Biscuit Tin as Standard Measurement

I saw this scenario in Bario which evoked lots of memories. the smell of the newly milled rice, the touch of the rough rice grains in my hands. They brought back memories of my maternal grandmother who fed so many grandchildren with the rice grown in the land my maternal grandfather cleared, from the Rajang river bank right into the hills behind the village.

Our rice fields were fairly extensive so to speak and I remember my two aunts going into them in the early morning and coming home for lunch, with legs caked in mud and sweat streaming down from their faces.

There was a huge rice storage bin upstairs in the big house, enough to fill up more than 100 dan (half a pickul per dan). We children used to jump into the huge bin and tread in the grains. We got a good scolding. But I really loved the feel of the rough grains on my legs.

 These two tins in the photo are biscuit tins which have been recycled to contain unmilled rice at the mini milling station at Pa Ukat. It reminds me of my maternal grandmother's days in the 1950 and 60's in Nang Chong Village, Sibu.

Rice, both milled and unmilled, were sold by weight. In Foochow it was the Dan, the Chinese unit of measurement from Fujian. A dan was 50 kg. Pigs were also weighed and sold according to dan.

擔

100

50 kg

110.2 lb

picul or Chinese hundredweight

After weighing the grains, the miller would mill the rice into the biscuit tins. In this way the farmer would also see how many tins they get from their grains, which could have come in a guni sack. The milled rice would then be poured into the guni sacks which could easily get on bicycles to be pushed home by the farmers.

Sometimes when farmers got together they talked about how much rice their families ate. Some would say that their families ate so much rice like 2 biscuit tins of good rice. And they would laugh at the voracity of their children. And rice was such a staple to the Foochows who considered rice a STEEL. So the ability of eating rice was a sign that the child was healthy.

The fine husks  of the rice grains would be mixed with cooked left over rice for ducks, chickens and even pigs to eat. Nothing was wasted. The powdery husk is called KONG in Foochow.

Today millers also sell the husks to sagu makers to make sagu.

the biscuit tin has been a very useful container in the Foochow society since the olden days.