{"id":3069,"date":"2022-06-15T07:31:26","date_gmt":"2022-06-15T07:31:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thevillagemyhome.com\/?p=3069"},"modified":"2022-06-15T07:48:07","modified_gmt":"2022-06-15T07:48:07","slug":"the-village-in-a-garden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thevillagemyhome.com\/zh\/the-village-in-a-garden\/","title":{"rendered":"The village in a garden"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Living life on their own terms\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Foong Pek Yee<\/p>\n

foongpekyee@gmail.com<\/a><\/div>\n
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The tree-lined road and lush greenery from the entrance to\u00a0 Merbau New Village is a sight to\u00a0 behold.<\/div>\n
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Located along Jalan Pantai Remis in Manjung, Perak, its 700 meter long “Great Wall ”\u00a0 gives it a distinctive look from afar.<\/p>\n

It was just like any other village until the early 1990s when it took part\u00a0 in a clean and beautification campaign organised by the Housing and Local Government Ministry.<\/p>\n

The village is among\u00a0 a few villages in Manjung which emerged champion.<\/p>\n

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Outstanding: The 700 meter long\u00a0 wall also double up as a walking path<\/strong><\/div>\n
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Made his mark: Tan Sri Dr Ting Chew Peh<\/strong><\/div>\n
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Adding to the joy of the Merbau villagers is that the Minister who initiated the campaign, Tan Sri Dr Ting Chew Peh, also grew up in the village.<\/div>\n
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And the village today is testimony to the campaign’ s success.<\/div>\n
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\u00a0Finishing touch<\/strong> : The little pagoda and children’s playground enhanced the landscaped garden.<\/strong><\/div>\n
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Simplicity: Nature’s beauty<\/strong><\/div>\n
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Timeless beauty: The road leading to the houses in the village<\/strong><\/div>\n
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Going all out\u00a0 to spruce up their village some 30 years ago, what is most remarkable is that the villagers are able to maintain it well all these years.<\/div>\n
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Merbau New Village was once a barbed wire settlement under curfew during the Emergency (1948-1960)<\/div>\n
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Set up by the then colonial government, there are 452 such\u00a0 settlements which were named new villages.<\/div>\n
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Fast track to the present,\u00a0 the villagers are mostly second, third and fourth generation in the village.<\/div>\n
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Majority of some 200 attap shacks in the village in the early years have since been rebuilt into modern concrete houses.<\/div>\n
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House-proud: Villagers take good care of their houses and surroundings.<\/strong><\/div>\n
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There are\u00a0 six coffeeshops in the village which serve as the meeting point for villagers rain or shine.<\/div>\n
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The network : The village coffeeshop is the place to connect and recharge<\/strong><\/div>\n
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Welcome: Entrance to Merbau New Village<\/strong><\/div>\n
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Landmark: The village’s temple<\/strong><\/div>\n
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Fitness first: Exercise equipment for the villagers.<\/div>\n
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Time to go home: Primary school pupils after school<\/strong><\/div>\n
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\u00a0Top\u00a0priority: The villagers have education at heart, and this Chinese primary school in the village is more than 70 years old<\/strong><\/div>\n
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Safe and near: The Chinese primary school SJKC Kg Merbau Ayer Tawar is\u00a0 inside Merbau New Village<\/strong><\/div>\n
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Ayer Tawar town, about nine kilometers away,\u00a0 is where villagers run their errands.<\/div>\n
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The village is a predominantly agricultural community.<\/div>\n
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In the very early days, each household was given a plot of land for them to build their house and plant vegetables, fruit trees and rear chickens and pigs.<\/div>\n
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Villagers sold the animals for money to pay for essentials like rice and education for their children.<\/div>\n
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In the old days, a\u00a0 grand feast means having one chicken for the entire family during\u00a0 Chinese New Year.<\/div>\n
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“We ate the entire chicken except the feathers,” recalls a former villager who is eldest among 10 siblings.<\/div>\n
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Life was hard but improved substantially\u00a0 when the colonial government gave them land to plant rubber.<\/div>\n
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Many including Dr Ting grew up tapping rubber in the early hours of the morning before going to school.<\/div>\n
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There was no electricity supply in the old days.<\/div>\n
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The rubber tapper carbide lamp also double up as study lamp at night.<\/div>\n
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It was some 20 years ago when many of the rubber smallholdings were turned into oil palm smallholdings,\u00a0 in favor for the less labour intensive\u00a0 and more lucrative commodity .<\/div>\n
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From the 1970s , some villagers started venturing\u00a0 out of the village in search for economic opportunities in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore.<\/div>\n
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A villager who introduced himself as\u00a0 Soh Kow\u00a0 says he went to work in Kuala Lumpur in the late 1970s, taking up different types of jobs, from construction worker to plain clothes security guard.<\/div>\n
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In his 60s now, he had returned to the village for good – bought some land and doing oil palm cultivation nearby.<\/div>\n
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He\u00a0 says his children who have better formal education have more options in life.<\/div>\n
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“Unlike myself\u00a0 in my era then, the\u00a0 younger generation are in a position to chart their own future and they have my blessings,” says Soh.<\/div>\n
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For some, the village remains their only shelter during tough times.<\/div>\n
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A villager in his 40s, says he returned to the village shortly after the start of the Covid 19 pandemic.<\/div>\n
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“I was staying in Johor Baru and working in Singapore before the pandemic.<\/div>\n
” I cannot afford staying in Johor Baru\u00a0 when I don’t have a job.”<\/div>\n
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\u00a0And if there is anything that has remained unchanged over time, it is\u00a0 their roots\u00a0 in the village.<\/div>\n
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Living life on their own terms\u00a0 By Foong Pek Yee foongpekyee@gmail.com The tree-lined road and lush greenery from the entrance to\u00a0 Merbau New Village is a sight to\u00a0 behold. Located along Jalan Pantai Remis in Manjung, Perak, its 700 meter long “Great Wall ”\u00a0 gives it a distinctive look from afar. It was just like … Continue reading “The village in a garden”<\/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":[225,228,261,260,262],"class_list":["post-3069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-places","tag-clean-and-beautification-campaign","tag-leafy-village","tag-oil-palm","tag-rubber-tappers","tag-simplicity"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevillagemyhome.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3069","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=3069"}],"version-history":[{"count":33,"href":"https:\/\/thevillagemyhome.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3162,"href":"https:\/\/thevillagemyhome.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3069\/revisions\/3162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevillagemyhome.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevillagemyhome.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevillagemyhome.com\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}