Memories of Grandmother

 In the last 8 yers of mny maternal grandmother's life she was blind. her blindness was caused by glaucoma and in those days medical facilities were not like today's. the Sibu hospital could not removed the glaucoma as she was deemed too old to have the surgety. Besides Sibu was not even blessed by a good specialist .

Grandma lived with her handicapp and her children and grandchildren adjusted to her plight.

Today I share with you my grandmother's love for Quaker Oats.

One of her favourite meals, without disturbing uncles or aunties in the old house in Nang Chong was Quaker Oats. Something she could make on her own. Third Aunt gave her a flask of hot water, spoon, bowl, cup etc and she felt her way around in her life of darkness,

She would ask Third Aunty to get someone to buy Quaker Oats of Old Man Oats when she felt that her tin was half empty.

It would be my mum or Aunty Yung or a good nephew who would sed a tin of Quaker Oats down river. Down river was a term we learned from the Colonial days. Up river means the parts of the Rajang which was above Sibu.

Grandma would be circulated perhaps 2 months each time Third Uncle moved her. First Uncle lived in Pigeon Road Sibu, When she was with First Uncle my mother and Aunty Yung would visit morre often bringing food to the family and grandma. First Uncle was then a retired barber and wharf labourer. Life with him was not too bad as his children were humble and loving. First Uncle would piggy back grandma when she wanted to visit a doctor likke Dr., Ding Siew Hua.

In those days not many old people had wheel chairs. It was always a son who could piggy back his mother. Praise God for First Uncle.

Second Uncle was working in the logging camp so he was unable to host grandma. Second Aunty as the daughter in law would welcome grandma once in a while. She would cook chicken soup or make beef soup to send to grandma . She was busy too looking after her own grand children.

Third Uncle was the breadwinner who put food on the table, in the house at Nang Chong, downriver, not far from Bawang Assan.

Observing the goings on in those days I took in the great understanding of family connectivity and love.

An old mother with visual impairment needs the love and kindness of all family members.

Grandma was absoultely humble and loveable. Her sons and daughters rallied around her to provide most of the things she needed. She also had one good son in law to depend on,.

She longed to see her fourth son Lau Pang Teck who was in China. 4th Uncle Pang Teck left Sibu in 1954 to study in Beijing Univeristy. But he was actually scammed. He did work with machinery but he never obtain his engineering degree. He got married and had a son who later commuunicated with the family. He was sponsored two trips to visit Sibu happily. Uncle named him dragon. But he never saw his grandma. 

At times when I looked at grandma stiring her Quaker Oats breakfast I believe she was really thinking about her sons and daughters . She missed them in her quiet ways. And I listened to her and put many of her stories in my own memory bank.

She passed away in 1985. 

Bundles of Soh Mien

 

My Ngie Mah was best in drying soh mien in the sun.

Our neighbour in Brooke Drive, the Ting family were soh mien makers. So they would always give us the best soh mien (in 5 katis or 10 katis in those days) tied with a red thread per set.

When we took the soh mien home on the day ngie mah came to visit she would carefully made little "zi" or bundles like in the photo to dry in the huge bamboo tray meant for drying food!!

Grandma's handiwork was perfect, each one would be exactly the same size. She would tell us that the cook would easily and evenly cook the soh mien in the boiling water and no one would complain of undercooked soh mien. Or no one would complain that her share was a smaller amount.

Having equal sizes of soh mien would also mean that drying them was easier, without finding out any one bundle being under sunned!!

Grandma was always a good and happy worker.

How we loved her handiwork.

Nang Chong Stories : Tapah Fish

Eating a slice or two of steamed tapah would always reminds me of 
my maternal grandmother's life in Nang Chong. How blessed we were!!

The Nang Chong area in Sibu was criss crossed by small streams which flow into the Rajang. Many village houses which dot along these streams would also created their own irrigation canals, often only 6 feet wide and 6 feet deep and for the length of their titled land into the inland side. My grandmother's house thus had two of these canals which ran parallel to each other along the periphery of that piece of padi land cum house. 

The canals dug by my grandfather and his relatives before they started planting padi (and even before building the house) brought in river water  when the river was high. The land was well drained during low tide.

I loved to see the river at its highest level because I could see the water flowing into the padi fields. This would bring fertile mud to the rice when the water subsided. Insects and pests would be killed. So very little pesticides were used and probably it was unheard of at that time. My grandfather and uncles only used a bit of LOI LING JING (tuba juices) to kill of insects and mosquitoes.

When the water level was even higher, the precious water was used for all sorts of washing and cleaning. The clean water at the highest tide level would be carried by bucketfuls and poured into the waiting diesel drums.

When our diesel drums were filled with clean and clear water, how rich we felt!

My third uncle had made a movable netting gate for the canal runnig out towards the jetty. When the tide was high, he would lower the wire netting gate. Fish would swim freely into the canal. When the tide ebbed, there would be some fish trapped at the bottom of the wire trap. 

A few precious fish could be trapped. My grandmother would be so happy to get a small tapah of 2 or 3 kilos. There were other fish too like Red Eye fish, ikan sembilan, ikan baong etc.

Our Foochow way of preparing tapah then was simple, steam the tapah steaks with just soy sauce and some fried onions and ginger. Pour a bit of home made red rice wine before serving. The fish then was memorably sweet. 

After the express boats damaged the land along the banks of the Rajang, we no longer could enjoy God's blessings. We started to have to buy every fish we wanted to eat.

By then my uncle was old and in fact the eldest uncle had already moved to Sibu.

This is part of my childhood memory of life in the village of Nang Chong.
 

Beladin : Fish Maw

 

How can fish maw be so expensive? I read one expensive type is evening going at RM60,000 per kg. Unbelieveable.

Fish maw soup has been a traditional Foochow banquet soup, a Chinese new year dish etc. Now , fortunately there is a wide range of choices from expensive to very affordable budget priced fish maw for ordinary souls like me.

Recently my cousins and I talked about fish maw of yesteryears of Beladin, a remote rural village in Sarawak where she was teaching at the beginning of her teaching career. Fish maw produced in the village was so common and easily available to her and her family that she never thought of stocking up or reselling. She was just happily teaching there. Fish maw from ikan panjang and ikan terusan were ordinary food and no one then ever thought of packaging them as festive gifts in those days.

In actual fact fish maw is tasteless and chewy but when added to soups with lots of other ingredients, it becomes very appetizing. 

Fish maw of ikan terusan has an unusual shape. The male ikan terusan has a bigger fish maw and is sold at a higher price than the female fish.

Both the locals and the Chinese love ikan panjang and its fish maw. Ikan panjang is also highly demanded in Beladin and surrounding areas. In fact it is quite difficult to understand why ikan terusan and ikan panjang are only found in Beladin and some of the estuarine areas nearby and not in any other parts of Sarawak.

Salted Ikan Panjang and its fish maw used to be imported from China by many sea product merchants but today they are rather uncommon.

Note : fish maw can be divided into king fish maw, premium fish maw,grass seabass fish maw and fried fish maw. Male fish maw is bigger, soft and smooth but not easily dissolved in the mouth.

So if it is possible, It is best to buy fish maw fresh from the fishermen!!

Nang Chong : Padi Cultivation and Small Crab Sauce

 The Foochows since they migrated to Sibu have always made their special crab sauce called Pangi Cheong.

My uncle Lau Yung Chiong and his family lived in this house and all around this house was a large field which was used to grow rice for years I remember. Both uncle and his wife were very hardworking and they grew their own rice every year with the help of their children.

My aunt, wife of Lau Yung Cheong, was the best Pangi Cheong maker in the whole of Nang Chong because she had three big sons who could help her. she had quite big plot of padi field and her sons would cut the grass to line up the field . But putting the dried grass all along the edges of the padi field, the boys actually trapped the small crabs under the dried grass. They would breed very quickly.

when they started to grow bigger (after the first day of the 8th month) the boys would start collecting the pangi. the small crabs were just like miracles for they came out in full force. Cousins used to tell us that there were tons of them, crawling around and even crossing foot paths.

They would chase the crabs into the dried grass and then pull the grass up. There would be buckets and buckets of them to collect.

My three cousins used to tell us that their arms were bitten by the small crabs. But it was all worth their efforts.

Aunty Yung Cheong would clean the buckets of pangi, and salt them over night. The next day, while the older boys had to go to work, the youngest boy Ah Meu, would be tasked to push the stone grinder to make the pangi paste.

The paste with some red wine added would become fermented after a few days. And the resultant crab

sauce would be enjoyed by every one.

Today a 750 ml bottle of this delicacy or pangi cheong costs around RM50.00 And it is very very difficult to find. The original recipe called for pure grounded crab paste, mixed with only a bit of rice wine lees and some RED rice wine.

During the planting season and harvesting season, the farmers would be very busy and would have no time to prepare proper food. The crab sauce would be just the right kind of rice pusher and whet up a good appetite.

Wasn't it a good way to start the planting season? Farmers got their buckets of small crabs to make a good sauce, and soon the dried up grass would be burnt to act as fertilizer for the new crop of padi. Life was such a good cycle of different seasonal activities.

But most important of all, we kids just marvelled at God's nature. Why did the small crabs appear only in the month of August? And to mate? 

Today many new generation youth would not understand the value of this special sauce.

Snails and Health of the Foochows

 The Fujian people have always loved dishes of good snails from the pristine river banks.

I was treated to some when I went to visit Minqing and the surrounding districts a few years ago.

When in Minqing, Fujian, China, I knew already that my aged mother would never be able to see China. She was getting too old to travel and I felt really bad when I talked to her about my travels. I could see that she had that special longing in her eyes, and faraway look. But being stoical all her life, she never expressed any regrets. I could not even say that I travelled on her behalf!!

When she was in her 70's she had wanted to see the Great Wall of China and eat all the food my grandmother had mentioned to her and her siblings when they were growing up in Nang Chong Village.

My China born Grandma had mentioned how good the river snails were. Yong Tai district had snails which gave out a green soup which has health benefits. The green snail soup is given to those who have poor lungs.  

When I visited Yong Tai, I was given a treat to taste the green snail soup with my friends, courtesy of the local welcoming committee and friends. The soup was memorable and very sweet. Now I have photos to prove. Both my grandmother and mother would have loved the photos I took.

During the Japanese Occupation my mother and her sister, Aunty Yung, all Sarawak born, went along the river Rajang mud banks to look for  snails. Two kinds of snails could be found on the mud banks. One was what the local Ibans call Tekoyong Apong or just chier loi in Foochow. These were not as plentiful as the ah moh loi or the round ones.

Today, we Foochow cook this dish of the longer and triangular shaped snails (below) with a lot of thick black soy sauce and ginger, sometimes with chillies and lemon grass. The round ones can also be cooked with thick soy sauce, or just boiled with ginger.

During the Japanese Occupation every one would go and pick river snails ( ah moh loi in Foochow) and place them in their metal buckets. It was like a race to pick the most within a short time. Those who went late, when the sun rose high above their shoulders, would no longer be able to find any. sometimes my mother would go as early as 6 am when it was barely daylight. Then she would be able to collect half a bucket. Many would even go to pick the ah moh loi when there was a full moon. It seemed they came out in full force then.

My mother said that it was most frightening to see a snake or two whenever she went snail picking.

But to my hardworking mother,the resulting half pail of snails would be enough to feed the whole extended family for two days at least. Mum said the snails were part of their limited protein source in between chickens and pigs during  the festive season.

My maternal grandfather who was a good cook would add more water to make more sauce so that every one could have the snail sauce with the sweet potatoes or the rice porridge. Boiled tapioca would even be delicious dipped in snail sauce. It was a pity he passed away during the Japanese Occupation and he did not enjoy the good days after the liberation. He suffered so much pain cause by lack of medication but he looked after the whole family well.

The Foochows who lived by the Rajang River banks were thankful that they had snails to eat during the Japanese Occupation and may be that was why not many of them died from vitamin deficiencies or beri beri. 

Many Foochows continue to believe, rather morbidly,that when legs are swollen, death is near.

Today river snails have become very expensive and is often part of restaurant menu in Sibu and elsewhere.

Different kinds of snails are still very popular restaurant dishes in Fujian, China.

Tea Rice : Nang Chong Version

 My maternal grandmother Tiong Lien Tie was not a picky eater. She was a careful eater, often just eating simple food and in small portions because she was such a small person too at less at 5 foot in stature. But to me she was a BIG person, with a strong personality and a tongue to match.

She never went to formal school but since she grew up next to a school house in Ming Ching, Fujian, she picked up a lot of Confucian sayings and committed them to memory. She had indeed a very good memory. She could quote an apt Confucian saying at any time to teach us a good moral lesson. She would "once Confucius has said it, it cannot be wrong".

We had seen her in various moods. Happy, sad, angry, reflective, warm and loving. She was never cruel or unkind, perhaps it was due to her difficult life when she was young as a child. She was sold to the Lau family at the age of 4 and then she had to do a lot of child labour work in the family to sustain the family. Then she was brought out to Sibu, Sarawak to marry my maternal grandfather. She was hardly 10 years old! My maternal grandfather was 16 years her senior. They were married when she was 15 or 16. There was no marriage certificate for them.

Growing up in Sibu at Ensurai, she was treated as a daughter of the family and was at the beck and call of her elder, "sister in law". She was a kitchen assistant mainly.

She made attap, by sewing together nipah leaves. She made rokok or local cigarettes by rolling nipah leaves and cut and tied them in bundles.

She dried longevity noodles in the sun. At times she made salted fish.

Those were chores she did with grace and joy, because at the end of the day she had a bowl of rice to eat.

When she was sad, she had a self remedy. Pour hot tea over the crusty cold rice topped with her own salted fish slices.

And she would sit by the back of the stove, near the fire, as she tended the fire, sang a few of her Foochow songs, in between mouthfuls of tea rice.

The moments of sadness would soon leave her mind and she carried on with life again.

Note : I saw her eating tea rice many times. Every one would empathise with her and understand the situation.

Relatives would knowingly tip toe around her. But soon her sadness would be gone, and she would be whole again.

How nice it is to be able to uplift emotional upheavals by just a bowl of tea rice......

Har Chien : Appetizer

 My mother used to relate a lot of stories about the Foochows and the Melanaus doing trade along the Rajang River, during the Japanese Occupation when there was little for the Foochows to barter trade with the Melanaus.

The coastal peopl paddled their boats to their village , Nang Chong, offering salted fish, fermented fish, cincalok, belacan, and nipah products.

As my mother's family badly needed the salt, she had to part with some white rice she harvested for the nipah salt, sugar and cincalok.

My grandmother returned to Sarawak after her stay in China during the Japanese war in 1945. She experienced the very difficult post war years of want and lack as she had spent all her money in China. She literally spent a small fortune educating her second son, eldest and third daughters. Because of the invasion of the Japanese she could not build the house she dreamed of. So she had to return to Sarawak to recoup without realizing that it would be her last trip to China.

Cincalok or Har Chien was so precious to my grandmother that she would only poke a chopstick into the bottle to get a taste the the salty appetizer.

The bik story of her just smacking her lips with a chopstick of cincalok always amused us when we were kids. Was it hard for her to remember her days in China and to face reality in Sarawak?

But her daughters eventually married well and her sons also did well. Only her youngest son went back to China to live his dream of a good education.

Later I would rather think that she was like a deer needing some salt, looking for a salt lick. That was the kind of association I had with her desire for salt. My grandmother was to live a fairly long life, with no issues related to salty diets. She was able to eat a lot of salted vegetables, cincalok, fish sauce till the end of her days.

Indeed after the war, when peace came and a neigbhour started making bean curd (soy beans were imported again), my grandmother liked to steam her bean curd with some cincalok and ginger.

To this day, I will do the same when I get fresh cincalok in Miri.

Grand Ma : our first Moral Education Teacher

 

My maternal grandmother Tiong Lien Tie was a very natural teacher. Our class room was the dinner table or the balcony which joined the main house and the kitchen of our Nang Chong house on the banks of the Rajang, just a little further down from Chung Cheng Secondary SChool.

A tinned dace would be opened when we had porridge.

My aunt would cook porridge on days when it continued to rain and not much energy would be needed by the rubber tapping uncle and aunt. In those days a tin of dace cost around $1.00, so it was very affordable.

We would have side dishes of salted vegetables and deep fried peanuts and perhaps a dish of preserved long beans (in ern chow).

Our porridge was very water and we could even DRINK it from the bowl. That was the way my grandma liked her porridge.

Making porridge is a way to save money according to my grandma. It saved money because only One MILK tin of rice is enough for 10 or 12 of us for the meal. And it was delicious even with just a bit of salt and some lard.

My ngie mah would tell her moral stories and we would enjoy our porridge as we listened. So it was a very good meal, at a table where love and bonding abounded.

My grandmother never raised her voice in anger. That was one thing I remember about her. I suppose that was passed down to my mother and my youngest aunt, Aunty Yung. Grandma always taught us to be good to each other. My mum and my Aunt Yung were the best of friends because of her teaching.

The tinned dace has several characteristics. It has black beans. My grandma would use her chopsticks to pick a black bean one by one. One black bean to go with one mouthful of porridge. She showed us how not to be greedy at the table by example. I still eat like that. One black bean at a time,using my chopsticks.

The dace is easily cut into small pieces, to be shared by all at the table. Grandma would see to it that we shared the soft ad tender shreds of nice fish. Sharing at the table is an act of love.

thinking about those days and my grandmother's love invigorates me.

I hope you like my memories today.

Downriver : Some Sanba Memories

 As a child I loved going down river.

That was the term we used when we were young. "Down river" meant the lower part of the Rajang Valley starting from Sibu.

There were no long and motorised roads then, except rubber garden paths, some cement foot paths for bicycles (some were wide enough for trolleys or pull carts) and wooden plankwalks of course.

Every where our Foochow forebears walked and very often barefooted. They were very frugal folks and one of their common characteristics was their barefootedness or naked feet. My mother's siblings walked every where and they were more often than not, barefooted tooI was told that some folks had even thickened soles that they needed no shoes!!

(Another characteristic of the Frugal Foochow men was their shirtlessness. In the day they worked hard, chopping wood, catching fish, and others, all without shirt on their back. This was also to save washing and for the practical reason, their shirts would get wet by their sweat any way.)

They tapped rubber barefooted too in order to save money. Sandals and shoes would just be wasted in the mud and water logged rubber garden. But on the down side, they suffered from cuts and so many unspeakable sores.

Writing this made me think of another barefoot lady. My neighbour Ting Moo (she turned out to be my cousin's aunt) never wore shoes when she first moved to our grandfather's rental wooden house across the road. She was a very frugal lady. She and her son were well known barefoot neigbhours of ours. As a child I only remembered her wearing shoes and slippers much later.

Then my aunts and uncles from down river also put their shoes in their baskets. They put on their shoes only after they alighted from the motor launches.

But sanba would forever be in my mind and heart because that was where my mother came from, and where my Ngie Mah and my beloved relatives lived. It was also where I spent the best holidays of my younger days, where I was nurtured and was taught, and trained to memorize many Confucius sayings by my grandmother.

During the holidays, I would be sent down river where my ngie mah would look after me, and where I would represent my mother to be near grandma. We cousins would all sleep in a room, some on the wooden bed and some on the floor. In cold nights we would cover ourselves with the red Chinese woolen blanket which smelt of the sun.

And in the warm mornings, we would swim in the Rajang River if the tide was high and my Third Uncle was able to look after us. The river was good and it was our swimming pool.

In the evenings we would all crowd around the balcony area where my grandmother and third Uncle would tell stories, peppered by her Confucius sayings. They were our earliest TV programme presenters.

When the rubber price was good and we had good food on the table. Sanba life meant that we had chickens,ducks and even pigs to slaughter for food. There were a few times my uncles and aunts had pigs to slaughter and as they did not have a refrigerator, they sold some and ate some, as the saying goes.

The most memorable dish was my grandma salted meat in the urn and the sliced and steam ones in the food safe for every one to share.

Every evening my third uncle would make a huge bao, which he would slice. Some of us ate more than our share because the melted Golden Churn tasted so good. 

In those days Third Uncle did not use dried instant yeast and I remember my grandmother would get the wet yeast from Kim Guan Siang or King Nguong Chiong (Foochow pinyin) before she took the motor launch back to Nang Chong. Grandma walked every where in town. She would only have the luxury of using the trishaw when my mother sent me to wait for her at the wharf and to help her carry less stuff (basket of clothes, a duck or a chicken etc). His baos were the best in the world.

Usually after a sanba holiday, we would put on some weight.

When we got into the motor launch every one would say, "Wah your grandmother must have fed you very well."

Nang Chong Stories : Rearing Pigs

 

My mother and her eldest sister in law were in charge of rearing pigs (about 3 or 4 pigs a year so that the Japanese soldiers would not hear the loud noises when they passed by) during the Japanese Occupation. While aunt was busy looking after her young children, born one year apart, my mother cooked for the family and for the pigs as well.

she had to collect extra yam leaves and water lettuce for the hot food to be cooked under the smoke house (hern boon) . Besides she had to make sure that the wood fire was on going throughout the morning. Pigs were fed twice a day with warm, freshly cooked food, so that they could grow faster.

Besides feeding pigs, she also had to tend the padi fields. Furthermore, when my maternal grandfather was already very ill and my mother already knew that it would not be long for him to leave this world for the Kingdom of Heaven. He was losing weight and his pain was getting more excruciating each day. Today a small surgery would have eased the pain of his intestinal hernia according to a doctor.

There was one time when my mother went into the pig sty to rescue one baby pig from underneath a heavy mother pig. And she realized too late that the mum was angry, and had started to rush at her. She was too late climbing out of the sty, so her shin was gored quite badly. She used to show my sisters her deep scar which continued to be very obvious on her fair leg. She said her fear of pigs was permanent. Hence after her marriage, she did not want to rear any more pigs. She left her pigs in Nang Chong, but she never left her fear behind.

The slaughtering of a pig was a village affair in those days and as the family did not have any refrigerator, most of the pork was shared with relatives nearby. Fresh pork was quickly eaten and the left over pork was boiled and salted. Meat was thus on the table for a few weeks. Pigs were slaughtered only once in a while during the 3 years and 8 months of Japanese Occupation. Mum used to say she reared the pigs but the feasting was communal or gotong royong(cooperatively eaten). 

The wounds luckily did not manifest themselves and she walked with a limp for days and weeks although she continued to work in the farm. How her wounds finally healed she also could not remember. But she used a lot of iodine and later a lot of of 693, the white tablet that is now banned. 

God was truly watching over her. 

Nang Chong Stories : Perilla

 When the Foochow pioneers first moved to Sibu, they brought a lot of seeds and even cuttings to grow.

While they must have brought a lot of dried herbs for coughs, fevers and other health problems, they must have brought seeds of the perilla which in Chinese, is called zĭsū (紫苏) or sūzǐ (苏子).

My mother was born in 1926, 15 years after the first arrival of Wong Nai Siong and his Foochow pioneers. By then my mother said the Foochows were already spreading and trying their best to carve out good farming land for themselves. Land was free for any Foochow who was hardworking.

It was known that my hardworking maternal grandfather had already fell more than 100 acres of land and had grown a lot of rubber for his growing family. He had built three coolie houses for his rubber tapping employees to live in. I have even met one man (surname Chiu in Miri) who said that his family tapped rubber fro my grandfather and uncle before and after the Japanese war. Today he is a very wealthy man.

My mother was the fourth daughter and there were already two brothers older than her. Subsequently my maternal grandmother gave birth to two more boys and one more girl before the Japanese arrived. It was also rumoured that my ngie mah had a baby girl before my second aunt was born. And then there were also one or two miscarriages along the way. My maternal grandmother never talked about these unfortunate situations all her life.

While growing up my mother never saw a doctor and she never experienced any injection. Her first vaccination was when she was almost 20!! That was the time when she was given a card with her photo for her vaccination!

What medical treatment did she have? Parents did their best with their traditional knowledge. Fevers were treated easily by giving children some mung bean porridge. A bit of cough was cured by chewing some perilla leaves plucked from the roadside!

I was way over 60 when I chanced upon perilla leaves in Minqing.

I did ask my mum about it but she said she never realized that perilla as a plant has almost disappeared from the gardens of Nang Chong. She was then almost 90 and she told us about her early childhood when they did not know about western medicine. She was afraid of going to the hospital all her life.

(This photo was taken in Minqing, near the Methodist Church, when I visited Ban Dong with my friends.)

"In the olden days Zisu was found all over the yard. Just take a few leaves and chew and your small cough would be gone. No need to go to Sibu to see a doctor."

Panadol, aspirin, and Bre A col and other over the counter cough mixtures all caused perilla to disappear from our cultural landscape. And it was something not even recorded in our social and cultural history my mother had commented.

I also believe that children in the olden days were tougher and made of sterner stuff.

"Perilla is a good thing," she said when I asked her once,

Lau Kah Jui's Vegetable Garden

 My mother's memories of her father were very clear throughout her life.

 She was sad for him because he did not live a longer life to enjoy the wealth he accumulated for his children and grandchildren. As one of the 1118 Foochow pioneers he had worked very hard to clear land and build houses in his younger days and was a totally generous Foochow man who had a very strong faith in God. He would not harm any one nor talk bad about others, although he did have a manly temper.

My maternal grandfather died in 1943, during the Japanese Occupation when my mother was only 17 years old. From then on my mother was both mother and father to her younger siblings, Yung, Sing and Teck. The eldest son Ping was already married with children, Hee, the eldest daughter was practising as a nurse in Sarikei with her doctor husband, Dr. Hsiung. The second son, Kui was in China studying, a third daughter, Toh was already married to Chang Chung Ching, also in Chinga. And together with my maternal grandmother they were stranded in the mainland by the war.

Ngie Gung, or maternal grandfather was a very hardworking Foochow man. He never stopped working even when he was quite ill towards the last few years of his life. He had hernia of the big intestines and no one could perform surgery during the war. It could have been very complicated.

He had to wear a stomach brace made from thick cloth for two years to reduce his pain according to our eldest uncle, Ping.

But in spite of all the pains, he continued to grow vegetables while my mother planted padi,reared pigs, chickens and ducks to feed the whole family .

This is a story from my mum.

In the 1930's my maternal grandfather Lau Kai Jui, made a living as a builder, carpenter and woodworker apart from tapping rubber. He had about 100 acres of rubber garden and employed several families. However he was most happy growing his own vegetables for the family of 4 boys and 5 girls, and a few grand children, especially in the last decade of his life.

He was very innovative. He planted vegetables in the water logged areas by making troughs in logs he collected from Rajang River. He was able to chisel the logs slowly and planted vegetables like yiu chai, gua chai and even creeping vegetables like long beans, petola. In later years, my mother never saw that kind of vegetable gardens any more.

My mother all through her life, missed her beloved father who also passed away too early in his life. She wished he had lived longer to see more grand children and enjoy good food and rest in his old age. But he died too young. Mum always felt that a person must always enjoy good food, eat well, to realise a good life.

If I lived by the river side I would do what my ngie gung did...grow vegetables in troughs made from logs.......how wonderful.

Roots of Lalang Grass

The lalang (Imperata cyllindrica) is a terrible and aggressive weed which have never been a welcome feature of rural farmers' life. It grows very fast and it cannot be controlled. Even the best of weedicide cannot kill it. Once a field of lalang is burnt, it would grow in a matter of weeks.

When our Foochow ancestors came to Sibu, their spirits were dampened by the fast growth of lalang or Huong Chow . Huong here may mean wild, or chaotic.




But its roots are powerful in reducing fever when brewed for one or two hours.

When the Foochow pioneers first arrived they had no medical support and Sarawak government did not even have a clinic in Sibu. Those sinseh who came with them were mainly barefoot doctors who knew only about rustic cures. And among the cures was lalang root.





It is quite tough to harvest the roots because the leaves have sharp edges which can cut our fine skin. And it is very difficult to pull out the roots at the same time. Most of the time, people would changkul the soil and then break up the soil to extract the roots. That would be an easier way without cutting one's arms by the sharp blades of the leaves.

Today we can easily buy the dried roots of the lalang in any Chinese sinseh or medicine shop. Just take a handful and boil it with water. After cooling the brew, just drink it and the fever will be gone.

Eating Sweet and Sour Pork Downriver

Down river, upriver.

When I was young, going to see Grandma meant that we had to travel downriver. It was a normal term in Sibu. It meant we had to take a motor launch which would take an hour or more to reach Nang Chong, a village further down the river, towards the South China Sea.

Upriver would mean places like Kanowit, Song and Kapit.

The Malay word for upriver is Hulu and downriver is Hilir.

In the olden days, wedding feasts and birthday celebratios were usually catered by village groups.

The home catering service of wedding or birthday feasts down river was well appreciated.

This  Litchi Pork was served  the welcome banquet in Fuzhou when I visited in 2018.

One of the dishes every one enjoyed was the sweet and sour pork which was a derivative of the Litchi Pork of Fuzhou.

I remember as a child how an uncle prepared for the dish for my cousin's wedding in Nang Chong.

There were a few cooks to help out and there were only three or four stoves for them to do all the cooking from scratch!!

This included slaughtering the pigs,chickens and ducks too.



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With everything already ordered, he made sure that there were tins of pineapple cubes for his particular dish for the feast. I never did realise  then how hard it was to prepare sweet and sour pork for 15 tables .

Most downriver guests loved this dish because of the special taste and not every one then could buy tinned pineapples just to cook this dish as most farming families had very simple food at home. Moreover, many of the children never even had the chance of attending a wedding banquet in Sibu town!!

First the right amount of good flour coated seasoned lean pork cubes would be deep fried. It looked as if there was a huge basin of fried pork cubes!!

Then some slices of chillies, cubed cucumber, sliced onions and garlic and some sugar would be stir fried in heated oil.  When done, the whole basim of pork cubes would be poured into the enormous  kuali.To thicken the sauce, using the syrup from the tinned pineapples, the cook added some tapioca starch.

It really took a huge chef like a TARZAN to do this kind of food preparation.

Food catering was amazing in those days when facilities were minimal, without refrigeration and electrical appliances.

And at the end of the feast many would even have extras (Chai Deh) to take away!!

Let us always remember the cooks who helped made our downriver feasts so memorable.

Biscuit Tin as Standard Measurement

I saw this scenario in Bario which evoked lots of memories. the smell of the newly milled rice, the touch of the rough rice grains in my hands. They brought back memories of my maternal grandmother who fed so many grandchildren with the rice grown in the land my maternal grandfather cleared, from the Rajang river bank right into the hills behind the village.

Our rice fields were fairly extensive so to speak and I remember my two aunts going into them in the early morning and coming home for lunch, with legs caked in mud and sweat streaming down from their faces.

There was a huge rice storage bin upstairs in the big house, enough to fill up more than 100 dan (half a pickul per dan). We children used to jump into the huge bin and tread in the grains. We got a good scolding. But I really loved the feel of the rough grains on my legs.

 These two tins in the photo are biscuit tins which have been recycled to contain unmilled rice at the mini milling station at Pa Ukat. It reminds me of my maternal grandmother's days in the 1950 and 60's in Nang Chong Village, Sibu.

Rice, both milled and unmilled, were sold by weight. In Foochow it was the Dan, the Chinese unit of measurement from Fujian. A dan was 50 kg. Pigs were also weighed and sold according to dan.

擔

100

50 kg

110.2 lb

picul or Chinese hundredweight

After weighing the grains, the miller would mill the rice into the biscuit tins. In this way the farmer would also see how many tins they get from their grains, which could have come in a guni sack. The milled rice would then be poured into the guni sacks which could easily get on bicycles to be pushed home by the farmers.

Sometimes when farmers got together they talked about how much rice their families ate. Some would say that their families ate so much rice like 2 biscuit tins of good rice. And they would laugh at the voracity of their children. And rice was such a staple to the Foochows who considered rice a STEEL. So the ability of eating rice was a sign that the child was healthy.

The fine husks  of the rice grains would be mixed with cooked left over rice for ducks, chickens and even pigs to eat. Nothing was wasted. The powdery husk is called KONG in Foochow.

Today millers also sell the husks to sagu makers to make sagu.

the biscuit tin has been a very useful container in the Foochow society since the olden days.

Nang Chong Stories : Getting hold of Pang Ngee

The Pang ngee is a small red crab which the Foochows love. It can be eaten, though rather tediously, as a pickled crab. It is too small actually as it is  only the size of a match box. But the best way is to make it into a sauce, which the Foochows call Pang Ngee Chiong.



The photo above is by Irene J. Yong.

During the Japanese Occupation in SArawak, my mother looked foreward to catching loads of pang
ngee to make the sauce for the family.



Here is her story:

" It was her first foray into the growing of rice in the muddy fields at a tender age of 17+ and she was the chief farmer of the family. She and her eldest brother and sister in law had cut the grass of the 2 acre field ready for the mud to soften, and the grass to be burnt. The Red Pang Ngee in the 8th lunar month came together to mate and they were seen crawling all over the field.

How to capture them?

Mum called her nieces and sister in law for help. They piled the grass into mounds and started to chase the pang ngee into the mounds. After gotten several pang ngee under several mounds, they started to lift up the mounds to check. The pang ngee were still there resting. So they just pushed the pang ngee into their buckets. They managed to bring home about two heavily ladened buckets. The next day they did the same thing again. "

Traditional knowledge of nature. Some people say that would be very gee rek (strange) but that was one way to capture the pang ngee in the older days.

Nang Chong Stories : Chilli and Tomato Sauces

A lot of chili sauce manufacturers changed their labels or went bust because of the need to get halal certification.


In the 1950's and 60's wedding banquets were often held at home, downriver in the villages.

The popular chefs would be asked to help out and an able bodied team of helpers were rounded up to do the cooking and serving. Most banquets would have 10 to 15 tables for close relatives and immediate neighbours. And for four or five days the house would be full of people, coming and going.

One of my best memories of attending a banquet in Nang Chong was to see each table being served with two of my favourite dishes - sweet and sour fish and the peas with chicken innards.

these two dishes would call for tomato sauce and a tin of pineapple. My uncle who was a chef, told me secretly that the lovely sweet and sour fish sauce came from a bit of chili sauce, a bit of tomato sauce and a bit of pineapple syrup and a bit of vinegar. Years later I realized that most of us Foochows actually loved our food sweet.

but interestingly it was my love for the sweet and sour fish that introduced me to the eating of tomatoes.

Many of my cousins did not like to eat tomatoes because of the Foochow aversion for Chow Chang (green smell) and perhaps it is for this reason that many Foochow women in those days did not like to eat raw food e.g. raw cucumber, tomatoes and onions. I was different because I liked what they did not like and therefore I was considered an "alien" or a jin gee lek person. I suppose I was changing with time without realization.

Nang Chong stories : Okinawa Spinach

Have you ever reflected on the wisdom of your elders?

When we were young we took everything for granted. Knowledge was gained in school. Home was where we lived and worked. Many of our elders were older people who had never been to school. Most of them were willing to learn for their children.  But I must say we children have a lot to learn from them orally.

We can learn a lot of medical uses of our local vegetables if we pay attention to what our older generation plant and collect in the jungle.

One of such precious vegetables which my mother and aunts had grown in our gardens and formerly in Nang Chong is Lang Ging Hern or Okinawa Spinach.

Photo from Google

This is not a common vegetable in Miri where the Foochows migrated to in the 1970's. But it is a common market vegetable in Sibu and around Sibu.

In the past the Foochows loved this vegetable as part of their daily food. When fried with hoong ngang or the thick rice vermicelli this vegetable turned the rice vermicelli to a lovely pink colour. As children we liked to only drink the soup which in those days seemed to be very savoury and  tasty.

In most households in Nang Chong there would always be a row of this pretty vegetable. Sometimes if there was a surplus  or a sudden flood which submerged the vegetable plots my mother would pick them quickly and chop them up for the pigs she was rearing. She did not know then that this vegetable was actually very healthy and organic food for her pigs (rich in iron). No wonder they grew so fat and huge. Mum used to say that they were tired of this vegetable so they would share with the animals and ducks which seemed to like it too.

I used to be on the look out for this vegetable in Miri. But it is quite hard to find.

It can be used as a salad vegetable, with cheese, tomatoes and a bit of lime juices and fish sauce.

When a new mother is lactating, she can eat a lot of this vegetable too. It will help her build up more iron. The Foochows believe that red vegetables help increase red blood cells.

Nang Chong Stories : Sweet Potatoes

The sweet potato is now one of the most popular root vegetables in the world.

It was first introduced to the Chinese by the Father of Sweet Potato of China, Ting Jing Loong  (1543-1619)of Changle. He was a high ranking official who started a business in Luzon Island. Having a critical mind he found the sweet potato of Luzon drought tolerant and easy to plant. In spite of the ban imposed by the Spanish Government on the export of sweet potato, he managed to smuggle out the vines. He twisted the potato vines into absorbent rope and smuggled them back to Fuzhou for cultivation.

The Foochows migrated to Sibu, Sarawak in 1901, under a programme signed by Wong Nai Siong, the charismatic Foochow leader and the Rajah Brooke of Sarawak.

One of the most important crop the Foochow pioneers brought to Sibu was the sweet potato among other vegetable seeds, fruit tree cuttings and natural rice seeds because the Foochows are basically agriculturists. When time became better, some of them returned to China and brought the yellow beaked duck and the hardier serati to Sibu. The Foochows being rabbit eating people also introduced rabbits to Sibu. ( Source : Oral Stories of the Lau Kah Chui family of Sibu)

During the Japanese Occupation, the sweet potato saved many lives as it could be planted without the Japanese soldiers knowing and when rice could not be grown openly and in wide expanse of land. The Japanese had a rice tax which was very prohibitive at the same time. Many survivors of the Japanese Occupation like my mother still cannot bear to look at sweet potatoes because of their trauma.

Besides the sweet potato the Foochows also relied on the Melanau for sago starch which they cooked with some vegetables. This helped them "fill their stomachs".