Our Java Connection : Grand Aunty Java

 1958

That was the last time we saw Grand Aunty Java in Sibu, Sarawak. My father had helped her with some passport issues. She did stay for a while as she was travelling by ship from Singapore and she would return by sea. 

We were all very young then and did not know the political and geographical reasons that caused her to come all the way to Sarawak, Borneo, to see her widowed sister-in-law, Mrs. Chong Jin Bok, or Mrs. JB, our grand aunty. A sea journey would take 2 or 3 nights from Singapore.

My father's mother, Chong Jin Soon had died at age 38 when my father was barely 16. Grandmother Chong was her older sister.

According to our Chong and Tiong family history, Grand Aunty Java came to visit regularly her parents (who settled in Sibu) with her only brother, (Chong Jin Bok) and my maternal grandmother, her only sister.

My father's maternal grandfather, the Chong patriarch, Chong Jin Swee ( Kheng Swee), had built a large house on their rubber estate in Sg. Merah. It was a two storeyed house, hence quite a handsome home in those days according to an aunt. While my grandfather had also acquired a big piece of rubber garden next door he did not build a big house at that time. He only built a wooden hut for the growing family as he needed extra cash to start a sawmill in Binatang. All those years my grandfather was moving from one place to another to manage his growing businesses.

 By 1927, the year my grandmother passed away, my grandfather had acquired 3 motor launches, a rice and saw mill, an ice factory and more rubber land in Binatang.

My grandmother, being English educated helped him fit all the machinery (e.g. rice milling engine, ice making machinery in Pulau Kerto , etc) he acquired from overseas with the help of Rev James Hoover, by reading the manuals to him, explaining the steps and translating into Foochow.

My grandfather was a talented engineer, and machinery just came alive in his hands!

My maternal great grand parents stayed in Sg. Merah, although they also bought land to grow rubber in Binatang, encouraged by my grandfather.

Today the Chong family's land in Sg. Merah has been developed and a road is aptly named after grand uncle Chong Jin Bok.

The regular visits of Grand Aunt Java from Java were recorded by some great photographs. She must have visited once every three or four years, before and after the Second World War. It must have been a long journey for her, almost like a pilgrimage, from Java to Singapore and then to Sibu.

Seated *second row - from left, Grand Aunty Java with baby in arms, Grand Aunty Chong, Grand Uncle Chong Jin Bok, Great Grandmother Chong, Great Grandfather Chong, my grandfather Tiong Kung Ping (with Chang Pang King) ,my grandmother Chong Ching Soon.
Back row : Sii (wife of Grand Uncle Tiong Kung Eng), Grand Uncle Tiong Kung Eng, Chang/TiongTa Kang, Tiong Siu King, Tiong Hua King and Chang Lee Sieng.
On the floor, from left, Chong Chung Hian, Chong Chung Sing, Chong Eng, Chong Chung Ting, Tiong Nguk Sieng, Tiong Ing Sieng, Tiong Chuo Sieng.
(If I have spelt the names wrongly please correct me)

She had married into a batik cloth and perhaps also a cement producing merchant's family and was therefore considered well off in those long ago days. She survived the Japanese war, and later the Sukarno persecution. 

However after 1958, we lost all contact with her and her family.

It was many years later, that her two daughters, then living in Australia came to pay a visit. By that time my mother was widowed. Aunt Chong Eng brought Aunty Betty to see my mother at Brooke Drive, and the other members of the Tiong family in Sibu.

Recently my cousins were happy to recover a family photo of Grand Aunty Java and her visit to Sibu.

The photo does not have a date, but we can guess from the photos by the size of the children.

I remember in 1958, during a dinner at our house, the kebaya wearing and English speaking Grand aunty Java passed on to us children a very valuable lesson, "Don't waste rice. We must not drop even a single grain of rice on the table."

She showed us by example and picked up two grains of cooked rice she had dropped on the table.

My father as usual was very respectful and quiet, sitting silently next to Grand Aunty Java.

That scenario at the table remains in my mind very clearly until today when I am at an age older than her when she visited us.

Only very recently we found out that her name was Chong Ho Soon.

(We the next generation take some liberty to make some assumptions that Great Grand father Chong according to some elders was a Bible reader and a quite a scholar. He named his children well, Jin (excellence) Bok, Ching (Fuqing and also purity)Soon and Ho (Peace) Soon. 

May be some of my relatives can correct us.)