fresh coconut milk, as well as oil for cooking and lighting. The residue was fed to the chickens.

[*Or so we thought at the time; I have since learned that this is not true.]

In Parit Besar, I learned to draw water from a well and transport it in two tins balanced on a kandar stick – the way construction workers do it! Ah Wong, our faithful domestic, turned out to be an excellent gardener: she worked all day long in the field, planting all kinds of vegetables for our own consumption. I took over her indoor duties – while continuing to give tuition to my children and, later, to a few other children from the village. In exchange for sweet potatoes and the odd kati of rice, I did some tailoring for the locals, and even performed some simple doctoring on the side.

More than once I found myself playing midwife to the neighbours. Dixie, too, had proven herself adept at amateur midwifery some years back, when our she-goat was in labour. I couldn’t fit into the tiny goat-shelter, so I got Dixie to do the needful. Armed with a piece of rag, she crawled into the the shelter and delivered the kid. She even cleaned it and took out the placenta without the slightest qualm or queasiness. I knew then that she would make a good doctor!

During the war years, we had the opportunity to sample an exotic variety of meats – monkey, iguana, musang (civet cat), even dog! Personally, I couldn’t bring myself to participate in these adventurous feasts, so I usually had an early dinner of poached eggs and went out visiting, to avoid witnessing the slaughter of these poor creatures (Ah Wong was quite expert at it). To the Chinese, these rare meats are considered not only delicious, but also medicinal.


DIXIE AND SONNY (for that was what everyone was calling Choong Keet) managed to acquire a basic grasp of English and a little arithmetic. We had no textbooks. It was too dangerous to keep books in English about the house, for if the Japanese ever came to know about it the punishment would be severe. Of course, Dixie and Sonny also had to learn some Japanese, if only to avoid getting slapped whenever they ran into some Japanese soldiers!

As soon as the British returned and English schools were reopened, I sent Dixie to St. Mary’s, my alma mater. She was admitted into Standard III – but within a term was promoted to Standard IV. In 1946, my husband was posted to Raub, in Pahang. Dixie was enrolled in a co-educational government school – the only English-medium school in town. Within a year she was given a double promotion to Standard VI. She did so well that another double promotion was offered to her – but I felt it was unfair for her to miss out on her childhood by moving so rapidly through school. So I turned down the offer. I didn’t want to see Dixie turn into an adult before her time!

She was now at an age when boys would take notice of her and occasionally harass her. When she complained about this, we decided to put her in the Senior Methodist Girls’ School in Kuala Lumpur, where she could live with her youngest aunt until the school hostel was ready. This suited her fine, for this was Dixie’s favourite aunt.

I accompanied my youngest sister Moong Wai and her young children to Hong Kong, where my brother-in-law Hai Kee was studying to be a doctor. When the family had settled in comfortably, I returned to Malaya, only to learn that, in my absence, my husband had been transferred to the Supreme Court in Kuala Lumpur. What a wonderful surprise! He told me that he had been recommended to the Supreme Court by one of the judges who had been impressed by his work in the Raub district court. So here we were, back together in the capital, and doing better than could be hoped!

Dixie completed her A-levels when she was only sixteen – too young to be admitted to the University of Malaya in Singapore. In the interim, I arranged for her to teach Junior One classes at the Confucian Secondary School, a private Chinese medium institution. It proved to be a tough job for Dixie. Most of the boys were the sons of hawkers and shopkeepers – in other words, none too genteel or particularly motivated to learn. Seeing a fresh-faced teacher just a few years senior to them in age, the boys decided to become a major disciplinary problem for Dixie. I didn’t realise what the situation was, though I was teaching in the same school – but I had the Senior Twos and Threes, and had already gotten used to the “tough” behaviour of Chinese school “baddies.”

Dixie kept quiet about it – until one day she simply walked out of the classroom and went home. The class monitor appeared at the house with an official delegation to lodge a formal apology – but Dixie absolutely refused to see them. They later wrote her an eloquent letter, begging to know why the honourable school teacher had made the whole class “scrape the dust” (the most terrible humiliation imaginable) by refusing to accept their sincere apology. Dixie didn’t see this as their asking for a second chance; she submitted her resignation and, with the money she had earned, paid for her own passage on a holiday with me. We sailed on a Dutch liner for Hong Kong – a very restful six-day voyage, discounting bouts of seasickness.

The following year, Dixie gained admission into the second year of the University’s medical programme. She managed to complete the six-year medical course in four years and eight months! She also met her future husband, a senior medical student.