2 – My Ancestry – Peranakan family
Like my father, my maternal grandfather came from Swatow (Shantou) China. I don’t know his history for he died long before I was born. I was told he owned or rented a farm at Alexandra Road area and kept pigs, planted vegetables and fruit trees. He married my grandmother a Teochew peranakan and had a big family – the eldest and the youngest were boys and five girls in between. Mother was the fourth daughter and my cousins would address her as See Ee or See Kor – fourth Aunt.
When Grandpa Tan saved enough money he would visit China to see his relatives. In one of his visits which took longer than usual, his employees sold his animals and deserted the farm. Grandma was a simple housewife and didn’t know what to do and waited for his return. The workers gave the excuse that tigers were found roaming the farm and they all had to run away. Well, grandpa lost everything and for the family to survive had to send his eldest son to work for the British.
On my uncle’s first day at work his British employer cut off his pig tail. Pig tails were not allowed among the employees! Grandpa had adhered strictly to his family tradition by tying his own hair into a pig tail. He was heart broken and died soon afterwards.
Grandma sent her first daughter to China to be married and she never returned to Singapore. Before long all the other daughters one after another were married off. In those days it was the custom to engage a matchmaker who would be tasked to look for spouses. My mother was the fourth daughter and she got married when she was only sixteen. As mentioned earlier she had four children – three boys and a girl and yours truly was the third child.
Grandma’s youngest son went to work as an apprentice servicing lifts. He was a strange fellow who was always very aloof. He got married, had a boy and a girl, the latter became a midwife and worked at KK Hospital for many years. She is now retired. Later when auntie (Soi Kim or youngest Aunt) was very sick for quite a long period, Uncle took on a mistress, a very gracious Cantonese lady who took care of the family including his sick Teochew wife.
My wife and I (retired by then) went to the funeral of this Cantonese aunt and found her two adopted children were about to bury her without any religious rites, so I asked to conduct the funeral for the sake of the living. She had never been against Christianity; in fact her daughter was a Christian. She did not become a Christian because she always felt it was her duty to see to the ancestral tablets of my grandfather whom she had never met! Such was her filial duty to the Tan family and their ancestors. I was totally unprepared to conduct the funeral but committed her to the mercy of God just the same. Being away from Singapore for so long, we had lost contact with our relatives. We were 14 years in Malaysia and 15 years overseas prior to our retirement.
Our family lived with Grandma at a kampong at Norfolk Road where I was born prematurely on 30th May 1932. As mother had to work, and father stayed most of his time at construction sites Grandma looked after me. Later the family moved to Kim Keat Road next door to a tau yu (black sauce) factory. I remember vaguely this big atap house. Later when I was about five years old our family moved away from Grandma’s home to Lorong Limau. We lived in one of the Singapore Improvement Trust Houses, (SIT units) predecessor to our HDB today. My younger brother was born in Lorong Limau.
We were always delighted when Grandma came to visit us. She wore her long baju kurong and sarong and always carried a box of serai and beetle nuts. She would chew the leaves wrapped with beetle nuts, lime etc and spit out red saliva! We always kept a spittoon under the table for her to use. She would arrive in a rickshaw and mother would rush out to pay the fare for her. When she was ready to go home, mother would go out to call a rickshaw, bargained with the rickshaw puller until they agreed on the fare. Poor as she was my mother would always insist on paying the fares. She was really filial.
When the Malay satay man came round, mother would stop him and we would sit around his stall to eat satay. We would always be warned beforehand, we were allowed only one stick each, no more, only grandma was allowed more. Looking back now we know the reason – mother had a hard time trying to make ends meet and really could not afford the luxury of eating satay. So we were primed before hand to say, “No, I’m full and don’t need anymore.” We were such obedient children we just obeyed instructions. We all knew the consequences of disobedience once Grandma left us.
The satay man always had two pots of gravy – one chilly hot the other somewhat milder. Everyone would dip into one of the pots of satay gravy! No one was concerned about hygiene in those days! One stick of satay but we were allowed to dip as many times as we wished and I made sure I made the maximum number of dips, just to enjoy the gravy!
In 1945, Grandma died just before Singapore was liberated. On her tombstone I saw her name for the first time. I didn’t know she was called Cecilia Koh – a name given by the priest at her baptism. We always called her “Ah Ma” meaning grandma.
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