The most memorable and tangible object during our growing years would be the house at 15 Tupai Road located behind the old clock tower. It was the second house from the left of a row of two-storey buildings of bricks and lime which were built during the 1930s. There were no cement or concrete then. The upper level had wooden floors with high walls and tiled roofs.
The house belonged to a Mr. Manecksha, a rich chettiar or money-lender, who owned several houses in town. As one enters the house through the two large wooden doors into the hall, one would come face-to-face with the worship altar where the ancestral tablet, Taoist deities and Mazu statue, were placed. Mazu was the patron goddess of sailors, and mother told me that the Mazu statue belonged to grand-uncle Ying Kau. Beneath the altar was the deity known as 'The God of Earth'.
Behind the wooden panels were two rooms occupied by our grandparents and parents since the mid-40s. Our grandparents stayed in the front room while our parents occupied the back room. After our grandmother passed away in 1955, the partition separating the two rooms was dismantled to make one huge room. A big wooden platform was erected over the area of the back room. And this was our sleeping quarters during our younger days. The other side of the room stood a big iron-frame bed with brass fittings and a cotton-filled mattress where our parents used to sleep.
From the hall, a narrow corridor on the left side of the house leads to the back portion which comprised two small rooms and a kitchen. Uncle Ah Choon and his wife Tan Nai and family stayed in the last room. The other room was occupied by a couple with a young son. Years later, around the 80s, this room was turned into a dining area where we had our meals. On the right side of the rooms was a long open-air corridor that leads to the bathroom and the toilet and connects back to the kitchen.
Along this corridor, mother Lee Mooi would lovingly tend to her little garden consisting of several potted plants such as ixora, spider lilies, roses and dahlias etc. and two or three pots of orchid hanging on the low wall that separates our house from the neighbour's house.
There was a huge earthen jar filled with soil that contained an old Teja tree or Chinese pine tree that was planted by our grandfather Chan. The Teja tree is believed to ward off evil and brings good luck to the bearer. Friends and neighbours would come and request for sprigs of Teja leaves to be used in religious offerings and other customary rituals. No one is allowed to pluck the leaves with their bare fingers, as this is believed to cause the tree to die. Every day, our father Chung Chow would place used Chinese tea leaves from the teapot to the plant as fertilizer. He also insisted that we have a fresh pot of Chinese tea in the hall everyday. In the old days in China, a pot of tea would be placed near the doorway, and any visitor or traveler could partake in it to quench his thirst.
Beside the Teja tree and hiding among some bricks was an old tortoise. Mother Lee Mooi said that if it comes out into the open, it is a sure sign that rain would fall soon.
At the end of the corridor was the bathroom and the toilet. As Taiping is well-known as the wettest town in the country, it is not surprising to have the coolest and freshest water too. Even its taste is sweet, refreshing and invigorating, and one can drink it straight from the tap. It comes directly from the Larut Hills formerly known as Maxwell's Hills.
Beside the bathroom was the toilet. For those of you who are too young to know, the old toilet was equipped with a rubber bucket before it was replaced with the septic tank system in July 1983. In the old days, one should not go to the toilet in the early hours of the morning. A hand might suddenly appear from underneath and pull the bucket away from where one is squatting because the night-soil collectors will be on their rounds. Toilet paper was expensive. So we used pieces of old newspaper instead. We would crumbled them to lessen the harshness and sometimes we would wet them before we use them.
From the hall, a steep flight of wooden stairs leads to the first floor. As young children, we used to play in the stairway, running up and down the wooden steps, and causing dust and dirt to fall onto the bed of an old lady who once lived under the stairway. Many of us, at one time or another, accidentally fell down the stairs while playing on the steps. Luckily they were minor incidents and mother Lee Mooi used to tell us that we grew up taller and tougher after that.
The first floor of the house consisted of five rooms with an open kitchen at the back. Wooden panels separated the rooms. All the rooms were rented out to tenants with one family occupying one room. Father Chung Chow recalled that sometimes there were as many as 40 or more people living together under the same roof befitting the Chinese saying "the house with 72 tenants".
There were two big rooms with windows overlooking Tupai Road, and another room in the middle of the house that faced the stairs with a window over-looking the back open corridor.
I recalled that one of front big rooms was, at one time, occupied by a family of four who made kueh-teow and chee cheong fun in a noddles factory next to the Coronation Park. I used to play with their son who was about my age. On many occasions we would climb the factory roof and sit on the tiles and watch the open-air cinema situated beside the factory and separated by a high brick wall. One night, they quietly packed their bags and ran away from their creditors. Even our parents lost a few months of rental payment. They left behind an old bed, a broken-down cupboard, and some empty boxes.
I also recalled that the middle room was, at one time, occupied by an old Hokkien couple. Inside their room was a big iron-framed bed and next to it was an altar where a statue of a deity was placed. Big yellow curtains hung behind the statue as a backdrop. Sometimes, worshipers would come and pray to this deity. An interesting thing about this couple was that the fragile old man smoked opium which was illegal after the war. Every time he lights up his stuff, a sweet-smelling aroma would fill the whole house and onto the streets below. He was caught by the police on several occasions, but they let him off because of his age.
In front of the stairway was a narrow corridor that leads to two small rooms at the back of the house, one of which was occupied by a construction supervisor known as Uncle Hung, his wife and two daughters.
Mother Lee Mooi and sister Lut
One daughter was a seamstress who later became consort to a towkay of a big Chinese medical company in Penang. The other daughter married a tailor who had a shop along Eastern Road. They moved to the bigger front room when it became vacant and lived there for many years and became very closed friends with our parents.
The other small room was occupied by my godparents, Mr. Goh Cheng Siew and Madam Lim Wai Ying. My godmother passed away in 1977 when I was studying in the US. My godfather operated a coffee shop opposite the old bus station and he passed on in late 80's, mother Lee Mooi and I attended his funeral in his home-town Selama, Kedah. Among the siblings, only two of us have godparents - myself and brother Chew Hong.
The kitchen on the first floor resembled a big balcony with a solid railing overlooking the back lane below. One half of the kitchen was covered with galvanized iron roofing to provide shelter from the sun and rain. Beneath this makeshift roof were charcoal stoves where the tenants would cook their food. Long bamboo poles hung over the railing of the balcony. The poles were used to hang wet clothes put out to dry in the sun.
The most interesting place in the whole house would be the kitchen on the ground floor. It had only three walls with an open space facing the back door that leads out into a back lane. The deity known as The Kitchen God sat on an altar at one corner, and below it was a raised cement platform where we do our cooking. The walls and ceiling were covered with a thick layer of black soot accumulated through the years from the burning of firewood. Our mother used to buy big logs of Bakau wood from a woodcutter. He would then split the logs into smaller pieces with a long-handle axe that had a thick head. The wood was laid out to dry before it could be used. In the late 50s, firewood was replaced with charcoal.
Brother Chew Hong's godparents lived next door and they operated a coffee stall located on a piece of vacant land beside our house. Chew Hong's godfather had two wives, and the younger wife sold chicken noodle soup in the coffee stall. The coffee stall was later demolished in the early 60s, and a few years later, a block of three-storied building was built in its place. Chew Hong's godmother continued to sell her noodle soup in a small stall parked by the roadside outside her house. Her chicken noodle soup was our main breakfast before we go to school each day. Later on, she and her step-daughter moved to Kuala Lumpur and her stall was taken over by a woman popularly known as sister Ngoh. Her husband, Ah Bee, operated a push-cart coffee stall which was stationed beside her noodle stall. We continued to have our chicken noodle soup almost everyday until about the mid-70 when all the roadside food stalls in Taiping were relocated to the Hawkers Centre at the old circus ground.
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