From: Rosa - 5
Date: 7/4/00
Time: 1:05:43 PM
The predominant figures in my memories of my
early Kampong Pandan days were certainly my grandparents, especially Ah Mah,
because she was so towering in her demonstrating love of all her grandchildren,
her sense of humour, her vigour, her devil-may-care attitude to so many things
and her passionate pursuit of what she believed in.
But under the strata of these years, embedded
but with their own distinct qualities, are soft memories of an even earlier time
of my life. These memories surround Mamma, and Sei Yee appears as an
accompanying figure.These must have been very early days. Before we moved to the
house that Dai-Kau-Fu loaned us in Kampong Pandan we lived, among other tenants,
in a wooden house off Princes Road. The second of my didis, Justin, was born
here. My distant memories are of times before this, so I must have been very
young.
The early Kampong Pandan memories are active,
full of colour, multi-patterned, with many strands loosely knitted, giving off
varying shifting intensity at recall. They overlay but do not diminish the
soothing, soft, lulling memories delicately wrapped in floating wisps of
cloud-like warmth of the very young years.The setting must have been the house
we lived in for a time, later recognised as the mission house, at the back of
the Holy Rosary Church in Brickfields.
There music and songs. Sei Yee at a piano and
she and Mamma teaching us to sing. They must have been wonderful teachers
because almost sixty years on and I recall the tunes and almost all of the words
which were in Mandarin. There was ‘Ten Little Friends’, the fingers and
thumbs of our hands, who, tall or short, together are our bunch of friends who
help us every day when we have work to do. Following Mamma, we stretched out our
hands and waved our fingers. ‘A Visitor Comes’ and two of us (Dai-Ga-Je or
Meimei #3 must have been the sisters with me) stepped out, bowing to each other,
one as the Visitor the other as Xiao Peng You to greet her and to explain that
Papa is not at home but please come in for a cup of tea. A drama-song where we
had to take more than one part.
Cunning Fox: Good Little Girl, please open
the door as I wish to come in. Little Girl: No, no I won’t open the door.
Mamma is not at home and I won’t open the door to anyone.
Cunning Fox approaches a number of animals
who are all careful not to open the door to him. Until he comes to ...(I forget
what animal) who foolishly opens the door and is eaten. I later found this song
in the text of my Chinese primer. Songs that gently taught the use of our body
and to cultivate manners and the consequence of folly and disobedience. There
were patriotic songs. We determindedly resolved not to buy Japanese cloth, sang
with robust vigour the rousing ‘Arise, arise ...’ and standing ramrod,
lustily gave voice to San Min Zhu Yi, the national anthem of Sun Yat Sen’s
China. I am still almost word perfect in this and just about three years ago
tried to piece together the missing words with Mamma, Sei Yee and Paul Suk
There were stories. Of the thoughtful
HoongYoong who kept the smallest pear for himself, giving his brothers and
sisters the larger ones. We followed the fortunes of a family of little lambs
who were left at home by themselves. They steadily refused to open the door to
Wicked Wolf but were tricked when he disguised himeslf as Mother Sheep. With
bated breath we learned that fortunately Baby Lamb had hidden himself. He led
Mother Sheep to Wicked Wolf and with great resourcefulness Mother Sheep tricked
him to his death and rescued her children. Stories of the great from the pages
of Chinese history. Sun Yat Sen was a large figure. Chinese legends and fairy
tales.
There were also undisguised lessons. Learning
to write our names in Chinese, each of the three characters to be copied down a
column of a square-lined paper. I remember shedding tears at the injustice that
all the three characters in my name had so many complicated strokes while Dai-Ga-Je’s
‘Yue’ (Yoke) had only five simple strokes. Little misdemeanours were
punished in the age-old manner of Chinese schoolteachers, being made to stand in
a corner inside a circle of chalk out of which we could not step.
Simple, comforting days of bonding and
learning were the essence of my early years, shutting out an awareness of the
other grown-ups most of the time. A specially precious memory which I felt as a
child as putting aside Mamma and I alone. She told me that when I was born my
head was so tender that if she carried me up after I had slept on my side, my
head on that side would appear as flat and smooth as if a slice had been cut off
and she had to keep turning me ever so often. Of course I would not have been
able to verbalise it, but I felt in my being the epitome of gentle, motherly
love.
Another equally beautiful love-filled
remembrance included Papa. He and Mamma had come in after an evening out. They
came and stood by the bed where I slept, I was not quite asleep and felt them
standing over me, whispering to each other. It sounds almost a saccharine scene
from some girly novel, but it did happen and I remember it.
It must have been the time of the Japanese
Occupation. Two pictures in red. A prominent memory of being carried on a dark
night, with the other children, warmly wrapped up, into an air-raid shelter with
wooden benches and red laterite walls. A bright picture of being taken to watch
a gay street procession full of lights and lanterns, with a dragon dance, on a
crowded street. This could be a celebration of the end of the Occupation or a
Chinese community rejoicing on Double Ten (China’s national day). Another,
less disturbing, less action-filled picture is of Meimei #3 standing tiptoe on a
little stool screwing her little nose to inhale the delicious intoxicating fumes
from the bowl of chicken and rice wine soup that Mamma was drinking as she was
in confinement after the birth (it must be) of Didi Stephen. Dai-Ga-Je and I
were walked to the church at the front of the house and we were attracted by the
colourful flower petals on the floor of the porch.We had chicken pox followed by
measles. Yiyi came with a wad of leaves, blessed in some temple, and tied them
under our pyjamas tops. We were told by Mamma and Sei Yee not to go to Ah Koong
and Ah Mah or Papa to get help with tying up our pyjamas trousers.
I would have been a little older by then to
remember all these. Other adults were intruding, the world of intrigue was
opening, I was growing up.
3 July 2000