My father's relatives

It would be a rare family indeed that doesn’t have extended relatives. Come to think of it, while I was an only child for much of my childhood until my sister, Judy, came along I’d still consider myself quite wealthy in terms of relatives, especially on my mother’s side. Her family was large and closely knit, and I had no shortage of uncles, aunts and cousins around me. But on my father’s side, it was a different picture altogether. There were only my paternal grandparents, Quah Teik Beng and Lim Poh Choo, and my aunt, Quah Liew See, with whom I had constant interaction.

The Japanese Occupation had a devastating effect on their lives. Grandfather Teik Beng couldn’t find permanent work after the war, and my father had to leave school in Standard VII to help support the family. He found his calling in banking, joining the Mercantile Bank (later to become the Hongkong & Shanghai Bank) in Beach Street and remaining there until his retirement. But because his father couldn’t earn a steady income, the responsibility of the family’s finances fell almost solely on him. They were staying in a rented room in Malay Street back then—a small, tight family unit.

It was from there that he later married my mother and moved in with her family at Seang Teik Road. That arrangement wasn’t uncommon in those post-war years. Meanwhile, my paternal grandparents and Aunt Liew See moved to another rented room in Green Hall. I still remember that old townhouse. It used to be some sort of association building: long and narrow, with the kitchen, bathroom and toilet  tucked way at the back, shared among all the occupants in the house. A sturdy wooden staircase hugged the side of the wall, leading to the first floor, which was partitioned into individual rooms for different families. My grandparents stayed in one of the rooms at the rear.

At night, the whole place was dimly lit with yellow incandescent bulbs as fluorescent lighting hadn't yet come into fashion. The corridors were dark, and there wasn’t much to do in the evenings but retire early or seek out cheap entertainment around town. My mother and I used to visit regularly, and I remember she and Aunt Liew See would occasionally take me across Light Street to the Supreme Court compound in the afternoons. The grassy field there, where the Francis Light statue and the Logan Memorial stood, was often overgrown and full of weeds. One particular weed made a popping sound when you put it in your mouth. Simple joys for a little boy. It was on that field that I first learnt to ride a bicycle. Unfortunately, I crashed my aunt’s bicycle more times than I care to admit. Sometimes we’d even walk to the Esplanade, which wasn’t far off.

It was at Green Hall that my grandfather died in 1963. I was in Standard Four and missed being in the annual Westlands School class photograph that year. He had been sick for some time, walking with the help of crutches after an accident left one of his legs permanently bent at the knee. He died in the wee hours of the morning, and someone came to Seang Tek Road to awaken my father. When we arrived, he had already gone, his body stiff, his leg still bent.

Later, a man from the coffin shop—no such person as a present-day funeral director then—came to move the body to the Toi Shan Convalescent Home in Hutton Lane, where the wake would be held. Everyone familiar with that place knew the name was misleading. There was no convalescing at all. The upstairs housed the dying destitute, and the ground floor was entirely a funeral parlour, divided into cubicles for wakes. Lighting was poor, and at night, after the prayer rituals, only a single bulb might light the corridor and partitions. Shadows were cast on the walls. The dead, still covered with only blankets, lay on wooden planks awaiting their coffins. As a young boy, I found the whole atmosphere terrifying.

One ritual involved us wiping my grandfather’s darkened face and symbolically feeding him some rice. Placing a few grains on his lips for his final journey. That ordeal of staring into the lifeless face of my grandfather, haunts me till this day. But I survived the funeral. The procession ended at the Thai cemetery in the Wat Pimbang On monastery in Green Lane, where his body was openly cremated on a stack of charcoal tended by an Indian caretaker. A few days later, we returned to collect the remaining bones, placed them in an urn and buried it in the grave on the temple grounds.

On the seventh night of his passing, we performed the customary vigil of waiting for his spirit to return one last time. My parents, grandmother and aunt gathered in the darkened Green Hall house. The lights were switched off and we laid down, pretending to sleep. I was so scared that I closed my eyes tightly and covered my ears with my pillow, trying to block out all sight and sound. Eventually, someone, probably my father or grandmother, threw a small metal object into the corridor to scare away the (bull head and horse face) spirit guardians of the underworld and announce the vigil’s end. Everyone got up rather relieved to inspect the offering which had been left open overnight: a plate of bee-koh (sweet glutinous rice cooked with coconut milk) left out for the soul. If the rice showed signs of having been bitten into, it meant the soul had returned and realised its earthly journey was over. But nothing had changed. Ritual complete, life slowly returned to normal, although we wore black and white clothes for a year to mark our mourning, before transitioning to blue and white for the remaining two years, a small square piece of black cloth always pinned to the left sleeve of the shirt. Thank goodness that tradition has fallen out of practice today. In my opinion, it was just to show how filial piety one can be.

My father with Lee Chee Jin, his relative
from Sarawak (left)

After Green Hall, my grandmother and aunt moved briefly to another room in Carnarvon Lane. Whether it was Green Hall or Carnarvon Lane, it was impossible for two ladies, one elderly and the other unmarried, to live alone in a rented accommodation without a man around. So it was decided that they come to live with my parents and maternal grandmother in Seang Tek Road. It was there that Grandmother Poh Choo passed away in 1967. For about two weeks, she had complained of being unable to move her bowels. An enema was arranged for her at home—an old-fashioned treatment even then—but it turned out to be the last straw. She never got out of bed again. A few days later, just four days before Chinese New Year, her death arrived. My maternal grandmother was unable to escape the Seang Tek Road house in time and so she, too, had to remain in the house for all the funeral rites. That year, there was no Chinese New Year for us. The neighbourhood still celebrated with prayers, joss sticks and firecrackers but our house was silent. No red sashes across the doorway, no angpows to receive. We just sat on the five-footway and watched the festivities from a distance. We donned black and white clothes again but thankfully, we switched to blue and white after the 49th day, before discarding all the mourning colours after a year had passed.

Apart from Aunt Liew See, my father had no other close relatives in Penang. He had some first cousins living in Love Lane, descended from my grandfather’s younger brother, Quah Teik Lim. His family included Quah Kong Chai and Ah Siew, and their sisters, Quah Siang Bok and Quah Siang Kheng. The ladies married off and moved off elsewhere, Kuala Lumpur and Sungai Petani, I believe. The men, after the death of my granduncle, relocated to Butterworth. Of his four cousins, only Siang Bok remains. I still keep in regular touch with two of my cousins, Poh Chuan and Siew Suan. They’re my closest surviving relatives on my father’s side. Grandmother Poh Choo was said to have family in Sarawak, but I’ve never been able to trace them. All I know is they once lived in Keyalang Park, Kuching. There was an uncle, Chee Jin. His daughter, Choon Chai, stayed in Penang for a year or two in the mid-1960s while training as a nurse.

More reminiscences about other relatives in later stories.

NOTE: This story is part of my reminiscence series which I've been adding to my blog once in a while. The series is meant to document things I remember about my younger and childhood days; my important memories, which may be pretty mundane to other people, to pass down to my son and daughter. Life as it used to be in the 1950s to 1970s, perhaps into the 1990s. But let's see how it goes...