histr342.htm

History - 2

Conversations with Lim Huck Aik

as recorded by Lim Kean Chye

The family bear

MY GRANDMOTHER loved animals. I remember she had a bear tied to the teng to (1) at Kimberley Street. When he grew big and strong he would drag the teng to after him. The teng to was never used except for special occasions. We would dine in another room. After "Homestead" was built we took the bear with us but he kept biting at the bars of his cage and my grandmother had to give him to the zoo at Ayer Itam. It was run by a priest. And I also remember a black panther that my grandmother got from Thailand. The dogs all ran away when he arrived, except for the Irish terrier which tried to attack him in his cage. The panther was also given to the zoo. And our parrots! In those days we would hail passing rickshaws to take our visitors home. My grandmother's parrots picked up the call and would repeat lang ch'ia! lang ch'ia! aain and again. You can imagine how annoying this was to the rickshaw pullers.

A story teller come to the house every night to read grandmother a story before bedtime. The stories were from the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, Kau Tay T'ian (Sun Wu Kung) and Sam Pek Eng Tai. The lang ting tang (2) man also came to tell stories. My mother, like her mother before her, was also a nyonya. Like other nyonyas whose koay were good my grandmother made some for sale, and my father (3) did the selling. They did not employ Indians sell on the street as some others did (4).

In Kimberly Street we occupied two houses which were very long, stretching to to Hongkong Street. Johnny (5) lived next to us. He was older than me. I remember Johnny's band (6), particularly because they practised every day. I never danced to his band but I danced at the cabaret at the Great World. I stopped going to the cabaret when I got married at 30. That was in 1937.

We moved when grandfather (7) built "Homestead" at Northam Road. The Ferara marble was laid by Italian workmen. It is not true that the house blocked the hong sui (8) of Quah Beng Kee's house (9) and caused his economic crisis. My father had in fact bought him out of Eastern Shipping (10) before that. The 1929 slump ended my father's fortunes. It's not true that he lost his fortune in copra speculation. He had to sell "Homestead" (11) and the swathe of land from Pangkor Road down to the sea (12).

The local judge, an Englishman, was a regular at our tennis court. After tennis he walked up the hill to the judge's house. I have never known him to take the train. Down the road was "Chatsworth", the home of A A Anthony (13), a neighbour of Lim Cheng Ean (14) at "Hardwick." Further down where Northam Road meets Kelawei Road was the bungalow of Chung Thye Pin. It was unoccupied because he believed it to be haunted and it remained empty until the Shanghai Hotel became its tenant.

Our country house was "Lim Lodge" at what is now called Lim Mah Chye Road. We had a country estate on a hill in Tanjung Bungah just before you reach Miami Beach. That's how I became a swimmer. I remember that my father's mess was also by the sea. As was the fashion we also built a house up Penang Hill but the hill came down. Luckily we were not there when it happened.

We put up at the Crag Hotel instead. Those days we were carried up the hill in sedan chairs by coolies. Chow Thye (15) built the Italian style "Mon Sejour" at the end of the path, way past the Brothers' Hill. My father was his brother Chow Kit's (16) partner. Inn Kheong (17) and Joo Tock's (18) houses were close together, just above Cheng Ean's (19).

English coachman

We had several horse carriages. Cannot remember when we stopped using horses. It is not true that my father had a coach and four with golden lamps and that he employed an English coachman. I remember that our first car could not negotiate the slope at Tanjong Bungah; we had to push it up the road.

I studied law at Christ, Cambridge. I was introduced by Leong Ying Khean (20). Also studying in England then were I K Cheah, brother of Inn Kheong, Ismail Khan (21), H T Ong (22) also Kheng Kooi (23), all junior to me. I liked Ismail Khan who was a gentle person.

I was a member of the Masonic Lodge at Cambridge. When I applied to join the Lodge in Penang there was opposition but the senior members, including the judge, threatened to resign if I was blackballed, so I got in, the first Asiatic (24) to be admitted. The Penang Club also opened its doors to Huck Lim (25) and me. Strange to say, I beat Huck Lim in the election to the position of trustee when they decided that one of the trustees should be Asiatic. After I was admitted there was a rush to join the Lodge headed by Khoo Sian Ewe (26) and Hussein Abdoolcader (27). But for some reason they were rejected. Hussein afterwards tried his luck in Johore and was admitted there.

It was not until towards the end of the Japanese occupation that the Japanese saw the list of office bearers of the Lodge, so they detained me. Masonic people were looked on as spies by the Japanese. But I was well treated. In the days when 6 to 7 were crammed into a cell in the jail I had a cell to myself and a small garden for planting. I was just locked up. I was not questioned.

When I came back to Penang from England in 1930, Cheng Ean, who was 15 years my senior, asked me to join the colonial legal service. He had protested that the Colonial Legal Office was closed to colonials so the governor said to him, we will appoint anyone you recommend. He came to me and said, you must accept. This was totally unexpected because he and I often clashed in court and I had thought that he disliked me. I told my father about it and he said OK but my mother opposed my accepting the appointment because she could not bear to think of me going away to far away Singapore. Lim Cheng Ean was disappointed. He did not recommend anyone else.

Speaking of lawyers, Heng Kok (28) was the first Asiatic partner of Hogan and Adams. I was in Evans and Allan. Later they merged to form Hogan, Adams and Allan. Tat Jin (29), Leong Ying Khean, Wat Hye (30) and Lee Tiang Keng (31) and I were in the same mess. What is a mess? It was a sort of club with 6 or 8 members. We would meet for poker and whisky. In those days society was a closed one and, if you wanted female company, you joined a mess. .

Prices. I remember char koay tiau was 3 cents. .Chee Swee Ee (32) of Balik Pulau was a friend of mine. He went to Shanghai, not England. I called him Ee-ah. Poh Sun (33) and Tye Keat Kwong (34) driving up Penang Hill. I think they used a Packard. No, I have never heard of any nursery rhymes connected with the clock Cheah Chean Eok gave to Penang on the occasion of Queen Victoria's Silver Jubilee.#

Notes

(1) Teng to - long table
(2) Lang ting tang man - Itenerant fortune teller who also told stories accompanying himself on the mandolin
(3) Lim Chin Guan
(4) If the nyonya in Malacca placed bottles of chinchalok on her windorw sill for sale, the well-to-do housewife in Penang was not ashamed to advertise her culinary skills by sending    Indians out on the streets to sell their popular koay and laksa, contained in two baskets balanced
at he ends of a stick across the shoulder.
(5) Son of the youngest Municipal Commissioner of the Straits Settlements at 25, Lim Cheng Teik.
(6) Johnny and his cousin Tommy, son of Lim Cheng Law formed Penang's first jazz band which
was conducted by the Filipino conductor of the E & O Hotel orchestra
(7) Lim Mah Chye
(8) feng shui
(9) Later the residence of Lim Kiar Joo and now occupied by "Maple Gold" restaurant
(10) Eastern Shipping virtually monopolised commercial shipping in south Asia
(11) Bought by Yeap Chor Ee
(12) Bought by Lim Cheng Teik
(13) A rich Armenian stockbroker
(14) Lim Cheng Ean, a Straits Settlements legislative councillor and a brother of Cheng Teik and Cheng Law
(15) Loke Chow Thye whose daughter, educated at Bryn Maur married Chua Cheng Liat who with his brother Chua Cheng Bok founded Cycle & Carriage. Chow Thye Road was named after him
(16) Loke Chow Kit, brother of Loke Chow Thye. There is a street in KL named after him
(17) Cheah Inn Kheong
(18) Khaw Joo Tock, one of the sons of the Raja of Ranong
(19) Claremont
(20) Leong Ying Khean was at Cambridge in 1908. He lived at No 32 Northam Road. His brother Eng Khean was next door, the site now occupied by the Penang Bowling Alley. Their father Leong Fee's house was at the beginning of Leith Street, opposite the Teoh Tiaw Suat (Cheong Fatt Tse) house. It was the residence of the vicar general in later years and is now occupied by a teaching institute.
(21) Became a chief justice of Malaysia
(22) Ong Hock Thye, became a chief justice of Malaya
(23) Lim Kheng Kooi, a Queen's Scholar
(24) Nowadays called Asians
(25) Ong Huck Lim, a lawyer
(26) Khoo Sian Ewe, son of a Chinese Kapitan. Before income tax was introduced in the Straits Settlements just before World War II, he was the largest landowner in Penang after the Roman Catholic Church. He was a member of the Straits Settlements legislative council
(27) Sir Hussein Abdoolcader was a nominee of the Penang Indian Chamber of Commerce for the Straits Settlements legislative council
(28) Khoo Heng Kok, 1908 Queen's Scholar
(29) Cheah Tat Jin , one of the sons of Cheah Chean Eok, the man who gave the clock tower to Penang
(30) Cheah Wat Hye, a well known tennis players and grandson of Cheah Chean Eok
(31) Brother of Khoo Soon Chee, partner of Lim Cheng Ean in the legal firm of Cheng Ean & Soon Chee. He once served as Malaysia"s ambassador to Japan
(32) Uncrowned king of Balik Pulau whose wife's laksa was considered the best in Penang
(33) Tye Poh Sun
(34) Tye Keat Kwong. Poh Sun and Keat Kwong were cousins

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Lim Huck Aik (born 1907) died at the age of 97. When Tengku Abdul Rahman became prime minister he had Lim Huck Aik appointed a governor of Bank Negara and also a pro-chancellor of the Universiti Sains Penang. Tengku had wished that he be appointed a judge of the high court but the proposal did not find favour with the chief justice, Thompson. Lim Huck Aik talked to Lim Kean Chye over a period of three years about what he remembered of his life and his family specifically for the purpose of of having the story published in The Penang File of which he was a devoted reader. He checked the notes a page a time (he could not manage more than one page a day). He died before some of the desultory comments could be fleshed out into something more substantial.

Foong Kim Chong

Paya Terubong

The Best Thai Food in Town

Phone: 825 5643

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INDEX

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Index page Baba words Book review Contempt Food guide Letter to the editor Lim Huck Aik Pulau Tikus letter PoW Gazette Road names

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The Penang File Issue 34