Batu Road School II

Batu Road School II
BATU ROAD SCHOOL II It is a difficult universal question as to what factors play a major part in determining our station in life; and this debate can never really end or be resolved, as the trenchant diversity of views and opinion is too vast and great. Chinese and most Asians simply believe in miang sui or destiny; and this ties in with the Buddhist doctrine of karma or cause and effect. Chinese also believe however that this same Buddhist doctrine enables you to change your destiny. So, in that sense, Chinese are stoic and are not preoccupied with absolute fate. If things are bad, they just accept it as bad residual karmic effect that had to be ameliorated; and if things are good, they continue to do good deeds and be charitable in ablution of past sins and to pray for eternal blessings. So, you live, cope and learn from life; and plod on in its betterment for yourself. It would be even better still if one is lucky enough to be able to learn from others or by observing their experiences, good and bad, so that one acquires that perspicacity to see beyond the phenomenon of life, and acquire spiritual wisdom about the meaning and purpose of life. Whether one has that requisite mental penetration or discernment to learn from the observation of the experiences of others or from the rhythm of life can only in finality be answered by each individual observer? Ones early life experience or that of observing the life experience of others starts off with the family and at home, later graduating to extended family and relatives and neighbours and friends, and their surrounds. During this infantile stage, one is mollycoddled and is learning and observing under the protective wings of ones parents. In using my primary school, Batu Road School II as a memory marker; rather than it being the protagonist or as the subject matter; I am writing of myself when I progressed, for the 1 st time, to being an independent observer and participant of the world around me. This was a period when and where I had to venture out daily [during school terms in any case] from my base of the family home, in the Cycle & Carriage Industrial Compound [described in my memoir of the Hainanese Chicken Rice Hawker], traversing through the woods of the squatter settlements adjoining the family home, to my primary school Batu Road School II and its environs, all of which then comprised the purlieu of my little boy world, from 7 12 years of age. As my discursive recounting of my memoirs unfolds, through the weaving of memory threads, and the changing colours of the threads, you will see the changing patterns in the tapestry of life in the Batu Road squatter community of my childhood. Despite the insurmountable odds against it as a despondent hell-hole of abject poverty and squalor, and inexorable hardships, and gangsters, this squatter area turned out to be a successful progenitor of successful beings or matriculants of life. Out of interdependence and symbiosis, and from sheer faith, and singlemindedness that things can and will only get better, the squatter community at large managed to improve their lot and evolved from the swamps of impecuniosity and unpropitious birth. I am truly lucky that the educational institutions that I am an alumnus of (a) Batu Road School [primary education] (b) Victoria Institution [secondary education] (c) University of South Australia (d) University of Adelaide [both for tertiary education] have all had their foundation buildings heritage listed. Thus while most of the houses I have lived in over the years, no longer exist, having been renovated, demolished or developed, these alma maters remain as memory markers of what I have learned or learnt and experienced in life. Let me first give an idea of the area or surrounds within the purview of this memoir. Imagine a huge rectangular piece of land area comprising the Cycle & Carriage compound with its adjoining squatter settlements at both flanks part of the huge Tiong Nam Settlement, on the west side of Batu Road, (a metal-sealed main trunk road, [Batu means stone in Malay], from the
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Page 1 of 32 Vince Cheok
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North, into the centre of Kuala Lumpur). Batu Road was, (and still is in most parts), lined on both sides with 1900s 2 storey shop-houses, (interspersed with later built 3 storey ones), throughout its entire stretch from the Princess Circle junction with Ipoh Road, Pahang Road and Princess Road to Mountbatten Road in the city centre, (where the Padang [field], now Dataran Merdeka [Independence Square] is). Kampung Baru, the Malay kampung is on the other side, (east side), of Batu Road. At the northern end of this rectangle is Haji Taib Road, and at its southern end is, (what is now) Jalan Sultan Ismail. Back then, it was known colloquially as Jalan Kilang Ais [Ice Factory Road]. Both are metalled roads. My Primary School, Batu Road School is on (the eastern side of) Jalan Kilang Ais. Jalan Kilang Ais those days was a dead-end road, as it finished up at the River Gombak, flowing in from the North, to the centre of Kuala Lumpur, (near the Padang), where it meets with the Klang River, flowing in from North-South. The name Kuala Lumpur means Muddy Meeting Place to reflect the congruence of these 2 rivers. Refer to my memoir on The Good Old Colonial Days. Within this rectangle there were a few slip-roads or secondary access dirt roads into Tiong Nam Settlement. There was also a secondary dirt slip-road at the back of Tiong Nam Settlement that sort of ran parallel, (NorthSouth), to Batu Road. Similarly, imagine again the Batu Road School land block as a huge rectangular adjacent block of land that had its eastern boundary on Batu Road and its western boundary being the River Gombak. At the Batu Road frontage you had the various administrative buildings of the Department of Transport, and progressively inwards towards the River Gombak end, you had the 1st playing field, (a girls school called Batu Road Girls School was built there after I had left Batu Road School), followed by a metalled access road to the entrance of Batu Road School, followed by the main school building and out-buildings (canteen and labourers quarters) and compound, followed by the 2nd playing field, then by the riparian area, where there were among other structures, legal or otherwise, a Chinese school called Chung Kwok Chung Hock, ( which I also attended in conjunction with my attendance at Batu Road School, in Primary 1 and 2), an Indian school, some houses, small workshops and a big Ice Factory, (whose British name I cannot remember, it may have something to do with Harrison & Crossfield). Many years later the said access road to Batu Road School was linked to the secondary dirt slip-road at the back of Tiong Nam Settlement to form part of Jalan Raja Laut, (part of which was the old Broadrick Road), which traversed all the way from Ipoh Road in the North to the city centre, near the Padang. The Batu Road School main building was built in the 1920s, in the architectural style commonly described as Victorian, (sort of Gothic/Georgian/Art Dcor). It was and still is quite an imposing building even by modern day standards, as were other public, now heritage stately iconic buildings built by the British Colonial Masters. They were inclined to build monuments to show off the Empire and its greatness; as is or was implied in the expression The sun never sets in the British Empire.. Similar buildings in Kuala Lumpur of this genre are Victoria Institution, Methodist Boys School, Convent Bukit Nanas, Coliseum Cinema and the Central Market. You see more splendid epitomes in Penang, (the 1st Colonial outpost in the then Malaya), around the Fort Cornwallis heritage precinct, and in Singapore, (for example), the Parliament House, Raffles Hotel, Chartered Bank and Hongkong and Shanghai Bank buildings. In Australia you have similar fine examples in the Queen Victoria Building and the Town Hall in Sydney; and in the gold-field towns of Ballarat and Bendigo in Victoria. From an aerial view, the main building is E (with a short truncated middle bar) shaped. It is a 2 storey stone building with high ceilings and a clock tower [minus the clock] in the middle of the E. It has balustrades in its faade between the main pillars, on both floors, revealing the verandah all around the building and the recessed classrooms within. This design, high ceilings
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and verandahs were to facilitate air-flow and ventilation in the hot humid tropics; and to shelter the classrooms from the almost daily incessant, paltering, afternoon convectional rain. In the top storey, the front rooms at the corner of the wings of the E also have balconies. At the rear of the building, in the clock tower conclave, the first landing of the bastion staircase also led to a balcony; from which the headmaster or other dignitaries would address the school at assembly or at play in the quadrangles below; which also doubled up as badminton courts. Going up the bastion stairway, you can access the roof landing, or continue up to the top of the clock tower. The roof landing proceeds to an open-air walkway right around the perimeter of the main building, with the arched roof protruding out in the middle, like the sides if a pyramid. The walkway is bordered by a 3 feet high rampart/parapet; with rosette like crenels between the merlons, so if you were to stand on the verge looking out at the vista before you; you felt as if you were at the top of a castle. I know this because as a prefect, in my final year, I went up there to check on some projectile that one of the students had thrown up to the roof. Looking north, you could see for miles, over the adjacent Tiong Nam Settlement, right across to the Chow Kit Road wet market, next to Kampung Baru, the Capitol and Federal Cinemas, at the Ipoh Road and Jalan Raja Laut junction, behind Chow Kit Road, (the next road north of Haji Taib Road), and the General Hospital in Pahang Road, (which I described in Dear Sir Mr Dicom). I wished now that I had explored further, and taken a full 360 circumferential vista view. The vista from the top of the clock tower would probably have been even grander? I am not sure why the Tiong Nam Settlement was so named. The term Tiong Nam means middle south in Hokkien and could imply Chinese, as in Middle Kingdom, in the South, as in South-East Asia. In Cantonese, Toong Nam means east south; but the Tiong Nam Settlement was North-west of the Kuala Lumpur city centre, the Padang! As the Tiong Nam Settlement was a Hokkien area, the reconciliation may be found in the Cantonese expression Toong Nam Ah meaning South-East Asia. Thus the name for this otherwise Hokkien Chinese settlement was to reflect that it was a Chinese settlement of Chinese sojourners in South East Asia. As I mentioned earlier, the Cycle & Carriage compound was flanked by squatter settlements on both sides. I shall call the squatter settlement closer to the school and towards the city centre the Left Flank, when viewed from the Batu Road frontage; so the other will conversely be known as the Right Flank. The Right Flank was the locality for my memoir on Dead Dogs Ghost Spirit. Having grown up in or in close proximity to a squatter settlement, I find it incomprehensible why people have a dreaded fear of going into a squatter area for visitation or otherwise. They dread it as if it were a leper colony. They imagine a squatter settlement to be a hotbed for crime and prostitution and other illicit or illegal activities. If one were to be objective; and accept that the level of sanitation, congested tenements and rustic housing and amenities came synonymously with the abject poverty and the landless, then the only real fear was that of the Chinese triads (Chinese Secret Societies) or gangsters. Triads have always been part of any Chinese community since time immemorial. Traditional Chinese migrs overseas still caught within the web of Chinese culture and not yet Westernised, accept or accommodate the good and bad of triads as a continuation of the legends of the Outlaws of the Marshes, the Chinese equivalent of Robin Hood and his merry men. In my childhood, this outlaw triad tradition was still being cultivated, not just by the presence of the triads out there in the community, but also through the daily addiction to leen wan mun wah or Chinese comic cartoons of kung-fu fighters, (like the popular manga comic cartoons popular in
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Japan in modern times), and the Chinese kung-fu and Japanese samurai movies favoured by the local Chinese, (and screened at the local cinemas). 2 of such cinemas are the al fresco wooden Queen Cinema, across Batu Road from Tan Chee Khoon Clinic, (which itself is just around the corner from Batu Road School), and the Capitol Cinema in nearby Chow Kit. Being a local lad, a young boy of 7, a minor, the triads or the gang members in both the Left Flank and the Right Flank were not really interested in me as a target. Furthermore, I was a surrogate member by association, (particularly when I grew older, as hinted in my memoir in Life and Deaths in the Family). There were triad members in the family and in the employees in Lek San & Co, my fathers panel beating and welding workshop. In fact my father, like every other business establishment paid protection money to the local triad society. So, at large, everyone in the neighbourhood is or was either passive or active members of the triads or at least came within the umbrella of their protection. Its intrusive tentacles and reach permeated through the local community; from its base in the Tiong Nam Settlement. So, much so, that many local conflicts and issues were often negotiated and settled through mediation via the auspices of the middlemen nominated by the triad society. In Malay the Chinese gangsters are called samseng, as they are also known in Cantonese and Hokkien; it means Three Stars. The Chinese patois is very descriptive or colourful in this sense. In Cantonese there is another term Hak Seh Wooi or Black Snake Society. There were different triad groups; most of which fell within the Cantonese Wah Kei banner or the Hokkien Ang Bin Hoey banner. Within the Wah Kei you had the Loong Foo Tong or Dragon Tiger Gang. Within the Ang Bin Hoey you had the 08 Khong Puett Gang, the 108 It Khong Puett Gang, the 306 Sar Pak Luck Gang and the 21 Dhee It Gang. This was because there were various sub-Hokkien groups, the Eng Choon, Heng Hwa, Hock Chew and Hainan. The 21 gang had some Indian and Malay members. I often wondered to myself whether in the intrinsic sense Chinese triads were bastions of recividism or rather quasi-commercial organisations or guilds for illicit activities like prostitution, gambling, smuggling and trafficking of contraband goods or even the building of illegal squatter housing. Triads, at least at their upper echelons of management, have a certain code of conduct analogous to the Chivalry Code of the Medieval Knights of King Arthur. The samseng chai you meet at the coalface are and were just the foot-soldiers or mah-chai [little horses]. The real bosses or Godfathers or Tai Kohs are or were the highly respected elite businessmen or heads of the various Chinese guild or clan-houses. The different dialects or clans or guilds predominate in specific trades and professions. The Heng Hwa and Hockchew dominated hotels and spare parts and the trishaw trade and thus prostitution and narcotics. The Teochews dominated the grocery, rice and salted & pickled goods trade and thereby contraband. The Hakkas dominated tin-mining and Chinese herbal shops. The Hokkiens dominated general commerce and banking, rubber plantations, sawmills and fishing and thus illegal gambling and loan-sharking. The Hainanese dominated the coffee shops. Like the yin and yang; all components of Chinese society were and are interwoven in a tapestry of deceit and inscrutability. Years later it was confided in me that the then local Member of Parliament and local community leader, Dr Tan Chee Khoon, (whose clinic and dispensary was at the corner of Batu Road and Jalan Kilang Ais, whose family also owned a motor vehicle spare parts shop on the other side [Queens Cinema side] of Batu Road, whose nephew Tan Kee Kuang was my classmate at Batu Road School), was a Heng Hwa triad chieftain. Till today, I still find that hard to believe. Anyway, the more salient point is that Chinese triads are not street gangs as in Western countries and Chinese triads are not normally into petty street crimes, thievery, burglary or robbery. They were and are into the big perpetual business of crime. The same still applies today to Chinese
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organised crime. Unless you were or are a gambler or you frequent brothels or buy contraband or take drugs; you may never encounter them personally. That did not mean that you should unnecessarily venture into a triad stronghold if you were not a local. You might be asking for trouble. This will become clear later. Let me proceed to take you into the Left Flank. The rear door at the back of the kitchen in my house in the Cycle & Carriage compound led straight into the Left Flank. What a contrast and what a different world! You see, the Cycle & Carriage compound was gated. Therefore at the end of a business day or during Sundays and public holidays, the vast compound was isolated and quiet and empty of people, except for the 2 jagas or security guards, my family, (we lived at the Batu Road end of the compound), and 2 other families, (who lived at the rear, the Jalan Raja Laut end of the compound). Of the 2 families, one was a couple with no children, (that I know of), and so we had little dealings with them. The other was the family of one of the head mechanics for Cycle & Carriage, with 2 sons, one of who (i.e. Ah Kwan), works for my father as a welding apprentice. We nicknamed Ah Kwan Pigsy as he looked like the character of the same name in The Journey West. Ah Kwan had flappy large ears and a piggish snout of a nose. The Left Flank like the rest of Tiong Nam Settlement was mainly a residential area, except for some home industries like contract tailoring, laundry, home-cooking, coffee-shops and the more substantial village grocery, (where I bought my Chinese confectionery and condiments as described in the Dead Dogs Ghost Spirit), and a tofu factory and a rattan-cane factory. It was therefore a vibrant, bustling and thriving Chinese community. There were also a few Indians, Sikhs and mixed-race in this community. Let me first sort out any preconception that the Tiong Nam Settlement might be like insanitary slum; for these days you often read about insanitary squatter slums in the Third World. There were 2 slip-roads that went right through the Left Flank from the Batu Road end to the Jalan Raja Laut end. The one nearer to Baru Road School was a dirt road, (a quarter partially metal sealed), at the Batu Road end (1st dirt road). The 2nd, nearer to my house, was a dirt road (2nd dirt road). Alongside these dirt roads were giant monsoon drains, very large culverts, like open sewers, that would prove their worth and utility in the sanitation of the Left Flank. There were also less substantial feeder drains that fed into these giant monsoon drains. The arterial drainage network was a stroke of genius of the Colonial Masters. For when it rained, (which was almost every afternoon), and when it poured, (during the wet monsoon season, which would last for 3 months at a time), the torrential deluge would change the monsoon drains into little fast flowing rivers, strong enough to wash away dogs and cats which fell in by accident. In a sanitary sense, these monsoon drains flushed all the affluent, detritus, cadavers, (dead rats and cats, even dogs), slush and other refuse, (that might have been washed or drained into them), out to the River Gombak and eventually to the sea at Port Klang. It is true that, (intermittently, occasionally and temporarily), during a drought or dry spell, i.e. between the rains, these open monsoon drains might become stagnant, putrid and fetid and effusing redolent stench. But, thank God for the tropical rain and storms and its being a clean natural cleansing agent. Another infrastructure sanitary benefit we should be forever grateful to our Colonial Masters is the system of reticulated, chlorinated potable water. What a more burdensome habitat, these squatter settlements might have been, had this amenity not been available! Imagine all the womenfolk spending long hours toiling away just to collect water from a well or from a solitary water pump. Imagine water not being drinkable off the tap! Nonetheless, because the reticulated water was levied, most settlers had storage receptacles, like 44 gallon drums, to collect rainwater for free by various devices, like gutters and spouts from the roof. On rainy days, it was quite a sight, watching the settlers rushing to put out and arrange in the open as many buckets, pails, large tins and cans as possible to collect rain-water. The typical household or communal
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house, (for each house would have many families within the house), would have a concrete water-well or reservoir, (which was also fed by a tap from the reticulated water supply), as the main bath and laundry facility. It was into this reservoir that the rainwater collected was then deposited. The reservoir was cleverly housed or roomed in such a way that it is partitioned or divided into 2 areas. Thus, you have an enclosed bathroom, on the smaller side of the divide; and an open laundry, (you hand-washed of course, over a ribbed wood board), and other types of wash area, (for slaughtering chickens, washing shoes), on the adjoining or other side. When you have a bath, you would scoop a bucket of water, (from the bathroom side of the partition) and pour it over your body. You would then sit on a small wooden tang chai (a small bipod stool made from nailing 1 long plank over 2 short planks) and soap and body brush yourself. You then pour scoop-buckets of water over yourself again to complete the bath. For the early morning ritual of brushing your teeth and washing your face, (and because everyone was doing it at about the same time), the majority of the occupants of the house would each have to convey a pail of water outside, together with their wash requisites, toothbrush and paste, face towel and tongue scraper. Yes, the Chinese scraped their tongues, and many still do. It is a very healthy habit apparently, as the yellow layer on the tongue in the morning has sai quan [bacteria]. I must also mention the ever present or prevalent mosquitoes in the tropics. They are out at dusk to dawn. Only females bite you, as they need your blood to nurture their eggs. You can hear their whirring sound when they are buzzing close by you. You know that you have been bitten when you feel a sharp prick like an injection and an irresistible itch. Mosquitoes are dangerous because they are vectors for diseases like malaria and dengue fever. The mosquitoes had various ideal breeding places in the Left Flank and Right Flank, in the various rain water storage receptacles, like the 44 gallon drums, and also the stagnant pools of water in the monsoon drains and the isolated patches of swamp, in the parts of the settlement where drainage was bad. Once in a while, the town authorities would send people to spray DDT all over these 44 gallon drums, monsoon drains and stagnant pools of water, wherever they detected live mosquito larvae. Personally, I wondered whether this DDT spraying was effective, as I continued to be bitten all my life by mosquitoes in Kuala Lumpur. If there was one deficiency on the part of the sanitary authorities, it would have to be the garbage collection system. Although the night-soil men, (lower caste Indians, for no else would do this job), would come nightly, (during the middle of the night), to collect night-soil from the outtoilets located at the rear of the houses; the garbage men would only come weekly, and often fortnightly, (for the squatter settlements were lower in priority), to collect household garbage left out near the dirt access roads. Some households had metal garbage bins; but these ended up overflowing inevitably, given the volume of daily refuse. Many just dumped their household waste at their allotted spots. These propinquent rubbish piles were a nuisance in more ways than one. First the rampant rats, coming out at night, and the stray mangy dogs and cats, during the day, would rummage through the rubbish looking for edible scraps; scattering the rubbish further afield. Secondly, when strong winds blow, as a prelude to the rains or storms, the rubbish was again strewn much further afield. Thirdly you had the incessant and unsightly household flies and sand-flies and ants hovering or crawling all over the rubbish heaps. Then you had the unbearable stench and odour from rotting meat and vegetative remains and animal excrement, wafting in the appropinquity. The Chinese have a strange selfish territorial idea of belonging or not belonging or concept of responsibility or blame. Thus a householder would be diligently sweeping, (with a reedbrush sweep; reeds or rattan strips bundled up), the environs that comprised her patch; but
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somehow when it got to this invisible demarcation boundary, she stopped sweeping, (even though it might just be an open area geographically adjacent to her house). So you would have certain open areas of no-mans land that nobody claimed or accepted responsibility for. These included the areas where rubbish piles were awaiting the garbage-men, the dirt access roads and the immediate vicinity of the out-toilets. The out-toilets, or should I say out-latrines as there was no water-closet, were always located a safe stench-distance away from the dwellings. The out-latrines are raised wooden cubicles on a concrete slab-base; with a flight of 3 steps leading up to the latrine. The latrine consists of a drop hole and 2 starting blocks to squat on. Yes, squat on, not sit on! If you do not know how to squat, you may have a practical problem! Furthermore, it is more practical going to the latrine in a sarong; as you can just you roll up the sarong to your torso. Pants require adept manoeuvring. Dropping the bombs of excrement (night soil) into the night pot require potty training from young. Also brushing or fanning off the hovering blowflies, iridescent coloured flies bigger than household flies, require further adeptness. These days in Malaysia you have the modern flush toilet version of these starting blocks squat toilet as well as the modern Western sit-on flush toilet, except that instead of a side bidet like the French have, you have hand-controlled nozzle hose to rinse your anus before finishing off with toilet tissue. There would also be a mini handbasin to wash your hands. This is one good influence of the Islamic culture. Another example of this are the rows of hand-basins in the dining area of local restaurants for customers to wash their hands before the meal; for many locals still eat with their hands. Apparently, the food tastes better, when you eat with your hands! Within each householders patch of responsibility, any dry rubbish swept and piled up are burned, like little funeral pyres for dead animals. On a good burning sort of day the Left Flank would end up all smoky and a nuisance to those who have just hung out their laundry to dry. So much, for good neighbourhood spirit and common courtesy! Neighbours might become boisterously embroiled in unnecessary and avoidable altercations. Silly pathetic defences are proffered I am burning the rubbish on my land. Blame the wind for blowing the smoke in your direction. Get the drift? That was just a pun! Luckily those were the days before takeaway plastic bags; and therefore most garbage items are and were bio-degradable. If this type of local burning were to be carried out these days, can you imagine the toxic pollution from the burning of plastic bags? Can you imagine the monsoon drains or the rubbish piles full of plastic bags? As you can see, the term squalor when applied to the Left Flank or the other parts of Tiong Nam Settlement must only be restricted to these so-called public areas, which no one claimed responsibility for, and the ubiquitous rubbish piles or strewn litter thereabout. There were some public areas that were communal areas, like the village square, or squares for there were a few of them about, and the dhoby ghauts, where some in the community did their laundry to save money, (as the water is taken from a public pump or tap that is not subject to water levy). These communal areas that were subject to a somewhat communal responsibility were not unkempt but rather relatively clean. I think the de facto responsibility fell on the proprietors of the adjacent coffee-shops to these communal areas, or by delegation their hawker subtenants. They had good economic reasons to keep their shop precincts clean, so as not to lose customers. The Tiong Nam Settlement with its wooden houses and iron roofs, (a small minority still had native thatched attap [a type of tropical palm frond] roofs), is no concrete jungle. However it is not exactly verdant like the Malay Kampung Baru directly across the road from Batu Road. However there were coconut trees, rain trees, papaya trees and other types of tropical trees
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sporadically found all over the Left Flank and the Right Flank. Immediately behind my house there were a couple of guava trees and a tropical cherry tree. The guava wood was very good for making catapults. There is a tamarind tree located at the rear of the Right Flank just outside the joss stick factory there. The tamarind pod fruit pulp provided free sweet and sour candy; if you have an inclination for sweet and sour things. I have written about the rain tree located within the Cycle & Carriage compound in the Hainanese Chicken Rice Hawker. There was also a raintree located outside the coffee shop at the communal square at the Batu Road end of the 2 nd dirt road through the Left Flank (the front coffee shop). I cannot identify the tree located outside the coffee shop at the communal square at the Jalan Raja Laut end of the 2nd dirt road through the Left Flank (the back coffee shop). I think it was probably an Angsana tree as from memory, it blossomed and showered yellow flowers. The arbour and shade provided by these trees, allowed chairs and tables to be placed outside the respective coffee shops, so that the patrons could indulge in their beverages or meals al fresco, providing respite from the tropical heat and humidity. Also for night dining, particularly supper, between 10 pm to 3am, and this was a favourite past time in the tropics, it was cool and refreshing outside in the night breeze. I often frequented the front coffee shop for supper or a midnight snack; for there was a popular Cantonese wan ton dumplings, [cloud swallowing in Cantonese] noodle shop there. The term wan ton is misleading as the most popular dish there was the dry tossed noodle in lard and thick honey soya sauce with barbecued pork slices and blanched choy sum [Chinese spinach]. At night, the back coffee shop, being more isolated away from the authorities, and frequented by many of the triad members, was popular for mahjong and other forms of Chinese gambling, like pai kow [Chinese dominoes] and for drinking beer and Guinness Stout. I remember Guinness Stout well not as a beverage, even though I enjoyed it now and then later as an adult. As a young boy of 4 or 5 I was told by my 3 rd Brother Sum Chuan, that when you drink Guinness Stout you can kill a thousand warriors! Many, many years later, I was travelling through a small town in Malaysia, on one of my (pastime) frequent jaunts into the real jungle towns. I was showing my Hong Kong Chinese wife, what my childhood life was like, which was replicated or still somewhat frozen in time in some of these isolated very small rural towns. I came across a poster emblazoned with this selling point of Guinness Stout, which read Guinness Stout - Kill a thousand worries. It goes to show that when you learn a new language, you must learn it well, so as to be conversant with its nuances. To continue with the type of vegetation found in the Tiong Nam Settlement, let me say that there were no fields or playgrounds or lawns. Whether plants just grew fortuitously or were intentionally planted, (for these urban settlers were not in the main interested in gardening or agronomy, their life being caught up with the more exigent pursuits of survival and making a living), you found the almost endemic hibiscus bushes and other wild tropical bushes and tall lalang grass interspersed within the settlement surrounds, away from pedestrian activity. There appeared to be some faint-hearted attempt with some households of pot-planting, although these unsightly pots were actually used powdered milk cans. The settlers were either not into aesthetics or did not believe in wasting hard earned money on ornamental pots. The common pot plants were what is locally known as the Singapore Daisy, (with yellow flowers and a crawler or ground cover, if grown on the ground) and the Japanese Rose, (a succulent and crawler with red or mauve flowers). There were the occasional shallots, grown for the stem rather than the bulb. You do not water plants in the tropics! Mother Nature attends to all the otherwise requisite chores required of gardeners in temperate or other non-tropical countries.
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It being a Chinese settlement, it was to be expected that the Tiong Nam Settlement would have essential Chinese characters; socio-demographically, culturally and habitat-wise. I have made reference to the infusion of triad activity into the community scheme earlier in this regard, and I shall go into further and more personal triad details later on. Let me now discuss Chinese housing infrastructure and design and the appurtenant spiritual and fung-shui aspects. Unlike the Malays, over in Kampung Baru, the Chinese did not normally build elevated housing, (i.e. with no ground floor and which have slatted windows throughout the entire perimeter of the elevated house), although this would have been the wise or prudent thing to do in the tropics Elevation would both to facilitate ventilation and airflow and to avoid the house being flooded during the monsoon season. The main houses that were originally built at the time of the establishment of the settlement are, and were, quite substantial wooden dwellings. The original house when first built was based on the traditional design for a 3 generation family, that is, for a household comprising of the grandparents, the children and their wives and the grandchildren. From a common front verandah, you then entered into a very large common all-purpose family/ recreational area or lounge or family hall, with two rows of bed-rooms at the side. The bedrooms have a raised wooden bed called lau pun, a foot or less above the ground. This was and is because the Chinese believe, (in terms of Chinese therapeutics), that you might get fung sup or wind, resulting in old age arthritis from the earthly vapours. Incidentally, in the case of flooding, (unless it was a severe flood), the flood level would usually be well below the raised bed-room platform. The residents would be sleeping on the platform itself, which was quite slippery because of the linoleum floor covering. Then, you would come to a dividing wall at the back of the family hall. The centre panel, of this dividing wall, between the 2 doors at the flanks, (aside the last bedroom at either flank), leading to the rear portion of the house, was where the ancestral altar and other altars were sited. It was like a centre piece having a spiritual strategic command over the familys life and proceedings. The rear portion, (behind this back-wall, and which was equally large in space as the family hall), was where the more menial, laborious, tedious and dirty household chores are curtained off and conducted. This was the servants area in the English manor sense. This was the kitchen, laundry area, bath area, family dining area; where the internal clothesline was to hang clothes in inclement weather; where you slaughtered chickens and chopped up meat and vegetables; where you hanged slaughtered ducks and chicken to dry, prior to roasting; where you indulged in women gossip that you do not want your ancestors to hear, (even though the Kitchen God was ensconced in the rear portion, but of course he was more concerned as a spirit with kitchen matters); where away from public prying eyes or sight, you had friends over for illegal gambling, (for the front door was usually left open during the day). The linoleum covered kitchen dining table was equally ideal for playing mahjong. Of course, most families, being migr did not have the requisite 3 Generations. So over time, rooms were rented out, first to relatives, then to people from the same clan or village, and then even to strangers. Sometimes you might have a family of 5 or more renting a room! With the influx of new migr or rural Chinese into Kuala Lumpur, (for all roads led to Kuala Lumpur, the place where riches were or are made), these original buildings had annexes and extra rooms added to or extensions made. Each building then looked ramshackle and weirdly and haphazardly designed, losing very much its original 3 Generations character. As an agglomeration, these ramshackle buildings ended up congested with only narrow often tapering pathways separating them; leaving only the access dirt roads and the few open public or communal areas as firebreaks.
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One Chinese New Year holiday, (I think it was the 2nd day of the New Year, when I was 10, I think), the traditional Chinese customary practice of fire crackers, (to chase away evil spirits during an auspicious celebration), started a fire, which ended up in a conflagration in the top half of the Right Flank at the Batu Road end, nearby my house, (which however was protected or sheltered by the open space of the Cycle & Carriage compound). I was out lighting fire crackers myself with my twin brother, just in close proximity to the wire fence that separated the Cycle & Carriage compound from the Right Flank. The inferno must have taken quick hold in a matter of only 5-10 minutes. It was a windy day as well. A young naked Chinese woman ran out from the squatters screaming hysterically and shocked. A neighbour quickly covered her up with a large towel or a table cloth to save her modesty. She must have just run out of her bath room in sheer panic and hysteria. Luckily she did. Time was critical and of the essence! When the fire brigade came, which was in less than half an hour, nothing could be done but to view the devastation and just hose down the smouldering wood embers and steaming roof iron sheeting. For me, it was also part of my rite of passage. It was the 1 st time that I had seen a naked woman and female genital and pubic hair! It was a revelation, to put it more than limply, if you get the pun? I am not sure what happened to the children who triggered off the conflagration. It could have been my twin brother and I! Some of our firecrackers flew across the fence to the other side, into the squatters. Imagine being lambasted by my parents, had we been the guilty parties? I suspect the culprits were playing with firecrackers in one of the narrow passageways between the tenements. Ever since that day, I have had a respectful fear of firecrackers; preferring coruscating sparklers or crepitating cracklers, flintstone like squares of incendiary, that you slide on the bitumen or cement and they start crackling and hip-hopping all over the place. You could not go past a Chinese house in the Left flank or Right Flank without noticing the ubiquitous spiritual artefacts of sorts, both outside and inside the house or in the immediate vicinity. Let me take you on a virtual tour back in time of a typical Chinese squatter house. Outside the house you will have a dollhouse like shrine with a red-colour joss-stick receptacle containing rice for you to stick joss-sticks in. This shrine is for the Tua Pek Kong or Datuk Kong, the spiritual landlord of the acreage that the house is on. On the right front wooden support post of the verandah in front of the house is a red-colour joss-stick receptacle containing rice, (just like the Tua Pek Kong shrine), either sitting on a small ledge affixed to the post, or the red-colour joss-stick receptacle was in the form of a metal tumbler and just hung from the post. This is not a shrine at such, as the joss-sticks are for Tee Kong or Heavenly Father, and his shrine is the heavenly skies above. At the front facade of the house, recessed in from the verandah, hanging above the lintel of the front entrance door, you would have a wooden plaque advertising the household or clan name in Chinese characters. Hanging from this plaque, or below it, is an octagonal wooden framed mirror, called the putt kwa [8-sided hanging artefact in Cantonese]. The wooden frame is coloured red and green in a geometrical trigram meandros, like a Taoist mandala, and at the top edge of this octagonal mirror is a small trident. It is sort of an exorcism device to ward off demons and evil. Apparently, demons cannot stand their own reflection; and if they were to fly over the putt kwa they would be speared by the trident. On the doors and various parts of the front wall, (and outside the bedroom walls inside the house; if a room belonged to a separate and unrelated sub-tenant household), are pasted paper scrolls in red coloured bamboo paper with gilded or black ancient Chinese hieroglyphics, (or is it hagiographic), These are in large or small calligraphic Chinese characters, depending on whether it is a single character or word or a slogan or protective mantra. At the middle panel of the partition wall at the back of the Family Hall is the choe seen toei or main ancestral altar, the central piece of which is an altar table usually made of expensive
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rosewood, (if the household can afford it), otherwise it would be painted cheap local tropical timber. It is a spiritual sanctuary of different components. In the hollow beneath the altar table, (which is of sideboard width and with elongated legs of about a metre or more in length), is the Tei Chi Koong, the house god, with its respective red-colour joss-stick receptacle containing rice. On the altar table, you may have more than one red-colour joss-stick receptacle containing rice, the one in the middle being much larger than the others. You may also have porcelain or wooden idols of Taoist Immortals or have Kwan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy (the Chinese representation of the Buddhist Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara). In a small number of households you may have the Smiling (Rotund) Buddha representing Matreiya Buddha, the future Buddha or Buddha in the next aeon or kalpa. On the wall at the centre and above the altar table is the framed paper image main deity. Usually it is just a written scroll listing out the genealogical background of the ancestors, but may include framed photographs of recently deceased parents or grandparents. In other cases depending on the cult or devotion, it might be Kwan Kung the patron or protector of the Chinese triads and businesses or Wong Tai Sin or Tin Hau and others. In the rear of the house, there is a shrine to the Choh Kwan or kitchen god. This is not a comprehensive survey of the various Chinese spiritual deities or demi-gods or gods; but it does convey a good general impression of the pantheon of deities that the Chinese say their prayers or make incantations, invocations or intercessions to. Once you go past the phantasmagoria, (as I will attempt to explain why later), the Chinese do not worship any gods, (as in the Greek and Roman gods in Pantheism), as such nor is theirs a religious faith in the true sense of a Creator God, who created the world or humans, (as in the Abramaic faiths). It is somewhat more like a nebulous spiritual relationship that partakes in a sort of dealing with superstitions, animistic beliefs, ancestral primitive traditions, the occult and necromancy or the nether-world and eschatology and the spirits and demons. It is about trying to come to terms with relating to the living and the dead and of going with the Tao and accepting ones destiny or karma and of professing filial piety. It is not something dogmatic in doctrine or has any theological foundation or one requiring strict compliance as in soteriology, as a matter of eternal salvation or condemnation. It is a personal choice of doing more or doing less or doing nothing at all. It is not mandatory, such that if you do not get involved you might be ostracized by your fellow Chinese. There is no incrimination of any sort. There is no proselytising or conversely apostasy. You can grow into it just as easy as you can grow out of it. It is a matter of personal choice and an exercise of free-will. You do what brings you spiritual comfort or do what allays your spiritual fears. The Chinese are atheist in the strict sense of that word. They light josssticks by way of appeasement or propitiation to the Tua Pek Kong, Tei Chi Koong, Choh Kwan, as locality spirits, for being (or as invitees) in their spiritual territory. They light josssticks by way of invocation to Tee Kong, not at a personal level but by way of supplications globally or at large, akin or as if to Mother Nature for fortuitous weather or living conditions. They light joss sticks by way of veneration and filial piety to the Choe Seen or ancestral spirits. They light josssticks by way of laudation and intercession to the Taoist Immortals and similarly to Kwan Kung Wong Tai Sin or Tin Hau seeking protection or relief and promising beneficence or some other good deed in return. If what is sought by the intercession eventuates or is fulfilled then one is obliged to carry out the quid pro quo or the other end of the bargain. A simple example is to kai how, that is be vegetarian for a year; or for life, in the case of a bigger request like if ones child gets well from cancer.
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There are 8 Taoist Immortals. They were in fact worldly beings i.e. human beings in Chinese history that apparently gained immortality; and were deified as immortal spirits. Kwan Kung was in terms of Chinese legend, a famous general and famous for his military strategies; thus his popularity as a deity for triads and businessmen. Wong Tai Sin and Tin Hau rather being local spirits are Guardian Spirit of the Poor and Guardian Spirit of Fishermen respectively. Tin Hau is a female deity popular in particular with coastal Southern Chinese like the Hockchew, Hokkien, Henghua, Hockchia, Teochew, Hocklo and Hainan dialects. She is also known as Matsu or Heavenly Queen. The Hokkiens and related dialects in Malaysia also pray to Kow Ong Yah or the Nine Emperor Gods, said to be the nine sons of the Heavenly Queen. The Heavenly Queen and the Nine Emperor Gods are represented by the North Star and the Big Dipper. Notice the significance of this constellation to fishermen! Given their maritime heritage, the Hokkiens and related dialects in Malaysia also make devotions to Admiral Zhen He or Cheng Ho [in Hokkien], (the famous Chinese global explorer, claimed to have discovered America before Columbus), and deified as Sum Poh Kong or Sah Po Kong [The 3 Treasures Lord]. It is rumoured that the term Sinbad the Sailor comes from Sah Po the Sailor. Admiral Zhen He was a Moslem Chinese Eunuch. It is speculated that the 3 Treasures is a reference to his umbilical cord, scrotum and foreskin; that as a eunuch he would wanted preserved, so that he could be buried whole when he died. With the advent of Buddhism, Tin Hau is often taken as synonymous with Kwan Yin. However, Kwan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy (Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara), is in fact in a different category altogether. You light josssticks to her seeking her protection, to be her protg. You seek redemption of bad karma, but not in the sense of redemption of sins, as there is no sin in Buddhism. Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara is akin to a Christian saint, in a loose sense. She had attained Nivarna and therefore do not suffer rebirths in Samsara anymore; but she had vowed to remain in this world of Samsara to guide worldly beings to, (speaking metaphorically), the other shore. She had and has acquired infinite merits. In becoming her protg, you are asking her to transfer some of her infinite merits in remise rather than in remission of your bad karma or karmic residue. In other words you are asking her to assume your bad karma. She will suffer in your stead. This concept can be ridiculous in the case of a person who is not perspicacious enough to understand that by the same token he or she has to repent and turn into a new leaf. Otherwise it would be a case of reductio ad absurdum! In Buddhist Canon Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara is not a she but a he; but because in terms of Chinese values, mercy and compassion are a feminine trait, in the yin and yang of things, he has been portrayed as a she. Like Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva Kshitigarbha or Tei Chong Wong is in the nether world or Hell helping and guiding and granting remise or transference of merits to beings [souls] suffering in Hell. The fact that Kwan Kung is the patron saint or deity of the Chinese triads is a reason why Chinese triads have elaborate, arcane, mysterious and somewhat surreptitious rituals and initiation and propitiation ceremonies, usually conducted by a Taoist shaman. I have no knowledge of the exact nature and procedural details of these rituals or ceremonies, not having being privy to them at any time in my life. However, by word of mouth or hearsay, their existence is trite, common knowledge. Apparently settlements of blood feuds or vendettas and territorial disputes, albeit after a spate of bloody warfare, are made by rival gangs through a formal truce or pact or otherwise, under or through the auspices of a Kwan Kung ceremony. When you are outside the jurisdiction of the de jure authorities and the law, you need to have a mutually recognised de facto or spiritual authority in this case to maintain law and order in the secret subterranean world of triad and illicit activity. In that sense, the traditional Chinese triads of my childhood were like a cross between the Mafia, the Freemasons & the Opus Dei.
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Personally, I have heard of some details of an initiation ceremony, which involved cutting the neck of cockerel and the smearing of its blood on the initiate, and the swearing of an oath by the drinking of rice wine to Kwan Kung. The oath includes the swearing of loyalty and allegiance and affirmation to comply with the Ancient Chivalry Code, (of the 18 Lor Hon or the legendary 18 Buddhist Kung-fu Warriors), comprising within it, elements of debt, honour and integrity. I should mention that the possible source of the names for the 08 and 108 Gangs might be the Buddhist Noble 8-Fold Path and the 108-beaded Buddhist meditation rosary. The Chinese triad members do not nick the palm of their hands to mix blood to become blood-brothers, like what you see in Cowboy and Indian movies. The Chinese are neither cowboys nor Red Indians. I shall not speculate further on triad arcane ceremonies. What is of more public knowledge is the patois or lingo or hand signals and other mannerisms or etiquette that triad members used in dealings with each other. Triad members could identify each other or an associated group by the way you held your fingers when you smoke or the number of times you tapped a cigarette on the table before lighting up and the way you nonchalantly mislaid the requisite number of matches on the table as an identifier. There might be a certain opening catchphrase for the month when you proffered salutary greetings. The triad members had or have a penchant for agglutinating words, to come up with a catch phrase, as an aphorism that had a certain unique or quaint meaning, sort of like slang. It did not help that the lingua franca between the different dialect groups was Cantonese. For the Cantonese dialect have 8 or more tones for each phonetic sound. This means you end up with an alliterated language where in one sentence, an untrained ear would hear the same sound 10 or more times. The dilemma is that in fact there are possibly 6 or more different words in relation to that same one phonetic sound! When there was a curfew or war in the sense that rival gangs can no longer enter each others territory, the aphorism used is kai yim or no salt diet. For salt gives taste to food and is used here as meaning life and its relationship. So, kai yim means that there is no longer a living relationship. When there was a kai yim, one needed to be extra careful and be on the full alert, as this was a time of open warfare. No, the Chinese triads are not like the Italian Mafia, shooting each other on sight or in surreptitious stealth, (springing up for a machine gun slaughter Al Capone style, by underhanded surprise). Triad gangland fights were organised rumbles scheduled in advance at a nominated time and place. Usually this was between 9pm and midnight at one of the crossboundary back lanes. One common battleground was the back lane behind the shophouses on both sides of Batu Road. No guns were used but rather parangs or machetes, axes, bicycle or motorcycle chains or short handle scythes. These weapons would normally maim but could often be fatal nonetheless. Often these scheduled rumbles got cancelled or postponed because an informer had alerted the Red Berets, the Police Special Triad Squad. When you see the Red Berets around, you know that there might be an impending rumble. Most of the residents are unlikely to inform. Most would, I think, sit on the fence, and prevaricate when questioned by the Red Berets. Triad warfare or killings are not usually indiscriminating. The kai yim and a rumble is restricted to the participating triad members and not innocent outsiders. As a local, you got wind of a rumble and just avoided the proposed battleground. If you lived nearby, you just shut your door and windows and pretended that nothing was happening or had happened. One night, my twin brother, Albert, and our foster-brother Victor, were sandwiched in the middle of a rumble, as the 2 opposing gangs were approaching, (in the moonlit darkness), at Batu Lane, (behind the Batu Road shophouse, Lim Clinic, next to Yuen Co., where Victor lived upstairs
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above the clinic). They were at the wrong place at the wrong time and were mistaken by both gangs as to be of or from the other side. They got chased, all the way to the flight of steps leading to Victors upstairs house. Albert recounted that he missed being slashed in the legs by a parang by a matter of a few inches. The banter is still repeated today of Albert saying to Victor Why did you not wait for me? and Victors reply When in danger, every man for himself! Unlike kai yim gangland warfare, the job specific or person specific targeted poh sou i.e. retribution or assassination, takes place by ambush or stealth. My 1 st and most poignant and dramatic experience or recollection of a triad gangland assassination or killing was when I was about 5 years old. It was after dinner and Aunty, the family cook and servant, had long finished cleaning up the kitchen. I was chasing cicaks [geckos in Malay] crawling on the wall and ceiling and Aunty was directing us children to get ready for bed. Suddenly we heard the howling screams of someone hollering in anguished pain, and in total fear, in the Malay language, repeatedly Mak! Mak! Tolong! Kena Bunoh! [Mother! Mother! Help! They are killing me!]. This was against a background noise of skirmish and melee, of scores of running and shuffling feet. In the quiet of the night, noise travelled very far, and from the running and shuffling, one could deduce that what was taking place was occurring on the 2 nd dirt road through the Left Flank, directly in front of the squatter house at the back of our house. It was an indescribable, horrific and extremely traumatic experience, to hear the cries for help from a dying man being slaughtered or machete to death. His physical pain and mental fears of impending inevitable death somehow registered in the hopeless urgency and emotional intensity of his pleas. The assailants were obviously impercipient to his pleas for life. We all roughly knew who the victim was. There was a mixed-Eurasian family in one of the shared housing directly across the 2nd dirt road from the squatter house at the back of our house. The young man, the scion of this Eurasian family, a minority in a Chinese settlement, must have committed a very serious capital offence to have been assassinated by the triads. Such was the indoctrinated rule or procedure in a triad dominated Chinese culture that everyone in the Left Flank, including my parents, all were blind and deaf and silent to this killing of the Eurasian lad. Like the 3 Monkeys in Buddhist lore, we saw no evil, we heard no evil and we spoke no evil! It is enough for me to say that I had recurrent nightmares of this experience until we moved away from the Cycle & Carriage compound. Many, many years later, on a trip to Hawaii, I sighted geckos in the hotel room balcony; and my memories flooded back to that fateful night when the Eurasian lad was assassinated. And, again, many years after Hawaii, one early dawn, when my wife Josephine and I and our safari guide were on the highway to a safari park, east of Durban, we came across a road carnage that must have just occurred less than hour before. There were blood and human bodily parts strewn over the highway - heads, limbs and torsos and inner parts! Nearby, you could see the police vehicles, ambulances, with sirens wailing, and the totally wrecked local village mini-bus and the still intact sugar-train a long haul sugar cane truck. The highly stacked and wide berth sugar-train must have decapitated both the mini-bus as well as its passengers! My mind just flashed back to what might have happened to the Eurasian lad, being slashed and chopped like a mangy rabid dog! My second, albeit an indirect, triad assassination experience came 2 or 3 years later. Ah Tee was a neighbour 4 years older than me. His parents and his 2 younger brothers and he, together with 3 or 4 other families lived the squatter house at the back of our house, (described in the Eurasian killing above). Ah Tees ignominious claim to fame or notoriety was that as a triad mah chai he assassinated the wrong man. He was only 14! Imagine killing an innocent man, instead of the targeted intended victim? What can you say of Ah Tee? Such a man is dangerous? Yet I
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have an indirect close association with this dangerous man through his youngest brother Ah Peeh, (who was 2 years younger than me). From the time I first started walking to Batu Road School, at the age of 6+, I have known Ah Peeh. He was a thin, emaciated, doleful and glum young boy of 4+ then. He was normally taciturn, probably from some slight mental retardation, or from his general ill health. He always had a runny nose and was always coughing. His face and skin colour was sallow and insipid; probably suffering from malaria or hepatitis. I do not really know. We became friends for about 3 years. He never got any better. Then one day, the 1 st day of the start of a new school term and academic year, I never saw Ah Peeh again. I never asked nor did I bother to investigate why. You see, I used to give half my pocket money to this poor kid called Ah Peeh. I just took pity on him, for who knows why? However, my parents never knew that I had given my pocket money away. So, I was not about to reveal anything. The only other person who knew was my twin brother Albert. Years later, when I came back from Australia to Kuala Lumpur to visit family, I ran into Ah Tee one night at Chow Kit Road. He recognised me before I recognised him. He asked me whether I was one of the Lek San twins. I confirmed I was. He said he was Ah Tee and asked whether I remembered him. I had to say I did, even if I did not. For, you can tell a triad member from his manner and expression. He said he knew of me from his youngest brother Ah Peeh. I was not sure how Ah Tee could have recognised me though. It occurred to me that in the daily walk to school I had to pass through a walkway between a woodpile of rubber firewood at the rear of my house and the 2 windows of the side wall of Ah Tees house. All those years, Ah Tee must have been observing me through his window as I walked past. He told me that he had been released from juvenile penitentiary and was now a tai koh or big brother, but he did not say which triad gang. He asked me what I was doing. I told him that I was at University in Australia. He was very impressed by and regaled in this fact, that the Tiong Nam Settlement triads were even represented in Australia. What could I say? He told me to call him up if anyone gave me trouble, for he was my tai koh! What else could I say but obsequiously say, thank you. My parents did intervened in one attempted assassination or it might have been a furphy or bluff; just a pretext or a warning call. One day, during lunch break, on a working day, some local triad members came calling on Ah Fong, (one of my fathers employees). Ah Fong was not from the Tiong Nam Settlement but lived in Setapak, a village north-east of Kuala Lumpur. I think triad civility required that the would-be assailants had to get permission from my father, before they could carry out their dirty deed in our house. After all, father was under their protective umbrella. What ever it was, there was a lengthy back-room secret discussion; the outcome of which were lots of smiling faces and later Ah Fong coming out of hiding, (wherever that might have been). I thought I knew all the secret places. I suspect a fellow worker might have temporarily put him in the roof attic; but I am only speculating. When I was much older, and already a student at Victoria Institution, I often followed my 6 th Maternal Uncle, on his rounds as a triad bagman, during my school term holidays. I was having free lunch with him one day at a coffee shop, (about 3 doors down from the Lim Clinic) where Victor lived upstairs), when some triad members came running from the kitchen with machetes heading towards a customer sitting at one of the front tables. Quick as a weasel, that targeted customer rose and sprinted away, fast as lightning! A year or two after my mothers death, an extenuated assassination attempt was made on my father, outside a Chinese grocery shop, somewhere near the junction of Jalan Raja Laut and Haji Taib Road. My father was just about to get into his car when a triad member rushed at him with a wooden cudgel with a nail spike and spiked him on the right shoulder and then ran away. We never got to found out who contracted the triad to do this to him. We speculated that it might
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have been one of the piew wooi club members, chasing for payment of my deceased mothers tontine debts [refer to my memoirs in Life and Deaths in the Family]. Anyway Albert and I contacted Ah Siew, Victors cousin brother, to make some discrete enquiries. How could my father have been attacked in our own triad home territory? It was later established that that the attack had not been officially sanctioned. Apparently the person who contracted the assault was also under the same triad umbrella, so what was done was a private arrangement to cause minimal harm. We suspected a lady, a piew wooi tao to be responsible. She was a lady, who lived nearby at Ipoh Road, and whose eldest son was a god-son of my mothers. The mishap was quietly settled behind the scenes. I do not know the full details. My father probably received a discount in terms of protection money. Ah Siew came to my assistance again in the 1990s. I had to secure his assistance as a bouncer or strongman when, as Chief Operating Officer of Idris Hydraulics, I had to resort to self-help to repossess a subsidiary company called East Coast Electronics. The purchaser had not paid up the purchase price, after having taken possession and management of that company for over a year. The corporate raid was successful but unfortunately Ah Siew suffered a stroke and cerebral haemorrhage at the coffee shop behind Chow Kit Road, (our childhood hunting ground, which we adjourned to with the gang to celebrate). He suffered the stroke midway to describing, (to the rest of the gang that were not there at the corporate raiding of), that mornings events. He was particularly emotionally hyped up; describing how I was like Chow Yong Fatt in the Chinese triad movies. He is, without saying, sadly missed, not just because he died helping me, but because he was an intimate brother, more ways than one. My working knowledge of triad diplomacy or procedures also came in handy when I was dealing with Idris Hydraulicss subsidiary Aokam in Sabah State in East Malaysia. Aokam owned the Sagisan tropical logging concessions, around Keningau town, which were plagued by illegal logging. In dealing with the triads involved in the illegal logging, direct confrontation was inadvisable. When you see how insouciant some of the triad members are, ready and on-call for warfare, you might somewhat be mistaken, (from their lackadaisical or nonchalant attitude), that they might be unconcerned about perdition. I do not agree. In my opinion; they all fear death and the stoic fortitude is all a show. Italian Mafia and American Black gangsters, (that you see in Western movies), like to strut their stuff, wear fancy clothes, exhibit their diamond and gold jewellery and drive around in fancy extended limousines, and flaunt their status. However the Chinese triad members of my childhood were not like that. The one major thing they feared was to lose face or to lose their honour. Honour in this sense, boiled down to whether or not you are seen to be a coward or that you are unable to keep promises or whether as protectors or suppliers of prostitution, drugs or contraband or even as assailants, you were ineffectual, i.e. all bragging but no substance. Part of this facade of toughness took the form of being foul-mouthed, having tattoos, having scars, having calloused hands, or being prepared to risk everything at gambling; anything that conveyed daring. Another feature was the courage to confront strangers to the Left Flank or Right Flank to exert territorial suzerainty. The triads could at short notice galvanise the troops to protect their turf. There are certain banal or trite words or phrases that cropped up all the time in triad lingo or patois. Phrases like hung meh yeh loh? or walk what road? meaning what gang do you belong to?; yow see mun mun king meaning if there is a problem let us go through the issues step by step; pei meen meaning give face and tai-kah choot lei wan sik meaning we all come out to seek a living, (a very good plea to be excused from ones accidental transgression, on the grounds that you did what you did, like parking your peripatetic vendor cart, in the triads
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territorial jurisdiction, without first paying protection money). Be on guard when you hear mow lun yung meaning useless prick or lun see, lun yong which means braggart or narcissist. If you get called either of this, be prepared to run away quick smart. Lun see, lun yong in Chinese means you act like a prick, in fact you are a shit prick. When I was very young; a trite profanity was tiew lei loh mow keh chow fah hai or fk yr m-thers sm--lly c--t. This phrase came up even when friends were talking to friends in casual conversation! Imagine that! Over the years, efforts of euphemism to mollify this profanity had this phrase reduced to - tiew lei loh mow hai; then later - tiew lei loh mow; and later - tiew lei or f--k y-u; then finally lei pei yun tiew get f--ked. So, does that evidence that triad members can, over time, and exposure to common civics, get more mellow and urbane? Let me guide you, back in time, as to the rules of engagement, (as regards triads), in the squatter settlement. The 1st rule was never unnecessarily venture into a triad area, unless you were a local resident or visiting relatives or friends. The 2nd rule was when you have to, enter in broad daylight and during working hours; and when you do, walk with a sense of purpose, do what you have to do and exit; do not jay-walk and act like you were prying; triads do not like prying eyes. The 3rd rule is when you are accosted or confronted by triad members, (unless you are a Buddhist monk or a Catholic priest), remember to act humbly and be self-deprecating and apologetic. These triad members are easily galvanised when you react aggressively so as to cause them to lose face and therefore would take consequential action to save face. It is all a question of face. Do not besmirch their honour. Do not show disrespect. Show affectation! You are a stranger and therefore suspect. Act so as to allay any fears they might have and to show that you are a genuine harmless passer-by. I must relate the experience of my best friend at university, David, a Hakka, who is from Sabah, and who cannot speak Hokkien or Cantonese. When David came to visit me in Kuala Lumpur, I took him out for late supper one night, at a Hokkien Mee hawker stall, (at the high-rise low cost housing, opposite the General Hospital in Pahang Road). After supper, while I was paying the bill, and talking to the owner, (who I had known for many years, as her Hokkien Mee stall used to be at the rear of Yuen Co. in Batu Road), David wandered off to my car parked nearby, (about 30 paces away). In that short period of time, David was politely accosted by triad gangsters. He was asked whether he had a light to light up the triad members cigarettes - yow for mah? Then whether he could pong mong - help and to tan kei kow suei koh lei (speaking allegorically), give us some money. Poor David - he was being extorted! He was petrified! I got to my car just in time, saw what was going on, and said to the 2 triad members Ngoh keh pang yow lei keh! Chi kei yan. [He is my friend! He is with me]. I exchanged salutary greetings and that was the end of the matter. We can all afford to laugh or even be cynical in retrospect; but you can see why, the local triads were, in an ideally rustic sense, Arcadians of the Chinese 18 Lor Hon tradition or its essence in the Tiong Nam Settlement. The Chinese, whether triad members or not, being Chinese, are typically gregarious, hardworking, resilient, pragmatic (always improvising and resourceful rather than creative or innovative), mercantile and risk-inclined (always aspiring to be better, usually in terms of fiscal wealth; and prepared to gamble), altruistic (in the sense of filial piety and providing for dependents, albeit, in a clannish, family sense or a parochial sense or in terms of a wider ambit, a Chinese nationalistic sense), loyal and patriotic (albeit in a selfish restrictive racial sense as with their idea of altruism) and most of all nebulously religious, in the amalgamated sense of ancestral worship, Animism, Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism and even Christianity. When I now reflect back on my childhood, (and with the benefit of retrospective hindsight), I can now see that, (given the level of education of the settlers), nobody that I was acquainted with as a child, including Aunty and my parents, actually knew anything, (beyond superficiality), about
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Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism and Christianity. They were, simply put, simple-minded folks with a fear of spirits and demons and the spiritual world; a spiritual world that sort of co-existed with and alongside the living, but also pertained to the beyond after death; where everyones soul went for mandatory perdition to sort out whatever retribution to be expected from ones karmic consequences. There was or were no God or Gods to provide salvation or redemption or forgiveness. It was simply cause and effect or reap what you sow. These character traits, whether genetically ingrained or not, have provided the alchemy that has enabled any critical mass of Chinese to thrive, prosper and succeed in any environment or circumstances. Every different group of Chinese Diaspora anywhere will generate its own melange of similar Chinese irrepressible human spirits and demons i.e. the Chinese moon will always be replicated, with its bright side and its dark side. The Chinese are gregarious and hardworking and resourceful like worker ants. They are not normally individualistic minded. Being socially gregarious, and growing up in an extended family or clan situation; and in many cases, growing up, sleeping, clustered up, with 4-5 others in the same bedroom, the Chinese felt uncomfortable with solitude or with being alone. They would not eat or drink alone, if they could help it. They would not even go to a massage parlour or a brothel or a gambling den alone! There was no joy in enjoyment unless you shared it with family or a group of friends. So there was no concept of parents going out to have a romantic dinner alone and have somebody babysit the children. The whole family would go out en masse together; whether it be for weddings or otherwise. It was the same with holidays; although it was unusual to talk or speak of holidays in my childhood; as nobody took or went on holidays. People might go back to their hometowns during Chinese New Year or to visit sick relatives, but no one described these visits as holidays. In any case, when holidays became fashionable later in life, it was nevertheless not a holiday unless it is or was with the family, and even better still, with a group of families. There was no concept of a honeymoon. When my youngest sister Cherry, 3rd Sister, that is her rank, got married, she was accompanied by 2nd Sister Jenny and 4th Brother, that is me, and also Baby, that is Jason, the youngest child, and therefore, has or had no specific rank. No, I have not explained it very well; or perhaps I am only revealing one half of the epiphany; there is another side to the coin. A Chinese has no inherent sense of being an individual as an individual; he sees himself as an individual within a family; without the family he is not himself. In a broad sense, the Chinese wants to be identified with a family or a clan so as to have a sense of belonging; a sense of identity; a sense of coming from somewhere. You need to be identified basically by your roots, since your spiritual foundation is one of ancestral veneration and filial piety. As an example, I will with non-Chinese identify myself as Chinese; but with Chinese I will identify myself as a Hakka; and with other Hakkas I will identify myself as a Daipu Hakka; and with Daipu Hakkas I will identify myself as from the Cheok Clan. In the mental psyche however as distinct from the metaphysical self; a Chinese person might want to seek individual glory. He might seek exultation or laudation for his self-ego. He would want to stand out in the pack, to excel, to show leadership, to be the clan chief, to be tai koh, and most of all to fly the flag for the Chinese, be a Kapitan China, like Yap Ah Loy, who founded Kuala Lumpur. I am not in anyway suggesting that this is a narcissistic trait; it is not. For as I explained earlier, you have to have an aspiration to lead, but you must not simply claim that you lead or are entitled to lead or boast that you can lead; for in the Chinese metaphysical sense you have to be humble, self-effacing and self-deprecating. The more plebeian Chinese person may however have no such ambition for greatness, status or wealth. Such a person is compelled to work hard nonetheless as a matter of pride and honour;
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he is afraid to bring shame or dishonour to the family; to make the family lose face. Such a person works hard, to show to the rest of the community that he is a filial son and a filial parent; that he is not a laggard, an idler, a bum, or otherwise lazy and indolent, so as to be either a useless man or an idiot. He does not wish there to be an impression that the family might be cursed. Chinese can generally tolerate profanities but they will readily take offence to a malediction like Hum Kah Chan meaning Cursed for Generations. I repeat, Chinese fear or dread spirits and curses; they do not therefore fear God. They simply cannot understand the concept of a Creator God. It is very hard to comprehend Chinese logic. In a Taoist sort of way, the reply would be that, if God exists, why would he want to create anything; does he not have anything better to do? Also, why would his creation be imperfect? Why are there good and bad? If he cannot create perfect things he cannot be a God. He does not deserve to be a God! No, there is no God; just humans and worldly things and spiritual things; just yin and yang. So, the individual mental psyche of the Chinese is not God-inspired; but rather the Chinese are inspired to excel for individual glory or compelled not to bring shame or dishonour. Both these compulsive forces have the effect of propelling the Chinese of my childhood to be industrious and to have a propensity for money-making or to be money-minded. Following from their gregariousness and industriousness, as discussed above, it therefore appears so incongruous that the Chinese of my childhood did not know how to be truly expressively happy! I am not suggesting that the Chinese are or were a morbid, morose, moribund lot. They are as we know social creatures and spend a lot of time, working and eating, and in the kitchen and gambling, so they must be hearty and have a sense of being. No, what I am saying is that their joy, gladness and happiness are stifled, repressed, staid and controlled and composed. It is stoic and inscrutable, sort of stiff-collared and dignified; like joy pregnant in expectancy, but there is no giving birth. The Chinese are outright unsentimental and prudish. How can I illustrate my point? Take the Greeks, Italians, Spanish and the Irish, and their gusto, zest and relish for life. These Latinos are fiery, sentimental, temperamental, emotional and passionate. They epitomise free-spirited, exuberant, unrestrained, impulsive bonhomie and joie de vivre. They might be hot-tempered and impetuous but when they laugh and love, they do so with intuitive spontaneous gay abandon; whether intoxicated by alcohol, grief or happiness. Their emotional outbursts are not tempered or fettered by expected norms of restraint or public decorum. When the music strikes they instinctively get on their feet and dance and sing; often alone and lost to the world and singing in soliloquy. There is no Chinese equivalent of a Greek kocari, tik or sirtaki or Italian polka or Spanish flamenco or Irish jig. The traditional Chinese humility of not being ostentatious or not showing off, when translated into modesty and temerity or demureness expected from the women, meant that there could never be any public expression of affection. There would be no holding hands, hugging or kissing, let alone dancing. I have never seen my parents held hands or kissed. In fact, I have never been hugged or kissed by my parents. Yet I know that they loved me deeply and intimately with all their heart, mind and soul. Whatever the reason or cause, the Chinese in my childhood did not show affection. For the Chinese lived not for themselves but for the family. There were no Latino-like socially exuberant fiestas, fetes or dancing or parties in the squatter settlement. There were only funerals or spiritual rites. On Hungry Ghosts Day, the 7th day of the 7th lunar month, the Chinese make appeasement with and proffer solace to wandering ghosts, by offering dumplings and fruit and burning funereal paper ingots and currency. On Ancestral Remembrance Day, the Chinese visit ancestral graves to venerate their ancestors, to maintain and repair tombstones, to repaint afresh faded lettering and weed the surrounds. So said celebratory events
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like weddings, moon yuet or 1st birthdays, (you are deemed to be 1 year old on the 1 st month after birth), were really mere feasts, (i.e. without music or song or dancing). These were held at local restaurants like Lee Wong Kee, next to Odeon Cinema on Batu Road or at Sek Yuen at Pudu. The 1st birthday was rather a celebration of survival; for infant death was prevalent in ancient times. There were no further birthdays celebrated until the 60 th birthday; and even then it was a celebration of having survived. So, as I said, deeply ingrained in the Chinese psyche was this fetish embroilment with life and death and destiny. Thus food was life. Having food meant you were alive. Food itself, not the joy of love or company, was the raison dtre for celebration. Food celebrated the fact of absence from hunger, famine, floods and other disasters that had plagued our Chinese ancestors since time immemorial. Being Chinese you succour on roots that tapped into thousands of years of antiquity. These same ancient roots gave the Chinese the meaning to being Chinese. The Chinese therefore celebrated life daily, by the inexplicable, incessant, addictive indulgence with food. Not just at set meal times, but all the time and anytime. There is always an excuse for the partaking of food. There is an impromptu feast when distant relatives drop by unexpectedly. In fact, the traditional salutary greeting is Sik Pow Mang Eh? or Have You Eaten Yet? and not Hello or How Are You? or Peace Be With You! There are feasts or food at weddings, at religious rites and ceremonies and at funerals. You offer food to the ancestors or ghosts or spirits and you partake after they have eaten (in the ethereal spiritual sense). You have food at every occasion, when you do well, when you do not do well, when you are doing something, when you have nothing to do. You cannot simply have company or a conversation without eating. My mother, when she was not working, was always smoking or cracking water melon seeds. Food and eating being a perpetual pastime, day and night, 24-7, consequently, as would be expected, restaurants, food stalls and stands are found everywhere. You might say that they are to be found in every nook and corner. In addition you have the ubiquitous local peripatetic and itinerant food hawkers. You could say that the food industry provided a mainstay of employment for the residents of both the Left Flank and the Right Flank. For in my childhood there were no big factories or assemblies in the town areas. So, as a menial or unskilled labourer, (if you chose not to work in rural tin mines and rubber plantations or be a fisherman or rice farmer), the employment prospects were stark in town. You had to resort to self-help and be resourceful in whatever way you can. Being a hawker or pedlar gave you a sense of proprietorship and economic freedom. Some were even family enterprises, with the wife and children assisting in the trade. Jalan Kilang Ais, the main road outside Batu Road School was a natural congregational or assembly point and a mandatory passage route for peripatetic hawkers as they traverse through their nominated routes of trade. This gigantic rain-tree lined road was like a tropical arbour and avenue, where locals often came for a bit of respite from the hot humid tropical heat. It was particularly hot around mid-day before the usual afternoon convectional rain. At noon, the 1st school shift of students would be coming out and the 2nd shift would be going in to school. Then, you have the eager parents waiting or sending off their kids. The rich kids may have chauffers in cars or trishaw riders waiting. My classmates Yu Kok Ann and Wong Kan Shen were chauffer driven. They lived in the rich end of town at the Circular Road and Ampang Road precinct; which today is known as Embassy Row. Yu Kok Anns father was the managing director of China Insurance. Wong Kan Shens father was the managing director of Malayan Banking. My classmates Tan Kee Kuang, nephew of Dr Tan Chee Koon, and Lim Kok Thye, whose father was a dentist, had trishaw riders waiting for them.
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Why did we have students from rich families from the rich suburbs in Batu Road School? You see, Batu Road School, together with Pasar Road School, at Pudu were selective schools. When Victoria Institution was originally located at High Street near the High Street Police Station, by the Klang River, before shifting to Petaling Hill in 1929, it had students in primary as well at secondary levels. In 1929 the primary school component was transferred to the new Batu Road and Pasar Road Schools. So both these 2 primary schools remained as feeder schools for the Victoria Institution. They were feeder schools in the sense that students who did well in the High School Entrance Exam, the crme de la crme, were first selected from these 2 associated primary schools, before top students from other primary schools were accepted into Victoria Institution. Therefore, there was a conscious effort from parents, not within the school captive area, to send their children to both these selective primary schools. One of my classmates Lau Chee Hong came all the way from Rawang; an hour and a half journey by bus. Strangely enough, most of the Chinese children from Tiong Nam Settlement went to the Chinese school Chung Kwok Chung Hock, next door to Batu Road School. I can partially classify Chung Kwok Chung Hock as my alma mater, as I studied there in Primary 1 & 2, straight after my Batu Road School shift. It is tautology to say Chung Kwok Chung Hock. There are lots of Chong Hwa Chung Hock Chinese schools around the country. Chong Hwa Chung Hock means Chinese Language Chinese School. Unless you specify the full address, people will not know which particular school you meant. As an aside, when my wife Josephine, from Hong Kong, came to live with me in Kuala Lumpur, she expressed astonishment as to how many roads were named Jalan Sehala. I explained that it was not a street name but a road sign that said One-Way Street. Cest la Vie. There is another point about the close relationship between Batu Road School and Victoria Institution. During the Japanese Occupation during World War II, Victoria Institution became the Japanese Military Head Command Quarters and Batu Road School became a military garrison. After the war, Victoria Institution recommenced for a short while at Batu Road School, while Victoria Institution was still being used by the returned British Authorities. When I was at school at Batu Road School there were often rumours about ghosts wandering at night in the main building. I have never had the opportunity to check this out, as the compound was locked at night. The peripatetic hawkers [hereafter simply called hawkers] assembled and waited for the horde of students, entering and leaving; for this was the main opportunity of the day to cash in. You can just imagine them, sanguine in hope, with bated breath, in hushed expectancy and promissory hope of a good days trade. There was a cut fruit, sugar cane juice and ABC or ais batu campur or ice shavings dessert hawker who was not itinerant, in that he was permanently located at the rain-tree just outside the 1st playing field throughout the day, (having set up shop early in the morning and packing up at the end of the day). He required special mention, not because of his fare, but because apparently he had 3 wives! Imagine a hawker with 3 wives! The hawkers were a motley crew. There were Indian, Malay and Chinese hawkers, so there was a variety of hawker food to choose from. There were even competitors selling the same type of food. You had the ice cream man, (who did not actually sell ice cream but rather ice-blocks of hoong tau [red bean] and sheen mooi [salted plum]), the rojak [Asian salad] man, the cendol [coconut milk dessert] man, the roti [bakery] man, the mee rebus [noodles] man, the lok tong [steamboat] man and others. Some were boisterous in advertising their food; while others were reticent. Some might give you salutary greetings while others hardly said a word. There is one important factor to be mentioned about these hawkers. Being mobile, they were not on tap i.e. they just carried the same pail of water to wash used plates, bowls, cups and glasses,
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(until the next point where they can refill the wash tub). This was obviously an insanitary practice and obviously insalubrious to health; as witnessed by the not infrequent cases of gastroenteritis and diarrhoea. The school teachers regularly advised the students to only buy food at the school canteen; but this warning was more often than not ignored. This is not to say that the school canteen food was lacking in any way. In fact, the canteen sold both hot and cold substantive restaurant type local meals like nasi lemak, laksa, mee siam, roti canai, goreng pisang, kueh lapis etc. I found out when I migrated to Australia that the school canteens there do not serve hot substantive meals; but there was or is no compulsive eating culture there either. You cannot blame the Batu Road School students who patronised the hawkers however. They were just victims of human frailty by demonstrating a weakness to the seduction of MSG-charged hawker snacks. They succumbed to their delectable tastes and the arousal of the palate and senses. You might say that, for some students, while waiting for the school bell to ring for school to end, they were already salivating and drooling in anticipation. I shall only describe my 2 favourite hawkers, the 3-wives hawker and the lok tong hawker. As mentioned earlier, the 3-wives hawker sold cut fruit, sugar cane juice and ais batu campur. His stall was like a trundle barrow like any fresh fruit wheeled barrow cart that you would see in a suburban weekend farm produce market you encounter in England, Australia or the United States. It was quite substantive like a mobile shop; with its tarpaulin A-framed roof and storage cupboard and drawers in the main body of the carriage. At one end of the cart you had a handoperated sugarcane squashing/roller machine. At the other end was a hand-operated ice-shaving machine. In the middle was a glass ice-compartment; where the cut fruit slices of papaya, pineapple, mangos, guavas, chiku [sapodillas], other seasonal tropical fruit, and Chinese pears, apples and oranges, were placed above huge ice blocks wrapped up in white cambric cotton cloth. The ais batu campur was a favourite of mine. You shaved some ice into a bowl, then filled it up with cooked red beans, jelly, creamed corn and other dessert type ingredients, then covered it up with more ice shaving, then rolled it into an ice-ball and sprinkled it with your choice of coloured sugared cordial syrup. This was a very refreshing cold icy treat on a hot tropical afternoon. A lok tong hawker sells steamboat; which means he sells satay-stick skewers of fish-balls [fish paste in ball shaped pieces], squid [dried squid soaked in food-grade alkali, so that they become succulent again], kangkung [Chinese water spinach] and fuchuk [deep fried tofu pastries]. You cook the skewers in a boiling pot of water and then dip the cooked snacks in sweet plum sauce or piquant chilli sauce as you prefer. A lok tong hawker also sells tofu toi [tofu pockets] which is deep fried tofu stuffed with diced cucumber and bean sprouts. You sprinkle honey soy and other sauces you like, and eat them like spinach pies. Unlike the 3-wives hawker, the lok tong hawker had his barrow cart hitched up to the front of his tricycle; so that the cart was on the 2 front wheels; so that he cycled his tri-cart to wherever he took his trade. Batu Road School, with its 1st playing field and 2nd playing field, and front and back gardens and shrubberies and trees in its compound, was lush and green and verdant, in contrast to the Tiong Nam Settlement. At the southern rear end of the 1st playing field was a lalang [wild long grass] area, where you could catch grasshoppers, (if you are into that sort of thing), for your pet birds. The access road at the front of the school had hibiscus hedges, with red flowers, on the 1st playing field side, and ixora hedges on the school frontage side. The ixora flowers are red and multifloriated. I used to enjoy pulling out the stamen from each floret and suckle on the honeydew. Behind the ixora hedges were hibiscus shrubs, with yellow flowers, and croton plants with its multi-coloured leafage; yellow, red, green and orange.
Batu Road School II
There were ancillary buildings besides the main building. There was an out-building at the northern end of the main building, i.e. at the boundary with Jalan Kilang Ais. This was the Primary One building. There was a tall wire fence, with a roll of barbed wire at the top, adjacent to it, at the boundary with Jalan Kilang Ais. In fact this School Fence continued all around and enclosed the entire perimeter of the school premises, including the 1st playing field and 2nd playing field. The school access road was gated. A tropical vine called Morning Glory dominated this part of the School Fence. It is a type of clematis. It has trumpet like mauve flowers, similar in shape to, but smaller than the yellow zucchini flowers found in Australian markets. The Morning Glory Vine was an ideal place to catch spiders during interval as lunch break was called. You looked for 2 leaves that are glued together by spiders web; and hopefully you might get a prized catch for your spider fighting, (a popular activity during the interval periods). Next to this Primary One Building was a Jacaranda Tree with its distinctive purple flowers. There were other trees in the school; some at the edge of the 1st playing field, just before the lalang area. There were trees also between the school labourers quarters, at the southern end of the main building, and the school canteen and indoor recreation building [for table-tennis]. There were trees all around the perimeter of the 2nd playing field, except for the eastern end, adjacent to the canteen building. Along the western edge of the 2nd playing field, alongside the entire School Fence, separating it from the Chung Kwok Chung Hock next door, was a long expanse of Canna plants; glorious with its yellow, red, crimson and variegated lily like flowers. The glossy hard black seeds from their seed pods were ideal for counting like abacus beads or as pretend money when playing card games, (for we learned to gamble young in my childhood). Between the school labourers quarters and the School Fence at the southern boundary of the school was a market garden for the school labourers. If you were allowed to do so by the Mando, the overseer of the school labourers, a visit to this market garden would reveal brinjal or aubergines, ladys fingers or okra, onions, chillies (lots of them), tomatoes and some greens. There were also cassava, papaya and dwarf coconut trees in this vicinity that the school labourers had reserved or set aside for their agronomy pursuits. Every once in a while, you might see a goat, (or a kid rather), or two tied to one or more of the coconut trees. Then they sort of disappeared for a while and then reappeared! Given this secured fenced-in vast verdant expanse of the school compound, it was hardly surprising that Batu Road School was a playground rather than a school. With all the things to do, playing hunter, catching spiders and grasshoppers, or Tarzan, climbing trees and fences, running around, playing catching and hide and seek, hopscotch and other games out in the fields or quadrangle/badminton courts or the table-tennis room, the last thing you wanted to do was to concentrate on school lessons. In contrast, it was a highly disciplined regime on the academic side of the school equation. You lined up in pairs holding hands entering the classrooms. The class had to stand and greet the teacher Good Morning Sir or Good Afternoon Sir and sing Negara-Ku, the National Anthem before lessons started. You had to stand up when spoken to or when responding to a question from the teacher and worse of all you were not allowed to talk during lessons! This was despite the fact that we sat in pairs, two to a desk, and in rows all facing the teacher at the front of the classroom. What more, the teacher carried a cane, for caning was allowed those days! How Dickensian! I was definitely not a good student; in the sense that I lacked focus or concentration.
Batu Road School II
Memory wise, I cannot remember details of my primary school lessons very well. However, I remember the extraneous or extra-curricular activities and the surrounds vividly. I remember in particular my always being impatient for the interval bell to ring. I remember clearly always, looking out through the classroom doors, (for the classrooms had many doors, like windows, to facilitate ventilation), out through the verandah, to the rain pitter-pattering against the green background, on rainy days. If it were not this engrossment or distraction or transportation into a world of wild imaginings of the external surrounds and its lure of childhood playful happiness, I might have not have had the observations and mental reverie of childhood revelling. I therefore remembered the poignant, personal events or experiences rather than the regurgitated, mundane, repetitive, boring classroom lessons. I remember well my 1st day at school. Mrs Lim the Primary One teacher asked me How did you come to school? I responded eagerly and confidently, with the smattering of newfound English language that I had acquired at the Prince of Wales Kindergarten at Princess Road I come to school by walk. Never one to suffer further embarrassment, (after being corrected), I made up my mind that I was going to master this Red Devils language. I remember the Primary One Building for an unforgettable contretemps. Due to an adventitious accident, one of my classmates, a Malay boy called Fauzi, was blinded in the left eye. A Chinese boy, (I cannot remember his name, I think it might have been Tong Seng), was handing back marked exercise books, by throwing them from the back of the classroom, by calling out the names. He called Fauzi and as he did so, Fauzi turned around and his exercise book caught him in the left eye. What a vicious, whimsical turn of fate? Thereon, Fauzi was sadly nicknamed Glass Eye. I sympathetically felt for Fauzi, in a way that only someone similarly ill-fated, and imbued with the requisite empathy, can understand. Born with a congenital heart effect, I was not active as a toddler. I was just lethargically hanging around my carer and just observing things around me. This might have been how I developed my knack for observing and contemplation. My carer, who was my 1st Sister, (in circumstances that I have no clear memory of, as I was only 3 years old, was negligent or remised). She was ironing and also tending to me. I got burned by burning charcoal or the hot iron itself, and was and am left with a permanent scar on my left cheek. I was sadly nicknamed Scar Face, amongst my other nicknames, like Wild Bull Head, but for other reasons. There were no electric irons then. You filled the cavity of an iron with hot coals to make a hot iron. 1st Sister was an adopted child. An adopted child was more like a servant girl. I was told later in life that she ran away from home; but it was possible that she could have been kicked out of home. She did not return to be part of the family again until after my mother died [refer to my memoir on Life and Deaths in the Family]. Many years later, when I was at Victoria Institution, I acquired another scar on my face, this time to the right corner of my lips. I was in the school rugby team and we were playing in a match against the Klang High School on a rainy muddy day. The ball was slippery like an eel and we were more like pigs or buffalos wallowing and sliding in the quagmire, trying to take possession of the ball. I ran for the ball and bent down to pick the rugby ball when the opposing team player decided to kick the ball. In the melee he ended up kicking my head! I was knocked unconscious and taken to hospital. When I woke up the doctor said that I appeared OK except for the stiches for a cut lip. My mother attributed my providence to Kwan Yin and the oblations she had made to that deity to protect me. I was born in the Year of the Tiger in 1950. I have had more than 10 near-death incidents since then. Maybe tigers (cats) have more than 9 lives.
Batu Road School II
There were happy primary school experiences as well, beside further bad experiences like schoolyard fights, (like charging like a bull at the twins Moon Fook and Moon Thong when they bullied my twin brother Albert), and altercations, (punching Victor, my foster-brother when he snatched something from me), or delinquencies (accidentally rubbing tiger balm on Kang Shens brothers eye; I wanted him to sniff but he swerved to avoid the balm, and then ended up being smeared on the eye). I did not have a bad reputation; if anything I was regarded as the Robin Hood or protector of the weak. In any case, if it were necessary to call for reinforcements, the scions of the Soon Co. and Yuen Co, (and there were many there as my contemporaries), were on call. As a clique or coterie of cousins and foster-brothers, we celebrated and glowered in pride when Heng Beng, (Victors cousin), sang Blue Suede Shoes by Elvis and Victor sang My Hometown by Paul Anka at school concerts and Albert won 1st prize in a Malay Language Essay Competition. Yu Kok Ann was an annual fixture at school concerts with his piano accordion. Wong Kan Shen did not win any prizes at Batu Road School, but later at Victoria Institution, he won an ignominious reputation or notoriety for slapping his girlfriend in public at the Cathay Cinema. He later became a plastic surgeon. For apparently non-academic students, Albert and I consistently won 2nd prize at the end of every academic school year. Rajinder Kumar, an Indian boy from Thamboosamy Road, (behind the Tiong Nam Settlement), consistently won 1st prize. Rajinder Kumar attended Victoria Institution as well, as did Victor, my cousin Thean Cheong, and many of my other classmates. Rajinder Kumar became a doctor and is residing in Adelaide, South Australia. I will not discuss the local teachers. I have written about my favourite local teacher in Dear Sir Mr Dicom. I had Mrs William, an English woman, in Primary 3. She was motherly, chubby and jovial, like Julie Goodwin of Master Chef Fame in Australia. She was pale-skinned, almost lilywhite; she always avoided going out into the sun, unlike the Westerners I came to meet when I went to Australia for tertiary education. I had Ms Ingersoll, a young Australian girl, in her late 20s from Perth, Western Australia, in Primary 4. She had what I then thought of as a funny accent. She was tall, athletic and strong built, Dawn Fraser like. She stood out with her sunburnt skin, freckles, and what appeared to me then as big feet and stumpy shins, like soccer legs. She was not a chatterbox like Mrs William. She was more a listener and observer. The Mando and the rest of the school labourers (the British called them peons but we gave them an honorific term - Thambi or brother) were all Tamil Indians. In a very small sense, their enclave of school labourers quarters and market garden within Batu Road School could be regarded as a Tamil Indian Settlement. You cannot help but endeared yourself to these human beings. They somehow gave that condolent impression that they lived a lugubrious life of fate and destiny, in eternal servitude to their Earthly masters or employers; and, perhaps, also to their lot in life, as dictated or entrenched by their castes. In my opinion, there is nothing in life that can be more demeaning and life-deflating as the Indian Hindu caste system. And yet, despite the incongruent sufferance and hardships that are imposed on them by the fate of caste by birthright, these Hindus remain devoutly religious and faithful in obeisance to their pantheon of Gods. This is so unlike the Chinese, who do not have a concept of a Creator God and would not in their metaphysical philosophy of the Tao, call a deity a God. In the Chinese view, deities are just deities. In main you only appease them to leave you alone. For, as a countervailing force you could implore on your ancestral spirits and the deities that you have become a protg of, to protect you and fight against bad deities or spirits.
Batu Road School II
If the Chinese were or are inscrutable, the Hindu Tamil Indians are surreptitious. You get this impression because of their obsequious, quiescent, taciturn, reticent demeanour. Any feelings of pent up resentment against the oppressive master, standing akimbo shouting orders in the Malay language, were often disguised in the spitting of chewed pinang [a type of areca palm] or commonly called betel nuts. The betel in the betel nut; refers to the betel leaf that it is chewed with, together with a paste of limestone. It is slightly narcotic, it that it stimulates the senses and is addictive. When the masticated betel nut is spat out, it has the appearance of a splatter of blood. These peons, living on the verge of poverty and their attendant poor diet, often appeared lethargic, enervated and despondent in spirit. I still picture them, toiling in the open sudorific sun, shirtless and bare-backed in their sarongs, tediously scything at the long grass to keep the fields mown and level. It was very labour intensive and back breaking having to continuously bend over to cut grass with a hand scythe. When you got near them, perspiring profusely and body odour, reeking of curry, coming out of their pores; you felt like saying halt, please have a rest, and repose in the shade. Luckily or fortuitously, these peons did not have to do any actual gardening. They did not have to water or fertilise or till or sow. Mother Nature rained down almost daily and attended to the watering; and this applied even to the peons market garden. They just had to cut and prune or sweep and clean. In fact their main task was to keep the school classrooms and toilets and the grounds clean. Maintaining the school fields and the shrubbery was only secondary. There was always a sniff of curry spices and chilli and aromatic incense around the school labourers quarters. It had a uniquely Indian ambience. I got to befriend the Mandos nephew, who I shall just call Thambi. I befriended Thambi when I discovered him working as a labourer in the car wash at the Shell Station outside the Cycle & Carriage compound, in the Right Flank. The area where the Shell Station was built over was the spot where my twin and I prayed to the Dead Dogs Ghost Spirit [refer to my memoir of the same title]. Thambi was also the Indian boy who saved my cousin Thean Cheong from drowning [refer to my memoir in The Good Old Colonial Days]. Having Thambi as a friend, allowed me to traverse the inner compound of the school labourers quarters. Thus, I got to see their religious shrines to Krishna, Shiva, Vishnu, Lakshimi, Ganesh and others in the pantheon. They did their puja or worship or devotion, at dawn and at dusk; lighting up wicks in coconut shells filled with coconut oil and burning fragrant sticks of incense. Their daily puja rituals to propitiate their gods and the lambent flames in puja bowls have become part of my spiritual psyche. Every religious festival a goat was inevitably slaughtered for sacrifice and in celebration. That was the reason for the disappearing goats! So ends my memoir of Batu Road School II days. I may have missed out on some minor details, like detailing the route to and from school. This is difficult as I took different routes, over the years, depending on the season, weather and whatever took my fancy on a particular day. Whatever it was, it entailed, in main, going past Ah Tees house, (at the rear of my house), the 2nd dirt road, and then zigzagging through, (different lanes, alleyways and, passages through the crowded tenements in), the Left Flank. The Chiuchow grocery shop where I bought my Chinese confectionery and condiments [refer to the Dead Dogs Ghost Spirit] was on the 2nd dirt road, (towards the Jalan Raja Laut end), and directly opposite the back coffee shop, (and around the corner from the Dhoby Gaut). I must mention that I learned to gamble at the age of 4, at this Chiuchow grocery shop. You paid 5c for a tikam; that is, you chose a folded slip out of a hundred, stapled on a cardboard. You unfolded your slip and it told you what your win was. Normally it read no prize and then you just got a lolly.
Batu Road School II
There was a coffee shop next to the tofu factory along the 1 st dirt road, where at one stage as a young teenager I would waste much pocket money feeding the jukebox; to listen to Cliff Richard singing Voice in the Wilderness and Outsider and Elvis singing Its Now or Never and Paul Anka singing My Hometown. Quite appropriately, My Hometown reminds me of my days as a squatter boy in the Tiong Nam Settlement. Vince Cheok Little Horse [Triad Expression for Foot Soldier] It is all peaceful all around you, there is nothing very much to do. Life is just not quite what it seems, Hard toil fills your empty dreams. People flash by at a hurried pace, watchful eye you keep of this place. Little Horse, Little Horse, What have you been up to? Big Brother is watching you, every single thing that you do. You are playing gang signs with your fingers, watching that no unwanted stranger lingers. Separating your own from the others is the game, for those outside your turf, are not the same. They do not pay your gang protection money, So you extort money from them, if they have any. Little Horse, Little Horse, What have you been up to? Big Brother is watching you, every single thing that you do. Helter-skelter, in warfare, who needs shelter? The meaning of life does not really matter. The frantic scenes around you are not reality, mere illusions, all around you that you see. Practise your kungfu or you will have difficulty, keeping supreme the invincible 306 Secret Society. Little Horse, Little Horse, What have you been up to? Big Brother is watching you, every single thing that you do. All tomorrows seem mundane and the same, no hope to rise above it all, just the same pain. So, one more time, try to keep up your self- esteem, escape into the quiet inner sanctums of your dream. Then Kwan Kung, his arcane secrets he will all reveal, answer he gives, surprise, surprise, will be so surreal! Little Horse, Little Horse, What have you been up to? Big Brother is watching you, every single thing that you do.
Batu Road School II
One day the karmic residue will all be broken, you will be spiritually freed and all forsaken. Attaining the Nivarna which you will never find, In this samsara world of ours, suffering so unkind. Your body and guts are burning, the excruciating pain! Machete slashing you all over, will we see you again? Little Horse, Little Horse, What have you been up to? Big Brother is watching you, every single thing that you do. Vince Cheok RAINING When it is raining, I think of rugby days at the Selangor Padang, being the right wing-forward for the Victoria Institution, of human buffalos wallowing in the mud, chasing, groping for the elusive slippery ball, flopping when the scrum falls or breaks, next to anchor-man Kok Leong ("Sumo"), sliding upon the missed tackle through the glorious wash, intentionally at times for the swashbuckling bravado. What a lively, vibrant, picturesque battle scene, thirty gladiators in the eastern passage of time, with a pair of imposing grand colonials as the spectators: the lady - the Shakespearian Devonian Selangor Club - to the east the Tuan - the Victorian Moorish Secretariat Building - to the west, waited upon by their faithful ubiquitous coconut palm fronds. The rugby war cries are still ringing in my ears, and the sweet succouring coconut juice is still lingering on my lips. The game is over, but the relish of childhood days, a-swash in the tropical monsoon rain remains. VINCE CHEOK
Ais Kacang or ABC (acronym for Ais Batu Campur or Shaved Ice Mix) Recipe
from 101AsianRecipes.Com
Ais Kacang or ABC is the most popular Malaysian dessert. This ice mix dessert comprise of a mound of finely shaved ice sweetened with sweet flavoured syrup such as palm sugar syrup, sarsaparilla syrup or rose syrup and evaporated milk. The shaved ice is then topped with a generous portion of jelly, palm seed (attap chee), red beans, peanuts and sweet corn. These days ABC in top restaurants is also served with diced fresh tropical fruit and flavoured ice cream (yes, durian flavoured too) and even chocolate topping . Ingredients for Ais Kacang finely shaved ice
Batu Road School II
rose syrup evaporated milk cooked red beans palm sugar syrup Toppings for Ice Kacang 1 tin creamed sweet corn 75 g jelly 80 g finely crushed roasted peanuts 45 g palm seed Sliced bananas, pineapple, watermelon and other tropical fruit Flavoured (durian as well) ice cream Ingredients to make cooked red beans for Ais Kacang 140 g red beans 330 ml water 95 g sugar 3 knotted pandan leaves Ingredients to make palm sugar syrup for Ais Kacang 180 g palm sugar 130 ml water 3 knotted pandan leaves How to cook the red beans for Ais Kacang rinse the red beans with running water soak red beans in water for two hours put the red beans, pandan leaves and water into a pot bring water to a boil lower heat and simmer until red beans start to become soft stir regularly put in sugar and cooked until red beans become mushy you will also notice the water drying up remove from heat and allow red beans to cool How to cook palm sugar syrup for Ais Kacang put the palm sugar, pandan leaves and water into a pot bring water to a boil lower heat and simmer until the syrup thickens remove from heat and let the syrup cool down
Batu Road School II
How to make Ais Kacang put a mould of finely shaved ice onto a serving bowl flavour the ice with evaporated milk, palm sugar syrup and rose syrup top with jelly, peanuts, red beans and sweet corn sometimes these toppings are put underneath the ice also top with a scoop of durian ice cream and serve immediately
Malaysian Dried Tossed BBQ Pork & Wonton Soup Noodles
Barbecued Pork (Char Siew) By Chef Kou Kim Hai, Concorde Hotel's Xin Cuisine Chinese Restaurant in K.L.: Ingredients Marinade: 1.2kg sugar 55g preserved soybean paste 55g hoi sin sauce 20g fermented bean curd (nam yue) 500ml light soya sauce 250ml dark soya sauce Red dye (optional) 1.5kg belly pork (remove skin) Method Preheat the oven to 200C. Mix the marinade ingredients. Divide pork belly into five strips (about 300g each). Marinate pork belly strips for about 3 hours. Carefully pierce the marinated pork belly strips vertically with a skewer. Roast pork belly in the oven for 30 minutes, basting the meat with the marinade every ten minutes
Wonton Soup Recipe from Rasa Malaysia Serving: 15 wontons or 3 servings of wonton soup Ingredients: 8 oz. peeled and deveined medium size shrimp 1/8 teaspoon sesame oil 1/2 teaspoon chicken bouillon powder 1/8 teaspoon fish sauce 1 small pinch of salt 3 dashes white pepper powder 1 oz yellow chives (chopped finely) 1/2 teaspoon corn starch 15 wonton wrappers
Batu Road School II
3 cups stock Salt to taste White pepper powder to taste Sesame oil to taste Stock Ingredients: 1 1/2 pound leg quarters (chicken thighs and legs) 1 1/2 pound lean pork 1 1/2 pound ham 10 cups water Method: Prepare the stock first by boiling all the ingredients in a deep stockpot. Bring it to boil and skim off the scum, that surfaces, until the stock is clear. Simmer on low heat for a couple of hours. Pour the stock through a sieve and set aside. Save the extra in a container and keep it in the fridge for future use. Put the shrimp in a small bowl and rinse them under cold running water for about 5-10 minutes. (This step makes the shrimp crunchy.) Drain the water and pat the shrimp dry with paper towels and then cut each shrimp into 3-4 pieces. Add half of the chopped yellow chives into the shrimp and marinate with the seasonings for 1 hour. Blend the shrimp well with the seasoning. Place a wonton wrapper on your palm and put about 1 teaspoon (about 3-4 pieces) of the shrimp filling in the centre of the wonton wrapper. Gather the corners of the wrapper with the other hand and give it a twist in the middle to close the wonton. Repeat until the filling is used up. Add 3 cups of stock into a medium saucepan and bring it to boil. Add the remaining chopped yellow chives into the stock soup, add salt, white pepper powder, and sesame oil to taste and set aside. Heat up another big saucepan with water. As soon as it boils, drop the wontons into the water; stirring gently so the wontons dont stick together. Continue to boil until the wontons are cooked and float to the surface. Transfer the wontons out with a hand strainer and divide them into 3 equal servings. Pour a ladleful of stock over each serving and serve immediately. Making the Cantonese Char Siew Tossed Noodles accompanied by the Wonton Soup 320gm fresh wanton noodles Chicken lard (fry the chicken fat to excrete the oil) Shallot oil (fry shallots in oil, and use the oil only, discard the shallots) Char Siew (see above) Choy Sum (Chinese Green) (blanch separately) Wanton dumplings (see above) Spring Onions
Batu Road School II
Pickled Green Chillies Wanton Soup Chicken Bones and 1 Maggi chicken cube (crumble it) [or just save time and buy ready-made Chicken Stock Soup] 1.5 litres water 2 pieces ginger (smash them) 4 cloves garlic (smash them whole with skin) Salt and pepper to taste Place chicken bones and garlic in a small pot. Slowly bring to boil. Simmer for about 1 hour until water is reduced. Add salt and pepper to taste. Discard the garlic and ginger. Wanton Mixing Sauce 3 tbsp oyster sauce 3 tbsp plum sauce 6 tbsp dark soy sauce 1 tbsp light sauce A few drops of sesame oil A bit of sugar or honey Combine all the sauce ingredients in a bowl. Use required amount of sauce to toss with the blanched wanton noodles Method Bring to boil 15 litres of water, then using a spider sieve, cook the fresh wanton noodles for 30 secs, untangling the wanton noodles as you do so. Do not overcook as they have to be al dente. Take out the wanton noodles and dip them in cold [room temperature] water, then blanched them again in the boiling for another 20secs. Then, after allowing as much water to drip off, using a spider sieve, place them on a plate or shallow serving bowl, add 1 to 2 table spoons of wanton sauce (see above), a few drops of chicken lard and shallot oil and toss or mix well with using a pair of chopsticks. To serve Top up the tossed wanton noodles (see above) with blanched choy sum, sliced char siew and diced pickled green chillies. The tossed wanton noodles will be accompanied by the wantons served separately in wanton soup, garnished with chopped spring onions, sesame oil and pepper.

Batu Road School II

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Batu Road School II