Candle Making in Sibu

When we lived in Brooke Drive Sibu, there lived a towkay neo who was a candle maker . She must have been an enterprising woman to develop this special skill.

She operated the business on her own, made good candles, especially those red ones for the temple worshippers.

Her method of candle making was traditional. She dipped a set of wicks in a container of liquid wax, and then dried the wicks on the racks. she had about 10 sets going at one time. We never counted how many wicks were in each set but they seemed  to be quite a large number. After many dippings, the candles slowly grew bigger.

(Photo from Google)

Finally when the right sizes emerged she would have them dried and then bundled. I sort of remember she made three sizes but it could have been more. Small ones for the temple, the medium ones for universal use (funerals etc I was told) and the big ones for weddings.

 If I remember correctly there was no specific candle shops in Miri but some sundry shops sold the red candles for ancestor worshipping for the convenience of their their non Christian customers. However, we could easily tell which shops were Christiabs and which shops were not because of the ancestral altars in the shops.

I still remember one day as I was walking to school, she and her husband were on a motor bike and she was carrying two big candles. she must be delivering them for a wedding.

After she passed away we also wondered if any one took over her business.

As kids we were quite scared of candles burning in the cemeteries and we avoided looking at them.

It seemed so long ago that we kids hanged out around people's homes. That would have been considered loitering today. but in those days, we had no malls to hang out with our school friends.

Today with advancement in technology there are many different kinds of candles and probably the traditional method of making red candles in one's backyard is no longer practised.