This is an excellent gift from my daughter for writing my old stories to celebrate my 75 years old birthday. The timing is good because now is the grim days (early 2021) in the COVID-19 pandemic as lockdown “shelter-in-place” being imposed again. I am not traveling anywhere and have a lot of time to write. In the past few days, I was having video conference with my 2 1/2 year older brother living in Malaysia because I can barely remember anything when I was very young during the critical times.
The earliest I remember my father is stepping out the train to see him at a British detention camp. I was probably 4 to 5 years old and was very happy that he gave me an origami bird folded from a cigarette case. He never did it before or would do it again, and he did not smoke. Later I realized that was my trip leaving Labis on way to join my mother and two brothers in Singapore about 100 miles south (see map at left). She ran away because she thought my father would likely be deported to China since he was not born in Malaya.
My father lived in the time of change. He came from a very poor farming family in China to work as a tin mine worker at an age of 12. At that time, British imported many Chinese workers to help developing Malaya. He exaggerated his age to get in. It is a mystery to us where he was and what he did before he became a big boss in timber business in Labis, Johor. From that point on, jungle is his life.
I did remember the jungle train rides on a private railroad built by my father’s company. My bother told me that the railroad came by our house located at 5 miles Labis Road (Five Stones called by Chinese, Batu Lima by Malay, see above & future maps) in the south of Labis at the edge of the jungle.
My father married my mother in 1942, the year when Japanese occupied Malaya. Young girls married earlier to avoid to be taken as comfort women. My mother was adopted when she was a baby. I was born in 1946, a year after the war, and my older brother in 1943, a year after Japanese occupation, and my younger brother in 1948 when Malayan Emergency started.
I barely remembered living at 5-mile with my Grandma (Grandpa died much earlier) and my father being thrown into jail, probably in 1949, due to the suspicion of his monetary support to the guerrillas in the Malayan jungles. Left picture was torn down from a document. The cropped stamp on the picture has words “General, Republic of China” in Chinese. Maybe my mother was worried and prepared to be departed to China. Even we were all born in Malaya, but she took this picture for a traveling document. It is our first picture in life and was taken in Segamat, in the north of Labis.
The British forced the relocation of 500,000+ peasantry from the fringes of the jungle into guarded camps called New Villages later. Some villages still exist nowadays. Because of the Malayan policies, it is very difficult for a non-Malay to own land and many farmers became squatters (farming without land rights, Chinese called them cultivators). It was tolerated because they provided food for the country. When I was taken to Singapore, my Grandma left for China and never came back.
I am not sure when my mother and two brothers started living in the downtown of Labis. After my father’s locked-up, she was scared that the British might lock her up too. Probably in 1949, she took my two brothers and ran away to Singapore. I always think that how difficult for her to run far away with two young kids. When I joined them, my mother was remarried and we lived at Ho Swee Hill (later I found out it was located about half of a mile in the south and was a very historic place, more in later) which was a dangerous squatter area for poor people in Singapore. It was burned down in 1961 by a suspected fire, the biggest outbreak in Singapore's history, and residents were relocated.
I did go to school as a first grader. However, may be in the first day of school, I skipped school and hid under a pedestrian bridge. I barely have any memory of all these. Soon this was not important because my father was looking for us after he was released by British in 1951 or 1952 and had restarted his timber business. I don’t know how he could restart his business because he was not that well-to-do as before.
They decided that my older brother and I would rejoin him in Labis. In late 1952 or early 1953, we went back to join him. He married a younger woman, hoping that she could take care of us. In Labis, my father went to work in jungle almost every day and came back very late at nights. We hardly saw him. Also things did not quite work out. I was supposed to be a first grader and my brother a third grader. At first we were reluctant to go to school and finally we just skipped it. Unfortunately, we were called rotten kids in Cantonese in town and my brother thought it really means gangsters in English.
The top picture at left is the 2019 aerial view of the ongoing construction of the electrified double-track railway at Labis (part of the project of north-south Johor inter-city high-speed rail). It shows where we lived during 1953-55. We only have one picture of my father in the early years and was probably torn down from some ID card (inserted).
Not sure where my father lived before he was arrested by the British. During 1953-55, we lived on the 2nd floor of a shophouse on Market street (Jalan Pasar, left pictures) facing the railway station after temporarily living in a village when we moved back from Singapore (more in later).
Walking along the street, one would reach Labis river. Across the railway, one would reach the police station and Labis Road leading to our 5-mile home in the south. On the same road going north about 1/2 mile is Labis Chinese school.
In 2011, we visited Labis and went to the railway station (left 2nd picture). It had been stayed the same in years. The Jalan Pasar where we lived also stayed the same (more in later).
I don't know where he stayed after 1955. It is impossible to understand my father without going through the very different periods and places in our lives. Figuring out I cannot finish his life story in short time, I should continue in coming writings.
Our fates changed when we left for Singapore in 1955 to join our second step-mother. Eventually we settled in Johor Bahru (JB) in 1957 where I spent most my childhood. In 1966, I went to Taiwan for oversea study for 4 years and got to come back to visit in the summer of 1970 (below 1st picture).
My father usually stayed at where his company was located. As I know his timber business started at Labis and nearby jungles. In 1960s, he obtained a timber project from the crown prince of the state Pahang (more in later) and he relocated his office to Kemayan, a small town in Pahang. His company NG PIEW TIMBERS was quite well-known.
After teaching in Taiwan for one year, I went to the US to pursue further studies in 1971. In 1982, I got a chance to bring my whole family back to JB and this was the last time I saw my father. Fortunately we had a picture of father-and-sons taken in front of the sultan's palace on the hill (left 2nd picture).
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