A Flask of Hot Water

For years, my mother's first chore in the morning, as a wife and mother, was to boil a kettle of water for the hot water flask. This was a Foochow habit from the rural area of the Rajang, or may be it was even from Minqing, China which she must have learned from my maternal grandmother.

This chore was out of the practicality of the day when wood was used for cooking. For today no young woman would think of getting a kettle on first thing in the morning and then filling up a flask!!

After breakfast of plain watery porridge and may be just some thin Chinese tea, rubber tappers and farmers for example would go off to work leaving behind young children and may be only one elder or an older child to mind them if they lived together as a three generational family, like my Grandmother and her daughter in law in the 1950's.

By 10 o'clock in the morning the wood fire would have smouldered and any one wanting a hot cup of tea or a bottle of warm milk would depend on the hot water flask.

A flask of hot water was necessary to be kept aside for night use too for the same reason.

A wood fire must never be left unattended in the village or started at any time without adult supervision.

Mum would be busy doing all the house chores until it was time to cook lunch. So any visitor coming at about 11 in the morning could have a drink of tea or just plain water. Bah Gung Jui, made hot by adding some hot water from the flask.

Small children would have their feeding bottles easily in that way, without having to wait for the water the boil on the stove.

Thus safety, time saving, efficiency and convenience were all wrapped up in a wonderful hot water flask like this.

At night my mother would carry a flask upstairs for convenience. A hot drink could be made any time.

The next day, she would bring the flask downstairs and any cool water left would be poured into a Sun Valley bottle, the common drinking water bottle of our day.

The China made hot water flask was a life saver!!

A Hot Water Flask would always remind me of my hardworking mother who made sure that we had hot water when needed when we were young.