Sibu Tales : Knife Sharpener

In the 50's and 60's in Sibu there was a man who was famous for his knife sharpening skills and he was of course rather indispensable. Each time he cycled along a road like our Brooke Drive (which adjoins so many hundreds of lanes) he would be held back for his customers. Some women would bring out two or three knives for him to sharpen. Others would take out their scissors too. After only a few minutes of simple sharpening, his customers would be deiighted to pay him just a little under 2 ringgit.

Being itinerant this Apek would travel from one housing estate to another with his tools. We were even told that he would go to Sarikei and Bintangor once a year to service his customers. However we never got to know his name, not even his surname and we were not nosey to know more.

Photo of a knife grinder in China. Google.

The Foochows being very frugal would not buy a new pair of scissors or a knife even when they became blunt. Furthermore many believed that their knives and scissors became better over the years. My mother still owns her pair of scissors which she bought in the early 50's and they are still performing very well.

He never seemed to retire from his job for he continued to cycle from road to road even when he was very old, still wearing his old hat and loading his sharpening stone into his old tattered basket. His bottle of tea with some leaves in it etched a strong image in my mind. He was a man of few words and he would always let the women know that nothing should be wasted.

We never knew about his family or if he had grand children because he never talked about them. All we knew that two or three times a year he would ride along our road in Sibu and call out loudly, "Muai doh! Muai Gar Doh!" He would clean the knives and the scissors under a big rambutan tree near our house but when the big road, the Brooke Drive was upgraded in the 80's he was not seen much. May be he was too old to cycle any more. Or he had gotten sick.

I was then working as a teacher and could buy a new pair of scissors for myself, or a new knife for my mother. My mother and our neighbours no longer needed someone to sharpen their knives or scissors. We never saw him  again. Perhaps he passed away.

With the disappearance of the itinerant knife sharpener, the housewives and especially tailors of Sibu lost a good faithful friend.