The Small Feet Matriarch of Marudi and Her Kuih

 I am glad I can still collect some life stories of small feet or bound feet grandmothers in Sarawak with the help of kind friends.

Marudi Kuih or Sengkuang Kuih - Originally from Xiamen

 This is the story of a remarkable lady who started the business of sengkuang kuih in Marudi. Today the reputation of Marudi sengkuang kuih has spread even toLong Lama, Miri, Brunei, Kuching and New Zealand.

The Chinese farmers who had settled in Marudi were traders mainly while members of their families were subsistence farmers. These traders actually did not see much cash as they were mainly involved in barter trading.

One of the Chinese farmers' favourite crops was di gua or sengkuang (jicama). Many like to call it mengkuang.

It’s known as sar ge in Mandarin and, to some, as Chinese turnip, a healthy root vegetable although it does not have nice-looking skin. But its starchy white interior is well-loved by all who eat it either raw or cooked. Today, it’s fetching a very good price.

Sengkuang is a bean, not a root crop like sweet potato. Not many people know it’s a climbing bean.

Originally grown in Mexico, jicama eventually spread to the Philippines and Asia. It requires a long growing season with no frost, so it thrives in locales that are warm all year round like Sarawak.

Its flesh is juicy and crunchy with a slightly sweet and nutty flavour. Some think it tastes like a cross between a potato and a pear. Others compare it to a water chestnut. 

As a Minnang speaking family, the Hos maintained good relationships with people of all traces in Marudi, While grandfather Ho rowed his own paddle boat up to as far as Long Lama to do trading when he first came to Sarawak, his sons and grandsons maintained modern business styles by having shops and businesses in both Miri and Marudi. They took government contract work to supply food to the army in Bario for example and brought down jungle produce from Bario and other villages on the return flight.

Grandma Ho and her daughters in law managed the Marudi Government Secondary School canteen in the  60's. After she passed away, her daughters in law continued the kuih business. Her sengkuang kuih was the most famous.

She cut Milkmaid condensed milk tins into half. The lower half was used as the mould for her "inch" thick kuih. Each tin was filled with the sengkuang and rice batter and then deep fried in oil. The fragrant kuih was sold as a snack. Many students found the kuih filling and they even considered it their lunch.

Originally, Grandmother Ho would mill the fresh rice with a stone grinder herself in the early hours of the morning. Even though she had small, bound feet, she was very strong and meticulous in sorting out rice grains, milling and extracting the water from the rice and water mixture. Freshly milled rice flour add a special aroma to the sengkuang kuih. Today, when women make sengkuang kuihs using store bought rice flour, the taste and texture are different.

Ho Chin Tiong, one of her grandsons, now operates a coffee shop in Miri. He said that his grandmother taught many to make the kuih but not many of her students were successful. Even his own aunts could not make as well as his grandmother. There Marudi shop was burnt down in one of the fires in 1970's. But the whole row of shops were quickly rebuilt.

However, Ho’s brother, who now lives in New Zealand, has learnt the art of making kuih sengkuang well from his grandmother. Today, he makes this cake for his grandchildren during summer. 

The cake-making legacy of the Ho family in Marudi lives on in New Zealand. The family, now in their third and fourth generation remember how difficult it was for their matriarch who came from China, to settle down in Marudi, where she could not understand the local langauge, and yet she adapted to lead an exemplary life.

(Her story was first published as a Sunday Post feature article on 28.02.2021 by the blogger, after interviewing Ho Ching Tiong and Ho Ching Lai, the grandsons).