A Nyonya mosaic : memoirs of a Peranakan childhood

146 A NYONYA MOSAIC in soya sauce) and heng chai jiu hee (water convolvulus with cuttlefish). At times there were different varieties of the same type of food to choose from. For example, for those who did not fancy Malay chicken, mutton, or beef satay (skewered grilled meat) there was always the Hainanese pork satay with its pineapple and sambal gravy. The ketupat (rice packed in coconut leaves), which was eaten with satay, inspired another dish known only simply as ‘Ketupat’ which was sold by Hainanese vendors. For twenty cents one could eat to one’s fill three packets of Ketupat and the following dishes: ikan masak asam (fish in spicy tamarind gravy), kang kong char rempah (water convolvulus fried with spices), sayor kachang char lemak (long beans in rich coconut gravy), kelapa goreng (fried coconut), gorago goreng (fried shrimp fry), sambal udang (prawn fried in spices), belimbing lemak (belimbing fruit in rich coconut gravy) and sambal blachan. This particular hawker always emphasised to his customers that the foodstuff he was selling was cooked by a certain Nyonya Tikus, someone who obviously commanded respect because of her culinary expertise. It did not impress us because we did not know who this lady, with the nickname of ‘Rat’, was although we generally agreed that she certainly knew how to cook the ketupat dishes well. The evening hours’ hawker- parade ended with the wan tan mee (noodle soup) seller who was among the few who pushed a handcart to sell his food. By dusk the streets were quiet while in every home the womenfolk were busy preparing more food for dinner. Of the many hawkers who passed by in the afternoon hours I can never forget the tay lah pow seller who sold dumplings of several varieties in an aluminium carrier. He played an important role in a crisis in our family. It all started one evening when father and grandma accepted a friend’s invitation

THE TRADESMEN 147 for a short evening session of cherki at their home. Grandma brought along a young maid she had just employed to be her companion. This girl was our domestic help Ah Sum’s niece. Before the evening was over the young maid had been accused of stealing the hosts’ money based on an allegation made by their children. To worsen matters some loose change was indeed found on the girl who protested her innocence and said that the change had come from a purchase of dumplings from the tay lah pow man earlier in the day at our house. This was a bad loss of face to father. The next day father waited for the hawker who confirmed the girl’s story and father immediately sent word to the family that our maid had been proven innocent. It was a well-known fact that their children were naughty, unruly and prone to mischief. Father could not bring himself to forgive this lack of etiquette on the part of the couple for the embarrassment caused and immediately cut all contacts with them. It was only long after father’s death that a friendly relationship was again established with them by grandma. Dinnertime was at seven with the menfolk privileged to be at the first sitting followed by us females at the second sitting (husbands did not eat together with their wives). Around this time hardly any food seller passed by our house. I suppose common sense taught them that very few would buy hawker food during and immediately after dinner hour. They were replaced by a host of other miscellaneous tradesmen who ranged from the blind masseur to the guitar-strumming Chinese fortune-teller. The first on the scene was the Jewish camphor balls seller. He carried his camphor balls in a wicker basket which he slung over his shoulder. He called out in Malay ‘Kapor barus’ as he walked his rounds. At times he brought along with him a limited stock of needles and thread as well. His call was usually mingled with that of the ‘Kok kok, wang wang’ cry of

148 A NYONYA MOSAIC the man who sold live frogs and turtles which buyers reared to a suitable size before slaughtering them for food. Frogs were consumed for their supposedly blood purifying property. It was taboo for people with household gods to consume the meat of turtles and their related kind. The blind masseur was a middle-aged Chinese man who had a companion to guide him along the way. This escort carried an unusual device to attract potential customers. It was a wooden catapult-shaped object with a metal rod joining the two arms of the catapult. At either end of this rod were metal plates which were struck by a free moving metal ring sliding along the metal bar. By shaking the catapult, the noise given out was loud enough to be heard many doors away. Japanese women living in the neighbourhood hotels were regular customers of this blind masseur. I noted that he spent a pretty long time at each house. Perhaps each body massage took time or was it that the masseur had to attend to more than one customer in the house? With a neighbourhood of a fair number of Japanese, it was not surprising that there were Japanese hawkers as well. One of them was a noodle seller who appeared on the road when all the local food hawkers had gone home for the night. It was about nine-thirty when he came pulling his 4-wheeled pushcart, hurricane lamps dangling on each side. He rang a bell to attract his customers. We did not patronise him because it was close to bedtime when he appeared on the scene. The other item he had to sell was the Japanese bean cakes. The Chinese fortune- teller was usually the last to come to our neighbourhood. With the streets already quiet the sound of his mandolin, which he played as he walked, could be heard long before he was seen. A small lantern hung from his instrument. Dangling at the bottom of this lantern was a cord about 30 cm (1 foot) long while encircling it was a ring of narrow cards with Chinese

THE TRADESMEN 149 characters and numbers on them. These cards hung tasselled along a rotating metal ring which rotated around the light. Women consulted this man not so much to have their fortunes told as to request him to divine lucky Chap Ji Kee numbers. I remember on one occasion when eldest sister-in-law paid for my fortune to be told. To have my fortune told I twirled the metal ring to set the cards spinning. When the momentum slowed down I was required to catch hold of anyone of the moving cards. The selected card was handed to the man who, after taking a quick glance at the card, proceeded to strum his mandolin as he sang a song which foretold good or bad fortune in general terms. It was not much of a prediction. The lang ting tang man who derived the name of his trade from the sound of his mandolin rarely predicted anything bad for anybody. Because of this he never went wrong with his customers. This cosmopolitan crowd of hawkers and traders with their varied sounds and products were once a way of life. Today they are no more. They knew suffering as they walked the streets in the rain and sun carrying their heavy loads on their shoulders. Their modern counterparts in the food centres and the shopping complexes today are a far luckier lot who are a far cry from their forefathers in many many ways.

chapter eight The Inevitable FATHER WAS DIFFERENT from the other Babas of his day. Unlike most who tended to be distant and aloof to their offspring he was close and warm to his younger children. He rarely failed to include me, Sister Puteh and fourth brother in most of his outings, be it to IOLA, his rubber estate, his visits to several temples near Kebun Lemo or the evening car rides round the island. Perhaps he was trying to play mother to us – for she had died when I was only about three years old and both Sister Puteh and fourth brother were not very much older than I. When he was not out with us he was usually at home playing cherki. Otherwise, he would be found reading. He was rather fond of reading the Chrita Dulu Kala (Stories of Olden Days). These were books of old Chinese romances that had been translated into romanised Baba Malay and they were very popular with the Babas. Practically every home had these volumes which were highly treasured. Father had his bound in leather with the tides as well as his name embossed in gold along the spine and on the cover of each book. Among the most famous of these translated works was Sam Kok which was a translation in thirty volumes of The Romance of the Three

THE INEVITABLE 151 Chrita Dulu Kala (Stories of Olden Days) were books of old Chinese romances translated into romanised Baba Malay. They were very popular with the Babas. (Courtesy of Katong Antique House)

152 A NYONYA MOSAIC Kingdoms. The translator was Chan Kim Boon who had several other well-known translation works to his credit. Among a certain section of the Baba community it was believed that because of the many intrigues and machinations in the plot of the Sam Kok, those who read it were bound to pick up bad ways. As such, those who were known to have read the stories were shunned and avoided. Father never hid the fact that he had read the translated classics of Chinese literature and the fact that the womenfolk included him in their cherki sessions was a clear indication of the respect they had for him inspite of his having read Sam Kok. Occasionally, father would relate to us interesting tales from some of the other translated works he had read. That was how I learned why we dubbed people with a hearty appetite Seet Jin Quee. This legendary hero was reputed to have such a voracious appetite that he was able to eat forty people’s share of food at any one time. The idyllic evening drives and outings began to tail off when father’s health started to break down. The next three years saw him desperately turning to various avenues in search of a cure. After a while it became increasingly obvious that Dr Wilson’s treatment was not doing him any good at all. In fact, there were several occasions when I learned from whispered conversations that father had thrown up blood. As Dr Wilson increased his home visits, father similarly increased the number of sessions he had with the card fortune tellers. One of them was a Eurasian lady who wore the sarong kebaya. Father had made use of her services long before he fell ill and had depended on her for his business decisions. This lady was never popular with the rest of the household and so on her daily visits she would walk straight into father’s office for a scopong session and straight out without stopping to fraternise with anyone else in the house. As father grew more

THE INEVITABLE 153 sick he would even summon her twice a day to bukak scopong. As his illness gradually worsened father stopped the western medical treatment and resorted to traditional Chinese herbal cures instead. Self medication was very much the order of the day. In general, nearly all Baba families had prescriptions for Chinese herbs for the treatment of various ailments. These iok tuanhs (medicinal scripts) were written in Chinese either on pieces of paper or white cloth. The purpose of each prescription was written in Baba Malay on the reverse side. At times even the person from whom the prescription had originated was recorded. Each family jealously guarded their collection of prescriptions which sometimes had been handed down several generations. Copies were made only for the closest of relatives or friends. Some families possessed a wide variety of prescriptions which ranged from herbal cures for internal injuries due to assault, to those for body odour. When a sickness had been diagnosed by an elderly member of the family the appropriate prescription was taken to a Chinese druggist to be filled. The amount to be purchased was occasionally written down on the reverse side of the prescription too. Some families made money out of certain prescriptions that were reputedly very efficacious. I remember a particular case involving a prescription for mouth ulcers. Grandma possessed several cures for this but they were not as effective as that owned by a distant relative who refused to loan us the prescription. Thus, every time we ran short of this medicament we had to buy it from this person at quite an exorbitant price. There were families who were so confident of their prescriptions that they never consulted any medical authority for any sickness in their homes. Other than the iok tuanhs which had to be dispensed at Chinese druggists, most Baba families possessed a variety of

154 A NYONYA MOSAIC Examples of iok tuanh (Courtesy of Katong Antique House)

THE INEVITABLE 155 folk cures in the form of roots, barks and other miscellaneous objects of vegetable and animal origin with which they treated themselves when necessary. Grandma had a cloth bag full of bizarre objects, some of which were purchased at great expense. Among her prized items were a rhinoceros’ horn, a python’s dried gall-bladder and bezoar stones originating from animals such as monkey and porcupine. These were remedies for various maladies ranging from fever to insect bites. Although some of them were prescribed for internal use, grandma never used them internally. One particular item in grandma’s possession which fascinated me a lot was the bulu kong kang. This was a piece of hard shiny black wood upon which grew a thick bunch of fine golden coloured hair. This hairy substance was employed to stop bleeding. One day Sako, my neighbourhood Japanese friend, had a fall while playing in our house and bled profusely. Grandma quickly pulled a tuft of the hair and plugged it into the wound. Very soon a clot formed and the bleeding stopped. It was a miracle that Sako did not get tetanus as a result of this treatment. The substance that grandma had pushed into her wound was anything but clean: it was dirty and dusty. It was believed that when all the hair had been pulled out fresh hair would grow on the wood. We never had a chance to test whether the bulu kong kang could really replenish itself. Except for this one occasion in stopping Sako’s bleeding, grandma did not use this remedy again. Father’s use of traditional herbal medicines showed hopeful signs in the beginning. However, after several months, it became apparent that these medicines had merely provided temporary relief and that the sickness was getting more severe. Just before he finally abandoned these herbal medicines he was introduced to opium. While most of us are aware today that opium does

156 A NYONYA MOSAIC not cure any diseases, people in those days had confidence in it and believed that it was a miracle drug. After all they had seen with their own eyes how a pellet or two of opium enabled an emaciated elderly rickshaw puller to carry a passenger from Chin Swee Road to Haig Road and back again at a running pace. It was this belief that made father an opium addict and, although it did not help to improve his health, he continued to take it till he passed away. Father also turned to spiritualism. It was easy enough for him to tum to it because from his early days he had as much faith in spirit mediums as he had in card fortune telling. He depended on their advice very much for his business dealings. There were three temples around the Kebun Lemo area which he frequented regularly. One was the Siong Lim Si temple now along Jalan Toa Payoh. There was no spirit medium at this temple so father merely visited it to bum joss-sticks and to pray before the gods there. The next one was a spirit medium temple not far away. The medium was a man known as Ah Tuck and the deity was known to us as Datok Siong Bo. Ah Tuck’s ritual of going into a trance was a simple one. First he burned a piece of charm paper and held the burning piece in his right hand. While standing before the altar he muttered a few incantations, at the same time waving the burning paper at intervals before his face. With that he would go into a trance and normally would ask father. ‘Mo tanya apa?’ (What do you wish to ask?) in good Baba Malay. The ensuing conversation was all in Baba Malay. The second medium was a Teochew lady and her deity was Ma Cho. In the trance this lady spoke Teochew and probably because most of her clients might have been non-Chinese speaking Babas like father, she had an interpreter to do the translation. Each time father decided to visit this spirit medium he had to fetch the interpreter who lived not far away. The

THE INEVITABLE 157 relationship between our family and this medium subsequently deepened to such an extent that second brother’s first daughter was fostered to her. This step was taken because the baby tended to cry a lot every morning and grandma felt that it was ill fortune for tears to flow the first thing every morning. After a short while the baby was fostered to another person when the Teochew medium decided to return to China for good. I did not quite relish the visits to these two spirit medium temples as they were situated amidst pig sties and dirty squatter colonies. As father grew progressively weaker he could no longer make the journey to consult the two mediums at Kebun Lemo. He then turned to other spirit mediums. There were several Baba and Nyonya mediums to choose from. It is interesting to note that the spirits associated with the Nyonya mediums were inevitably those with Malay names. Well-known Chinese deities like Kwan Kong (the Warrior God) and Lo Chia (the Third Prince) seemed to be associated with non-Baba mediums only. Just as there were many kinds of deities there were as many ways these deities made their presence felt. In general, it was the case of a spirit taking possession of the medium’s body to manifest itself. An interesting variation was the Datok Bakol where the deity manifested itself in a wicker basket which suddenly possessed motive power of its own. Since father had become less ambulant, arrangements had to be made for the medium to come to our house. This was nothing unusual because there were mediums who made house calls. One such person was a lady by the name of Nya Chik Mambang. Nya Chik was her given name and she was the medium to a group of spirits known collectively as mambang. There was another lady medium who was her rival in the business but our family preferred Nya Chik Mambang because of her quiet and businesslike attitude. The other lady,

158 A NYONYA MOSAIC Tang Tuck, was a stem and fierce person who behaved likewise even during her trance. Every time Nya Chik Mambang was summoned to the house transportation and a meal had to be provided for her and her assistant. Each mambang consultation lasted three nights. Spiritualism did appear to improve father’s condition for a while but it was probably more psychological than physical. Finally, we had to accept the painful truth that he was not ever going to recover at all and that his days were numbered. Late one afternoon father’s elder sister was hastily summoned when father’s condition became critical. Dear old Mak Koh came as quickly as she could. When she entered the house she was already sobbing audibly. Some of the other relatives who had arrived ahead of her joined her in silent tears. I followed closely behind her as she laboured to climb the steps as quickly as she could to be in time to see her brother for the very last time. There were several people milling outside father’s room all dabbing their eyes with handkerchiefs as Mak Koh quickly pushed her way into the room. I was held back by eldest sister- in-law. When I began to cry, Ah Pok who was standing nearby came and led me away from the room and began to weep himself. Suddenly there was a loud wail from father’s room and as Ah Pok hugged me close I knew that I had become an orphan from that moment. Everybody was shaken by father’s death but they were not taken by surprise. Father had been ill for nearly three years and was slipping away with each passing day. Grandma now became the head of the household. In spite of the disadvantages of illiteracy and a sheltered upbringing she was to prove her mettle right from the start. She was steady and efficient. Immediately, grandma quickly directed the domestic help to inform some of our relatives of father’s death. She did not have to worry

THE INEVITABLE 159 very much about mourning clothes because two weeks back she had already arranged for the purchase of black material. Within hours most of our relatives and close friends had come and some volunteered to sew the mourning dresses for those without them. Her next instruction was for the undertaker to be contacted to do the necessary. He was none other than the famous Bah Yam who led the seroni band at happy times. During moments of grief, he was an equally capable undertaker. As soon as Bah Yam had been informed of father’s death, he sent the tokong, a general purpose labourer, to come and bathe the body. He brought with him a wooden platform called the pah een. This was placed centrally in the first hall of Rumah Tengah. All my brothers helped to carry father’s body down and placed it on the platform. It was customary for sons to perform this duty but in cases where there were no male heirs then the daughters were expected to take over the responsibility. The body was covered while awaiting the arrival of the coffin. With father’s death eldest brother became theoretically the head of the house and he had to wear his mourning dress inside out and put on a conical hat. He was served a bowl of mee suanh (rice vermicelli) to ensure longevity – that for him, his life might be as long as the strands of noodles. Besides informing all friends and relatives verbally of father’s death, one of father’s felt hats was hung outside the house as an indication that the owner of the hat had passed away. Father’s coffin was typically Chinese and was a huge and awesome looking structure. As a young girl I was terrified of its ugly shape and massive appearance. The coffin must have been an expensive one of good and heavy quality wood for it took four able bodied men a lot of physical effort to unload it from the lorry and carry into the house. After its arrival we children were ushered to the back of the house for we were not

160 A NYONYA MOSAIC permitted to witness the ritual to come. This was one where the tokong bathed and dressed father’s body before placing it into the coffin. The water required for this purpose was not supposed to come from our house, but had to be ‘purchased’ from another source. This responsibility of ‘buying’ the water or beli ayer belonged to eldest brother who had to go to the nearest public standpipe to obtain the water. At the standpipe eldest brother had to light joss-sticks and pray and burn some silver papers before turning on the tap for the water. As the body was being prepared by the tokong, silver paper was burned piece by piece at home in a clay pot until the body was safely placed in the coffin. The clay pot was later placed outside the house by the roadside. A short prayer preceded the dressing of father’s body. After the body had been placed in the coffin a pearl wrapped in sireh leaf was placed in his mouth and another pearl was sewn into the cloth that was to cover his face. This was to prevent the deceased from speaking. Another two pearls were put in his shoes. Some of his favourite clothes, including his cheon thau costume, were put into the coffin to be interred with him. Nothing made of leather however was allowed in the coffin (the shoes were made of rubber). A lot of silver paper was used to cover the body completely before the coffin was closed and nailed shut. For the formal ritual of nailing the coffin a young lad with both parents still alive was chosen to carry out the task. The boy did not hammer the nails in all by himself but was assisted by the tokong. By the time other friends and relatives arrived at our house, the coffin had already been securely closed. At the foot of the coffin was a table covered with a white tablecloth on which was placed a pair of burning white candles and a joss-stick urn. In father’s case we used green-stemmed joss-sticks when we prayed before this altar. If he had passed away as an octogenarian,

THE INEVITABLE 161 an age considered to be ripe and old, the dominant colour of the altar would have been red and red candles, red-stemmed joss-sticks, and an elaborately designed table cover with red background would have been the order of the day. In another variation, yellow candles would be used to honour the deceased who had been acknowledged as a pious and saintly person in life. Offerings of tea, rice, and food were made twice a day on this altar in the morning and in the evening. All hanging pictures and photographs were taken down from the walls and kept out of sight. Anything with a reflective surface was covered with strips of white paper. This was to prevent the reflection of the dead from appearing on these reflective surfaces. Our front doors were similarly pasted with strips of white paper in an ‘X’. As long as father’s body was lying at home it was customary for the female members of the family to shed as many tears as possible as a sign of their profound grief. I joined sister Puteh and my sisters-in-law when they wailed every morning, afternoon and evening as they prayed before the altar and invited father to partake the drinks and food that had been offered on the table. We continued to cry at night when we invited father’s soul to come home to sleep. My grief was spontaneous because I had been so close to father and he had loved me above the rest. The obligation requiring the womenfolk to cry was not just before father’s altar. It was further expected of all female household members to rush to every female visitor, fall before her feet loudly wailing, and cling to her legs while pouring out tears of extreme grief and anguish. While attempting to console the mourners at her feet the visitor herself gave way to her emotions and the din multiplied. I did not go to all this extent to show my grief – I felt it enough within me. Daughters-in- law particularly were obligated to perform this ritual to show how very sorry they were at the loss of their in-laws. I can never

162 A NYONYA MOSAIC forget the scene when my two sisters-in-law were in the kitchen and word reached them that relative so-and-so had arrived. They immediately stopped what they were doing, rushed out, and performed the obligatory falling on their knees and crying. This went on throughout the five days father’s body was at home. During this period of deep mourning no female in the house was permitted to powder her face or comb her hair. A dishevelled appearance was proof of one’s extreme grief. Even animals were not unaffected. Ah Pok’s pet cat was tied up for fear that if the animal were to walk under the coffin the dead might be awakened. It was pitiful to see how restless the cat was because it had never been tied up before. Its loud mewing of protest only earned it a sound thrashing from Ah Pok who was in no mood to tolerate this. Ah Pok was not alone, the rest of the domestic aides were similarly emotionally upset for they had lost an employer they respected and loved. In spite of the fact that we were all very miserable it did not diminish our obligation to feed every visitor well. Those who came during the day were served rice and a dish known as gerang asam at lunch but without its usual main ingredient of buah keluak. Daytime visitors were mainly womenfolk. The men came at night to jaga malam (keep a night vigil) but they need not necessarily stay the whole night. Most of them went home after a couple of hours. They were served either with bread and a curry dish or bread with pongteh (stewed pork). Relatives contributed money for the funeral expenses and records were kept of their contributions. Friends brought along a bundle or a toh of silver paper, a bunch or soke of green-stemmed joss-sticks and a pair of white candles. As visitors took their leave we gave them a length of red thread each which they threw away before reaching home and a pair of red candles which they burned outside their homes. This was a gesture which ensured them

THE INEVITABLE 163 good luck. Nightly, three Taoist monks came to chant prayers by the coffin. Father’s funeral took place five days after his death. It was an elaborate affair which was typical of the funerals of old. That morning my brothers, sister Puteh and I changed our mourning clothes of black blachu, a coarse material we had been wearing the last five days, to one that was yellowish-red known as the blachu merah. As children of the deceased we were further identified by a karong or head cover of the same material. Sons- in-law, nephews and nieces were identified by their white blachu clothes. The funeral rites started at about ten in the morning when several coolies carried the coffin to place it along the roadside on a low platform. The senglay prayer was held there as we all knelt near an altar before the coffin. A big drum was beaten during this ritual. It was the same drum that had been used when father’s body was placed in the coffin five days before. At this prayer the names of sons and male relatives who had contributed money were read out by a master of ceremonies. As each name was called out the person stepped forward and knelt before the altar. Next, the women were similarly called and we knelt before the coffin one by one. After this the coffin was placed on a highly-decorated hearse with a photograph of father displayed at the front. There was a short procession from our house. Walking in front of the slow moving hearse was a man who scattered silver paper about. All of us walked behind the hearse and we gave way to uncontrollable wailing as we saw father off from his home for the very last time. Eldest brother carried a tong guan which consisted of a bamboo stave with some leaves at the tip and a paper lantern hanging from it. This lamp was meant to guide father’s soul along the way. My other brothers, nephews and nieces carried similar bamboo staves but they were topped

164 A NYONYA MOSAIC with a piece of red cloth each. Brother-in-law had to carry a red banner known as the len cheng on which were written father’s name and age in Chinese characters. For a good many years, being unable to read Chinese, most of us thought that the name on the len cheng belonged to the one who carried it, that is, the name of the son-in-law. It was years later that I discovered that this was not so. Flanking brother-in-law was the seroni band, this time blowing funeral tunes. There were also people who carried white and blue mourning buntings, lanterns bearing our surname, and paper effigies of domestic help to serve father. The procession continued for several hundred metres after which we continued the rest of the journey to the graveyard in motor vehicles. Father’s final resting place was off North Buona Vista Road not far from mother’s grave. Whereas mother’s grave was close to the main road, father’s was situated further away up a hill. When we reached the burial site I saw that a deep hole had already been dug there. A prayer ceremony was held as the coffin was slowly and carefully lowered into the grave. A lot of tears flowed and I cried my heart out. Eldest sister-in-law hugged me tight. From that moment she became both my parents to me. Each of us was given a clump of earth to symbolically cover the grave before we turned away to go home. I stole a glance back after walking a few steps and saw that the labourers had already proceeded to bury the coffin with spadefuls of earth. We brought back some soil from the grave site in an urn together with two of the paper effigies known as Kim Tong and Geok Lee and I knew that soon father would be all alone, with only the tong guan drifting sadly on his grave. Several of our relatives did not accompany us to the burial site. They remained at home to wash the whole house while we were away. After the cleaning was over, they readied the leng

THE INEVITABLE 165 tok which was an altar set up close to a platform to await our homecoming. The urn with the soil from the grave was placed on this altar and the two paper effigies on either side. Candles were lit. On the platform were placed father’s bed sheet, pillow, blanket, shoes and shirts. The first three items were arranged such that the platform became a makeshift bed. It seemed that on the next day these items appeared to have been shifted about as though the bed had been occupied the previous night. I was not aware of this at that time. It was only years later that in the course of a conversation reminiscing about father’s death that eldest sister-in-law mentioned that she was sure that the bedding had been moved. Had I known it then I might have been very frightened. On our return from the graveyard we were served rice, a variety of dishes, and fried noodles. The last mentioned dish was a must for it symbolised longevity for the members of the family. One week later we went again to father’s grave. All the items at the leng tok and the platform at home were taken along. A Taoist priest accompanied us on this trip to conduct the necessary prayers. Female members of the family wore a hood while the males each tied a piece of white blachu material around the forehead. The ceremony ended with the burning of all the items we had brought along. The same sadness and sense of loss pervaded the household as it did the previous week. The wound was still raw and had not started to heal. Time was its sole balm. At about six that evening we went to the temple at Telok Ayer Street. We brought along the two lanterns that were hanging outside our house. There, prayers were said to the temple deity to solicit her help to lead father to a good and blessed place. We entered the temple by the front entrance but left by a side entrance, the idea was to confuse father’s soul and to discourage him from accompanying us home. After all, he had gone to a

166 A NYONYA MOSAIC better place and should have no reason to want to linger in our mortal world. Along the way home we ate sweetened peanuts to signify the blessings of longevity and prosperity to the family. When we reached home eldest sister-in-law knocked at the locked doors and one of our aunts who was inside the house asked aloud: ‘Apa kabar?’ (What is the news?) She received this reply: ‘Kabar baik’ (Good news). With this password given the doors were opened to let us in. My next visit to father’s grave was about three weeks later to observe the sia toh rite. This was the formal installation of father’s gravestone which was expensive and elaborate. However, there were other gravestones on nearby graves that were very much more elaborate and massive than father’s. These belonged to the very rich who even in death were inferior to nobody. A short and simple prayer was conducted by a Taoist priest to invite the deceased to his permanent home. To the non-Babas the next rite was observed on the hundredth day after the death. They called this the Cho Kong Teck. We, however, observed the rite on the anniversary of father’s death and called it the Wan Ko Chinh. Apart from this difference, the rituals observed were similar: we burned paper effigies and miniatures for the dead. On this occasion we invited close friends and relatives for lunch, cherki sessions and to witness the ceremony. The guests came dressed in sombre colours. We had to obtain a police permit to burn the many paper structures along the roadside. I remember the whole of our frontage was packed with many items to be burned. They included a huge paper and bamboo mansion complete with miniature furniture, a retinue of paper servants, a paper car, several trunk loads of paper clothing and enough sacrificial paper money to last the recipient a long time. All these products were purchased from the undertaker and burned as an offering

THE INEVITABLE 167 in the belief that the dead would make use of them in the other world. Ah Pok was very skillful at making four poster beds with coloured paper, bamboo strips, chopsticks and round beads of the Chinese abacus. He contributed several beds for this ceremony. To supplement what was supplied by the undertaker we bought some more miniature tables and chairs of paper and bamboo from a Baba at Blair Road who was famous for his very life-like miniatures. It was a well-known fact that he charged a high price for his products but they were worth it. We were happy to spend so much money because father was the recipient. We wanted him to have, as always, the best of everything. We continued to perpetuate his memory by a series of regular prayers. During the first year of his death a memorial was held on his birthday. The other regular memorials were the anniversary of his death which we called the see kee, during Chinese New Year, during All Souls’ month which is the second month of the lunar calendar and during the month of the hungry ghosts. At all these memorials between eight to twelve dishes of food were offered. We Babas certainly upheld the tradition of ancestor worship very strongly.

chapter nine Growing Up ON FATHER’S DEATH our household went into deep mourning. The only member of the family exempted from this obligation was grandma because she was older than the deceased and, in the family hierarchy, she occupied a higher position. Life continued as usual with her. She could attend social gatherings like birthday and wedding parties without any impediment. As for the rest of the family, the period of mourning was three years. However, this three-year period was only in theory. In actual practice we merely mourned for eighteen months. Daughters and daughters-in-law were required to dress in all-black outfits for the first twelve months. This was the tua ha besar (heavy mourning), which was followed by the three months of wearing black and white clothes. Lastly came the tua ha ringan (light mourning) in which we were permitted to dress in shades of blue for the next three months. Towards the end of this period we were given a concession and could be seen in green if we wished to. If a mother had died, the mourning period for the children was extended by a short period known as the tua ha tetek (breast mourning) as a sign of further respect to her for having weaned the children. It was the

GROWING UP 169 lot of daughters-in-law to observe this ritual as well. Sons and sons-in-law mourned in a slightly different manner. Each wore a blachu material arm-band on the left arm for the first year and discarded it for a black one the next six months. During the mourning period the house itself showed the same sign of grief for twelve months. All curtains were removed from doorways and windows to indicate a state of mourning. A year later, the coloured curtains made their reappearance. New Year was again celebrated in the house but under certain restrictive conditions. It was a dull and uninspiring affair and we were not allowed to visit others and they in turn could not come to our home. My tally for ang pows was nothing to crow about that year. The one memorable aspect of this occasion was the quantity of kueh bakol we received from friends and relatives. It was customary for Babas not to present this cake to any household except one that was in mourning. We received so much that it took us months to finish eating them all. I was rather unhappy during the period of heavy mourning because black never appealed to me. On top of this all the gold jewellery which I wore was replaced with silver ones. Grandma purchased them from the Teochew haberdasher who carried a good selection of silver hair pins, belts, earrings, necklaces, bangles and kerosangs (brooches). Where silver jewellery was concerned this trader permitted a certain amount of barter. Grandma thus exchanged a number of used and slightly damaged silver items and a cash payment for the new jewellery. This form of trading was not confined strictly to the mourning period; it was a daily service provided by this trader. Typical of a trader who dealt in such a transaction, this Teochew haberdasher habitually ridiculed the quality of what was offered for exchange commenting that they were ‘macham tok po’ (like rags). From the business point of view this was to give him

170 A NYONYA MOSAIC an excuse for giving us a poor deal for our goods. For this he naturally became known as Si Tok Po (the ragged one). Other than selling jewellery, Si Tok Po also undertook repair jobs as a sideline. Pins and clasps of silver brooches and other parts of silver jewellery in general did not seem to be made to withstand wear and tear and they tended to give way easily and frequently. Whenever one of my pins broke, I dared not bring it to grandma’s attention for fear that I would be scolded for not having been careful with them. I would quietly arrange for their repair out of my pocket money. The complete outfit of a Nyonya in heavy mourning included footwear in sombre black and white. Such footwear and other plain, coloured ones were sold by a Cantonese lady who was a favourite with womenfolk young and old. Hanging from one end of the wooden pole she carried on her shoulder, was a stack of cardboard containers filled with colourful paper flowers of many designs and sizes. These paper flowers were arranged in a semi-circular or circular pattern and were used as a hair decoration around our sanggols (buns). I normally decorated my sanggol with the coloured ones but during the mourning period I had to change to the white variety. I did not mind this very much, at least it broke the monotony of my black outfit. These paper flowers were said to have originated in Penang and were made with a special thin paper known as kertas ambong ambong. At the other end of the wooden pole hung a small cupboard with several layers of aluminium trays in which were stored hair nets, special thread for use in combing a bun and a substance known in Chinese as lah tao. These three items were popular with Cantonese ladies but the last named also sold well among us Nyonyas. Lah tao was a translucent piece of vegetable material. When soaked in water it formed a sticky solution

GROWING UP 171 which we used on our sanggol Nyonya. This resulted in a glossy and stiff coiffure which was a must during outings and at social gatherings. About two days after treatment with lah tao the hair must be washed without delay for by then it would start to smell obnoxiously. Another contributory factor was the coconut oil we used on our hair. Although it was the fragrant type, when combined with lah tao the result was an awful stink one or two days later. Another item this lady offered for sale was slippers of cloth and plain velvet. Mourners were expected to wear black slippers with white toe-covers. She also sold a range of cheap slippers for daily wear which were said to be from Penang. Her command of the Baba language was above par and her trade call was not surprisingly ‘Bunga, kasot’ (flowers, shoes). Patronising her was a pleasant experience for she charged reasonable prices for her goods. Not long after father’s death I began to mature into adulthood. Eldest sister-in-law wasted no time in pushing me to perform more and more chores for myself rather than continue to allow me to rely on her. She began by urging me to comb my hair without any help. My first few attempts ended in dismal failure. She just smiled and encouraged me to better my efforts the next time. The combing of the sanggol Nyonya required a certain amount of skill and posed difficulty for a beginner. Nearly all the Nyonyas, young and old, combed their hair in the sanggol Nyonya fashion. Grandma was so fussy about her sanggol that Auntie Chye had to comb her hair several times a day. Eldest sister-in-law then urged me to learn to sew my own baju panjang (long dress) even before I had fully mastered doing my hair. Not comprehending the reason behind her sudden reluctance to help me, I concluded that she was punishing me

172 A NYONYA MOSAIC for some reason. One morning, in a fit of frustration, when my hair refused to cooperate with my fingers, I burst into tears and protested that it was not fair that I had to do things myself while sister Puteh need not have to do likewise. Eldest sister-in-law immediately chided me and reminded me that I was growing up and would soon be a child no longer. She added that any girl who could not perform up to expectations had only herself to blame in future and it would be too late then. I could not see her logic and felt that my time to marry was still very far in the future. Fortunately, where sewing was concerned I did not face difficult problems. In a short time I was able to sew my own baju panjang and my workmanship when stitching a sarong earned me such respect that several of our relatives gave me their sarongs to stitch. Spurred on by this show of confidence in me I went on to attempt to sew the baju nona which we know today as the baju kebaya. At that time the baju nona had recently made its appearance and a few of us had started to discard our long dress for this shorter type of apparel. This early version with its simple embroidered border was a far cry from the present day’s richly embroidered baju kebaya. My next assignment was in the kitchen where I was urged to spend as much time as possible. On reflection I am sure eldest sister-in-law must have made some sort of prior arrangement with Ah Pok for me to frequent his domain because he did not raise any objection although I was more a hindrance than a help in the beginning. It was also not improbable that Ah Pok himself had mellowed and passing on his culinary expertise was his way of repaying the kindness he had received while working for our family. In general, I had a pleasant time in the kitchen where the once moody and temperamental Ah Pok had become an understanding tutor.

GROWING UP 173 Among the first dishes I learned to prepare during my tenure in the kitchen was fish ball soup. With Ah Pok guiding me I cut away the flesh on each side of the ikan tenggiri (mackerel) after which I scraped the flesh from the skin. While preparing the fish balls with the flesh I boiled the skin together with the skeleton of the fish. When the fish balls were ready to go into the pot I removed the skin and the skeleton. Ah Pok then whispered a tip to me and pointed out that the skin and the skeleton with the bits of flesh on them need not necessarily go to waste. He mentioned that they would go down well with black sauce, a little sugar and fresh green chilli. Being somewhat of a glutton I did not hesitate to give it a try. It turned out as he had said and this simple dish of fish skin and bones became a. favourite side dish of mine whenever we had occasion to prepare fish ball soup. Eldest sister-in-law joined us in the kitchen whenever possible to contribute her expertise in the art of cooking. Among the favourite dishes of most Baba families was sayor keladi masak titek. This dish was made up of the stems of the yam plant cooked in a gravy containing chilli, onions, shrimp paste and candlenuts. Unfortunately many people suffered from itchy throats after consuming it. In order to overcome this problem an unusual ritual was required to be performed during the preparation of this otherwise delightful dish. Sister-in-law revealed to me the age-old secret. First, the stems were put into a pot of boiling water and cooked until they became soft. While they were on the boil, a piece of burning charcoal or a piece of burning firewood (depending on which was used as the fuel) was removed from the stove upon which the food was cooked. If it was charcoal, it was dropped into the pot followed by an incantation but if it was a burning piece of firewood, only the burning end was dipped into the boiling liquid for the duration of the short verse to be recited aloud:

174 A NYONYA MOSAIC Lu Keladi Gua babi. Lu gatair Gua selair. The incantation was a threat to the yam stems. An elaborate translation of the incantation would be: You are yam but I am pig (that means I can eat you because you are my food). You cause me to itch, thus I intimidate you (with burning charcoal or firewood). Others added a few pieces of areca nut into the preparation to prevent the itchy effect. Eldest sister-in-law did not acquire the reputation of an expert cook without good reason, People used to say that the ikan buntal (puffer fish) tasted almost like chicken if properly cooked. This fish had a reputation of being difficult to cook successfully. It seemed that while cutting the fish the gall bladder must not be damaged. Once the flesh was contaminated with gall it would no longer be edible. Similarly, while being cooked extreme care must be exercised to prevent soot from dropping into the pot for this would also render the fish inedible. In both instances consumption of the fish would bring about death. It was said that even if the fish had been properly cut and no soot had contaminated the dish it was necessary to perform a test before attempting to eat the preparation. This test involved the dipping of a clean unused wick from an oil lamp into the gravy. Should the wick undergo a change in colour it was an indication that it was not safe to consume the dish. The word ‘death’ had instilled so much fear that except for eldest sister-in- law, I rarely heard of a Nyonya who had cooked and eaten this fish. Unfortunately, I had never seen her actually preparing it in our home for grandma would have none of it. She was reputed to have prepared it successfully on several occasions in her

GROWING UP 175 mother’s home. Even though I hadn’t actually seen her cooking it, I firmly believed that if there was anyone in our family circle who could do it she would be that person. This was one recipe she did not teach me. She told me that it was not worth the risk just for the sake of a fish dish. It was unfortunate that when I had such an incomparable tutor to coach me in the kitchen I was not mature enough to fully appreciate it. Whenever I was taught to do something which I deemed had no practical importance, I tended to allow that knowledge to slip out of my mind. One example was the wrapping of ketupats (rice wrapped in coconut leaves). These days, satay sellers wrap their ketupats into cubes. These are called ketupat pasair (market), but there were other methods of wrapping them. In the days when expectations were high and skills were impressive in the field of domestic sciences, knowing only one or two ways to wrap a ketupat was not enough. Eldest sister-in-law knew several ways. She had picked them up from her mother and her Malay lady friends. She taught me the intricate folding of many but I am sorry to say that I forgot them all. There were: Ketupat pasair (the ordinary type) Ketupat kekek (another squarish type with one side curved) Ketupat bawang (a rounded type) Ketupat kueh chang (pyramid shaped) Ketupat jantong (heart shaped) Ketupat kuching (like a eat’s head) Ketupat mangis (like the mangosteen fruit) Ketupat burong (bird-like in shape) The last named was not filled with rice. It was a dummy and it looked like a bird. It was meant as a plaything for children. My cooking lessons in the kitchen under the tutelage of Ah Pok and eldest sister-in-law stopped short of Nyonya cake

176 A NYONYA MOSAIC making. Ah Pok was a man of many talents but making Nyonya cakes was not one of them. Had he the know-how he would not have hesitated to pass it on to me. As for sister-in-law, her other commitments left her little time to start me on something that might require her personal attention and presence right through the project as many a Nyonya cake was tedious and time-consuming in its preparation. Thus, the few Nyonya cakes that I was finally able to make were learned through observation while she was preparing them rather than actual step-by-step lessons from her. I was not the only one whose life went through a big change after father was no more around. When he was alive, eldest brother was known to be reckless in his business ventures which often ended in failure and father had to make good his ensuing financial problems. Without father, he began to exercise more care in his ventures and started to show profits for a change. Among his successful ventures was the import of pedigree dogs for sale. He would import about five young dogs at a time and as soon as they arrived he advertised them for sale in the newspapers. Within the next couple of days all his dogs would be sold to predominantly European customers. Because his imports were not puppies, some of the animals were not friendly and we were strictly reminded to keep our distance from them. On his part he kept them locked in their individual kennels until they were sold. On one occasion one of the animals managed to get loose and was prowling around the garden when a visitor unexpectedly arrived. We were all inside the house and were unaware that the dog had escaped. Suddenly we heard a piercing scream followed by growling and barking. We rushed out as quickly as we could and found our cousin Tengah crying at the doorstep and the dog nowhere to be seen. In between sobs she told us that the

GROWING UP 177 A 1950 studio portrait of myself.

178 A NYONYA MOSAIC dog had bitten her. Gradually we learned that she had come in with a tiffin carrier full of food which her mother had instructed her to bring to grandma. After she had opened the gates and walked into the garden, the dog charged her. In her panic she turned her back on the animal and attempted to run out of the house. In the excitement she dropped the tiffin carrier. The crashing sound further infuriated the dog who caught up with her and bit her on the left calf. Uppermost in our minds was that the dog might be mad and that it might only be a matter of time before poor cousin Tengah succumbed to rabies. Her father naturally sought the best medical attention available at that time and the dog was kept under close observation for any sign of abnormal behaviour. In the meantime grandma quickly resorted to an age-old remedy to counter the shock cousin Tengah had suffered. Grandma cut a bit of the dog’s hair and burned it to ashes. She then rubbed the ashes along cousin Tengah’s eye lashes, behind her ear lobes and on her chest. A few days later we were informed that the dog was not mad and were told to treat the case as an ordinary dog bite. Father’s absence did not affect my opportunities of going out very much. Whenever eldest sister-in-law visited her mother she took me along with her. Her mother’s residence was on Lorong Ong Kiat, a lane off Kreta Ayer Road. The people living there were mostly Cantonese with a small number of Baba families among them. Sister-in-law’s mother was a widow who lived all by herself in a modest house. It was indeed a sharp contrast to the palatial mansions of some of grandma’s contemporaries. A few doors away lived her mother’s sister whose house was furnished only with the barest necessities. The reason for her regular visits to her mother and aunt was to give the old ladies their monthly cash allowance. On my visits to these houses I was rarely permitted out-of-doors. Luckily most of the visits

GROWING UP 179 were brief ones for there was nothing to amuse me at all. In her mother’s house my only source of amusement was a very tame white cat with the proverbial bell around her neck. I often cuddled the cat and when it was time to go home it took quite a while to dust off all the cat’s white hair from my black dress. It was necessary that every strand of hair was dusted off because it was generally believed that ingestion of cat’s hair led to asthma. Besides visits to eldest sister-in-law’s mother and aunt, cousin Tengah frequently came to bring me for car rides. Although she was closer to sister Puteh’s age she preferred my companionship because of sister Puteh’s sullen temperament. Nevertheless she rarely failed to include sister Puteh on our outings. Cousin Tengah’s grandmother was grandma’s cousin. They had contrasting temperaments; where grandma was fierce and fastidious her cousin was sweet natured and simple. The one common trait they shared however was that both of them were without sons. Grandma’s cousin adopted a boy who grew up to become cousin Tengah’s father. Cousin Tengah was born under a lucky star because she was her parents’ favourite daughter and was well-liked by her own grandmother as well as grandma. Her father had three wives: her mother being the first, a Teochew lady the second and a lady named Bongsu the third. The third wife wore Nyonya attire and spoke the Baba language fluently but I was told that she was part Siamese. She too doted on cousin Tengah and frequently invited her favourite stepdaughter to her seaside home at Pasir Panjang. Whenever cousin Tengah wanted to visit Pasir Panjang her parents allowed her the use of their car. On her way to visit her third mother she usually dropped in at our place to seek permission from grandma to allow sister Puteh and I to accompany her. Grandma never turned down her request for two reasons: firstly, cousin Tengah was her

180 A NYONYA MOSAIC favourite grandniece and secondly, sister Puteh, her favourite granddaughter was also involved in the outing. Cousin Tengah was the second of three daughters in her family. She had four brothers. Her eldest sister was the unfortunate one. Both her parents disliked her and she was frequently physically assaulted by her mother who made her do all the household chores and treated her not like a daughter but almost like a servant. One sad feature in Baba homes of the past was the unequal treatment of children by parents. Those who were not loved had either been born with physical defects or were suspected of having brought ill fortune to the family. In the case of cousin Tengah’s eldest sister it was because she was born an unattractive child. Every time I visited their home it was pathetic to see the eldest sister poorly dressed with misery clearly written all over her face. She rarely smiled and hardly had any opportunity to talk to me as she was perpetually busy with the many household chores imposed upon her. I could not help detecting that she was treated with disrespect even by her brothers and sisters and her parents appeared to condone it. Third aunt Bongsu’s Pasir Panjang house was fashioned after stilted wooden kampong houses. But her house was of bricks, the roof tiled, and built on brick columns. The sea was a couple of metres away from the back door. When the tide was high we frolicked in the water. In the days before girls were emancipated enough to be seen in swimming costumes we tied our sarongs a la Dorothy Lamour when we played in the water. The surrounding scenery of kampong huts, coconut trees and a hill or two in the distance completed the picture of tropical paradise when one looked shorewards. When the tide was low we just strolled along the beach looking for hermit crabs and tiny fish caught in pools of water left by

GROWING UP 181 the receding tide. At other times we waited on the shore for Malay fishermen bringing home their day’s catch in their koleks (small canoes). Uncle occasionally patronised them for their fresh fish and prawns. When gerago (young shrimps) was in season he used to purchase enough to prepare shrimp paste and chinchalok (fermented shrimps) and still had some left to be fried in butter as a treat. On other occasions I was taken shopping along Arab Street with third aunt and her family. Nyonyas from near and far came to this area for their sarongs, and to buy or order their embroidered or beaded slippers. I liked Arab Street for the delicious Malay mee siam and rojak which were sold by an old Javanese lady hawker whose stall was next to a stall selling flowers and lime. It was a take-away service so we normally bought the foodstuff just before going home so that it remained fresh. Sister Puteh did not always accompany us on such shopping trips. In fact, I noticed that grandma gradually refused her permission to join us for outings. On enquiring, eldest sister-in-law explained that sister Puteh was already at a marriageable age so she should not be seen too often outside our home lest she might earn the unwelcome reputation of being an unrestrained young lady. One of cousin Tengah’s maternal cousins subsequently married sister Puteh. The wedding took place not long after we had completed our mourning for father. Since it was a marriage between relatives no go-between was involved. It was a straightforward case of grandma and a relative coming to an agreement regarding all the necessary details and arrangements. Knowing grandma’s personality one could imagine her taking the active role in all the discussions while the younger relative passively agreed to every idea and suggestion. Sister Puteh had a grand wedding. She was given the best by grandma while her husband received no less from his parents

182 A NYONYA MOSAIC for he was their favourite son. On top of this both families were reputedly well off financially. A scene from the wedding that remains vivid in my memory is the amount of tears sister Puteh shed at her cheon thau. Very few brides, or guests at this ceremony, could withhold their tears when the bride happened to be an orphan. What surprised me was my own reaction at this scene. Not long ago I had witnessed the same sad tears shed by cousin Swee Neo at her cheon thau but was not affected at all by it. Now, at sister Puteh’s cheon thau emotions stirred within me and I was unable to hold back my tears. Within a short space of three years I had undergone a vast change. After the marriage, sister Puteh and her husband lived with us and were allotted grandma’s room on the first floor of Rumah Tengah. Her good fortune in not having to perform household chores before her marriage remained the same after her marriage. It took me a little while to accustom myself to addressing her husband as Chow (brother-in-law) because before his marriage he was a cousin whom I addressed as Hianh (elder brother). Because of his close relationship with our family, grandma did not object to my being seen in his company. Normally it would have been thought improper for an unmarried sister-in-law to be seen near her brother-in-law, let alone being seen conversing with him. It was not so much an act of shyness but an expected code of behaviour for true-blue Nyonyas. Sister Puteh’s husband was still in school and dependent on his father when he married her. He had to continue with private tuition at our home after his marriage. Being married while still in school was not uncommon in those days and there were a fair number of Babas who continued to go to school after their marriages. Sister Puteh had married at sixteen. This early age was not unusual but in her case, due to the fact that she still continued to enjoy the protection of her family environment, she tended

GROWING UP 183 to continue to behave like a child and this was not acceptable. She was expected to carry herself like a mature woman as cousin Swee Neo did soon after her marriage. Some of our relatives who noticed this could not contain themselves any longer. A few of them who could address grandma on equal terms chided her for having allowed such a premature union to take place. Others went as far as to accuse her of being irresponsible. Actually, they were not being fair to grandma as she was probably worried about the two granddaughters under her charge. She was, after all, getting on in age and wanted to make sure that both these girls were married into good homes before her time came. Sister Puteh and her husband Åanked by her pengapet and his koo ya.

184 A NYONYA MOSAIC Marrying sister Puteh to her cousin’s grandson was the best arrangement she could make for sister Puteh. Being fully aware of sister Puteh’s lack of domestic skills, she realised that it was all the more important that she should not marry anyone but a relative. If she were to marry into another family she was bound to lose her in-laws’ respect and life would be miserable for her. Grandma therefore had no choice but to arrange this match. With sister Puteh’s welfare taken care of, grandma had now only one granddaughter left on her hands.

chapter ten New Year Preparations AN EVENT WHICH I looked forward to as a child was Chinese New Year. Celebrated from the first to the fifteenth day of the first moon of the lunar calendar, this festival, is preceded by a number of colourful and exciting celebrations. The first was Tang Chek, the winter solstice festival. Unlike the other Chinese festivals which were celebrated on fixed dates on the lunar calendar, Tang Chek seemed to fall on a different day each year. Rather than be uncertain about it, we had picked the date 22nd December on the gregorian calendar to celebrate this event annually and, somehow or other it always coincided with the correct date on the lunar calendar. During this event we ate small balls of glutinous rice flour called kueh een and we believed that by doing so we had lived another year. Perhaps in the distant past the chances of living through another year was something not guaranteed. We prepared the kueh een on the eve of Tang Chek. After the glutinous rice flour had been made into a dough we coloured half of it red leaving the rest uncoloured. It was a task that I enjoyed doing very much. All of us sat together to roll the dough into round balls of two sizes: one the size of a marble and the other slightly larger. Depending on the quantity of

186 A NYONYA MOSAIC the dough this rolling process could well take several hours to complete. The womenfolk did not mind the long hours because they could enjoy a gossip session as they worked. This gave me the opportunity to be around, for once, while the latest gossip was being exchanged. Also I felt a childish delight in competing with the adults to see who could roll a rounder kueh een and at a faster speed. These kueh ee were kept overnight on a round bamboo tray covered with a piece of cloth. The next morning, they were boiled and taken with syrup when cooled. Before any of us were allowed to consume them, we first offered them to our household gods and our ancestors in sets of three small bowls. We also stuck two kueh een (one of each colour) on the front doors. I never did learn the true significance for doing this. Grandma attached great importance to this festival and saw to it that everyone ate at least a bowl that day. As kueh een was my favourite I needed no prompting at all. Every year I could consume no less than three medium-sized bowls of it in a day and still crave for more. Less than a month later a festival of religious significance was celebrated on the 24th day of the 12th lunar month. This was Hari Datok Naik, when all the household gods made their annual ascent to heaven to have an audience with the Jade Emperor, to submit their annual report on us mortals. By virtue of the fact that the god’s altar was situated in the kitchen and that womenfolk generally spent a lot of their time there, this Kitchen god was obviously a silent witness to the behaviour of the family for the best part of each day. Knowing this we naturally took great pains to influence the Kitchen god’s report. In order to ensure that only favourable words would pour out of his mouth we offered sweet delectables to send him on his way. They included kueh bakol, huat kueh and cups of wine.

NEW YEAR PREPARATIONS 187 Kueh bakol, or basket cake, is a steamed glutinous cake which is nowadays wrapped in polythene and steamed in aluminium containers. In the old days they were made in banana leaf packets and steamed in a bamboo basket. We believed that there was a pantang involved in the preparation of this cake. The story was that anyone who attempted to prepare this cake but failed, ran the risk of facing bad luck which might influence the whole family. As a result of this belief, many of us did not make kueh bakol; we felt it was much safer to buy it instead. At first grandma did not believe in this pantang and continued to prepare it annually. Through the years as more and more incidents were related to her about strange ill-fortune that struck certain families that had failed to prepare this cake successfully she became more and more nervous. Ultimately she was convinced that so many incidents could not be mere coincidence; and so she made up her mind to leave it to other souls to prepare the cake. From then on our specially made steamer for this cake was left unused in the kitchen until it found its permanent resting place in the attic. The rites involved in sending the gods off on their annual visit to heaven were elaborate. I used to accompany sister-in-law to the joss-stick shop or a temple to buy the hoon bay required for the rituals. There were different varieties of hoon bay used by each dialect group. We made use of those prepared by the Hokkien people. It consisted of a set containing two yellow and a red piece of paper, all with drawings on them. The yellow pieces each bore an illustration of a horse and a sedan chair carried by two bearers, with a goddess depicted above the sedan. On the day of the god’s ascent to heaven, after our prayers at the household altars were over, the two yellow pieces were burnt as a token of sending the god off on a horse and sedan. Twelve pieces of gold paper folded into nugget shapes also went into

188 A NYONYA MOSAIC the flames followed by more unfolded gold paper, to complete the ritual. The red piece was kept aside for another ritual performed a week later. As soon as the gods had ascended to heaven, feverish activities of spring cleaning for the New Year, which was only a week away, began in earnest with plenty of temper tantrums thrown in. With grandma at the helm everybody had to lend a hand in the multitude of chores to be attended to before the house was ready to welcome the first visitor on New Year’s day. The size of our house and the decorative carvings on the furniture and the eaves which were beautiful to look at but full of niches for dirt and dust to settle in, kept the poor domestic helpers on their toes, scrubbing and cleaning all day long. In her determination to have a house with every fixture gleaming, grandma became a slave-driver during the week and did not spare a tongue lashing for anyone caught producing the slightest evidence of shoddy work. In fairness to her, she did not discriminate and meted out the same treatment to members of her own family as well. Grandma was so thorough in her supervision that not an inch of the house was left undusted and unscrubbed. Thus, at any time of day someone was to be seen scrubbing the tiled floor or perched rather precariously on the top rung of a high wooden ladder, cleaning the dust and cobwebs from the ceiling. After the tiled floor had been scrubbed clean, the spaces in between the individual tiles were painted with a mixture of slaked lime, blue indigo and vinegar with the help of a homemade brush of coconut fibre. This was a tedious and backbreaking task requiring a steady hand. The task certainly appeared endless because of the floor area of our house. Incidentally all the cleaning had to be completed before the preparation of the New Year cakes and tit-bits as it was imperative that they should be made as close as possible to the big event so that they would be fresh.

NEW YEAR PREPARATIONS 189 Typical of a true-blue Nyonya, grandma did not believe in shortcuts. Nothing was to be simplified or modified. Age-old traditional methods had to be strictly adhered to otherwise results would be totally unacceptable. As far as she was concerned these unnecessarily elaborate methods had stood the test of time and they were essential to getting things done right. Grandma’s policy was that our food and cakes had reached perfection and that there could not be any other way of preparing them. Anything produced not according to the original method would never taste the same, she maintained. It was therefore not surprising that grandma did not approve of our purchasing cakes from commercial sources. Shops in those days did not sell the low quality mass-produced stuff that we have today. Instead they were made by Babas and were as meticulously and skillfully prepared as they would be at one’s home. Yet grandma would still have none of it. In general we prepared two categories of cakes. For the New Year guests we had ‘dry’ ones like kueh belanda, lada buntiar, sesagoon, telor belanak, kueh tart, kueh bolu, kueh bangket and kueh koya. The only non-Baba cake served on this occasion was a western cake with Royal icing. This was the only cake grandma permitted to be bought from a confectionary along Victoria Street. Cakes meant for prayers were ‘wet’ ones which included kueh koo, kueh kochi, kueh wajek, pulot seray kaya and tapay pulot. The last mentioned cake was not really difficult to make but it carried a lot of pantangs during its preparation. Making it merely involved steaming glutinous rice with a little yeast and adding sugar then letting the preparation ferment for a couple of days. In actual practice, however, there were several ‘don’ts’ that had to be diligently observed to ensure success. For example, while the tapay was fermenting nobody should

190 A NYONYA MOSAIC talk about it. Any mention or curiousity about whether the fermentation was complete was supposed to immediately halt the process. Another taboo involved menstruating women. It was strongly believed that no woman should attempt to make tapay pulot during menstruation because at the end of the process the tapay was sure to have streaks of red running through the white glutinous rice. In addition to these strictures, the container in which the glutinous rice was fermented was to be specially treated. It had to be scrupulously washed, dried in the sun and then smoked with kemenian (benzoin). An ideal container was a jar of Siamese origin which we named Pasoh Siam. The steamed glutinous rice, individually wrapped in small packets with tapay leaves, were then placed into the jar. On top of this pile of tapay packets were placed a nail and a piece of candlenut. The opening of the jar was next covered with a tray before a gunny sack was placed above it to cover the whole jar. It was then placed in a dark warm corner to ferment while everybody kept their fingers crossed and mouths shut. Woe betide the person who failed to produce the tapay in time for prayers. Grandma would insist that the unfortunate person had not taken the full necessary precautions. Nothing could convince her that the yeast might have been of poor quality, insufficient in quantity, or the fermentation was incomplete. I have heard on more than one occasion that, in the days long past, some ladies had even gone as far as to strip themselves to a state of complete undress while preparing tapay. They believed strongly that this was a prerequisite for the production of a very sweet cake. Well-made tapay with the resultant wine was the favourite of Babas and Nyonyas, young and old. All these cakes, with their elaborate and time consuming methods of preparation, were always made far in excess of our household needs. It was

NEW YEAR PREPARATIONS 191 our policy to prepare enough for our relatives and close friends as well. We enjoyed giving so much, in spite of the cost, time, and effort involved. Two days before the big day we invited the souls of our ancestors to join us for the New Year. We began by taking down their photographs from the ancestral altar to a temporary altar. A simple offering of tea was placed on the altar together with a pair of lighted candles. When father was alive we burned two joss-sticks at the altar to invite mother’s soul. After father had passed away four joss sticks were burned to invite both of them. I was assigned all the duties of this ritual, under the watchful eyes of eldest sister-in-law. The task was mine for two reasons. As a girl I was obligated to be familiar with all aspects of our culture, especially those involving domestic life. It was a matter of time when I would be expected to perform all the necessary prayers in my future in-laws’ home and my family would be in disgrace if I was found ignorant of what to do. Secondly, everybody knew I was very attached to father and it was only natural that I should be the one to invite him home. I took this assignment very seriously and firmly believed that both my parents would hear my invitation and respond accordingly. The next day, several dishes of cooked food were offered at the ancestral altar. These, I personally carried from the kitchen. There were three dishes of meat which included a whole chicken, a whole duck and a piece of lean pork. These we collectively called sam seng. The name indicated that it came from three living creatures. This was followed by eight other secondary dishes, tea, wine, a basin of water for washing the face, a towel, a glass of water to rinse the palate and a silk handkerchief for wiping the hands and mouths. When all these dishes had been properly arranged we performed the pak puey to find out whether father and mother

192 A NYONYA MOSAIC had arrived to partake of the food. Essentially, pak puey involved the throwing of two objects while standing before an altar and interpreting the message from the way the objects had landed on the ground. Some families used two Chinese coins for the purpose. I was taught that if one of the coins landed heads up while the other was tails up it indicated cheo puey, meaning the souls had responded cheerfully to the invitation and had arrived. If they both landed heads up it indicated that the souls were displeased and it was necessary to throw the coins again. Both coins with tail side up meant the souls were in a good frame of mind but had not arrived. In our household, we did not use coins. Instead we used two wooden pieces each having a flat base and a convex body akin to a bun cut into two. The convex surface represented the heads side while the flat surface, the tail side. For this particular prayer we did not allow it to be said after noon for it would have meant that the appeal had been stretched to another day. We therefore scheduled the ritual well in the morning to give ample allowance for the souls to take their time to come, partake the offerings and to take their leave. In the course of this prayer I poured wine into the wine cups three times; once before the arrival of the souls, then the moment they had indicated their arrival, and again while they were having their meal. Each time I poured only a little leaving enough space in the cups for subsequent fillings. At the conclusion of this prayer my parents’ souls were given a ceremonial send-off. A sprig of tua chye (Chinese cabbage) was initially soaked in hot water before being placed in a bowl of water into which a pinch of each item of food and drink that had been offered at the altar had been added. Silver paper was burned and meanwhile the cabbage leaves were used to stir the contents of the bowl. The leaves were then cast into the flames after three circular motions were made with

NEW YEAR PREPARATIONS 193 them over the burning offering. Soon the contents of the bowl also joined the leaves in the fire, thus ending the prayer to our ancestors. By the afternoon of New Year’s Eve all the cleaning, cooking and baking was over and everything was ready. All the furniture had been polished until it gleamed and on some of the chairs were beautiful white lace covers tied with red ribbons. An important event was only a matter of hours away. This was the New Year’s Eve dinner, which was a very important meal for us. It is better known as the family reunion dinner for on this occasion every member of the family was to be present and those who were married and lived away from home were expected to make it a point to come home for a family get- together. This naturally resulted in married ones having to be present at two dinners on the same night, one at the parents’ and the other at the in-laws’ house. Immediately after sunset all the lights were switched on so that the house was bright and welcoming. Upon the Kitchen god’s altar we placed cups of tea, teh leow (prayer tit-bits), and three bowls of cooked rice into which an ixora flower and a stem of spring onion together with its roots were pressed. There was always a scramble for the bathroom so that everybody would be dressed for dinner at seven. We started our reunion dinner at the same hour every year. This strict demand for punctuality and proper dressing continued to be observed by our family even after father was no longer around. Grandma, inspite of her temper could have faced problems in maintaining the same discipline when she became head of the household because, by then, most of my brothers were married and might have resented being treated like children. Nothing of this sort however ever took place because our upbringing taught us that we should never stop being obedient and filial to our elders.

194 A NYONYA MOSAIC In fact with maturity there was even less likelihood of anyone going against custom and tradition. Before commencing dinner we all raised our glasses of soft drinks and wished all the elders a long life. They reciprocated with the same blessing. An elderly person like grandma usually added several more felicitous remarks when she returned her grandchildren’s best wishes. Most importantly she would bless us with prosperity and health as she said ‘Lu boleh untong untong, boleh kuat kuat.’ (you will be prosperous and healthy) In the case of the very young she usually added ‘Lu boleh kuai kuai’ (be good) as a blessing as well as advice to be obedient. Being the youngest in the family I had to wish everybody at the table including all my brothers and sister. Even after some of them had replied to my wishes and had already commenced eating I would still be holding my glass of lemonade and wishing my elders a long life. I never failed to enjoy the reunion dinner, not so much because there was a lot to eat as for the atmosphere. It was customary that everybody was expected to be at his or her best mood and so there was always a lot of laughter and jokes during this meal. The cheery atmosphere continued after dinner was over. Usually we had a spot of gambling as brief entertainment. Father was inevitably the banker and on this one night of the year he literally encouraged gambling even among the youngest members of his family. The game was a modified form of Chap Ji Kee where, instead of twelve numbers, only four numbers were used. We called it Si Kee. The stake involved was very low and in order that as many members of the family as possible could participate, father used to give us children a fistful of 1¢ copper coins as stakes. This gambling continued to be a part of our reunion after father had passed away. In his place eldest

NEW YEAR PREPARATIONS 195 brother became the banker. The gambling session could not last more than an hour because the adult members had other important tasks to attend to. As soon as the session was over they all went into their respective rooms to ready their clothes and jewellery for the next day, as well as to wrap ang pows. Before going back to his room father normally wrapped a lot of 1¢ ang pows for beggars who would call on us in the next few days. I was allowed to assist him to prepare these ang pows but when he wrapped those meant for the family he worked behind closed doors. Around 10 pm the domestic staff was summoned and instructed to close the main doors, windows and to switch off the lights of the two main lanterns hanging outside the main door. This closing of doors and switching off of lights symbolised that we had closed the old year. Once the doors were closed they would not be opened under any circumstance until the auspicious hour that had been picked to welcome the New Year. To the best of my recollection not a single member of the household ever dared to step out of the house on New Year’s Eve in order to avoid the predicament of coming home to locked doors. The exact time to welcome the New Year was flexible among the Babas. Some families welcomed it at the stroke of midnight while others consulted the temples for the auspicious time to do so. In general the hour was never before midnight or after 5 am the next morning. Father had chosen the midnight hour to perform the rite and the habit persisted in our family for a long time. This dispensed with the need to consult a temple which might give a different time each year. About ten minutes before midnight the windows were opened and the lanterns switched on. At midnight the two front doors were thrown open and, in the absence of father, eldest brother strode out with a