Kampong Spirit

by Josephine Chia

  This loving, nostalgic memoir of a crucial decade in Singapore’s history, 1955–1965, weaves personal with public events. Josephine Chia links happenings in her family to her kampong friends in Potong Pasir to national and international events. The family-kampong events include the coming of TV to Potong Pasir, the national includes Lee Kuan Yew campaigning there and the international impact of the news of the assassination of President Kennedy. In this way, the author imbues the seemingly small things with social significance, fusing drama, comedy and tragedy into a poignant tale of a child growing up. In addition, as she matures, she becomes aware of her Peranakan and feminist heritages, and how her mother empowered her by sending her to an English school. If you want to know what it was like for Singapore to progress exponentially from the third to the first world, this book is an essential document. It is an invaluable companion to her earlier book Frog Under a Coconut Shell.

  Robert Yeo,

  Author of ONE – The Anthology, poet, playwright and novelist

  This book gives a fascinating insight into life in a Singaporean Kampong during the transition from British rule to self-government with comparisons at different levels of living conditions. Josephine’s remarkable recall of childhood memories is fascinating ... This is a very well written book with vivid descriptions that are believable. It could be a useful reference book for students of the history of Singapore.

  Jennie Lisney,

  Vice President of UK’s Society of Woman Writers & Journalists

  KAMPONG SPIRIT

  Gotong Royong

  Life in Potong Pasir, 1955 to 1965

  Josephine Chia

  © 2013 Josephine Chia

  Front cover: Bernard Go Kwang Meng

  Published 2013

  Marshall Cavendish Editions

  An imprint of Marshall Cavendish International

  1 New Industrial Road, Singapore 536196

  All rights reserved

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  National Library Board, Singapore Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  Chia, Josephine.

  Kampong spirit gotong royong : life in Potong Paisr, 1955 to 1965 / Josephine Chia.

  – Singapore : Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2013.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978 981 4435 25 3

  1. Communities – Singapore – Social life and customs. 3. Lifestyles – Singapore.

  I. Title.

  HN655.2.C6

  307.095957 – dc23 OCN823784086

  Printed in Singapore by Markono Ltd

  This book is dedicated to my grandchildren

  Jeremiah, Emmanuel, Amelia and Mattheus,

  and to all the children of Singapore

  who hold the future of our nation in their hands.

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Foreword

  Balik Kampong

  Days Of Darkness (1955)

  Clarion Call Of Hope (1956)

  Freedom From Tyranny (1957)

  Going For Gold (1958)

  Music For Togetherness (1959)

  A Sense Of Identity (1960)

  The Burning Question (1961)

  Changing Times (1962)

  Those Who Dared To Dream (1963)

  Dying To Be Free (1964)

  The Lion Must Learn To Roar Again (1965)

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  I WISH TO thank National Arts Council (NAC) for their generous Arts Creation Fund which made it possible for me to concentrate on writing this book. I am also grateful to the NAC for giving the publishing grant to Marshall Cavendish to publish this book.

  I would also like to thank the National Archives for permission to use some of their photographs. Photo credits and thanks also go to Mr Lim Kheng Chye and Mr Han Chou Yuan.

  The first incarnation of Balik Kampong was published in the Peranakan magazine, by the Peranakan Association; and its second incarnation was subsequently published in National Library Board’s Singapore Memories archives.

  I wish to also acknowledge the use of a couple of books which helped to refresh my memory and confirm some of the facts. These are:

  • Singapore – An Illustrated History, 1941–1984, Text and Edited by Daljit Singh & VT Arasu. Published by the Information Division, Ministry of Culture.

  • Chronicle Of Singapore, 1959–2009, Edited by Peter HL Lim. Published by EDM and NLB.

  • Non-specific Articles from NLB Singapore Infopedia, newspaper articles and from the National Archives.

  • The quotation by Mr Goh Chok Tong is taken from Our place in Time – Exploring Heritage And Memory in Singapore, edited by Kwok Kim Woon et al. Published by Singapore Heritage Society,1996.

  • The lyrics of P. Ramlee’s song ‘Getaran Jiwa’ is taken from the film, Anatara Dua Drajat by the Shaw Brothers. Its English translation was gleaned from various translations on the web.

  I have been lucky to get two excellent editors for this book. Jennie Lisney, United Kingdom, came in when the manuscript was still under the NAC Arts Creation Fund Process. Tara Hasnain was appointed when Marshall Cavendish accepted the manuscript. I am amazed what good editors can pick up when the writer herself is blinded by her own words. So thank you both!

  Foreword

  EVERYONE WANTS TO be happy. Only the degree differs. How avidly one wants to pursue this happiness depends on how much it matters to the individual. This quest starts from satisfying the basic needs of having a home, nourishment, good health and family. Yet somehow it morphs into an obsession to possess more and more things, as if somehow material acquisitions can satisfy the inner longing of the spirit.

  Modern Singapore has all the trappings of material success.

  This is not something to belittle, as it has taken hard work, dedication and good leadership, for our country to transform itself from a swamp-infested island, where many people lived below the breadline, to a striving metropolis where the majority of the population are in comfortable housing and living well. And yet there is a growing sense that this never-ending race to acquire all the material comforts isn’t giving us true happiness. People are beginning to look at other worthwhile pursuits that would satisfy the deep yearnings within their psyche.

  It surprised many modern Singaporeans to discover that the Singapore folk, particularly those who had lived in our now-vanished kampongs with their lack of
material comforts, of proper sanitation, of running water in the houses, of electricity and even food, had still seemed rather happy with that life. What was the quintessential quality that these rural people had, which had helped them get through their challenging lives with smiles on their faces and gratitude in their hearts?

  It was the ‘Kampong Spirit’: Gotong Royong.

  Gotong Royong is a Malay word which describes the coming together of the community to help and sustain each other. Multi-racial communities lived in the kampong like an extended family where everyone’s doors were kept open, neighbours kept a look-out for each other, and the children played with one another without any thought of discriminating against the others for being of a different race. This is kampong spirit at its best.

  Everyone needs someone. When the kampong spirit is in evidence, nobody needs to feel alone or abandoned. This warm feeling of being cared for mak es life meaningful and brings happiness. And being happy, one possesses a stronger foundation, better able to take the knocks of life more easily.

  The stories in this book show how the villagers of Kampong Potong Pasir coped with their deprivations and their challenges. Though having little, their joy was expressed because they lived together in a real community, in the spirit of sharing.

  Each story has its own title and can stand alone without reference to the others, except for the first story, Balik Kampong, which acts as a kind of introduction and a general umbrella for all the other stories. The second story begins in 1955 and then the stories move progressively through the years till 1965.

  This book will evoke memories of old Singapore for those of you who have lived through it. For the young, these stories will provide you with a view of the foundation your heritage is based on, and show you how far Singapore has come from its colonial days, and therefore you can be proud to celebrate your belonging to this marvellous nation.

  Happy reading!

  Josephine

  Balik Kampong

  FOOD CONSTITUTES A major part of the average Peranakan’s life, whether it is cooking, eating or talking about it. It certainly is in mine! It is interesting how the memory or smell of a particular dish can evoke a strong response. Especially for a foodie like me. (Or you can say piggy!) The availability or lack of a particular food in one’s childhood can be deeply ingrained in one’s memories. And so it is with me.

  I am amazed at how the memory of the smell of a specific food can pull me back to my childhood in Kampong Potong Pasir. Even though it might be snowing heavily outside my window in England and I am tucked up warm under a goose-down duvet in the twenty-first century, I can be resurrected again into my family’s attap hut in 1950s Singapore. A kampong is a Malay word for village. The Malays were, after all, the indigenous people of Singapore.

  What a delight it was to be awakened by the delicious fragrance of coconut milk boiling with the rice to be made into nasi lemak, my mother’s pièce de résistance. The fragrance flooded our little attap-hut. Memories of food and my childhood are invariably linked with intimate memories of my mother, whom we called Mak. If we were lucky, we would get to eat the nasi lemak. At other times, Mak would scoop the cooked coconut rice, add the sambal, ikan bilis and various condiments and place them on banana leaves, wrapping them into green pyramids. She put them all in a rattan basket and my eldest brother, in his drawstring shorts, was the first in the family to cart them round the kampong, calling out, “Nasi Lemak! Nasi Lemak! Lima Sen! Coconut Rice! Coconut Rice! Five cents!”

  The kampong, located off Upper Serangoon Road, was down the hill from Woodsville, which we called Atas Bukit. Near our village was a Christian cemetery called Bidadari which was allegedly named after a Malay fairy. It was the best known and most well-kept cemetery on our island. Unlike the slightly ominous atmosphere of the Chinese and Malay cemeteries, the Christian cemetery had a look of peace and serenity with its neat rows of graves, its tidy lawn and white marble tomb-stones. Entered through either of the sets of giant Victorian wroughtiron gates, the cemetery sprawled over a few acres of land. With its undulating topography of green fields and trees, it conveyed a hint of the rolling hills of the South Downs of England, so perhaps that was why the British chose the area as the last resting place for their dead.

  Our village was predominantly Malay, and it suited us Peranakans, since we spoke more Malay than Chinese. Mak is the short form of the Malay word, emak, or mother. Our family managed with a bit of Teochew and Hokkien, but not Mandarin. As our Peranakan ancestry is from the Malacca line as opposed to the Penang line, we spoke the Baba patois, a rich hybrid of Malay and Hokkien; with an occasional mangled English, Dutch or Portuguese word. My mother wore the sarong-kebaya all her life, a Malay costume which Peranakans incorporated as our own. She always looked elegant and feminine in it. At home, my father, whom we called Ah Tetia, wore a singlet with the male sarong, usually patterned in stripes or checks rather than the floral batik of the female sarongs.

  Like many Peranakan women in the old days, my mother was a skilled seamstress and an excellent cook. At one time she had servants to order about in the kitchen in my grandparents’ magnificent house in Malacca in the Federated States of Malaya,

  “Chop this! Gilling that! Tumbok belachan!”

  I can imagine her with her arms akimbo or outstretched, pointing to this and that. She was never an aggressive person, her face was sweet and demure but she learnt from her mother that a household had to be run properly, and therefore servants had to be directed to perform well. However, subsequently the family fell upon bad times and she ended up in the shanty village of Potong Pasir with my father.

  “Whatever your circumstances, always live with joy,” Mak used to say.

  She was always optimistic, and often sprouted philosophical sayings like those which intrigued me. After all, she was uneducated. Where was the wisdom coming from? It was the trigger which made me want to find out more about her.

  Our kampong was within walking distance of Sennett Estate and the fabled Alkaff Gardens. The gardens were splendidly laid out alongside part of the sprawling Bidadari cemetery. Shaik Alkaff was a Yemeni from the Alkaff family, who came over from Indonesia in 1852. He loved old Japan, so styled the gardens like a Japanese tea garden with a restaurant, tea kiosks, artificial lake and a replica of Mount Fuji. The spot was a popular recreational place and was so scenic that many of the Shaw Brothers’ films were shot there – Singapore’s first home-grown films, with our own home-grown actors. The most well-known and talented of them all was the dashing Malay actor, musician and director, P. Ramlee. He was handsome, had a pencil-thin moustache and a charismatic smile. And I had an adolescent crush on him.

  “Ah Phine,” he would say in my dreams. “I’m so in love with you! Please marry me!”

  I don’t know why Chinese villagers were fond of adding the ‘Ah’ as prefix to a name. They also liked naming people by their characteristic, Ah Sang (Hokkien for someone who was thin), Ah Puii (for someone who was fat). Malays would say Chichak Kurus (Thin Lizard), or Si Gemok (That Fat Person). Nobody took offence or mentioned the discrimination act!

  Nobody called me Josephine. The three syllable foreign name was a mouthful for the majority of the kampong folk who were not English educated or literate. Peranakans tended to be Buddhists or Taoists. But my family was converted to Catholicism by English missionaries who gave us food, clothing – and new names. Converts like us were called ‘rice-bowl Christians’ – people who converted not because we believed that a Christian God will save us from hell-fire but because we were hungry.

  When I was a teenager, I slept on a mattress on the floor of our attap-hut. There were only two beds in our home, placed head to foot against each other. One was for my father who slept with two of my brothers; the other was for my mother who slept with two younger sisters. My baby brother slept in a sarong-cradle. I was made to sleep next to my third elder brother on a fold-up camp bed. When I started menstruating, the close proximity to my brother became awkward so he
and I managed to find a mattress for me. It was discarded by the English family living in the mock Tudor houses at the top of the hill at Atas Bukit, which was above our kampong. In the beginning, while sleeping on the floor, I would quake with terror when the rats emerged from drains and fields to scuttle all around me in the dark, their nails scratching the crude cement floor. Even though it was hot, humid and muggy, I always had a thin blanket pulled right up to my ears in case the rats decided to keep me company in my bed! So there I was lying on this mattress, dreaming of the handsome P. Ramlee planting kisses on my cheek. I could feel the wetness of his saliva.

  “Oh, Ramlee,” I mouthed dreamily.

  But he didn’t smell as I had imagined he would smell. In fact he smelled doggy. The gamey doggy smell woke me up with a start. My parents always opened the kitchen door the moment they got up so that air could rush in to cool the house. A neighbour’s dog must have inadvertently wandered through, without anyone noticing, and it was the dog who was licking my face and slobbering all over me! Yuck! My dream of P. Ramlee evaporated immediately. Alas!

  I was envious that the beautiful leading ladies like Saloma and Siput Sarawak got to sing and dance with P. Ramlee. Most of the films were musicals, and P. Ramlee had a sonorous and sexy voice. Two of his most famous films were Ibu Mertua-Ku (My Mother-in-Law) and Bujang Lapuk (Old Bachelor), and he sang the eponymous songs, making everyone cry at the first and laugh at the second. Admiring fans and villagers would crowd the magnificent Alkaff Gardens whenever a film-shoot was taking place. But to my joy nobody got to kiss him either – such intimacy was not flaunted on screen in our time.

  “P. Ramlee datang! P. Ramlee datang! P. Ramlee is here! P. Ramlee is here,” the shouts would go up whenever the great actor arrived. I, like all the other young girls, would shriek and swoon at the sight of him. Many would flock to the first air-conditioned cinema, The Alhambra in Geylang, to see his films.