The Ho Clan does Pangkor & Sitiawan, Part 4: Moses and Joshua Lead a Tour of the Promised Land
When we reached Sitiawan to join the amassing forces of the Ho Clan for this historic reunion, Uncle Moses, true to his past vocation as principal of the Anglo-Chinese School, had prepared an educational tour for all of us. His second-in-command was, appropriately enough, a man named Joshua. Joshua was a stout, devout Methodist who ran a travel agency in Sitiawan. It was through him that many Sitiawanites caught their glimpse of the world. He was dependable and friendly, but sometimes lapsed into pious bible-talk. He used the word “share” a lot. “I want to share something with you.” “As I shared with you last time…” “Did you like my sharing?” It’s a term that implies you are free to take it or not, but ironically it almost always meant you were obliged to listen.
During one trip, quite out of the blue, he launched into a discussion with King Hee’s father, the disciplinarian, on speaking in tongues. As Joshua was using the microphone, we could hear him but not the old man. The effect was like listening to him arguing with God on the telephone.
“Ya, some people believe in tongues.”
(God’s indistinct reply)
“I’m not saying that talking in tongues is good or bad…”
“…”
“No, but I’m saying…”
“…”
“Yes, I believe each one has his own belief. That’s all I’m saying…”
Perhaps this was how it had been for the historical Moses up on Mount Sinai, arguing with God over the finer points of theology while the people cowered in the valley below.
While Joshua argued with God, us Israelites continued to trace slow circles through the streets of Sitiawan in the hired coach. The previous coach with the riotous interior had been swapped for another. This time everything was in shades of blue and green. It was like traveling in an aquarium.
On the day we arrived, Uncle Moses arranged for us to have lunch in a restaurant on the outskirts of town. The name escapes me, but locals referred to it as “Backstreet Restaurant”. This small fact helps to describe just how small Sitiawan was for much of its existence. When pa-in-law was growing up, swimming in the mud-coloured river and swinging from mangrove roots, Sitiawan was a town with one main street, hence any other street running perpendicular to it was called a “backstreet.”
Like all Malaysian towns, Sitiawan has its share of urban sprawl. The once compact town had fanned out across the valley, unfurling bitumen roads, rows of concrete shophouses, concrete houses, and much general ugliness. If you go down the main street today however, it still looks eerily like the Sitiawan of old. Weathered 2-storey shophouses still line the street, many in timber with simple but graceful upper-storey verandahs. Many were unused, giving the town an air of tidy neglect. Civic pride ensured that the exteriors of these buildings were neat, if somewhat peeling. The lack of economic progress however meant there was little benefit in tearing them down to be replaced.
Sitiawan was populated at the turn of the century by Foochow peasants imported to jumpstart the economy by clearing swathes of dense rainforest for agriculture and industry. It was a time of heady change and great journeys of vast groups of people. They had been propelled from their homelands by war and poverty, and also by dreams.
I once visited Foochow province from where my grandfather migrated. I remember dusty, yellow soil, the colour and texture of chalk, hills laced with brittle trees like thinning scalps, and the unrelenting smell of firewood smoke. Malaya beckoned with promises; there was tin to be found here, perhaps gold and silver too. The heavens propitiously provided abundant rain, sunshine and a yearlong growing season; the earth grew whatever you planted.
For Sitiawan the lucrative dream never quite materialised. The people survived, grew for a while. But the tin rush which had swelled the coffers of other towns in Perak had largely bypassed this sleepy little enclave. Swathes of rainforest had been painstakingly cleared for rubber plantations, but the collapse of the international rubber market in the 1930s had put an end to that dream.
At times, Sitiawan seemed less a city of humans than of birds. Urban sprawl had flattened out the town into a loose, brittle landscape of concrete and bitumen. There was a disproportionate amount of space for roads with few cars, buildings with no inhabitants, businesses with no customers. The streets were de Chiricoesque, empty landscapes. Instead of people, the town was filled with swifts swarming at dawn and dusk in black, pulsating clouds over the dusty rooftops. Pigeons watched in silent, sinister rows on sagging powerlines.
Many of these empty buildings had been built just before the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997. Left empty, these buildings became refuges for swifts to build their nests. Eventually, some enterprising locals realized they could harvest these nests and sell them for a fortune. All over Malaysia, people with dreams of easy money rushed to buy houses, not for human inhabitation but to be left empty in hope of attracting birds. Many of the old houses along the main street in Sitiawan had their windows and doors sealed up for this purpose.
Others had purpose-built “swift towers” constructed. Sitiawan’s townscape was dominated by these 15-20m tall buildings, among the largest buildings around. They were windowless, doorless concrete boxes with only small round apertures for the swifts. They were like mausoleums crouching over the town - silent, monolithic and Egyptian.
Ironically, there were only so many swifts hogging this particular parcel of sky, and they had proved to be pickier than the hopeful humans in selecting their lodgings. Many of these “swift houses” remained empty and derelict, their boarded up facades giving Sitiawan the look of a city decimated by plague.
Moses Tay the great educator had arranged a cultural expedition of sorts for us, a sort of trace-your-roots tour of Sitiawan. We began with the future: at sundown on the first day we visited a man-made island at the estuary. The developer wanted to sell land parcels for building houses. As it was brand new, they were only a few desultory show houses on this sandy patch. There was a completed marina facing the South China Sea. It was a confident, soaring complex with berths for private yachts (there were a few, perhaps also for show), and imported carpet grass lawns with palm trees. It was completely deserted except for a single shop selling chendol. On the wooden jetty, a bridal party were taking photographs, a pack of teenaged boys watching derisively.
The developer was a group of local Chinese businessmen who wanted to rival the better-known berthing facilities at nearby Lumut, where we had boarded the speedboat for Pangkor Laut. This new development was perhaps better situated, being much nearer to the island resorts. The idea was quite conceivable, but had clearly not yet taken off. The marina complex was brand-new, yet the imported grass grew on a lumpy bank, and water-cracks were beginning to show on the new whitewashed walls.
The following day, the coach with the hideous interior was swapped for the Little Mermaid-themed one. We were taken to the cemetery next to Sitiawan’s oldest church, the Methodist Pioneer Church, to pay our respects to Doug’s grandparents who were buried there. The cemetery was well-ordered, with Chinese-style tombstones which were similar to those in my Sibu, Sarawak. Many were as large as SUVs. They were freshly tiled and well-kept. The family gathered around Doug’s grandparents’ grave which was surmounted with an oddly un-Protestant sculpted grieving angel. Family members tittered at the misspelling of descendant’s names on the gravestone (Doug’s included).
After a moment of silence, we were trucked the few metres to the Sitiawan Settlement Museum, located in a timber bungalow run by the church. There were walls of faded photographs with captions explaining the foundation and growth of Sitiawan and a reconstruction of a typical turn-of-the-century homestead interior. Upstairs were memorabilia and artifacts grouped into categories - a bedroom, a printing office, and a church hall.
Conspicuous in its absence was any mention of the Second World War and the Japanese Occupation. This dark episode had apparently been glossed over in favour of earlier struggles. Few people spoke about it. All pa-in-law said about it was that as a result of food shortages, they had to resort to eating wild tapioca day in and day out. Nowadays he wouldn’t touch the stuff.
On the spacious, very English front lawn at the church, we once again came in contact with Zahn, the 7-year old Destroyer of Worlds. He was impossible to escape; his smiling face was everywhere, he poked all sorts of people with his umbrella (except King Hee’s father, who continued to watch him warily) and followed various people at uncomfortably close range, annoying them to exasperation. One of them was 5-year old Matthew, who was the only other child among us. Matthew was a precocious talker for his age and loved words; when it came to Zahn he clammed up like a mollusk. Zahn pursued him relentlessly, wanting and needing validation - Matthew repeatedly ignored him and moved on. It was like watching a blind date heading for disaster.
At the museum we learned that Chinese settlement of the Sitiawan area (part of the Manjung district) was in 2 parts. A first wave came in 1900 direct from China; a second wave of immigrants came from my grandparents’ hometown of Sibu. This was news to me. It was never fully explained how it was that this group of people ended up being shunted from one place to another like unwanted children. It was to this second landing site that Joshua now took us.
The second landing of the Foochow immigrants took place on the edge of a deserted mangrove swamp, near the estuary. It had been designated a park, and a boardwalk of concrete pavers and crooked railings had been constructed along the river. It was in poor condition; a concrete bench lay upturned, unrepaired, The bank was littered with the detritus of modern life - detergent bottles, plastic bags, enough cigarette butts to sink the immigrant ships many times over. The overcast sky was white hot, the air stiflingly still.
Joshua explained, “They came from China in large, crowded steamboats. They landed here, and were brought to the church on foot.” This was the church we had just left, though the current building dates from slightly later. It was many miles away.
I imagined how the scene must have been like then. The immigrants in their threadbare Chinese clothes completely unsuitable for the climate here, the young in bare feet, the men wearing the traditional queue. There would have been fewer women - like the migrant workers of today, many would have left their womenfolk and children behind in the hopes of bringing them over later. They would have squinted into the blinding heat, taken in the view of this brackish river, the lead-coloured mud, the silent, distrustful trees on legs. It must have been appalling.
The Methodist pastor might have met them there, his band collar drenched in sweat, his pink face flushed in the heat. If not, he would have met his bewildered new flock in the church, after many dusty miles of marching. Then they would have been assigned their plots. Here’s your land, they were told, go and dig. Come to church on Sunday, let us know you’re still alive.
Hundreds died of the 19th century mass diseases - dysentery and typhoid. The years of hard labour would have whittled them down too. Those that remained were our forebears. We were the children of survivors.
The past was a tragedy, but so was the condition of the present-day concrete boardwalk.
“Build, build, build,” Joshua said, “Malaysians love to build. But no one maintains.”
He was full of political opinions today. Perhaps his telephone conversation with God had egged him on.
“Especially the White Elephant People,” he proclaimed, “They build things. The government gives them contracts, so they build, build, build.” All these creative euphemisms seemed to put him in a poetic mood. “White Elephant buildings for White Elephant people,” he said, almost happily.
He might as well have been talking about the entire country. All the places that we went to showed the same signs of overbuilding. Beach resorts with hideously ugly concrete chalets with no occupants, miles of forlorn concrete waterfronts, tonnes of concrete parlayed into fantastical sculptures that played no purpose. And all or most of it built with government contracts and public money.
Joshua, like every good Malaysian Chinese man, had a dictionary of thinly-veiled invectives for this kind of thing. “One Malaysia,” he snorted, quoting the latest government motto for national unity, “It’s true, everything is done for one Malaysia people only.”
And: “Top is rotten, so bottom is rotten too.”
But being a good Christian, perhaps he realised he wasn’t sounding very charitable, and he started to backtrack. “But on the other hand, most Malays are very simple, very nice people. If your car breaks down, they are the ones who help you. It’s only the One-Malaysia people, the politicians who are corrupt.”
Above us, the swifts traced their manic circles and figures-of-eight in the diminishing light, returning to their dark, shut-up houses laid out with bedrooms, toilets and studies, but no people.
During one trip, quite out of the blue, he launched into a discussion with King Hee’s father, the disciplinarian, on speaking in tongues. As Joshua was using the microphone, we could hear him but not the old man. The effect was like listening to him arguing with God on the telephone.
“Ya, some people believe in tongues.”
(God’s indistinct reply)
“I’m not saying that talking in tongues is good or bad…”
“…”
“No, but I’m saying…”
“…”
“Yes, I believe each one has his own belief. That’s all I’m saying…”
Perhaps this was how it had been for the historical Moses up on Mount Sinai, arguing with God over the finer points of theology while the people cowered in the valley below.
While Joshua argued with God, us Israelites continued to trace slow circles through the streets of Sitiawan in the hired coach. The previous coach with the riotous interior had been swapped for another. This time everything was in shades of blue and green. It was like traveling in an aquarium.
On the day we arrived, Uncle Moses arranged for us to have lunch in a restaurant on the outskirts of town. The name escapes me, but locals referred to it as “Backstreet Restaurant”. This small fact helps to describe just how small Sitiawan was for much of its existence. When pa-in-law was growing up, swimming in the mud-coloured river and swinging from mangrove roots, Sitiawan was a town with one main street, hence any other street running perpendicular to it was called a “backstreet.”
Like all Malaysian towns, Sitiawan has its share of urban sprawl. The once compact town had fanned out across the valley, unfurling bitumen roads, rows of concrete shophouses, concrete houses, and much general ugliness. If you go down the main street today however, it still looks eerily like the Sitiawan of old. Weathered 2-storey shophouses still line the street, many in timber with simple but graceful upper-storey verandahs. Many were unused, giving the town an air of tidy neglect. Civic pride ensured that the exteriors of these buildings were neat, if somewhat peeling. The lack of economic progress however meant there was little benefit in tearing them down to be replaced.
Sitiawan was populated at the turn of the century by Foochow peasants imported to jumpstart the economy by clearing swathes of dense rainforest for agriculture and industry. It was a time of heady change and great journeys of vast groups of people. They had been propelled from their homelands by war and poverty, and also by dreams.
I once visited Foochow province from where my grandfather migrated. I remember dusty, yellow soil, the colour and texture of chalk, hills laced with brittle trees like thinning scalps, and the unrelenting smell of firewood smoke. Malaya beckoned with promises; there was tin to be found here, perhaps gold and silver too. The heavens propitiously provided abundant rain, sunshine and a yearlong growing season; the earth grew whatever you planted.
For Sitiawan the lucrative dream never quite materialised. The people survived, grew for a while. But the tin rush which had swelled the coffers of other towns in Perak had largely bypassed this sleepy little enclave. Swathes of rainforest had been painstakingly cleared for rubber plantations, but the collapse of the international rubber market in the 1930s had put an end to that dream.
At times, Sitiawan seemed less a city of humans than of birds. Urban sprawl had flattened out the town into a loose, brittle landscape of concrete and bitumen. There was a disproportionate amount of space for roads with few cars, buildings with no inhabitants, businesses with no customers. The streets were de Chiricoesque, empty landscapes. Instead of people, the town was filled with swifts swarming at dawn and dusk in black, pulsating clouds over the dusty rooftops. Pigeons watched in silent, sinister rows on sagging powerlines.
Many of these empty buildings had been built just before the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997. Left empty, these buildings became refuges for swifts to build their nests. Eventually, some enterprising locals realized they could harvest these nests and sell them for a fortune. All over Malaysia, people with dreams of easy money rushed to buy houses, not for human inhabitation but to be left empty in hope of attracting birds. Many of the old houses along the main street in Sitiawan had their windows and doors sealed up for this purpose.
Others had purpose-built “swift towers” constructed. Sitiawan’s townscape was dominated by these 15-20m tall buildings, among the largest buildings around. They were windowless, doorless concrete boxes with only small round apertures for the swifts. They were like mausoleums crouching over the town - silent, monolithic and Egyptian.
Ironically, there were only so many swifts hogging this particular parcel of sky, and they had proved to be pickier than the hopeful humans in selecting their lodgings. Many of these “swift houses” remained empty and derelict, their boarded up facades giving Sitiawan the look of a city decimated by plague.
Moses Tay the great educator had arranged a cultural expedition of sorts for us, a sort of trace-your-roots tour of Sitiawan. We began with the future: at sundown on the first day we visited a man-made island at the estuary. The developer wanted to sell land parcels for building houses. As it was brand new, they were only a few desultory show houses on this sandy patch. There was a completed marina facing the South China Sea. It was a confident, soaring complex with berths for private yachts (there were a few, perhaps also for show), and imported carpet grass lawns with palm trees. It was completely deserted except for a single shop selling chendol. On the wooden jetty, a bridal party were taking photographs, a pack of teenaged boys watching derisively.
The developer was a group of local Chinese businessmen who wanted to rival the better-known berthing facilities at nearby Lumut, where we had boarded the speedboat for Pangkor Laut. This new development was perhaps better situated, being much nearer to the island resorts. The idea was quite conceivable, but had clearly not yet taken off. The marina complex was brand-new, yet the imported grass grew on a lumpy bank, and water-cracks were beginning to show on the new whitewashed walls.
The following day, the coach with the hideous interior was swapped for the Little Mermaid-themed one. We were taken to the cemetery next to Sitiawan’s oldest church, the Methodist Pioneer Church, to pay our respects to Doug’s grandparents who were buried there. The cemetery was well-ordered, with Chinese-style tombstones which were similar to those in my Sibu, Sarawak. Many were as large as SUVs. They were freshly tiled and well-kept. The family gathered around Doug’s grandparents’ grave which was surmounted with an oddly un-Protestant sculpted grieving angel. Family members tittered at the misspelling of descendant’s names on the gravestone (Doug’s included).
After a moment of silence, we were trucked the few metres to the Sitiawan Settlement Museum, located in a timber bungalow run by the church. There were walls of faded photographs with captions explaining the foundation and growth of Sitiawan and a reconstruction of a typical turn-of-the-century homestead interior. Upstairs were memorabilia and artifacts grouped into categories - a bedroom, a printing office, and a church hall.
Conspicuous in its absence was any mention of the Second World War and the Japanese Occupation. This dark episode had apparently been glossed over in favour of earlier struggles. Few people spoke about it. All pa-in-law said about it was that as a result of food shortages, they had to resort to eating wild tapioca day in and day out. Nowadays he wouldn’t touch the stuff.
On the spacious, very English front lawn at the church, we once again came in contact with Zahn, the 7-year old Destroyer of Worlds. He was impossible to escape; his smiling face was everywhere, he poked all sorts of people with his umbrella (except King Hee’s father, who continued to watch him warily) and followed various people at uncomfortably close range, annoying them to exasperation. One of them was 5-year old Matthew, who was the only other child among us. Matthew was a precocious talker for his age and loved words; when it came to Zahn he clammed up like a mollusk. Zahn pursued him relentlessly, wanting and needing validation - Matthew repeatedly ignored him and moved on. It was like watching a blind date heading for disaster.
At the museum we learned that Chinese settlement of the Sitiawan area (part of the Manjung district) was in 2 parts. A first wave came in 1900 direct from China; a second wave of immigrants came from my grandparents’ hometown of Sibu. This was news to me. It was never fully explained how it was that this group of people ended up being shunted from one place to another like unwanted children. It was to this second landing site that Joshua now took us.
The second landing of the Foochow immigrants took place on the edge of a deserted mangrove swamp, near the estuary. It had been designated a park, and a boardwalk of concrete pavers and crooked railings had been constructed along the river. It was in poor condition; a concrete bench lay upturned, unrepaired, The bank was littered with the detritus of modern life - detergent bottles, plastic bags, enough cigarette butts to sink the immigrant ships many times over. The overcast sky was white hot, the air stiflingly still.
Joshua explained, “They came from China in large, crowded steamboats. They landed here, and were brought to the church on foot.” This was the church we had just left, though the current building dates from slightly later. It was many miles away.
I imagined how the scene must have been like then. The immigrants in their threadbare Chinese clothes completely unsuitable for the climate here, the young in bare feet, the men wearing the traditional queue. There would have been fewer women - like the migrant workers of today, many would have left their womenfolk and children behind in the hopes of bringing them over later. They would have squinted into the blinding heat, taken in the view of this brackish river, the lead-coloured mud, the silent, distrustful trees on legs. It must have been appalling.
The Methodist pastor might have met them there, his band collar drenched in sweat, his pink face flushed in the heat. If not, he would have met his bewildered new flock in the church, after many dusty miles of marching. Then they would have been assigned their plots. Here’s your land, they were told, go and dig. Come to church on Sunday, let us know you’re still alive.
Hundreds died of the 19th century mass diseases - dysentery and typhoid. The years of hard labour would have whittled them down too. Those that remained were our forebears. We were the children of survivors.
The past was a tragedy, but so was the condition of the present-day concrete boardwalk.
“Build, build, build,” Joshua said, “Malaysians love to build. But no one maintains.”
He was full of political opinions today. Perhaps his telephone conversation with God had egged him on.
“Especially the White Elephant People,” he proclaimed, “They build things. The government gives them contracts, so they build, build, build.” All these creative euphemisms seemed to put him in a poetic mood. “White Elephant buildings for White Elephant people,” he said, almost happily.
He might as well have been talking about the entire country. All the places that we went to showed the same signs of overbuilding. Beach resorts with hideously ugly concrete chalets with no occupants, miles of forlorn concrete waterfronts, tonnes of concrete parlayed into fantastical sculptures that played no purpose. And all or most of it built with government contracts and public money.
Joshua, like every good Malaysian Chinese man, had a dictionary of thinly-veiled invectives for this kind of thing. “One Malaysia,” he snorted, quoting the latest government motto for national unity, “It’s true, everything is done for one Malaysia people only.”
And: “Top is rotten, so bottom is rotten too.”
But being a good Christian, perhaps he realised he wasn’t sounding very charitable, and he started to backtrack. “But on the other hand, most Malays are very simple, very nice people. If your car breaks down, they are the ones who help you. It’s only the One-Malaysia people, the politicians who are corrupt.”
Above us, the swifts traced their manic circles and figures-of-eight in the diminishing light, returning to their dark, shut-up houses laid out with bedrooms, toilets and studies, but no people.