1946. When a child bride arrived in Sibu by boat from China and was rejected, what could be the consequence? That poor girl would be totally lost with no one to turn to. She was only 15 but 16 according to the Chinese age. Her potential bride groom had given her one look from a distance and he had rejected her on the pretext that she was very ugly. In fact he was already in love with another girl whom he met after the war.
There would be a kind of Foochow Association to take in the needy, but girls left alone was something the society would commisserate. A few kind words here and there and finally she was asked to go and see my maternal grandmother for help. My grandmother was known to be a kind lady who could help and she had a big house to taken in even strangers from Mainland China.
One uncle XXX XXX Kwong one day had said about destitute girls in this way when too many of them were in some kind of trouble...He had bluntly, said, "Jump into the Rajang River. That would solve a lot of our social troubles."
He must have been joking. I was definitely not amused but he had a point being such a chauvinistic man..girls in trouble should just end their lives in the river. Indeed many women committed suicide that way for many reasons, apart from having an illegitimate child.
But my Ngie mah did not allow anything bad to happen to the young 15 year old............
The Foochows continued to migrate to Sibu even after the Second World War.
Many child brides continued to arrive as they were "booked before the war". My maternal grandmother decided to adopt this girl who arrived in 1946. She was bought as a child bride for a nephew . . My grandmother took pity on her and took her in.
My grandmother too was a child bride and she too felt that she was not exactly a very pretty girl.
Soon she became a companion to my mother and her siblings, working hard and helping out. Every one loved her, she was only 15 years old, far from her homeland, and in fact living with relatives. How much rejection did she feel? It was unfathomable.
But she was a cheerful girl according to my mother. Two years later, in 1948 my mother married my father and soon, Aunty Lang Ing was bethrothed.
It was God's plan indeed for out of the blue, my grandmother found a great match for her. It was quite impulsive of her. One day my grandmother suddenly thought that 18 year old Sung Nung (her godson) should get married.
She approached him as he was working as a carpenter nearby.
The shy Soon Nung (not exactly a handsome man) was only too happy at the suggestion!! According to my Grandmother he did not even look at her when she mooted the idea and with head bowed he just whispered a Foochow phrase meaning, CAN.
And immediately a plain ceremony was arranged and they were married by the Methodist Pastor of Nang Chong, papers were signed and she was taken away to Sung Nung's workplace.
Both of them were so grateful to my maternal grandmother. My paternal grandfather engaged the couple for a year in the Hua Hung Ice Factory but Soon Nung was offered a better pay and a position in a Sg. Salim farm where both of them could work together for a living.That was the last time my mother saw the two until a miracle happened in Kuching half a century later.
Was she happy? She must have been as she travelled all over the Rajang Valley, raising her children and remaining a good wife to Soon Nung who continued to work as a carpenter with timber camps.
Stay tuned...for Part 2...Aunty Lang Ing in Kuching.
1 comment:
it would be interesting to find out how the young little girls got into the hand of middle men, to be brought to sibu as child brides. did their family sell them away?
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