The Woman Who Breathed Two Worlds

by Siak Chin Yoke, Selina

  Tin gave us a topic to latch on to. We talked of how Ipoh had changed since our arrival, the extent this prosperity had been due to tin, and how the price of tin had become the talk of the entire town. Over the weeks Peng Choon and I too became gripped, because there seemed no end to tin’s rise and rise. We moved from tin to rubber, which was then also enjoying a boom. We talked about how crowded Ipoh was becoming: with people flooding in, the town was bursting at the seams. Extended families had to cram into single houses. We were fortunate in having rented our own place a few years back, but not a day passed when we didn’t hear the patter of feet running up and down the wooden staircases next door. As Peng Choon and I talked, I was reminded of something I had long wanted to do – find a larger space for us all. With China forever looming in our lives, though, the time never seemed right.

  Gradually Peng Choon opened up, until there came a time when we spoke as freely as we once used to. I heard how raw he was from the loss of his mother. He thought often of her and deeply regretted not having seen her one last time.

  The moment gave me a perfect opportunity. ‘So, your wife and son, how-ah?’ I asked, holding my breath while awaiting the answer.

  Peng Choon looked at me long and hard before replying. When he did, his voice was gentle, if a touch sorrowful.

  ‘You know I won’t leave my Malayan family.’

  My husband smiled and I smiled back. Strands of silver had found their way on to his head, but unlike some men, he wasn’t balding at the crown. If anything, the touch of grey gave him an aura of dignity, making him more handsome than ever in his Mandarin-collared jacket and trousers.

  ‘I have to go back some day,’ he sighed, quickly adding, ‘Only for a short visit of course.’

  ‘You know when?’

  Peng Choon hesitated. He finally said, ‘No, I don’t know when. I can’t leave yet – too much business. I need to be better established. If I go now, they’ll just hire someone else, and then it’ll be hard to get the job back.’

  Peng Choon was referring to the towkays of Ipoh, with whom he had only recently started working. Winning their business had been a slow process, and he was loath to put it at risk. When he had sought them out, it helped that he spoke their dialects and could prepare accounts in both Chinese and English, but with few connections, gaining their business still proved a challenge. Peng Choon’s persistence and charm eventually paid off. He was tough without being rude, a man of few words – the sort who could earn a towkay’s trust, because with him you knew exactly where things stood. Some of the best-known tin-mining companies were now clients, and Peng Choon worked alongside the leading entrepreneurs of the day.

  The first time my husband visited a tin mine, he saw an enormous crater in the ground, a hole so deep that his head spun when he looked into it. Hundreds of coolies ran around, climbing down flimsy ladders into the pit and then up again with baskets on poles slung across their shoulders. When told by his client, the manager of the mine, that it was a hundred feet to the bottom, Peng Choon refused to descend. He remained at the top, his heart filled with admiration. He could not believe how the coolies scampered up and down like ants oblivious to danger.

  My husband’s eyes focused on one of the men, who wore only dark trousers, having taken his shirt off because of the heat. The coolie scurried down a ladder and disappeared. Peng Choon did not know what he did at the bottom, because you had to stand near the edge of the pit to see, and my husband had instinctively moved away from the precipice. Within minutes the coolie came up again, one hand balancing the pole over his shoulder, the other hanging on to a makeshift ladder, which swayed dangerously from side to side. Even as he watched, Peng Choon held his breath: one small slip could have spelt the end. He could not imagine how the men carried the baskets all day up those ladders, which were roughly hewn from the trunks of coconut trees and creaked under their weight, because when Peng Choon tried to lift one of the rattan baskets he lost his balance.

  Peng Choon could see from the coolies’ faces that they were Chinese sinkehs, or new immigrants – a fact confirmed by his client, who grinned at the question.

  ‘Who else would do this kind of work?’ he asked rhetorically. Peng Choon shrugged. ‘Malays?’ His client guffawed. ‘Them? You must be joking!’

  Then, remembering that Peng Choon had married a Nyonya, the manager’s tone softened. ‘They like an easy life . . . not work. Mark my words: we Chinese will build this country. The white devils couldn’t do this either. And they know it. That’s why they import all this labour’ – at this the man swept his arm around, pointing to his group of coolies.

  When my husband recounted the story, I was more at ease with his client’s words than he had expected. With each new child life aggravated me less. I grew calmer, as if having to slow my impulses for the sake of the children doused my internal fire. The children still had the capacity to rouse my ire, but as for Peng Choon’s clients, why should I care what they thought? What would the fools know anyway?

  I was intrigued by the coolies. ‘You speak to one of them-ah?’ I asked Peng Choon. I wondered how they lived, what they did when not working, but my husband could not say. Instead he had examined mining machinery, looking at pumps and goodness knows what else.

  In his line of business Peng Choon was inevitably closer to the towkays than to the coolies. Sometimes he told me stories about the towkays, but I couldn’t distinguish one from another, though I had heard their names. I had even seen some of them, but they lived in another world, among other rich men.

  The first time I saw a towkay must have been around 1902, when we had already been in town for several years. The man came thundering out of nowhere – inside a metal can with seats. It scared the life out of me, this huge contraption which appeared to drive itself . . . making a noise so loud you knew to get out of its way. When I asked what the thing was, I was told it was a motor car – the latest type of vehicle; one that didn’t need a person or an animal to pull it. The towkay’s was the first in Ipoh. Afterwards more and more of these cars appeared. At one point, before rules were introduced, we had to be careful when crossing the roads, because the cars, which competed with the rickshaws and gharries and bullock carts for space, bullied everyone else. They were invariably driven by towkays or white devils, who did as they wished and tooted for everyone else to get out of their way. From what I could see, the rich had little to do except rush off to unsavoury places, to their drinking holes or concubines’ dens.

  Peng Choon’s stories hardened these opinions. My husband didn’t always respect his clients, no matter how wealthy. He had to hold his tongue, though – which he did unless asked to cook the books. As soon as he had to compromise his integrity, Peng Choon would give up the business, resigning as their accountant on the spot. Ironically, this sealed his reputation for solidity among the towkays. He began to get more clients than he could deal with and had to consider hiring a second man to help him.

  It was around then that Peng Choon began mentioning a fellow by the name of Foo Choo Choon. He told me he had recently begun working for this towkay, also a Hakka, whom he described as ‘visionary’. It was rare for my husband to be so effusive. When he said that Foo Choo Choon was different, my ears naturally pricked up.

  ‘How?’ I asked.

  ‘To begin with he doesn’t have a concubine.’

  On seeing my raised eyebrows, Peng Choon assured me his client was happily married with children.

  ‘How you know he no have mistress?’

  My husband laughed. ‘Everyone knows. Not a secret whose concubines are whose on Panglima Street.’

  ‘Hmm.’ I thought for a moment. ‘That all-ah? Why you say he so good?’

  ‘Because of the money he gives to charity. He’s just built a Chinese school. I hear he donated to that new missionary school on Lahat Road as well . . . and what’s more, he has spoken out against the opium trade. He’s a patron of the Perak Anti-Opium Society.’

  That was how I came to
hear about the Anti-Opium Society, which was then recently formed in our state of Perak. Its mission was to combat the rise of opium: to educate about its dangers, to treat addicts and to press for changes in law. More sceptical by nature, I was uncertain it could achieve anything unless it had white members too. Peng Choon assured me it did; in fact, the Perak branch had been started by a white doctor with a medical practice in town.

  ‘Some of them are on our side. The doctors and missionaries – they can see what’s happening. They want to help.’

  There was to be an anti-opium conference soon, which made my husband very excited. He thought that if we were united, towkays could be persuaded not to bid for the British opium farms.

  ‘Let them do their own dirty work,’ my husband said.

  I, on the other hand, remained convinced that success would come only if white members led the effort.

  ‘They only listen to each other,’ I said. ‘Make sure you have them on your side.’

  With his trip home to China deferred, we settled back into our lives. Peng Choon worked all hours of the day and occasionally the nights. Our children climbed trees, invented games, fell, hurt themselves, howled and learnt to get back up and to carry on. Ah Hong and I watched over everything and everyone – bathing, cleaning, feeding, visiting the market and cooking for the family. Despite this semblance of routine, my fears about my husband’s first family in China never went away; they would rise to the surface when I least expected them.

  Going to the moving pictures had been my husband’s idea. With so many mouths to feed, I was frugal, not given to frittering away Peng Choon’s hard-earned dollars and cents. Watching moving pictures seemed such a waste of money that I did not yield until the children pleaded. ‘Mama, Mama, I want to see,’ each had shouted. Hui Ying went one step further and asked what she could do to change my mind. ‘You let us go, I no play outside today,’ she offered in a voice so sweet, even I had to smile.

  That was how I found myself, during the fifth month of my seventh pregnancy, ensconced inside a large tent one weekend evening. My second daughter, Hui Ying, sat on my lap, our eldest girl, Hui Fang, beside me, while my husband sat on the other side of her, holding our son Weng Yu in his lap. The cinematograph was managed by a Japanese man, Matsuo, who took his tent, his machine and films all around Malaya. We watched a comedy called Troublesome Mother-in-Law, a black-and-white film that caused raucous laughing and the children’s jaws to drop open.

  At the start Hui Ying whispered, ‘Mama! The people, they really there-ah?’

  ‘Where, Hui Ying?’

  ‘There, in front of us.’

  ‘No-o.’

  ‘Then they where-ah?’

  ‘See that machine over there?’ I pointed to the middle of the tent, where a creaking monster stood. Peng Choon had told me beforehand it was called a projector. ‘They on a reel of film in that machine.’

  ‘Oh,’ my daughter replied, unsure what to ask next.

  She watched in silence after that, following every scene as the people in it stumbled and shouted, their actions grandiosely exaggerated to ensure their intentions were understood. Every now and again Hui Ying would glance at the projector, her eyes staring as if it were unreal.

  I looked around, not at the movie machine, but at the audience, who from their attire seemed a very mixed bunch indeed. There were ordinary families like us, a few customers with large amounts of jewellery, and a sizeable number of men, who cheered and wolf-whistled. When displeased they booed loudly and stomped their feet. It wasn’t behaviour I wished our children to witness, but the young ones seemed oblivious. Their eyes were fixed pointedly on the moving images in front or occasionally on the machine itself, which received reverent looks. I later discovered that they had thought the actors were inside, shrunken in size.

  That night my husband seemed equally engrossed. He sat stroking the head of his Malayan-born son. When funny antics came up, he and Weng Yu would guffaw, but I could not concentrate. China unwittingly came into mind; only a boat ride away in Chiao-Ling County were people my husband would have to visit. A trip wasn’t imminent, but one day I knew it would come.

  13

  Together with her daughter, Siew Lan visited our house regularly. In the distance Siew Lan’s daughter, Flora, looked like a Chinese from the north, with skin the texture of marble. Porcelain skin, they called it. Once you looked closely, though, Flora’s Eurasian features became obvious: greenish-brown eyes like a cat’s, eyelids with those lovely deep-set creases, and black hair not straight and thick like ours but thin and wavy.

  Siew Lan and I exchanged news about everything. Well, almost everything. We never talked about him directly, but she often referred to Flora’s father. She told me the white devil doted on his daughter and was even attempting to teach Flora English.

  ‘And you-lah?’ I mused aloud. ‘You going to teach your daughter Nyonya customs-ah?’

  ‘Hmm . . . Some, yes,’ she replied pensively.

  ‘Only some?’

  ‘Ai-yahh, Chye Hoon! Hard question-lah! How to know which customs to teach her? I have to see.’

  At the time I had just given birth to our fourth son, Weng Yoon, and I was determined to teach our children all our customs. I had already begun telling my eldest children the stories Mother had once told us. The little ones were enraptured by the tales of our ancestors, as I had once been. Our eldest boy, Weng Yu, encouraged by his second sister, Hui Ying, even imagined braving the seas in boats with eyes painted on their prows. But I was disappointed, too, because the boats were what my children were most interested in, not what we believed in or practised.

  ‘What to do-lah?’ I would complain to my husband, who merely shrugged. And now it was my friend Siew Lan who seemed less concerned about passing on our traditions.

  ‘But why not teach her all our customs?’ I persisted. ‘Some more important to you-ah?’

  Siew Lan’s face took on a pained look. Outside a rooster crowed. ‘Flora’ – she actually pronounced it as ‘Flo-lah’, because neither of us could master the child’s name – ‘they say she just chapalang – not white, not yellow. No one unkind, but they think she just chapalang.’

  ‘But if she learn Nyonya customs, she have family,’ I pointed out.

  Siew Lan looked at me then, her eyes crossed by the shadows of sadness that had never fully left. A sliver of maroon juice dribbled out from the side of her mouth. ‘World different already, Chye Hoon.’

  As light flooded on the barlay, the wooden platform in our outer hall where I received guests, I poured us more coffee.

  ‘I proud to be Nyonya,’ my friend said, ‘but sinkehs not like us. They now got power. Soon Nyonya and Baba may be no more. Then what is there left for my daughter?’

  I paused. A world without Nyonyas or Babas? I couldn’t imagine, though I knew what Siew Lan meant. The world was changing; life moved quickly, and people rushed more than they did when I had been a child in Songkhla. I didn’t like how we had less time for one another, how we kept to ourselves instead of reaching out as our ancestors had done. Yet Siew Lan’s words sounded overly sombre.

  But if what she said came to pass, what would it mean to be a Nyonya? I no longer knew. I thought I had once found an answer in my family, but the world, like quicksand, had shifted. I would have to ask the question again and either find an answer I could live with or sink.

  Whatever the future brought, I wanted our children to know the legacy their ancestors had left behind. I never wanted to hear anyone say that I hadn’t brought them up properly. They would respect their elders, give offerings to our gods and become considerate, well-mannered people.

  When our eldest son, Weng Yu, was five, I told him about an emperor who once ruled China, the land from where his father hailed. This Chinese emperor was exceptionally wise and had begun reigning when he was only fifteen. He was given the name Yao. Emperor Yao divided time into years, years into moons, the moons into days. He conquered floods, kept barbaric hordes at
bay, and banished evildoers into the desert. When he died, the people mourned for three years. In that time no music was heard and no theatre performed, in remembrance of the great emperor.

  For several exquisite seconds after I finished, my son’s liquid pools stared directly into mine, before he trained his eyes dreamily into the distance. ‘When I big, Mama . . . ,’ he announced, ‘I want to be a prince.’

  I laughed, yet in a strange way I believed my son. He was already regal, like his papa. From that morning on our eldest son, Weng Yu, became my little prince.

  He was an exact replica of his father: lanky, with a long, narrow nose and pointed face. His trademark lay grooved into both cheeks – the dimples everyone found irresistible, especially women, who had the urge to squeeze them. When he walked, my eldest son adopted his father’s gait and kept his back straight just like a little prince.

  But I worried about his reticence. As Weng Yu grew older, what had been broody quietness turned into pouting silences, full of the melancholy and clamped lips which even a changkol, a Chinese backhoe, could not have prised open. The only people able to lift my eldest boy’s moods were Hui Ying and my husband. Weng Yu adored his father; he was a different person in the evenings, after his papa returned. The boy would run to the door to greet Peng Choon, eager for every nugget which dropped out of my husband’s mouth. Peng Choon too was a man of few words, but he bristled with energy, whereas Weng Yu was languid, never taking the lead, having instead to be pushed. In the fast-changing world we lived in, I feared Weng Yu lacked the drive to succeed. If only he were more like his sister Hui Ying, I often thought.