My Memoirs (Part 2)

Continue from My Memoirs (Part 1)

I used to remember Grandma telling us that she had four sons and two daughters. Two eldest sons were taken away during the Japanese occupations to work on the ‘Death Railway’ of the infamous ‘The Bridge on the River Kwai’.

Forced labour was used in its construction. About 200,000 Asian labourers and 60,000 Allied prisoners of war (POWs) worked on the railway. Of these, around 100,000 Asian labourers and 16,000 Allied POWs died as a direct result of the project. As history goes, my two ‘Ah Pak’ are two of the many Asian labourers perished during that period. (Later, some young man came back alive to report to Grandma – that they had seen her two sons being held at the death railway)

The third son dies of malaria – due to lack of health care between these periods. During the occupation, the Japanese solders came for the ‘chok ching’ (to capture) young men at various part of George Town, and along the Market Lane / Chulia Lane. And at that fortunate time, his fourth son (my dad) was having diarrhea in the toilet and thus ‘miss’ him. Fate or miraculous escape, as you would call it. My dad grew up to become a handsome young man, whom the neighborhood addresses him as ‘Sie Khor’ or the fourth brother.

This fourth brother met up with my mom one fine day – through the introduction of his colleague (an uncle, I now called ‘ah Jeong’). Mom is the younger sister of uncle’s wife (now whom I called ‘tye yee’). And after a whirlwind courtship, both Mom and Dad were married.

I can still vividly remember Mom telling us siblings that on her wedding day during the tea ceremony, one of the ‘ah mah cheh’ suddenly went into trance and started to speak in some strange Cantonese, which later interpreted as one of the ‘Ah Pak’s spirit (Grandma’s other lost sons) desired to adopt the newly wed couples’ offspring as ‘their’ children. ‘They’ even presented her with 3 Russian diamond rings for the tea ceremony. These rings were later found (interpretation from the trance) in one of the hidden drawer at one of the many ancient cupboards. Strange as it may sound but till to this day, I have one of this Russian diamond ring in my possessions. Myths or Facts?

Hence, with the above strange incidents and in the memory of Grandma three lost sons, I and my siblings are taught to call both Mom and Dad as “Ah Sum’ and Ah Shok”. But as time progressed well into our adulthood, we fine tuned into calling Mom and Dad as ‘Lou Mou’ and ‘Lou Tau’ in Cantonese, which literally means Mother and Father in plain language

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