Ipoh World

Poon Ah Thye, only daughter of Phoong Ze Nam and Lim Ching Lian was born on 23 May 1916 on a coconut plantation in Papan, south of Ipoh in Perak. She was the fifth child. Eventually the family had eight boys. As the only girl she traditionally had no value to this Hakka family and so, at the age of 3 she was given away to a Chinese family who were returning home to the mainland. Her role was to be a “Little Daughter-in-law” to the family while waiting to marry their son, some eight years senior to her. Unfortunately, he was a little “slow” as modern parlance has it and passed away before reaching marriageable age, leaving her without a future husband or a future. In her later years she often recalled that the one thing she was sorry about was that because of his difficulties she had teased him to the point approaching unkindness.

At some stage in her life, having never liked her simple Chinese name Poon Ah Thye and so she decided to call herself Poon Kim Chin. Another oddity with her name was that when her birth was registered her family name was written down by the government clerk as Poon rather than Phoong. Not an uncommon occurrence in those far off days when language and dialect difficulties made communication between clans and races very difficult.

Poon Kim Chin was educated in China at Chaozho, joining High School there 12 July 1931 and graduating in 1935, age 19. She then joined the Kuomintang National Revolutionary Army Medical Academy to train as a nurse, graduating from the academy on 20 January 1939 as a Staff nurse with a diploma in Bacteriology. She married General Chen Fei Shek of the Kuomintang army that same year, having met him during her training. She was 23 years young. In fact, the General already had a wife back in his home village and so in today’s terms she would be called his second wife, but in those day it was quite common to have what was known as the ‘Fa Ci Wife” (literally “Hair Wife”) from his own village, to raise his children and a “City Wife” to accompany him to service and society functions. This is how Kim Chin described herself.

For the following five years she served as a Kuomintang nurse in support of the wounded troops in their battles with first the Japanese and then the communist armies, while her husband who was a communications specialist was responsible for the military communications facilities across the southern provinces of mainland China. Then in September 1944 she was posted back to the Army Medical Academy as a laboratory assistant and from here she could spend much more time in her part as the City Wife. They had one child who died very young, so settled in the academy, they adopted a girl, Chen Chew Wai from a large, poverty stricken, family in Guangdong. They had known the family for several years as they had first met in the clinic where both babies were being inoculated. Poon Kim Chin remained at the academy until May 1948.

By that time the situation for the Kuomintang was becoming desperate in their fight against the communist “People’s Liberation Army” and by 1949 the great bulk of their forces had fled to Formosa (now Taiwan). However the general, his wives and some of his closest aides did not follow them but escaped to Hong Kong. Life was tough for them all with all the trappings of a General having been stripped from the family and they were, for the first time really poor as at first General Chen had put his money into a duck farm, but this was unsuccessful and he came close to bankruptcy, meanwhile his “Hair Wife” did a lot of charity work with the Catholic Church. They became so poor in fact that when Chen Fei Shek fell ill with Malaria, his godson and one of closest aides in the army, Law Len Cheung, had to pawn his watch to buy quinine for him and later, on the death of the General, he arranged the funeral and burial in Hong Kong. Incidentally Law Len Cheung managed to become employed by the Hong Kong government communications department, rising to a senior position. He is now (December 2009) happily retired.

With the very real difficulties for all those that had fled from China, in 1950 it was decided that Poon Kim Chin should return to her family in Malaya with their daughter. By this time the Phoongs had moved from the coconut plantation in Papan and lived in a wooden house with atap roof and dirt floor in Kampong Kepayang, close to what later became Kampong Simee. There were up to 20 of the family living there at any one time. Imagine the shock of the refined, silk cheongsam attired General’s wife when she saw what she had come back to!

However, life in China as a nurse had made her a tough and resilient person and so she soon took charge of the household, eventually becoming the well loved matriarch of the Phoong family.

1951 brought the move into Kampong Simee New Village as decreed by the ‘Briggs Plan’, where the family were allocated two plots, lot 441 and 442. This time, "move house" meant just that as the family dismantled their home and carried it, plank by plank to their new site. At some stage after that, Kim Chin joined Ave Maria Convent Secondary School as teacher in Mandarin and Home Science. She also took a great interest in drama. Here she remained until retirement taking the move of the entire family to 31, Kampar Road in her stride. This was also crowded household for at that time no less than 12 people lived permanently in the house while 20 was not unusual. Just as they were about to move from Simee, in 1958, a second daughter, Chan Kin Mun, was adopted by Kim Chin and then in 1965 she adopted her third daughter, Chin Meng Wai.

After retiring from Ave Maria, this active lady worked in the Sam Tet School Canteen until the early 1980’s, a school which her brother Phoong Tet Ching had been the first headmaster.

Finally retired, Poon Kim Chin lived in Rose Garden, Ipoh and after a short illness passed away there in the year 2000 and was buried in the Tambun Catholic cemetery. She is remembered kindly by all who knew her as firm and fair person, and a grand lady, famous for her Hakka heritage cooking which she happily dispensed to not only the family, but to the nuns in Main Convent, the priests at St Michael’s church and any other needy person.

The photographs show, from left to right, top to bottom:

To read more about Phoong Ze Nam, click here.

To read more about Lim Ching Lian, click here.

To read more about Phoong Tet Ching, click here.

To read more about Kampong Simee New Village, click here.

To read more about Ave Maria Convent School, click here.

To read more about Sam Tet School, click here.