{"id":2220,"date":"2021-12-13T06:22:47","date_gmt":"2021-12-13T06:22:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thevillagemyhome.com\/?p=2220"},"modified":"2021-12-15T09:03:22","modified_gmt":"2021-12-15T09:03:22","slug":"dominated-by-the-rich-and-powerful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thevillagemyhome.com\/zh\/dominated-by-the-rich-and-powerful\/","title":{"rendered":"Once a place for the elite"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

By Foong Pek Yee<\/p>\n

13 Dec, 2021<\/p>\n

IT is a landing place for helicopters and small planes.<\/p>\n

It is also a place for polo – horseback ball game.<\/p>\n

Located next to Gopeng town, this is a scene in then Malaya in the colonial era.<\/p>\n

Watching the high society lifestyle, the locals called the place\u00a0 “Fi Gi Chang”\u00a0 or airport\u00a0 in Hakka dialect and Lawan Kuda (horse fighting) in Bahasa Malaysia.<\/p>\n

In a twist of fate, the place\u00a0 was turned into a settlement during the Emergency (1948-1960) -Lawan Kuda New Village.<\/p>\n

Fast track to the present, many elderly folk in Gopeng, a predominantly Hakka community, continue to call the village\u00a0 Fi Gi Chang, says Gopeng Museum curator Phang See Kong, 82.<\/p>\n

Phang also describes the villagers as an enterprising lot and he attributes it to the good feng shui in the village.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Pulse of the village: The wet market in Lawan Kuda New Village.<\/p>\n

The main road\u00a0 is flanked by restaurants, coffee shops, pharmacies, mobile phone shops, Chinese medicine shops, sundry shops, hardware stores and a yoga studio.<\/p>\n

There is also a wet market and a hawker centre.<\/p>\n

The latest addition is a 7-Eleven outlet and a courier service shop.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Peaceful and relaxing: Great way to start the day.<\/p>\n

The villagers are also resilient and hardworking.<\/p>\n

Many elderly, some in their 80s, continue to work.<\/p>\n

It\u00a0 was 6.30am on a recent Sunday where I stumbled upon a group of elderly women\u00a0 gathering at a roadside near the village entrance.<\/p>\n

They were waiting for their contractor\u00a0 to assign them\u00a0 part- time jobs<\/p>\n

A woman by the surname\u00a0 Wu told me that they got paid RM40 to work from 7.00am to 12 noon.<\/p>\n

The do\u00a0 farm jobs, like harvesting fruits and vegetables and\u00a0 grass cutting<\/p>\n

At 78, Wu says she has been doing part-time jobs since she lost her job in the tin mines in the 1980s.<\/p>\n

She says there are many\u00a0 part- time farm jobs\u00a0 in and around Gopeng.<\/p>\n

“We cycle or go on a motorcycle to farms nearby. The contractor will provide transport for faraway places like Tanjung Tualang,” says Wu.<\/p>\n

It was hardly 7.ooam and many villagers were out and about – doing marketing, enjoying\u00a0 breakfast, sipping tea, chatting and reading newspapers.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Cruising around: A routine enjoys by the villagers.<\/p>\n

Ren He coffeeshop opens around 4.30 am and patrons are already waiting, says a worker selling dim sum there.<\/p>\n

She says workers have to be at the coffeeshop by 3.00am to start preparing the food.<\/p>\n

In the olden days , villagers\u00a0 made their way to work at the rubber estates, tin mines and vegetable farms as early as 2.00am.<\/p>\n

Many continue with the habit of rising early though they no longer have to go to the fields or mines.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

As one villager put it: People in Lawan Kuda can survive as long as they are willing to work.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u00a0 “Fi … Continue reading “Once a place for the elite”<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[113,115,120,117,116,119,118,121],"class_list":["post-2220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-places","tag-coffee","tag-colonial","tag-dim-sum","tag-farms","tag-helicopters","tag-horseback","tag-jobs","tag-planes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevillagemyhome.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevillagemyhome.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevillagemyhome.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevillagemyhome.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevillagemyhome.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2220"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/thevillagemyhome.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2630,"href":"https:\/\/thevillagemyhome.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2220\/revisions\/2630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevillagemyhome.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevillagemyhome.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevillagemyhome.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}