分类： 人物

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.

Of war and love

By Foong Pek Yee
13 Dec, 2021
LOVE  brought them together,  war tore them apart.
A beautiful love story  cut short by the Korean War.
Lee Jung-Seop, born to a wealthy family in North Korea, and Yamamoto Masako met and fell in love when they were studying art in Tokyo in 1939.
They got married in 1945, the year World War II ended, and she took up the Korean name  Lee Nam-Deok.
The couple were blessed with two sons when the Korean War (1950-53) erupted.
Together with  their sons Tae-Hyun and Tae-Seung who were four and two respectively, they survived the 1951 mass exodus from North Korea to  South Korea where they stayed in Busan and Jeju for a year.
In a bid to save their children from hardship in a war torn country, Nam-Deok and her sons boarded a Tokyo-bound repatriation ship in 1952.
The separation was meant to be a temporary one.
The following year, Jung -Seop managed to make it to Tokyo for a weeklong reunion with his wife and sons.
Upon his return to South Korea, Jung -Seop who struggled to make money to bring his family home succumbed to hardship and poor health.
He died alone in a hospital in Seoul in 1956 at the age of 40.
Fast track to 2002, the South Korean government set up the Lee Jung-Seop Art Gallery in Seogwipo in Jeju and the road leading to the museum is named after the renowned artist.
 Legacy: Visitors learned about Lee Jung -Seop  as they stroll along the street named after him.
Jung-Seop’s life and times, written in English,  is displayed prominently at the gallery
I wished I had read about the Lee family before I visited the museum in the Summer of 2018 to better appreciate his art work which says a lot about love for his family and life in a turbulent era.
Happier times:  The two paintings by Lee Jung -Seop.
Next to the gallery is a small house where the Lee family stayed in a rented room measuring 1.5m by 2.4m for about a year in 1951.
Evolving times: The Lee family stayed briefly  in this house about 70 years ago.
According to The Korean Herald in a report on Jun 6, 2016 – It was in Seogwipo  that Jung -Seop created paintings that portrayed children playing with crabs and fish, in cheerful colours, and that his wife later recalled that it was the happiest time for the family.

A cafe for the kids

By Foong Pek Yee
13 Dec, 2021
THE  kids were visibly excited as they made their way to the bookshelves one  Autumn afternoon.
Todak Cafe – a book cafe- in Namwon, a small town in Jirisan,  is no ordinary cafe.
The brainchild of a few people who fell in love with Jirisan, it is a favourite haunt for people of all age groups in the otherwise quiet small town.
The young love  to read their favourite books and enjoy the food there.
It is also a waiting place for their parents to fetch them.
The cafe is also a  venue for meetings, activities and, a collection and drop off point for courier services.
The founders including Kim Hyun-Suk are from Seoul but have lived in Namwon for some time.
And they brought along ideas to help the people evolve  with changing times.
Visionary: Hyun – Suk  on her plans for Namwon
 Hyun-Suk says Jirisan, with the most beautiful mountains in South Korea,  is the perfect place to be with nature
“San means mountains in Korean,” says Hyun-Suk when we met at the cafe in the Autumn of 2018.
Calming : Jirisan offers a slow-paced lifestyle amidst nature.
Fluent in English, she and her two kids  left Seoul for the countryside many years ago.
She and her husband Cho Yang- Ho had wanted them to grow up among nature and have social contact with the community daily – something that can be rare in big cities.
 Hyun-Suk and their children stay in Namwon while Yang-Ho who stays put  in Seoul visits them on weekends.
Fast track to 2018, their  20-year -old-daughter and 17-year-old son were already in college and high school in Seoul.
But Hyun-Suk continues to stay in Namwon and run the cafe while Yang-Ho travels to be with her for the weekends.
Farming remains the major economic activity in Jirisan though businesses like   homestay and tourism are  thriving -thanks to the social media.
 Fresh produce: Harvest time in Autumn.
Hyun-Suk says many city folk who relocated to Jirisan soon found out that not everyone is cut out for agriculture work.
After giving farming a try, they ventured into other jobs.
Meanwhile many youngsters  from the countryside still flock to  Seoul for its  business and job opportunities.
Ha Jin- Yong who has been tasked by a non governmental organisation (NGO) to research on life among the younger generation in rural areas says the young still want to go to Seoul.
Serene: Mountains, stream and greenery a trademark of Jirisan.
At 25 (in 2018), Jin Yong who hails from Seoul says he fell in love with the rustic lifestyle after staying and working in Namwon for four years.
“City living can be lonely beneath all the hustle and bustle,” says Jin Yong