Coffee Drinking Habit among the Foochow Gentlemen in Sibu 1940-60's

My grandfather Tiong Kung Ping loved his cuppa when he went to town. He would be well dressed, carrying an umbrella, and alighted from the Sungei Merah bus at the destiation of his choice. If he wanted to catch a movie at Lido, he would stop at the berminal and walk the small distance to Liu Huong, the coffee shop sharig the same premise as the Lido Theatre. 

Sometimes he would bring me to accompany him for a movie if he had visited our house first. My frugal grandfather did not have to spend extra to buy me a ticket as an adult could bring in two kids for free in those early days.

Before the movie started, he would order a cup of coffee (without milk) and I would have a bit from the saucer, just like the way Lat, the cartoonist draws. It was nice drinking the sweet kopi o 

 Many people had in the past ask where my Grandfather learned to drink coffee. He must have learned it from the Hainanese coffee shop operators and liked it.

But my father was a different kind of coffee drinker and his background of coffee drinking was something found in literature books! After his junior secondary school in Sibu, in 1930,my father was sent to Shanghai to study and it was said that he went with his third brother, and the eldest son of Lau Kah Tii, Lau Pang Kwong. Wong Cheng Ang was another young man from a wealthy family who went along. 

 According to some relatives my father and his Sibu contemporaries enjoyed the "aura of western exoticism and drinking coffee became prevalent among elite men and women who advocated a modern lifestyle...." My father was an Anglophile and he enjoyed social gatherings among the intellectuals. His contemporaries also took to the dance floors of the Shanghai dance halls during weekends.

Tea and coffee in the 1930's in Shanghai were symbols of culture and modernity. My father and his third brother, being from Nanyang, never wore the traditional Chinese Long Suit or Tong Pau. They preferred neckties and the western suits, and of course good leather shoes. After their education in China, they came back to Sibu, bringing with them the coffee drinking culture. 

 Note In 2020, the largest Starbucks in the world is found in Shanghai. The Coffee culture lives on. I think my father would chuckle happily and think deeply.......