A Widow's Soup : Winter Vegetables

When we were growing up with my young widowed mother, we had a special and unforgetable soup : smashed garlic with two tablespoons of Tientsin Winter Vegetables (more finely chopped by her Chinese cleaver) and a small table spoon of lard. 

Savoury soups made our meal easy to eat. they kept our stomachs warm but most importantly they reminded us that our family had a debt to pay to the bank.

My late father was a kind and reluctant business man who was not very good in collecting debts owed to his company, he being a scholar, reader and a gentleman. He was even shy about going to a friend's construction office to demand payments according to a relative.

However, my Grandfather was a good business man, an entrepreneur who worked hard and made a lot of money. He was able to pass on so much wealth to his sons that the Foochows all said that he was a very capable man. In his last years of life, grandfather started a brick factory which was very timely and made money because the construction was just shaping up in Sibu. There was a great demand for bricks for shop and home building. though my father was instrumental in buying all the equipment (the first mechanized brickyard in Rajang Valley) from Singapore, and getting the factory shaped up, he was not the enterprising CEO.

Tragically so to speak even before my father reached his 60th birthday, the political situation in Sarawak changed. The communists caused a lot of trouble and my father's business suffered. He was unable to collect a lot of the bad debts. So when he passed away, my mother had to settle a lot of the bad debts he could not collect and had to pay back the unhappy and dissatisfied share holders.

The Chinese had a special system of billing. White for the invoice, pink for the purchaser (the IOU sheet) and the company copy.  Once a debt has been paid, the pink copy is given to the purchaser to show that he has paid up.

When accounts are recorded ad checked, the money in hand must tally with the company copies.

As a result of this trauma, my mother throughout her life, had the policy of CASH terms only. She would buy only with cash, and NO IOUs. So indeed she never had a 555 note book with any shop in town. I was barely sixteen, being the eldest and I saw how she struggled. My youngest brother was only 11 months old!!

Winter Vegetable or Tientsin Tern Chai.

During the days before she paid off my father's debts to the company, she executed a very tight economic policy.

One of the ways to keep a tight budget in the family was her putting budget food with love on the table and at the end of the month, she could use the savings to pay back the bank. However, she often reminded us that we could be frugal with ourselves but we must never short change others. So whenever a relative came by, she would quietly pass a few dollars to him for pocket money or even a beer in town.

We are glad that by example, she brought us up to be frugal and caring towards others.

Today, a simple soup of winter vegetable is still a good soup and how rustic and frugal it is!!

An upgraded fish ball soup with a tiny bit of winter vegetable as soup base. This costs around RM16.00 per pax.

My mother's philosophy was never to owe any one any money. use cash to buy things. If we did not have the cash, we need not buy. If we did not have enough money, have more soups, and make the porridge more watery. We had to be careful with the way we spend money. 
She was very wise and very right.

The saltiness of the Tientsin salted cabbage gave us a flavourful taste of life. Its simplicity reminds us to live simple but useful life.

God found a way to bless her manifolds. Her honourable act of paying off the debts helped her gain a lot of respect from the community. It was not easy for all of us children.

And not many people would realise actually how many buckets of tears a widow cried.