Category: Places

Ending her career on a high note

The story of  Soon Ah Buei-
By Foong  Pek Yee-
SHE is a dishwasher in a restaurant.
But Soon Ah Buei never complain of fatigue, says her son  Pu Siang Yen.
“One day mother fell sick. I was her replacement, and I realised it is such a back-breaking job,” Siang Yen  recalls  his mother’s struggle after his father passed  away 22 years ago.
He has an elder brother Pu Siang Chan, 43.
Siang Yen, 40,  says his mother pampers her family with her jia xiang cai (authentic home cooking) despite after a hard day’s work in the restaurant.
“We all know she is a good cook.
Good times: Tourists enjoying themselves at Yee Tai 2  Restaurant.
“And mother finally became a chef and lao ban niang (lady boss) about seven years ago,” says Siang Yen.
Historical site: HillVille Inn and Yee Tai 2 Restaurant are housed in the Sungai Lembing Hainan Association in Sungai Lembing, an ex mining town.
The two brothers set up a guesthouse with a restaurant on the ground floor and their mother is the chef.
Located in Sungai Lembing in Pahang, HillVille Inn and Yee Tai 2 Restaurant are run by the Pu family members.
Sungai Lembing is famous for eco-tourism, and has between 2,000 and 3,000 tourists over weekends before the pandemic.
Simply cool: The Rainbow Waterfall, about 12km from Sungai Lembing New Village, on a Sunday morning.
Welcome : Friends (from left) Foo Kok How, Siang Yen, Mac Tang Siew Fong and Alan Cheong posing  with the century-old tree in Sungai Lembing town.
All is well until 2020.
The Pu brothers lost their mother to cancer shortly after the start of the pandemic.
She was 64.
Siang Yen says they have come to terms that their mother had gone to a better place, forever.
“We found solace in the fact that our mother is finally a lao ban niang (lady boss).
“She is so happy when guests like her food and they posed pictures with her,”  recalls Siang Yen.
He says even Westeners took a liking to Soon’s cooking.
According to Siang Yen, his mother who was healthy, suddenly started to lose weight which is not a good sign.
Soon was diagnosed with late stage cancer, underwent surgery, but succumbed to the disease in a matter of months.
Siang Yen says his mother had managed to train one of his aunts to do the cooking.
Note: All the photos were taken before the pandemic.

Gold fish brings good luck to the villagers

By Foong Pek Yee
14 Dec, 2021
ORNAMENTAL FISH is a symbol of all things good;- from abundance, prosperity , good luck  to success.
In  Gopeng – an ex mining town-  it has given it  a new lease of life.

The world tin market crash in the mid 1980s saw many mine workers turned to  gold fish rearing – turning ex mining ponds into fish farms.

Gopeng, about 18 km from Ipoh city centre,  gradually rose to become one of the top exporters of gold fish .
The rest is history.
Watching their graceful movements  is simply therapeutic, says Roy Lee of how ornamental fish can be a de-stressor.
On top of things: Roy is hands on in the business.
Keeping ornamental fish is a way to de-stress, says Roy who
rears ornamental fish in  Gopeng.
He also imports and exports the fish to countries like  India, Vietnam, Thailand and  Philippines.
Chalking up 20 years in the industry, a
 typical working day for him starts at 8.00 am and he only calls it a day 12 hours later.
 Remarkable:  Villagers turned ex mining ponds into fish farms in Gopeng.
Perseverance: Ornamental fish rearing is labour intensive.
At 51, Wong Choon Ming has chalked up 30 plus years as a fish farmer, and is still counting.
He says he started off with gold fish and has switched to Arowana some time ago.
Choon Ming says Arowana, also known as dragon fish (long yu in Chinese ), is a symbol of good luck and prosperity, and majority of the Arowana from Gopeng  go to the China market,
Fish farmer Chin Kean Wei, 56, says it is a tough business and he is glad that farmers in Gopeng are close and help each other to stay competitive in the market.
Kean Wei says he also counts himself lucky as his wife Aw Chen Chen, 48,  helps him in the fish farm .
Caring  touch : Chen Chen learned  to look after ornamental fish when she and Kean Wei started dating.
Kean Wei says the demand for ornamental fish peaks  during winter and ahead of the Lunar New Year.
It may be end of year and holiday season but work comes first, says Kean Wei.
A typical working day for Kean Wei is between 7am and 9.00pm.
 Law Tong Hai says his  passion for ornamental fish brings joy in the business.
This is  important as the line between work and personal time is blur in the life of a fish farmer.
“We must be hands on though we have workers to do the job,” says Tong Hai.
Apart from experience, he says continuing research  to upgrade fish rearing methods is also important.
Using  pandan plants to filter the excretion from the fish is  a result of research, he says, drawing my attention to the fresh aroma of the plant during my visit to his farm.
 While large scale fish rearing using concrete ponds is inevitable, Tong Hai believes there are  ways to create an environment that is as close to nature as possible for the fish.

Once a place for the elite

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.

 

A street dedicated to coffee lovers

By Foong Pek Yee
13 Dec, 2021
Jeonpo Cafe Street in Busan, South Korea has 40 cafes and still counting.
It is the place for coffee lovers; from good coffee, ambience and  service to an interesting history behind it.
Stumbled upon the place during my trip to Busan in the Summer of 2019,  I went there a few days  to try out the cafes and has plans to go there again.
After all, my favourite pastime is sitting at a cafe reading or watching the world go by.
I learned  that South Koreans are particular over the  ambience of a cafe, and this is not without reason.
To begin with, coffee was the drink for only the royalty until 1930.
In 1896, Korea’s King Kojong was introduced to coffee in Russia  where he took refuge from invading Japanese.
He fell in love with hot coffee with sugar and brought home his favourite beverage.
From then until 1930,  sipping hot coffee, eating sweet snacks and listening to classical music was only for the royalty.
Coffee beans were available in the market from 1930 but only the rich had access to it.
By 1950, coffeeshops or  Da-Bang started to crop up in town areas.
In 1970, a  company, Dong – Suh, started manufacturing powdered coffee in South Korea, making coffee easily available to the people .
The history of coffee in Korea is proudly displayed at the entrance to Busan Coffee Museum (BCM)  in Jeonpo Cafe Street.
Kim Dong-Kyu – the founder and owner of BCM- has an extraordinary love for anything coffee.
Focus: Dong-Kyu aims to make Busan Coffee Museum the largest of its kind in the world.
Allergic to coffee beans and never tasted coffee before, Dong-Kyu went on to marry Woo Hee Nae, a licenced master Barista.
BCM was set up in 2018 and Dong-Kyu in his early 30s, says he has researched on coffee for a decade by then.
His collection of some 450 exhibits;  from roasters, grinders, coffee makers, coffee beans and literature from all over the world, some dated back a few centuries, makes BCM a one-stop-centre for coffee lovers.
Fascinated : Visitors to Busan Coffee Museum.
Priced collection: An old fashioned coffee grinder.
Your favourite pick :  Coffee beans from around the world.
The Korean Economic Institute of America was reported saying some  two billions cups of coffee are consumed daily worldwide.
Koreans reportedly drink an average of 12.3 cups coffee a week in 2019.
Dong-Kyu –  a professionally trained curator  and landscape engineer-  has plans to turn BCM into the largest of its kind in the world.
He  has another coffee museum in his house in Yangsan, a 30-minute-drive from Jeonpo.
Attention : You can find anything coffee.
Jeonpo cafe Street is certainly an ideal location for BCM.
Jeonpo rose to be among the trendiest spots in Busan in just a decade, with some 40 cafes among its 170 outlets which are mostly eateries and accessory shops.
Prior to that, Jeonpo was like any backstreet with sunset businesses like hardware stores .
Young people moved in to transform the area – renovated the empty stores into chic cafes and eateries, and the rest is history.