Near the end of 1956 or the beginning of 1957, my father came back to Singapore and decided with my step-mother to move to Johor Bahru (JB, see beginning map in 1st chapter) which is in the north across the Straits of Johor. In old time, the causeway was not that busy and passport was not needed to go back and forth (see picture).
The choice of this date may be because schools usually started in the beginning of the year. My brother and I were admitted in Foon Yew School located at Stulang Laut (Laut means Sea, left and below pictures) which was about 5 miles from where we first lived in JB. I barely remember the house we first lived but it was located across a sawmill that my father used to work with.
I obtained a copy of an old letter from my second niece mentioned in my previous write-up and it was sent by my father (apparently it was my step-mother’s hand writing, she was quite proficient in Chinese writing) in 1957 from this sawmill to his older brother who lived at Sekinchan (mentioned in "The Legacy of my Grandparents").
My father’s letter talked about the Labis government limiting his timber works even he had spent more than 20,000 dollars (a big money at that time) building a jungle road. Then he went to Mersing (see earlier maps) to build another road and found the trees, which had to be inspected and approved by government before cutting, were not good timber.
I only met my uncle once and forgot all about it until I visited his Sekinchan family in 2011. Mersing is a port that we stopped by in our 2019 family trip to Rawa Island and rushed Lennox back to see a medical doctor when he got injured on the island.
My father lost all his money and sought help from his older brother. Since he came to Malaya in 1920 (we guessed), I don’t know how many times he had seen his brother. Apparently it was a close family tie even they didn’t see each other that much. I didn’t see my father that much either.
I obtained a copy of a letter dated 1952, the last letter he sent to help the family in China. That was 32 years after he had left China and his mother and brother were already passed away. Not sure he’s getting help from his brother this time. One day he took the bus (I heard he had only $5 in his pocket) back to Labis to restart his business and we settled in Johor Bahru.
Since we lived 5 miles away, we were taking bus to go to school as fifth and fourth graders and the classes were taught in the afternoons. I remembered one day we walked home in the dark and later my brother explained that he lost the bus money. Luckily a lorry picked us up and sent us home.
My brother remembered our step-mother was very rough to him when our financial situation was not good. In just a few months, my father regained his business and we moved to a stilt house at the seashore of Stulang Laut (see below 1st picture, a nearby house). The front of our house was connecting to the front of the high school along the shore (2nd picture).
Across the road was a big sultan garden with patrolling soldiers and is now developed into residence area. I might have sneaked inside stealing some fruits. In our 2019 family trip, we visited the Kentucky Fried Chicken located just across Foon Yew High School (below pictures).
It has been a long time for a fast food chain to be located here. The KFC was a good idea because Malays don’t eat pork, local Indians don’t eat beef and all people eat chicken. I heard that the Sultan of Johor was behind this venture.
The old sultan, Ibrahim of Johor, was fabulously wealthy, spent most of his time in Europe and opposed the independence of Malaya. He was befriended and given a car (still here) by Hitler that made some ally friends not happy. Probably after the death of Ibrahim at London in 1959, they started to sell the land, piece by piece, to developers. Now the land on the left side of the high school is totally developed. Recently on Google map, I saw a McDonald’s built next to the school just opposite the KFC. It was built during pandemic and was not there in 2019.
In 1982, we have a big reunion of family members during Chinese New Year at JB and the kids got to meet their grandfather the first time. Also, we went to Singapore to meet my mother, my younger brother’s family and all half siblings. (bellow pictures)
There is a nearby ZON Duty Free (below left pictures) which contains a big hotel situated within an integrated duty free shopping and entertainment complex and a ferry terminal connecting to foreign countries. There was no sale tax inside. When visiting here in 2011, we saw a McDonald’s booth located inside that only selling ice cream whereas plenty of nice food were sold around it. We own a condominium near the ZON and we had taken vacation in 2011 and 2012 when it was not rented. It was convenient to shop and eat at the ZON.
In early morning, we could buy fresh-catch seafood from the sea people on their boats parked at seashore (below right pictures). This happened to us while living in our stilt house in 1950s when they paddled a sampan boat to the back of our house to sell us fish, crabs and shrimp etc. Now I know that they are Orang Seletar (Strait People) who are considered as part of the Orang Laut (Sea People) and natives of the straits around Johore and Singapore. Compared to old time, they have adapted modern equipment for fishing.
Malaya gained its independence on August 31, 1957 and we probably already had moved into the stilt house. In 1958, Foon Yew (means Broadmind Gentle) declared itself to be an Independent High School (that means privately owned, the Chinese name is Secondary School which includes Middle School) and all primary schools were owned by the government. My brother was just on time joining the high school and I was a sixth grader studying in the afternoon in a borrowed classroom from high school. No wonder he remembered more on playing basket balls in school and swimming after school. Later we moved away from the stilt house and lived on the streets of Ah Siang and Indera Putra (means Beautiful Prince, below pictures), which will be described in my next write-up.
Since I was in school at the same place for 9 years, most of my classmates are long time friends. Every time I went back to JB, we had reunions and went to pasar (market) to eat local food and drink. So far I have written mostly my early age events and I will write more after I entered high school when I can remember things better. I just noticed that I didn’t hear anyone calling the name “Stulang Laut” in our time.
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