By Foong Pek Yee
13 Dec, 2021
IT is a landing place for helicopters and small planes.
It is also a place for polo – horseback ball game.
Located next to Gopeng town, this is a scene in then Malaya in the colonial era.
Watching the high society lifestyle, the locals called the place “Fi Gi Chang” or airport in Hakka dialect and Lawan Kuda (horse fighting) in Bahasa Malaysia.
In a twist of fate, the place was turned into a settlement during the Emergency (1948-1960) -Lawan Kuda New Village.
Fast track to the present, many elderly folk in Gopeng, a predominantly Hakka community, continue to call the village Fi Gi Chang, says Gopeng Museum curator Phang See Kong, 82.
Phang also describes the villagers as an enterprising lot and he attributes it to the good feng shui in the village.
Pulse of the village: The wet market in Lawan Kuda New Village.
The main road is flanked by restaurants, coffee shops, pharmacies, mobile phone shops, Chinese medicine shops, sundry shops, hardware stores and a yoga studio.
There is also a wet market and a hawker centre.
The latest addition is a 7-Eleven outlet and a courier service shop.
Peaceful and relaxing: Great way to start the day.
The villagers are also resilient and hardworking.
Many elderly, some in their 80s, continue to work.
It was 6.30am on a recent Sunday where I stumbled upon a group of elderly women gathering at a roadside near the village entrance.
They were waiting for their contractor to assign them part- time jobs
A woman by the surname Wu told me that they got paid RM40 to work from 7.00am to 12 noon.
The do farm jobs, like harvesting fruits and vegetables and grass cutting
At 78, Wu says she has been doing part-time jobs since she lost her job in the tin mines in the 1980s.
She says there are many part- time farm jobs in and around Gopeng.
“We cycle or go on a motorcycle to farms nearby. The contractor will provide transport for faraway places like Tanjung Tualang,” says Wu.
It was hardly 7.ooam and many villagers were out and about – doing marketing, enjoying breakfast, sipping tea, chatting and reading newspapers.
Cruising around: A routine enjoys by the villagers.
Ren He coffeeshop opens around 4.30 am and patrons are already waiting, says a worker selling dim sum there.
She says workers have to be at the coffeeshop by 3.00am to start preparing the food.
In the olden days , villagers made their way to work at the rubber estates, tin mines and vegetable farms as early as 2.00am.
Many continue with the habit of rising early though they no longer have to go to the fields or mines.
To keep themselves economically active, some elderly continue to grow vegetables and fruit trees in their house compound and sell their harvest in the wet market.
As one villager put it: People in Lawan Kuda can survive as long as they are willing to work.
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