My great grandfather was a barefoot Chinese sin seh who was not thoroughly trained in China. He learned to read pulses in the village of Wun Chieh in the high mountains of Minqing which was drained by the Plum Creek or Mui Keh.
when young he was very keen to be a scholar but their village was too far away from any big city or even schools. So he and his cousins had a home tutor for a few years and he excelled in Chinese calligraphy. All of them were able to memorize the classics but they were not taught the sciences. Some basic arithmetic was taught to them and they learned to use the abacus.
When my grandfather and his brother left Minqing with Wong Nai Siong, great grandfather waited for his two sons to prosper in Nanyang and to send for him.
Indeed the two sons prospered and in no time he was in Sibu. He was a supervisor for construction work for the Methodist church and other work in the bazaar because he could read and write. And he was good in calculations.
When he left for Sibu my first great grandmother had passed away. He stayed a widower for a few years in sibu and he later went back to China to look for a wife. He was probably only in his late 40's when he remarried. My grand aunt was the only child of his new marriage. It was a second marriage for his new wife too as she came from a scholarly family, whose gambler of a husband sold her to my great grandfather.
the photo shows my grand aunt and my great grandparents.
Great Grandma loved Grand aunt so much that she would not allow her to do any laundry. Being a bound feet lady she would put a basin of clothes on a chair and she would kneel on the floor to do the washing. She would then totter to the verandah to dry the clothes. Great Grandpa would watch her lovingly.
*Stories told to me by my 7th Aunt.
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