Soy Sauce : Wong Cheng Ang

Soy Sauce was made by Wong Cheng Ang in Sungei Merah, at his home cum factory below a hill at the present Kwong Ann Crescent. So in fact he was a dear neighbour of my grand parents.


 

The production of soy sauce in Sg. Merah went on for a few years until 1963 or thereabouts when he went underground to fight for the independence of Sarawak from British colonial rule.

Educated in Yenching university and also Shanghai, his mother saw him as a typical bright young Foochow man who would be a community leader with a voice. He was also good in languages and the sciences. His degree was in Chemistry. He was considered one of the brightest Foochow scholars from Sibu and was often invited by the wealthy community leaders as their guest.

According to many of my uncles, he was even able to make his own bullets. But they were never sure if he was a good marksman or a man who used his gun to kill . In fact according to some relatives, he was one of the kindest men who ever helped any one in trouble. He was also a very good teacher.

As a child, I used to visit his nieces in Sg. Merah and we would also visit his wife and the soy sauce factory. He had built an enclosed yard, an extension of the house he built for his wife. The urns were all lined up very neatly and there must have been like 100 of them. He used locally made zinc covers or what the Foochows called Dian Gaik or kuali covers to allow the heat of the sun to ferment the soy beans.

He was always very good to my grandparents, blessing them with gifts of his soy sauce.

Wong Cheng Ang's mother's mansion

He must have learnt how to do the traditional Foochow way of fermenting soy sauce from his mother who was one of the most innovative and successful Foochow women in the history of Sibu Foochow. She owned lots of landed property.

As kids we used to hear that his widowed mother used a "flour sack" to carry her cash after selling her rubber. She held her position as the foremost wealthy matriarch among the Foochows in the 1950's and sent all her sons for tertiary education in the 1930's-50's. That was quite an achievement at that time.