My Parents

IT IS NOW APRIL l 1978 when I decide to write about my life. In November or  December next I shall be 90 years old. The exact date of my birth is not known and cannot be established with any accuracy, because when I was born there was no registration births.

My father came from China to Penang at the age of 16 solely for the purpose of earning a living. He was a Fukien or Hokkien Chinese and was then known as Phuah Hin Leong. Although born a Lim he became a Phuah by adoption. 

We were told that his father's farm was intended for his elder brother only, for it was a small farm and so my father became adopted by a man of the surname Phuah who lived close by. Though thus adopted he chose not to remain in China all his life but to come out to Penang by sailing boat to earn a living, even though the boat took about six months to reach Penang. It took so long because it  had  to  keep close to the shore all the way to avoid storms and rough seas. 

The name he bore then was Phuah Hin Leong, meaning Prosperous Dragon of the surname PHA. This is a very well chosen and appropriate name; for though he began life in Penang as a sampan-wallah rowing passengers from English ships that called to the shore of that island for the payment of one cent per passenger he ended up by becoming a millionaire, owning a rice mill and also an oil mill - there will be more of this wonderful achievement hereafter. 

In this very place he put up an attap shed, unnumbered of course, where he lived and also sold odds and ends for a living. There was no piped water and there was no room where he could bathe and so he asked to be allowed to bathe in a dwelling house close by. There was a girl of marriageable age living in that house. On a certain day he forgot to take his purse after his bath.  On the next day when he came again for his bath, that girl who  had   found the purse gave it to him. He was more than astonished by this act of honesty. He was also grateful at finding such an honest person. It was an astonishment and in appreciation that led to a marriage, of which I am the last of the sons. I suppose this must have been the reason why my nickname was Bahsayhan.

When I was about to be born, my father left Tanjong Tokong and came to live in Prangin Road, which is in the heart of Penang town;  because he was going to erect a rice and oil mill to make parboiled rice from local padi and coconut oil from copra, which is the name for the sun dried coconut kernel. This mill was in the road opposite known as Maxwell Road.  There was a small canal between these two roads, and not far away was the sea into which it emptied at low tide, while at high tide, the sea came in and with tongkangs came in loaded with Kedah padi for his mill. To help him build the rice mill he had gone to Rangoon to see rice mills there and from there he has brought an experienced man to help him in its construction and on the day his mill began to operate I was born. No wonder it was the talk of the family that my birth was of good omen and that I was according to the then belief a lucky son

Thus was born a lucky boy in an auspicious place and at an auspicious time.
 

IN COURSE OF TIME I grew to be a boy fit for school and as there was then no public or private school my father and several other fathers joined together and brought a Chinese teacher from China to teach me and the young sons of those who had helped financially in bringing the teacher. Thus did I get a chance to learn to read and also to write Chinese with the brush, execute a11 the side strokes and the horizontal and perpendicular strokes too with the teacher holding my hand and teaching me to such strokes with the right verve and pressure.  The next subject taught was reading from a beginner's classic. It was the well known classic consisting of three characters for each sentence, the meaning of which we didn't understand, but our then appointed task was to learn off by heart characters the meaning of which we would appreciate when we were grown up. 

I didn't however have a chance to grow up in my Chinese education; for about six months after I had started my Chinese education my mother took me out and put me in a school teaching English only.  The reason for this was because my teacher had punished me by making me kneel over two big clam-shells, which was the traditional punishment for boys who, as I did, absented themselves from school without permission.  In my case I stayed away from school to watch girls doing the Siamese traditional dance.  The punishment was a cruel kind of punishment but was quite traditional.  I should not have succumbed to the attraction of the suppleness with which the dancers went down on their knees from a standing position and then rose on their toes to an erect stance.

In later years the British colonial administration in a surprise move appointed Cheng Ean a relief magistrate for Georgetown, a post hitherto reserved for whites only. Already a hero to the locals Cheng Ean's popularity was boosted when he paid the fines of those who could not afford the penalties that the law demanded that he, as a magistrate,  should impose. Once more he made the headlines. 

When the Japanese invaded,  he, with the help of policing done by the former volunteers from the SS Volunteer Corps under their commander Lim Khoon Teck, was able to restore order in Ayer Itam to which the population of Georgetown had fled.  When the Japanese administration took over they appointed him Judge of the civil division which continued to administer the law of the Straits Settlements

After the war a delegation of the Malayan People's Anti Japanese Army called on him to thank him for his work in preserving order in Ayer Itam. A few years later the British asked him to consider the award of an OBE but he rejected the suggestion

Post Merdeka Penang, however, refuses to honour its most famous son; while there are roads named after Phuah Hin Leong and Lim Cheng Teik, not one sign bears his name.