Little Snapshots

By Chung Mui Kong

Little Snapshots is a delightful story of the author's early childhood in a little town called Papar, in Sabah, East Malaysia. The story is set during the period between late 1940s and early 1950s. Her book is mainly based on life in a little community known generally as Ah Chee's Rice-Mill Area which was situated about a mile from the town centre of Papar. She has portrayed vividly the economic, cultural and social environment of this community seen through the innocent eyes of a little girl. For those who are interested in the lifestyles of the people of Papar of bygone days, this book makes interesting reading.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 4, 2013
• ISBN: 9780992295516

Book preview

Leonie

Chapter 1

Visiting Grandma

Get up, sleepy head, I heard Ma whispering softly into my ear.

Ma, I don’t want to get up yet, I mumbled.

Do get up or we’ll be late for the train! I suddenly remembered that it was the day I had been looking forward to for the whole week - the day to catch the train to visit Grandma to celebrate Chinese New Year. I shot out of bed in two seconds and dashed for the bathroom.

Getting to Grandma’s house took a long time. First, we had to get up very early at about five in the morning to catch a sampan from our side of the Papar River, where the township was situated, to go over to the other side, where the train was waiting. There was no other way to get across the river, because the bridge spanning over the river was bombed during the war by the Allies to prevent its use by the Japanese army. Some enterprising Malays from Kampong Buang Sayang took the opportunity to provide ferrying services for both people and goods from one side of the river to the other when train services resumed after World War II. For a small sum for an adult (free for accompanying children), people were ferried across the river to catch the train. The railway was the main link between Papar and Jesselton (Kota Kinabalu), the capitol of North Borneo (Sabah). Towards the end of the war when this link was cut, there was virtually no communication between these two towns.

The train journey took a good part of half a day as the train stopped at every station along the way to pick up passengers and goods heading for Jesselton. Live pigs, chickens, ducks, vegetables, tapioca (cassava) roots, sweet potatoes, fish, rubber sheets, rice and countless other products were transported to Jesselton by train. The railway was the lifeline between Jesselton and many towns and villages dotted along it. Some of the goods were sold in the capital for local consumption, while others such as rubber sheets were exported to ports like Singapore and Hong Kong.

While goods and people were being loaded, a horde of Hakka women in baggy black, dark blue or some other dull-colored Chinese samfoo (Chinese jacket and loose pants) and quaint bamboo hats fringed with black cloth, known as leong mau (cool hats) were found holding up trays of food for sale at the open windows of the passenger carriages. Boiled duck eggs, boiled bananas, fried banana fritters, roasted peanuts, pickled cucumber and young papaya, Chinese cakes of various types and sweetened colored water were available for modest sums. I often begged Ma for some treats, but she always said, No firmly. The standard reply was, Little Pigtail, I’ve prepared food and water for the trip. I knew the answer before I asked, but that did not stop me from hoping that one day I would get a different reply.

Though the journey from Papar to Jesselton took almost half a day to accomplish, I never felt bored. The scenery was always refreshing as the train threaded through the countryside. There were many stops to look forward to. The first stop was Pengalat Besar, to be followed by Pengalat Kecil, and Kawang. Then the train came to a tiny unnamed station where it stopped to replenish firewood and water for its steam engine. I loved to watch boiling water and steam being let out from the boiler onto the ground while fresh water and firewood were loaded for the rest of the journey.

"Look! Ma, the train siow pien (urinates)!" I told Ma.

After being replenished with sufficient water and firewood for the boiler to generate steam, the train resumed the journey.

Choo, choo, choo-choo-choo. Choo, choo, choo-choo-choo, I hummed to myself and soon I was lulled into sleep by the gentle rocking rhythm of the slow-moving train.

I woke up with a start at the next station. It was a station called Kinarut. Once again squealing pigs, poultry, baskets of fish, fruits of all types, coconuts and all kinds of other agricultural produce were loaded into the goods carriages. Two other stations followed: Putatan and Tanjung Aru. I noticed many huge crater-like holes dotting both sides of the railway tracks. I asked my Ma what they were and she explained that they were the results of bombing activities by the Allies. Towards the final days of the war, airplanes from the Allies destroyed certain parts of the railway to stop the Japanese from using the line. The huge craters were the holes caused by bombs. Some of them were subsequently filled with rain water and we saw abundant water plants flourishing in them.

Finally, Jesselton came into sight. To a child, the clock tower of Jesselton looked like a giant, so tall and grand. The streets were straight and wide. The shops were loaded with items like textiles, toys, towels and all kinds of imported goods. To me, everything was just too impressive to describe. I did not mind the mud on the unpaved main street. Neither did I notice the shabbiness of the rows of shop houses with atap (palm leaf) roofs and dirty kaki lima (five-foot walkways). To a little girl, Jesselton was the most beautiful town in the whole world. I just could not wait to boast to all my friends, back in Papar Town, about what I had seen when I returned home after the Chinese New Year celebration.

After alighting from the train, we had to carry our numerous boxes and bags to look for a bus to go to Telipok, a little town where Grandma’s house was situated. The bags and boxes were full of fresh fruit, thick wedges of Chinese New Year cake as well as cooked or pickled sea products prepared by Ma for the festival. One big box was loaded with salted fish and jars of shrimp paste which Ma had prepared as gifts for relatives. Seafood was plentiful and cheap in Papar, so Ma found it convenient to prepare salted fish and shrimp paste as New Year presents. Another box was filled with a Chinese New Year cake called nien gau. It is a sweet and sticky pudding-like cake especially steamed for the Chinese New Year festival. Other bags and boxes contained fruits like pomelos (a citrus fruit, similar to the grapefruit), oranges, mangoes and bananas and other fruits in season. With some difficulty, a bus bound for our destination was found. It was nearly full so we didn’t have to wait for a long time before the journey began. The buses running between Jesselton and other smaller towns along the Tuaran Road were not like the modern buses we have today. They were converted from trucks. Each bus had a truck engine fitted with a wooden frame covered in zinc sheets. The bus body was just a rectangular box with a door at its rear. Two rows of windows were built along the sides of the bus body. Wooden benches for passengers were fitted into this rectangular box. Goods were accommodated on the floor jammed between seats. Larger items were stashed carefully onto the roof with ropes.

Buses did not run on fixed timetables. As soon as a bus was full, the journey began. No tickets were issued. When one wanted to get down at a certain spot, one just yelled, Stop! and it came to a screeching halt. The bus driver then asked for the fare that he deemed fair. One could even bargain a little if one thought the fare was too steep. Most of the time, bus drivers were willing to take a few cents less than the fares asked. The bus journey took almost two hours though Grandma’s house was no more than sixteen miles from Jesselton. To be exact, it was fifteen and a half miles away from the town. The journey took such a long time, because the bus had to stop numerous times to pick up and let down passengers. Finally, the tiring journey came to an end. By then Grandma’s house was full of relatives. They were my uncles and aunts as well as numerous cousins from my mother’s side of the family. It was one day before the eve of Chinese New Year, but by then virtually all my relatives had gathered at Grandma’s house, commonly known as The Big House. This house was situated in Grandma’s san bah which means an out-of-town farm.

Even though it was called The Big House, it was not all that big when it came to providing sleeping quarters. There were only five bedrooms, so everyone slept on whatever space found in them. Mats and mattresses were laid out in the bedrooms for that purpose. The best way to stake one’s claim for a sleeping space was to put one’s luggage on any unclaimed mat or mattress as soon as one arrived at the house. This, we promptly did. The next big hurdle was to queue up for the bathroom for one’s bath. There were actually two bathrooms, one on each floor of the house, but the one on the first floor was reserved for the eldest uncle and his family and the rest of us had to fight for the use of the one and only bathroom on the ground floor. The water pressure was frequently low, so water had to be carried there for use. Sometimes, to shorten the queue a little, a few cousins of the same sex took their baths together.

The gathering of the family for the Chinese New Year festival normally lasted a few days. It was a bonding time for Grandma’s descendants. Grandma was the matriarch who ruled over a large family. My maternal Grandpa died before the war, so Grandma assumed the headship in the Lee family. The annual Chinese New Year gathering was a time of good fun, games and food. For the younger generation, it was a time for cousins to renew kinship ties. For the womenfolk it was a time to catch up with gossip and to introduce their latest acquisitions like grandchildren and new in-laws, but for most of the men, it was a time to compare achievements gained in the past year. In between feasting activities, the adults gossiped and gambled. Mahjong was the game favored by most of the adults, but not all could participate in the game at the same time, because there were only two mahjong tables in the house, so some of the adults played Russian poker while waiting for their turn to play mahjong. While the adults gambled, we children played too. Our favorite game was police and thieves. The children were divided into two teams with one team representing the police and the other, the thieves. Everybody liked to be thieves as they had the privilege of running away to hide while the police turned their backs counting from one to fifty aloud. The police then began to hunt all the thieves down. As soon as every thief was accounted for, the two teams changed roles.

One of the highlights of our annual gathering was the reunion dinner on the eve of the Chinese New Year. It was the most sumptuous dinner for the whole year. At least four tables would be laden full with dishes like kiel nyuk (steamed loin pork and yam), capon (fattened castrated cocks), steamed fish, curried beef, fried prawns, stuffed tofu, and sweet and sour crab. For us, the children, the best dish was chicken, onion and potatoes cooked in tomato soup. A huge pot of that was cooked especially for the children. One sweet dish that we all liked was tong yeun (glutinous rice flour dumplings cooked in syrup). This dish was frequently eaten on auspicious occasions like reunion dinners and birthday celebrations. It was a dessert favored by both young and old, because the syrup was sweet and the dumplings smooth and round. When this dish was being consumed, someone would always say, May the old year end in sweetness and the new one be smooth and round like the dumplings we are eating.

After the reunion dinner came the most important part of the evening. We all gathered in the sitting room to listen to Ma’s Grandpa’s Story. The family history book called Kam En Gin (A record of God’s blessings to the Lee family) was read. One of Ma’s sisters read to us the story of how Ma’s Great Grandfather became a Christian and how one of his sons called Lee Siong Kong led a few hundred Basel Mission Church Christians (Lutheran Church Christians) to migrate from Hong Kong to Kudat, North Borneo in 1886. We all showed great interest in the story even though the events mentioned seemed so far and remote. I always wanted to know more about the daily affairs of those distant figures mentioned in the story. I wanted to know what they ate, how they dressed and how they treated their children and womenfolk. I wanted to know what games the children played and whether they had toys. Did girls go to school? Did they have new dresses for festivals? Did they have pets? Did they…and did they…? I had a thousand questions but no one could answer them. How I wished someone had taken little snapshots of how people lived in those days - snapshots, which preserved little tantalizing morsels of their lifestyles: their occupations, emotions, romances, tragedies and achievements. I told myself that when I grew up, I must write about what happened in my life so that future curious children like me would get some answers. Hence, I have decided to write the story of Little Snapshots. In this story, I shall include details of how my family and I lived during the period from the later part of the 1940s to the early part of 1950s in the little town of Papar. Hopefully, this story will be of interest to not only members of my immediate family but to other people as well.

Chapter 2

Creatures Great and Small

I was born in Papar Town and I spent my early childhood there before moving elsewhere. For a child growing up in this little town, it was a pleasant time, because life was simple and stress-free. Besides, I had a loving family as well as numerous animals. I had the most pleasant memories of some of these dear creatures. Some of them were pets while others were raised for the market and home consumption. I remember having quite a number of pets, for example, a fresh water tortoise, two mynah birds, a Moscovy duck with a red face, a goose that limped, Ngok Ngok, the piglet, the runt of a litter, many crickets and a few cats and dogs. Among them, dogs and cats were my favorites. I spent a lot of time playing with them. Because I loved them so much, I tended to attribute more human traits to them than other people did. Indeed I often thought that some of them behaved almost like humans. I often wished they could speak so that they could tell me about their feelings. They possessed human qualities like being kind, caring, loyal and jealous. Sometimes they could be crafty and on the odd occasion, downright nasty, as seen in some of the following tales.

One of my earliest recollections of my pets was a female dog called Ah Ban (Stripy) and her best friend Ah Wu (Blackie), a tomcat. These two animals joined my family when they were babies at the time when we moved into our new house. The house was situated along the Papar River only a short distance from Papar Town itself. The place we lived in was generally called Ah Chee’s Rice-Mill Area. It was called that because a Mr Chan Chee On, one of the sons of the first Kapitan Cina of Papar (Mr. Chan Fook On), had built the first motorized rice-mill in the vicinity. A Kapitan Cina is a captain or head for the Chinese people in a district. This position, an appointment conferred by the British colonial masters of North Borneo, carried high prestige.

There were perhaps about thirty households in Ah Chee’s Rice-Mill Area. Right after the war (WWII), my family moved to the first floor of a shop house in Papar Town, but we found the cost of living in town too expensive, so my mother decided to lease a piece of land from the Basel Church of Papar to build a modest house for the family. Our new house was built in Ah Chee’s Rice-Mill Area, because my third brother was working for another rice-mill, called Kwong