In My Grandfather’s Time

A back lane in Ipoh’s Old Town, Perak, Malaysia


Mural at a car park in Ipoh’s Old Town showing different stages of Kopi-O (black coffee) being consumed in a Malaysian takeaway plastic bag

It's Chinese New Year! Gong Xi Fa Cai, Happy New Year everyone! Kinda miss home. In the short 1.5 years between my last visit home in mid-2019 and now, I’ve lost 3 dear ones in Ipoh, my hometown. 3 people I used to visit on every trip home to Ipoh, my po-po (maternal grandmother), my ah-mm (aunt, wife of my dad’s eldest brother) and my friend and ex-colleague, Ajit. They’ve all gone on to a better place. God bless their souls.

Gonna post some photos of Ipoh. Ipoh’s old town to be exact. (By the way, for the non-Malaysians, Ipoh is the capital of the State of Perak, Malaysia). This was where our family started… in the late 1920’s. That was when my grandpa (father’s side) (1906 – 1987) arrived from China to what was then British Malaya. I heard that he came with only the clothes on his back, and a primary school education. He is of Hokkien (Fujian) descent. He met and married my grandma (1917 – 2010), a ‘local’ girl of Chinese descent, circa 1933. My grandma’s family was also of Hokkien descent but had been in Malaya a lot earlier, like at least two generations earlier, and therefore the Hokkien is distinguishingly different, with a lot of Malay loan words. (By the way, the Hokkien dialects in China also differ from county to county. I have no idea which county my grandpa or grandma’s families originate from). My grandmother’s mother (my great-grandma, whom I had the opportunity to meet when I was a toddler), was also Malayan-born, and her mother (my great-great grandmother) was Siamese (Thai). My grandma was born and brought up in a village called Enggor aka Karai, near the banks of the Perak River, and was totally Malaysianized in living style and food. She was what you’d call a Nyonya / Peranakan girl (Malaysianized Chinese), wearing sarong kebaya as her normal attire, with her hair left long and tied up in a bun (‘sanggui’ – after the Malay word ‘sanggul’) secured with a pin. She used to eat with her hands (rather than chopsticks – she only learnt how to use chopsticks after she married) and watched Malay shadow puppet plays (wayang kulit) in her village.

Anyway, to cut the story short, grandpa eventually had a family and built up a business in Ipoh old town selling salted fish and dried seafood, and was at one time, pretty affluent. He was one of the towkays (boss) in town who could own a car (not many could do that in those times). But unfortunately, he didn’t stay rich for very long. He invested in the wrong things you could say, including a second wife and created a rift in the family. The family split up, and eventually grandpa ended up staying alone in a rented room in Ipoh town. In his later years, grandpa moved back in with us, in my dad’s house in Ipoh. Grandma had always stayed with us, but although they were in the same house together, grandpa and grandma never spoke to each other, till the day he died. Tragic. Here’s more of the story in pictures…


The Games Room of the Han Chin Pet Soo (Hanchin Villa), headquarters of a Hakka Tin Miners’ Club, which is now a museum of sorts in Ipoh’s Old Town. Grandpa’s shop was in this part of town


Jayden lifting a bag of tin ore, Han Chin Pet Soo, Ipoh – Ipoh was a town built on tin-mining. Malaya was once the largest producer of tin in the world. During its tin-mining heydays, so many towkays in Ipoh became rich that Ipoh gained the nickname "the City of Millionaires”. Heck, there used to be a huge Mercedes Benz logo on a hill when you approach the city from the south (Kuala Lumpur), and it’s even lighted up at night. I guess this must be because there’re so many Mercedes Benz owners in Ipoh then…


Photos of old tin miners of Hakka descent. So that’s where the Ipoh road names come from Jalan Yau Tet Shin, Foo Yet Kai, Lee Kwee Foh, Lau Pak Khuan, Leong Sin Nam, Chung Thye Phin, etc. How come we never read of them in our Malaysian history books? – Wiki-ing it, I found the history quite interesting. It’s something like America’s Wild West, only that this is the Orient’s Wild South, when Chinese ‘pioneers’ explored the southern seas and opened up new frontiers for their native overlords. In the case of Malaya, it’s for the Malay princes and the British. Heck, the rivalry between the competing teams of tin-miners in the Sultanate of Perak in Malaya became so intense that it culminated in 4 wars in the 1800’s between the two main gangs, the Ghee Hin Society and the Hai San Society, backed by rival Malay princes (the Larut Wars). This eventually led to an intervention by the British and the subsequent British colonization of Perak (same old story all over the world). The old man in the middle of the photo above, the one in mandarin robes, that’s Chung Keng Quee, the leader of the Hai San during the Larut Wars. He looks like someone not to be meddled with, huh? If only someone can make a movie of the Larut Wars…


The main hall of the Han Chin Pet Soo – Pet Soo is the Hakka pronunciation of Villa. While my father’s side of the family are all Hokkien, my mom’s family is Hakka. Too bad I don’t know much about my mom’s side of the family, as she died long ago when I was 15 years old. But I remember we had relatives in Ipoh and Menglembu. Menglembu is predominantly Hakka and so are many villages surrounding Ipoh like Pusing. Ipoh, on the other hand is predominantly Cantonese-speaking


Reliving the past, Han Chin Pet Soo, Ipoh


Our Jiko (meaning dad’s second eldest sister) in Concubine Lane, Old Town, Ipoh – This small lane in the heart of old town is nicknamed Concubine Lane, 二奶巷 (yee-lai-hong in Cantonese) because many towkays in the past had more than one wife, and this lane was where many of the mistresses stayed. Some towkays had like 7 wives – Don’t believe me? Check out Chung Thye Phin. Maybe that’s why my grandpa also tried having more than one wife, but it proved to be his undoing unfortunately… My Jiko in her youth used to be a socialite and hung out with the other socialites of Ipoh in those days, like the mum of Michelle Yeoh (actress and ex Miss Malaysia) who hailed from Ipoh. Interesting huh?


This street art is on a lane just beside Concubine Lane


Here’re the kids at our old house in Canning Garden, Ipoh. This was where I grew up and where my mom, grandpa and grandma lived their last days… It used to be filled with noise and people, because we lived as an extended family. It’s an empty house now, as we’ve all grown up and moved out. Jipek who used to live here even after Granny passed away, is now in an old folk’s home…


The kids and their Jiko-po, Canning Garden house, Ipoh

OK, here’s something totally unrelated. This was a place in old town we stumbled into – a silly upside down house. Some optical illusions won’t harm anyone, right?






Defying gravity, at the Upside Down House, Ipoh

Before I go, GONG XI FA CAI everyone! Here’s to wishing you all a Happy, Prosperous, Peaceful, Safe and Healthy Chinese New Year. Changing the slogan to match the times. And peaceful is the only way it’s gonna be, with all the movement restrictions in place because of COVID-19…