月度归档： 2023年1月

The joy of a big family and old-world charm

Happy together:  Lam Foong with her Lai family in their Tronoh hometown in Perak for reunion on Chinese New Year.
Photos by Lai Jen Weng
By Foong Pek Yee
Jan 29, 2023.
At 89, Lam Foong is a picture of  joy and hope.
She keeps herself healthy and happy  by being active and productive daily.
A typical day for her is tending to her garden where she grows a variety of vegetables like potato leaves, long beans, egg plant, spring onion and hairy gourd.
Labour of love:  Lam Foong in her vegetable garden.
And what makes her most happy is she will have  home grow vegetables for her  children and grandchildren when they visit her.
A mother of seven , Lam who is a good cook,  has  plans all year round to cook for her family during festive or holiday season – Chinese New Year, Ching Ming, Mid Autumn Festival , school holidays and public holidays – when her children and grandchildren from Kuala Lumpur and Ipoh will go to their Tronoh hometown to spend time together.
During this Chinese New Year (CNY) their ancestral home saw more than  40 family members of three generations gathered over three days, from new year eve, for the celebration.
Auspicious: Lam Foong’s Chinese New Year specialties for reunion dinner.
The Cantonese pronunciation for  prawns ( ha ) and fish (Yu)  which rhymes with laughter and abundance respectively  are must -have for  festive celebration.
While Lam is a good cook, her children help her in the kitchen and run errands  – a family still steeped in the fine Chinese tradition.
For Lam, preparations for the celebration starts months ahead, from planning the menu, booking the ingredients and planting vegetables.
She also makes sure her children have her home cooked specialties like pork belly and yam and home grow vegetables to bring along when they return to their respective home after the celebration.

Green and fresh : Potato leaves is among Lam Foong’s favourite vegetables.

Beautiful day:  A bird perched on a branch of a rambutan tree in Lam Foong’s garden.

Lam Foong loves to stay in Tronoh while enjoying occasional visits to her children in Kuala Lumpur.

And equally important is she continues to lead and enjoy a healthy and happy lifestyle and the old-world charm.

Staying competitive and popular at all times

Value for money :  Makes Chinese New Year celebrations more joyous.
Jan 19, 2023
By Foong Pek Yee
One big bottle of nga ku chips is priced at RM35, and a small bottle at RM15.
The big bottle has at least three times the amount of that of the  small bottle.
Roadside stall trader Loh See Hoi’s  sales pitch certainly resonates with discerning shoppers these days.
Festive snacks:  Varieties and  value for money.
At 75, Loh is brimming with enthusiasm as he goes about serving customers at his roadside stall in Tanjung Tualang New Village, Perak recently.
Hardworking :  Loh showing a laminated photo of him cooking  his famous sambal sauce at home in Gopeng Perak.
His core  business is homemade sauce and he has been in this business for over three decades.
He sells some snacks during festive seasons.
Loh says his  stall opens  on Saturday and Sunday – almost a 12 hour stretch starting about 9 am.
He says he  chose to set up stall in Tanjung Tualang New Village some 30 years ago as  the village -a haven for seafood dishes-  draws many tourists over weekends and public holidays.
 Tanjung Tualang is also known as Tiger Prawn Town.
On weekdays, Loh and his wife, in her 60s, are at home  in Gopeng, Perak preparing  their sauces.
“I have recipes for over 20 types of sauce,” he says, adding that he likes to experiment and come up with his own recipes.
A bottle of his popular sambal sauce is priced at RM10 .
While cost of doing business keeps going up, Loh says  quality goods and competitive pricing  help  keep business afloat .

No ordinary community

The destination: This is the place in Sitiawan in Sept 1903  where 363 Foochows from China  landed after surviving the perils of sea and a cholera outbreak.
Jan 15, 2023
By Foong Pek Yee
THE year was 1903 in Malaya, against a backdrop of erratic weather conditions and plunging rice yields.
And a rice growing community in Foochow, China, became the colonial government’s target- recruit them for a rice growing project in Sitiawan, Perak.
The Methodist Episcopal Mission (MEM) was tasked to bring in the Foochows, and Rev Ling Ching Mi and Rev HLE Dr Luering went to China for the mission.
And  in Sept 1903,  363  Foochows landed in Sitiawan – the pioneer batch of Foochow settlers.
But the rice growing project never took off.
The land and facilities like irrigation and drainage for the project as  promised to them were not there.
They were instead made to trek about six kilometers  into the jungle where they stayed in seven longhouses for the next six months.
While  Rev  Dr Luering was stationed in Ipoh about 80 km away from Sitiawan, Rev Ling Ching Mi also  got a transfer back to China in Dec 1903.
Ling Ching Mi got his nephew Ling Ti Kong to take care of the settlers.
And Ling Ti  Kong also roped in Ding Chin Seng (husband of his father’s sister) to help him.
Ling Ching Mi, Ling Ti Kong and Ding Chin Seng were Foochows.
By Jan 1904, the Foochows  had set up  a day school under an attap shed with 22 pupils and a Foochow speaking teacher Ling Ding Jug for an eight hour class daily including an hour long break.
This is true to the Chinese  who subscribe to: ” Education for and the wellbeing of the children must never be compromised due to poverty.
 The shed also doubled as a church on Sundays.
By  early 1904  each family was given a three-acre- plot for them to build their own house and reared pigs, poultry and plant vegetables and fruits for a living.
The Foochows also went into rubber planting not long after.
Forever grateful:  Ling Leong Choong, 62, says this was one of the three wells that fed  the villagers for decades until piped water came to Sitiawan in the 1970s. The wells are in the compound of the house for Pioneer Methodist Church pastors  or “Muk Su Lao” in Chinese. 
Showcase: Set up in 2003, Sitiawan Settlement Museum was  formerly the ” Muk  Su Lao”along  Jalan Lin Chen Mei  in Sitiawan. It provides a glimpse of life in Sitiawan in the good old days and the missionary work in then Malaya. 
One-stop-centre:  The” Muk Su Lao” was the place for the Chinese to go for help in the old days.
Great job:  Shih Toong Siong who wrote the book “The Foochows of Sitiawan ” is a Foochow born and educated 
in Sitiawan.
 Hall of Fame: Some of the prominent figures in Malaysia and Singapore who are descendants of the Foochows in Sitiawan  and documented in the  book – The Foochows of Sitiawan.
While the Sitiawan Settlement Museum  gives a glimpse of history,  the book ” The Foochows of Sitiawan” by Shih Toong Siong is most enlightening.
 Rev  B.F. Van Dyke who became the first resident missionary in Sitiawan together with Ling Ti Kong and Ding Chin Seng  were credited for building a church costing $900( to replace the attap shed) and an orphanage in Sitiawan in 1905
Rev Van Dyke – an American of Dutch origin- was a missionary school teacher from the Anglo Chinese School, Singapore in 1900 before his posting to Sitiawan in March 1904.
Unfortunately Rev Ding Chin Seng passed away in 1906. He was 41.
Ours is 289:  Ling Leong Choong who was born and bred in Sitiawan  says the rubber tappers had labels engraved on to the latex sheets to prove ownership. And 289 was the label for his family, pointing to the samples on the wall.  
Way of life:   Bicycle was the most common and only mode of transport for the poor  in the old days.  The equipment used by rubber tappers are among items displayed at the Sitiawan Settlement Museum.
Simple lifestyle:  A typical kitchen of the Foochows in the old days.
With their farming background, the settlers were also among the first to go into rubber planting in 1905.
And that perhaps is also one of the reasons for many Foochow oil palm smallholders in Sitiawan today.
This pioneer  batch of Foochows may be  small in numbers but they definitely had earned an important place in history.