Ipoh World

Although there were very large numbers of Chinese immigrants who came to Ipoh to make their fortune and then return to their mother country, there are countless stories of those who, once here, decided to bring their families from China and make Ipoh their permanent home. It is rare, even in these cases, to be to able establish without doubt the details of the immigrant’s earlier life in China, but in this case we are indebted to our pioneer himself who laboriously wrote down the stories told to him by his Great Grandfather and continued to write until he arrived in Malaya. Sadly, here his journal ends, but his relatives, who still live in Ipoh, have since filled in the rest of his story.

Grandfather's Story.

Tet Ching starts his diary, relating the tales his grandfather had told him. It begins in 1862 where his Great Grandmother, Grandfather and two Grand Uncles are fleeing from their home in central China to Kai Ying County (Guandong) in the South. China is in turmoil as the Taiping Rebellion (1851 – 1864) said to be the bloodiest civil war in history is underway. Grandfather Phoong Jiun Ching was 12 years old and he and his mother headed towards the forest of Ping Yuan and soon became separated from his brothers (the Grand Uncles) who had taken a more southerly direction. This was a tough assignment for a 12 year old and his mother, with little or no food and water and the constant fear of being discovered by the rebels.

Eventually, deep in the forest his mother could take no more and simply laid down and died leaving young Jiung Ying penniless, alone, lost and very frightened. There was only one option left for the young man and that was to find his way out of the forest as quickly as he could and beg for food whenever he had the opportunity. Thus he found his way to the county of Jiao Liang and the village of Siao Lok. Here he found many other refugees from the fighting, who had been recruited by a Catholic priest and missionary, to build a church. Jiun Ching, at 12 years old, was employed as a concrete brick builder and carpenter. Soon he converted to the Catholic faith.

In 1880, at age 30, Jiun Ching married a local lady, Chiah, but within two years she had passed away and left him alone again. Some years later he married once more, but he and his second wife, Chan, (subsequently buried in the Catholic cemetery in Batu Gajah) failed to produce children. Around this time, contact was re-established with one of the two Grand Uncles, Phoong Wen Ching, who had lost touch with his mother and younger brother Jiun Ching, when fleeing from the rebels back in 1862. He had got as far as Annam (now part of Vietnam) married a local minority, had four sons and subsequently returned to Moi Yen, not far from Jiao Liang, where he had set up a small farm.

On their first reunion for more than 20 years, Wen Ching discovered that his younger brother (Jiun Ching) had no children and in the spirit of brotherly love, promptly gave his youngest son, the three year-old Phoong Ze Nam to him as his adopted son. This young man was destined to come to Malaya, although of course he did not know it, but when he arrived, many years later, he changed his name to Phoong Bing. After a brief stay in Jiaoliang, Wen Ching returned to Moi Yen and his farm, leaving not only his youngest son, but also the other three, temporarily in the care of Jiun Ching. He never returned to collect them and passed away some two years later, leaving the unexpected responsibility of bringing up the boys entirely to Jiun Ching and his wife Chan.

This they did, to the best of their ability in a country that was chaotic, continually in turmoil, politically unstable and suffering from a succession of wars over Opium and then the Boxer Rebellion. It was no surprise therefore that one by one, like thousands of other Chinese young men, the boys decided to leave for Nanyang, the Southern Seas, and all four eventually ended up in Malaya.

Father's Story.

The first to leave the family home was the eldest son of Wen Ching, who, at 18, took passage to Singapore and settled in Kuala Lumpur. Some three years later, when he was 20, second son followed his brother’s footsteps, but settled in Singapore. Wen Ching’s third son married in China and brought his wife to Ipoh on borrowed money, leaving the debt in the name of his adoptive father, Jiun Ching. It took the poor old man ten years to pay it off. He passed away in 1905 leaving his wife and the youngest son, Phoong Ze Nam, who had married a local girl, Lim Ching Liam. The couple was living with his adoptive parents.

In 1906, aged 24, Ze Nam borrowed two dollars and lost it gambling. At that time in China such a sum was equivalent to a prosperous shopkeeper’s whole month’s salary. He was terrified of what his wife and mother would say and rather than going home to confess he sought out an agent for migrant labourers and signed on for immediate passage to Indonesia to work as a "Sinkeh" or “Piglet” in the mines. He left behind his mother and pregnant wife (who was carrying Tet Ching, our pioneer of Sam Tet School). For Ze Nam, who was a timid man by nature, Indonesia was more than he could stand and after four months of incredible hardship, he ran away in desperation from his contracted employer and escaped to Singapore. Here he found his second brother who helped him to get to Ipoh and contact his third brother. In Ipoh he found work as a tin mine coolie in Papan.

Meanwhile, back in China, baby Tet Ching had been born and was living with his mother and grandmother in the Jiao Liang family home. These were difficult times as apart from the poverty, marauding gangs and continual wars, there was no man to bring in any money and so the women had to work hard just to survive. It was in this climate of hardship and deprivation that our pioneer grew up. However Ching Lian never gave up the idea of getting her husband back and tried desperately to find out his whereabouts. Eventually, a cousin, (Lim Yi Teng) who often traveled to Malaya as an agent for migrant workers located Ze Nam in Papan and in no uncertain terms made it quite clear that he must save up his miserable wages until he had enough money to bring his wife to Ipoh.

The news of Ze Nam’s whereabouts, brought great joy to the Jiaoliang household although when the practicalities were discussed there was great concern for Ze Nam’s mother, for if Ching Lian and Tet Ching were to leave for Nanyang, who would care for the old lady? And so the decision was made. Only Ching Lian would leave China and young Tet Ching would stay with his grandmother until his father could afford to travel back to Jiao Liang to bring the two of them to Ipoh as well. Eventually, Ze Nam scraped together enough money together to pay for his wife’s passage and she arrived in Papan to find they were to live in a small wooden house in a coconut plantation between Papan and Pusing.

With his wife safely installed in Malaya, Ze Nam turned his back on the Papan mines and over the next 16 years or so they reared pigs in a pen alongside the house, made Taufu for sale in the market and tended the coconut plantation. They also had another 7 children.

Tet Ching's Story.

During this period, back in Jiao Liang, eldest son Tet Ching had been brought up by his grandmother, completed his traditional Chinese schooling and been forced by his grandmother (very much against his wishes) to marry Yoong Choon Moy, ‘the little daughter-in-law’ chosen for him almost two years before he was born and who had been brought up as his little sister (See her story). He recalled that when he was growing up the villagers would make fun of him about his family. The elder children bullied him and told him that he was an orphan, bought by his grandmother from Jiangsi and that she had brought Choon Moy, his future wife, into the family to keep an eye on him and prevent him running away. Of course he had never seen Ze Nam, his father who had left for ‘Nanyang’ before he was born and could not remember his mother who had left for Ipoh when he was three. So when he repeated these tales to his grandmother and questioned her stories about his father and mother, she responded by giving him a thorough beating. She was not a loving person at all and would happily beat him regularly whether he was right or wrong.

Against this background, Tet Ching’s only ambition for many years was to leave his grandmother’s home and his ‘little wife’ and join military school (at age 18) where Further Education would be paid for by the government. However, just before he reached 18 years old, correspondence started with his father, who of course was in Papan/Pusing with his wife and family, and a new option opened up – emigrate to Malaya to join his parents. Unfortunately at the time (1924) Malaya was suffering from a major outbreak of Malaria with Perak the worst of all the states to be hit and his father would not allow him to take the risk. At the same time his grandmother flatly refused to allow him to join the army for, as she put it, he was the only person she had in China and without him to look after her she would die. The final blow of his eighteenth year was in the winter of 1924 when his grandmother insisted that he marry Yoong Choon Moy, ‘the little daughter-in-law’. Despite being persistent in his refusal to marry before he was 20, his grandmother continued to argue persuasively that she had brought up Choon Moy since before he was born which made her senior to him in the family and if he failed to marry her she would become the laughing stock of the village, claiming that the women would bully her while the men would flirt with her or worse. The final straw came when his grandmother won the day by kneeling before him and pleading with him to marry Choon Moy without delay. Tet Ching recorded in his diary, “At that time I had to obey my grandma. I was helpless and gave in; I had to succumb to the old tradition.”

Eventually, by the time Tet Ching reached 20 years old (1926) it had been agreed that he would travel to Papan to join the remainder of the family and once he was established in Malaya both his wife and grandmother would follow. In his own words (translated from the Chinese): “We had to wait eight days in Swatow then took a boat to Xiamen (Fujian Province) and boarded a ship bound for Singapore. This ship was only around 3,000 tons, but took on more than 1,000 passengers below deck. It was very crowded. After three days at sea, I woke up to a terrible storm that threw us around so badly that people were mixed up with the luggage. Some of the passengers were hurt and most were throwing up. Their clothes were covered with vomit and the whole place stunk like hell! The ship was shaking heavily and the waves that swept past the hull sounded like thunder. The sailors had to repair the leaking windows as the pressure of the water had sprung the seals. It was a very frightening experience. The storm lasted for two days before it started to subside and I sat dumbly on my luggage for hour after hour. Fitter than most, I had to help some of the passengers to change their clothes and also carry several of them to the toilet as they were so exhausted they could no longer walk. Of course many of these passengers were also too sick to eat, so they gave me their food. For these two days I ate four bowls of rice for breakfast, five bowls for lunch and seven bowls for dinner! I had set my new record of 16 bowls of rice a day! It took six and a half days to arrive in Singapore.”

Again in his own words Tet Ching recorded his arrival in Malaya thus: “I stayed for only two days in Singapore and then took the train to Ipoh where my uncle (my mother’s brother) met me at the station and arranged a car to take us to Pusing. Before taking the last part of the journey to the family house, we stopped in Pusing Town for dim sum. Then we followed the railway track from the Pusing station until we came to a small dirt track where we turned left into a coconut plantation. At the end of the track was an atap house, old and scruffy with a few small children playing at the door. Could this be it I wondered. Then, hearing our footsteps, a few people came out from the house; there was this woman who looked old, haggard and very skinny; that was my mother and she looked so much older than her 40 years. Immediately she grabbed hold of me, threw her arms around my neck and said “Oh my Tet Ching, I have shed so many tears for you. Today I see you as if I was dreaming.” Then she just burst into tears. After a while we went into the house, my mother called the children to line up and she told then that I was their second brother (my eldest brother, ‘First Brother’ had died as a baby in China before I was born). She then introduced them to me one by one. As I looked around me at my new home I noted that it was in very poor condition, much worse than our home in China. Clearly life was not going to be easy here. I felt disturbed and worried for the future.

Here Phoong Tet Ching’s diary ends, but his sons, Peter and Michael now take up the story.

Tet Ching’s forebodings on arrival were well founded for life in the atap house was far from easy. First of all more than 20 people lived in the house at any one time. Most of these were children and as there were 6 young sons in the family, on his arrival there were also five taken-in young ‘daughters-in-law’. However not all of these actually followed through and married their selected husbands in the end. One of the young boys, the eldest born in Malaya (known traditionally as Third Uncle to present day members of the family) died as a child and subsequently sixth and seventh uncle died during the Japanese occupation destroying the neat plans made by the parents. In the family there had also been one birth daughter, Poon Kim Chin, but she had already been given away in 1919 at three years old and taken back to China as a ‘daughter-in-law’, destined to marry an 11 year old boy (see her story).

Besides harvesting the coconuts, the family ran their own Taufu factory in the house and used the waste soya bean husks to feed the pigs in their pens close by. At one time there was more than 100 pigs in the plantation and the family were considered quite ‘well–to-do’, being able to feed so many mouths. It was therefore not long before Tet Ching’s mother Choon Moy and grandmother Chian, arrived from China and joined the already bulging household. But the days were hard as the Taufu had to be ready for Ze Nam to take it to the early morning market using his coolie pole and baskets and while he was there a second batch had to be produced ready for his return. The pigs had to be fed and the coconuts harvested and taken to market as well. Everybody had to play their part and there was no room for laziness. This was particularly hard for Tet Ching as being the eldest son he was expected to work as hard as anyone at these menial tasks and being the only truly educated one in the house at that time he felt he was wasting his life away. But the grounding in the Catholic faith that his grandfather had received as the teenage brick maker and carpenter all those years ago had stayed with the family who were all good churchgoers (and still are).

Sam Tet School.

Thus it was some six years after his arrival in Pusing (1932) that Tet Ching was asked by the Catholic priest of St Michael’s Church in Ipoh to take Catechism classes in the church grounds (on the site of today’s Sam Tet School). It was from this small beginning that the church formed Sam Tet Primary School where Tet Ching accepted the post of the first headmaster. From that time on he stayed in a Catholic hostel adjacent to the school and only returned to the attap house at Pusing and various later family homes, at weekends. In addition to teaching full time at Sam Tet, Tet Ching also took on the post of Supervisor of the Chinese classes at St Michael’s Institution and Min Tet Primary School.

When Sam Tet first opened as a formal Primary school, one wooden two storey building, with three classrooms on each floor, was built to accommodate the pupils. There were almost no other facilities. Nonetheless, many children enrolled in the school and it became very successful. Tet Ching remained as headmaster until the Brothers Marist, a French Catholic Order took over the Primary school in 1953 and at the same time founded the Sam Tet Secondary School. Tet Ching then transferred to the Secondary school as a teacher in 1954 and remained there until he retired in 1967.

The first Secondary School building was again a two storey, six classroom arrangement which still stands today, now sandwiched between two new wings.

Family Affairs.

Although Tet Ching was away from the family home, his wife and children for much of the time, the remainder of the family continued to run their businesses and sent Tet Ching’s fourth and sixth brothers to China to be educated in the traditional way. While they were there they managed to meet their sister Kim Chin who had been given away in 1919. Once they completed their schooling they returned to Ipoh. Then, as schools improved in Malaya seventh, eighth and ninth brothers were sent to school in Yuk Choy School, Ipoh, catching the early morning train from Pusing and returning on the 4.00pm train from Ipoh. Life had become quite stable for the family and although it was still a tough life there was always enough food to go round, but one day disaster struck.

According to the Feng Shui man, it all started with Tet Ching’s father, Ze Nam who dug a new well in an inauspicious place in the plantation. Just a few days later Tet Ching’s wife, Choon Moy, had a miscarriage and had to be taken away to the clinic for treatment. She lost a baby girl. That left all the children and little ‘daughters-in-law’ with no one to supervise them. Consequently, Tet Ching’s only daughter Rose and his eighth brother’s ‘future wife’ decided to play in the woods. Here they found some beautiful berries and feasted on them greedily. Both died, aged 11 years old, the same day. Three deaths in the family in one day! What was worse, the Feng Shui man forecast six more deaths to come. Ze Nam filled the well in the same day.

In 1939, while Ipoh and the world were facing recession, tin was found on the family’s plantation and Ze Nam was persuaded to sell their land for 800 dollars. They moved to an area now known as Wah Keong Park (close to today’s Kampong Simee) where they built a wooden house on a slope near the river. The land was leasehold and shared by eight owners, both Chinese and Malay. As the elder Malays passed away their share was split between their complete family and so if anything needed to be done legally the ever increasing number of shareholders had to be found to sign. A great problem! Here however there was no need to make Taufu as several of the family were working and money was not so tight. Consequently Ze Nam tended a rubber plantation and reared pigs, while others of the family grew vegetables.

In late 1941, because of the Japanese invasion, the family moved again to Kampong Kepayang (behind Fair Park) in another wooden house, where Choon Moy passed away at age 54 having suffered many hardships. Then in 1951, due to ‘The Emergency’ (the confrontation with the Communists) the family was compulsorily moved to Kampong Simee under the New Village Resettlement Plan of the British Administration. This time ‘moving house’ meant just that as the old home was taken to pieces plank by plank and carried to the new ‘two plot’ site that had been allocated. Here the house was reassembled on two plots, numbers 441 and 442.

Only 4 years later the entire family, still numbering more than 20, moved to 31 Kampar Road Ipoh, from where over a period of time they dispersed to their own houses. The majority remain in Ipoh today.

Never failing to remember his roots and the people of Jiao Liang he returned there in 1987, was taken ill and passed away. He is buried on the hillside of the Jiao Liang Catholic cemetery and his wife’s family still maintain his grave.

To read more about The Briggs Plan / New Villages, click here.

To read more about Yuk Choy Primary and Secondary Schools, Ipoh, click here.

To read more about Phoong Ze Nam, click here.

To read more about Lim Ching Liam and Yoong Choo Moy, click here.

To read more about Poon Kim Chin, click here.