Nang Chong Stories : Pre-war diet

My photo of a dish of nice Sarawak jellyfish

My mother and her sister completed their Primary school education at Tiing Nang Primary School just before the war. It was also the time when their mother my grandmother insisted on returning to China to build an ancestral hall with the money she had earned from rubber. My grandfather was not too well and did not want to "return to China". He sort of knew that he life would end very soon.

After she left, my grandfather and my mother's eldest brother Pang Ping, then already married, looked after the family of 9 ( mother's 4 siblings and two grand children from Uncle Pang Ping).

The Japanese had conquered China by 1940 and war was looming. Many people returned to China to fight agains the Japanese. Some of the retunees joined organized groups like the War Mechanics. Others returned to their own villages. The Japanese bombs literally dashed all my grandmother's dreams of living the good life and having a huge ancestral home in Minqing.

According to my mother, the pre war diet of the Foochows was very simple. The price of rubber had gone down and rice was produced by individual families, giving them just enough to eat. She was one of the young padi farmers of her village.

The Melanau fishermen continued to row their boats, visiting villages from time to time selling jelly fish especially. A whole kerosene tin of the jelly fish was only $1.20  and it would last the family for a month or so. The Melanaus ,who became friends with my grandfather, also sold salt, palm sugar, dried prawns, cincaluk and snails and other vegetables. These were the main items of my mother's diet before the Japanese arrived.

She also told us that a good salary was $10 a month for most coolies (kuli gang) and out this $4.5 would be spent on food. The coolies would have their meals with the towkay and lived in the coolie houses provided. Today many of these old coolies have passed away but their children would be able to tell the stories of how their fathers "reached the shore of Sarawak" and made their fortunes. They were considered the later batches of Foochows who came to Sarawak before the war.

They were as hardworking as the Foochow pioneers, although their conditions of settlement might have been more difficult as the Rajah's Government had stopped granting free land to the new comers.

The coolies came to Sarawak when rich towkay applied to the Rajah to gain permits to bring in more Chinese from Fujian. It is very much like what is happening today. Agents can apply to the government to bring in Indonesians, Bangladeshis to work. My grand uncle Lau Kah Tii was such an agent. However he was considered like a Godfather or a Saviour who helped bring many Foochows to Sibu to find their first bucket of gold. The clansmen have always been very grateful to him.