Sarawakian Local Delights : River Tortoise cooked with Pineapples

In SArawak, pineappes are commonly found in most farms and backyards of longhouses. the make a ready dish for any meal and the fruits can also be served as a snack on a hot day.



since the fruit is easily found in the backyard it becomes an ready ingredient when an Iban catches a river tortoise, which may weigh from 3 kg to even 8 kg. If a large one is caught, the Iban family can share the delicacy with their neighbours. There is seldom a question of selling such exotic meat to neigbhours in the real communal sense.

This dish of pineapples and river tortoise is easy to make. A pot of water with ginger and some chillies is brought to the boil. After a few minutes of more boiling, the cut pieces of the meat are placed in the pot for simmering. When the cartilage of the river tortoise is soft and breaks easily with a fork, the pineapple slices are added to the pot. Pepper, and salt are then added. Once the soup tastes good and flavoursome, the fire can be switched off and the dish served.

Because river tortoise does not get caught easily, the longhouse people also find it difficult to plan ahead to have the dish served on certain festivals.

But if you are visiting and the Iban family happens to have caught a river tortoise, what a nice welcome dish this can be for you. Enjoy the fellowship.

Sibu Tales : Frying of Fish

Before the non stick Tefal pan came to Sibu, Foochow mothers generally used wood fire for their cooking. And the only appliance or cooking utensil they had was the huge wok or cast iron Chinese kuali. In a strange way, many called it the Cantonese wok.


the skill I admire most when I watch my mother cook was the way she could fry fish without ever getting them stuck to the kuali.

Her secret was very simple she said. We had to make sure that the fire was high and the kuali was heated through before adding the add.

Pomfret which has thin skin needs to shallow fried this way. The cook has to wait for the skin to be fried through before turning the fish.

Fish fried this way to perfection is the best way to get a good aroma and taste out of fresh fish. It is the taste of traditional Foochow cooking.

Sarawakian Local Delights : Nipah Flowers

The Nipah palm is very important for the people of the coastal regions of Sarawak.



The leaves of the palm are used to make the roofs of the indigenous people's houses. The leaves, matted evenly together form a beautiful material for making of walls. These leaf based walls are called attap in the local language.

The stems of the leaves when burnt result in salt, nipah salt is organic and is known to have curative benefits.

The flowers of the nipah are pretty and when their stems are tapped in the early morning, a sugary sap flows out. This sap when boiled result in nipah sugar, a lovely palm sugar which is delicious.

In the olden days, this sugar was the only sugar known to the locals before the advent of granulated cane sugar from developed countries.

Sarawakian Local Delights : Banana Stems cooked with Old Chicken

Bananas are grown all over Sarawak and in order to have the best bananas, many of the suckers have to be cut down in order to allow the best plant to grow to maturity.

The suckers which are taken down are not wasted. Instead they are important food.

One of the bet ways to cook banana stem is to cook it in soup with old hens. The hens are prepared and their skins burnt or "tunu". Then they are cut into small pieces and made into a soup. Once the soup is ready, the blanched banana stems are added to the chicken soup.

Boil down the soup until only a little of the soup is left, just enough to cover the pieces of chicken and chopped banana stems. Add seasoning to taste. It is a very sweet dish and it is a dish with nostalgic, traditional flavours.

Sibu Tales : Making Bah Gui from Scratch

The pioneering families of Sibu Foochows continued to practise the  adoption of girls from poor families who become their maids (slaves). They were called Ngie Nii. It was a literally a kind of slavery.

Depending on the family values, the girls might be well treated or the opposite. To make it sound nice many of these families would say that they "adopted" the girls. Because to say they these girls were bought would not really sound Chrisitan, as many of the Foochow families were staunch Methodists.

This is the story which came from my grandmother about one of the adopted girls who wanted to learn how to make white rice cake or bah gui from scratch.

It must be noted here that one of the most important festive dishes for the Foochows is Char bah gui . We Foochows love it. It is usually presented during Duan Wu Jieh and the Moon Cake festival.

This is the story of a young woman who wanted to learn how to make Gah Gui from scratch. She was brought up as a Ngie Nii (sold to the family as maid) but she was luckier than more girls of her standing as her adoptive parents found a good man for her to marry since she was very skilled, intelligent and ever willing to learn. Her adoptive parents found her extremely capable. In fact they were a little sad to marry her off but they could let her stay unmarried all her life! Indeed she was fated to marry a man who loved her. As a newly married woman she worked hard to gain her new family's respect.

In those days it was not every day that women made bah gui.

She tried to secretly learn how to make it one year by peeping through the cracks of the wall in the wooden kitchen as her neigbhour did not want to teach her. The following year, she dutifully got up very early to make the bah gui since she had already used the stone grinder to mill the rice flour.

However she did not realize that she had used the wrong type of rice to make the dough. She had used glutinous rice instead of the normal rice.

But because she wanted to learn so much, her loving sister in law helped her. They did not waste the glutinous rice flour  as they used to make something else.

In the following years she became one of the best bah gui makers in the village.

Those who work hard and are willing to learn are usually rewarded.

Xiamen : Overseas Chinese Museum (Tan Kah Kee)

It was a cold morning when I visited this museum to study display strategies and other activities to enhance museum management.

With me was Miss Ting who was in charge of the Sibu World Fuzhou History Gallery (in the photo).

We enjoyed touring the museum which is divided into six sections: production and development of overseas Chinese, tragedies of Overseas Chinese before Liberation of China, the friendship between overseas Chinese and the people of the host countries, the contribution of the Chinese to PRC, the past and present of the community of overseas Chinese, the review of overseas Chinese. 

We saw more than 2000 cultural relics, handicrafts donated by overseas Chinese. This was what Tan Kah Kee had envisaged. There were also more than 1000 pieces of specimens of rare birds, beasts and aquatic animals. The exhibition hall covers an area of 2400 sq.m.

A piano displayed in the Oversea Chinese Museum (photo credit : OC Museum

Three of my aunts (Sarawak born) studied in this Chinese High School in Singapore.

Sin Chiew Jit Poh (calligraphy by Chiang Kak Shek or Chiang Chung Cheng)

This is an awesome model of Overseas Chinese shop lots found in the museum.

What a wonderful visit to this Overseas Chinese Museum and to pay respect to Tan Kah Kee.

Other photos by Chang Yi (Sarawakiana)

Sibu Tales : Cake Making and WI

The Women's Institute was recruiting members and our neighbours Kak and her sister joined. They persuaded my mum to join but she was adamant about not joining as she had many children to look after.

Before we had an oven, we used makeshift ovens. One of the ways to bake a small cake was to use an Indian styled aluminium curry pot. Charcoals are place on the cover to raise the heat and the cake would be cooked evenly. That really worked. We did make some cakes for a few Chinese new year and even a few small fruit cakes!! My mother was not impressed, but she just smiled.

In fact we were to find out later that many cultures in the world also used the idea. A fire is built below the ground in a hole and a put is put on the fire. A chicken or a cake would be put in the middle of the pot. Then the pot is covered and hot charcoals would be placed on top. This leads to a fantastic underground roasting.



Making cake is never my mum's cup of tea from the time ladies came around to recruit members for WI. Thus she was one of the few ladies along our street who did not learn how to bake.

But my father was keen to make her happy and bought her a second hand New World Oven when a British Officer returned to the UK. The whole family was over the moon for in those days not many people owned a good oven.

This led to lots of baking by my sisters using the splendid oven. Our aunts came and roasted chickens too. It was good to have an oven.

Snacks along the way, Hebei

Rev. Stanley Ting from Kuching, biting a piece of hard chocolate.

We all went by coach with our private driver. Along the way we shared snacks that we bought . Some bough chocolates, some bought local food, others bought buns. Beijing is a cosmopolitan city and all sorts of snacks and foreign style buns can be found.

this is Dr. Wong (acting like a happy 12 year old).

We were never hungry and we were like kids going on a school trip.

Zhangjiakou : Pickles and fresh food

Evening Open Air Market. What a splendid idea!!


One evening during our tour we had an hour of free and easy time, to visit an Evening Open Air Market. It was not Pasar Malam, or Night Market. It was a long street of vendors who sold fresh and cooked food and by sunset they were all gone.
How fresh these shittake mushrooms are!!


These petolas still have flowers at the end!!


We had an appointment with a director of a school but it was only at 6 .30 p.m. when he finished work. As our bus stopped near the market, the bus driver told us to enjoy ourselves.

It was such a pleasant activity.

We bought some food too.

Chengde's Summer Retreat of Qing Dynasty

The Summer Retreat of Qing Dynasty at Chengde puts to shame even many landscaped retreats of the 21st century.

By having said that, one have to admit that in those days, 300 years ago, they had all the skilled craftsmen and soldiers to do a lot of work without much pay outs.
 This mountain resort took over 90 years to build, starting from the 42nd year of
of Emperor Kangxi reign (1703) to the 57th year of Emperor Qianlong's reign in 1792.

It has 72 scenic sports (named by Kangxi and Qianlong emperors), more than 90 towers and pavilions, as well as small bridges, inscriptions on precipices, rockeries of various sizes, many gates, places and terraces.

There are also many exhibits inside (open for viewing only)

Unfortunately, no one can completely see everything in one day.

We were there for slightly more than 5 hours and we had to hurried off in our bus. May be one day we will come back to see this place again.

(Note : We can also see a lot of the replicas in the movies or tv dramas about the Qing dynasty.)

Sibu Food : Chak Hui tong

After every festival, we would have quite a bit of food left over, a bit of cabbage, a bit of pork and others. we did not have a fridge in the 50's, so my grand mother and my mother would do the traditional thing : to put some of the dishes together to make a huge Chak Hui tong.

The freshness of the soup will come from newly added Chinese cabbage or Tong Nern Bak, some fresh mushrooms or tinned mushrooms and a tin of oysters...Wallah..a fun soup for all. Give it a try.


This is actually a frugal dish from Minqing, where my ancestors came from in fujian, china. Hock chu leu in Sibu used to serve this dish also for banquets!! It was a much awaited for soup. When I went to Fuzhou, on several occasions my hosts made the chefs prepare this dish. It was truly delicious. (The photo was taken in Fuzhou)

(Left overs include chicken,duck,bean curd,meat balls). Don't waste your food. Get them together and come out with a hot pot ...This dish used to be served in Hock Chu Leu in Sibu,but after a while people thought that it was really made from left overs!! However truth be told, the chefs actually had to prepare all the fresh ingredients to make restaurant fresh Chak Hui Tong. Now only served as a banquet dish for Foochow/.foreign visitors in Fuzhou city.

Museum of Kalgan or Zhangjiajie, Hebei

Yu-hsiang Feng - a morning visit to a very unusual museum where we learned about a Christian general.





It must have been difiicult in those days with only those armaments and about 2000 soldiers for a general to win a war!!

General Feng was a Christian and so were most of his soldiers. He was known by foreigners as the “Christian General”. Feng, like many young officers, was involved in revolutionary activity and was nearly executed for treason. He later joined Yuan Shikai's Beiyang Army and with the help and advice of Chinese diplomat Wang Zhengting, converted to Christianity in 1914, being baptised into the Methodist Episcopal Church.

• Born : Nov 6 1882, Anhui China. Died, Sept 1 1948, age 65.

Sibu Tales : Ketola

We used to grow a lot of ketola in the backyard of our old wooden house in Brooke Drive/Kung Ping Road. Those were the days when we did not have a refrigerator.

Whenever my mother harvested six or seven of them, she would give two to Ah Hang's mother (Mrs. Lau) and cook two for our lunch and dinner. The rest she would soak in a basin of water. This was her way of keeping the ketola fresh for the next few days.

Basically she had three recipes for ketola. One was plain soup with ginger. The next popular dish was ketola cooked with eggs. The third was a simple stir fry with very glass noodles ( little water or no water added). In those days carrots and wood ears had not been introduced to many households yet.

Floral Drum in Beijing.

Beijing is a city with wonderful landscaping ideas. Ever since the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the BEijingers have been enjoying lovely landscaped scenery.

Tourists too benefit from the efforts to make Beijing beautiful.

A lot of ideas can be gathered when you go around small areas in Beijing on foot. I found this such an inspiring idea.

Zhangjiakou : Smoked Tofu

this is a splendid product we don't see in Malaysia. And it can even be bought in an open market along the street. Some shops are specialty tofu shops.

It must be very tasty and has a good reputation as Kongfu tufu. It is one of the famous dishes in the Confucius Banquet because  after Emperor Qianlong tasted it, its reputation incrased.

The first smoked Qufu smoked tofu was accidentally discovered by two Han brothers. There was a fire in the Han  kitchen but one of the brothers did not want the tofu to go to waste. He found a few pieces of the burnt tofu which he cooked in salt water. He sent that dish to Confucius who found it very tasty.

Later the Emperor Qianlong came to visit to visit the Qufu Confucius centre and he tasted the tofu dish. Thus the reputation of smoked tofu started.

Qufu smoked tofu can be served cold, boiled or stewed. Its braised version with meat, chili, fennel, pepper and cinnamon is excellent.

VVIP Table for 24. Zhangjiakou

One of our hosts, a Christian Church at Zhangjiakou, gave us a lunch treat. We were all seated around one single table and no one was side lined. Zhangjiakou is quite near to Beijing. and it was my first visit to Northern China, a place where my father spent many years of his student life.



It was an impressive lunch with more than 24 dishes. There were so many different ways of presenting the individual dishes and our hosts introduced them patiently.

the Organising Chairperson was a fluent, compassionate Christian who testified that her family kept their faith throughout all the difficult days of history in China. For three generations they kept their faith. Other Christian sisters also spoke about their faith. In fact at this banquet we only met the lady members of the church while the male counterparts were all out working.

the lunch was a good exchange too for they learned a lot from the speeches of our leaders from Sarawak. They learned about our ancestors' migration from Fujian to Sarawak and how the Christian faith continued to maintained in our new home.

Beijing, May 2018

Our first day in Beijing, after arriving at midnight from Kuala Lumpur.

We stayed in a beautiful, old fashion Qing style hotel.





Along the way to Hebei, we saw this Olympic Flame. I wish I saw it at night, with the flame rising high up into the sky.

Zhangjiakou, Field Work

It was evening but we still had plenty of sunlight to do photography. Our driver took us to an old address in Zhangjiakou where we were to do some photography.

We heard this was the address of  one of the earliest Christian churches in Zhangjiakou too but the old church was gone.

However it was very interesting to see the senior citizens enjoying themselves as the day wore itself out. They must have been living along this road for more than half a century. Perhaps their parents and grandparents had lived here. Life was simple, and they were enjoying time together.


It was nice to see pineapples. The Chinese call pineapples Poh Loh, a name I have to get used to whenever I read recipes in Chinese.

The vendors were only too happy to see us and to sell their over riped poh loh to us.



A part of this road has a lot of demolition going on. This should be how people lived about 100 years ago during the Qing Dynasty.





There is an amusing Foochow saying, when a Chinese man is alone, he works, when there are two together, they play chess. When there are three or four together, they gamble. I wonder if it is always true.

The warm, pretty May evening ended very pleasantly as we went back with lots of good memories of a special road, Xihoujie, in Zhangjiakou.

The First Post, Great Wall of China, Hebei

Jiminyi. The original first post/station of the Great Wall of China. This is located in Jimingyi Township, Zhangjiakou, Hebei, about 93 miles to the northwest of Beijing.

It got its name from the nearby Jiming Mountain. Ji (rooster) Ming (crowing).

It is recognised as the largest, best presernved and most distinctive ancient post house along the north post road in ancient China.

It is therefore a living fossil for archeological researches of post  houses and confidential malls.

It is now under government protection and recognised as a heritage site.

It was also quite fascinating because when we just arrived, a wind and sand storm occured, as if God was telling us this was how the people during the Yuan Dynasty lived in that kind of conditions. After a while the wind storm subsided and we were able to walk around like tourists.



The Jiming Post House was first established in 1219 by Emperor Taizu of the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) before setting up his empire. In the eighteenth year (1420) during the Yongle Period of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), it was developed into the largest post house along the north post road, in which government offices, storehouses, opera pavilions, and temples were built. In the eighth year (1472) of the Chenghua Period in the Ming Dynasty, city walls were constructed around the post house. The city wall was renovated in the third year (1738) during the reign of Emperor Qianlong in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). Although the post house has lost its original functions nowadays, tourists can still have a glimpse of its past splendors by the preserved ancient buildings. (Source : China Travel Guide)