A Hill and the Blue Sky

By Kwok Hon Kai

It is about a boy who went through an extraordinary childhood surviving the Japanese occupation of Penang.
He encountered a strange event during that time. He heard the bleating of a kid goat that died three days before. It could be called a vision or a calling but thus the event influenced the rest of his life. Though not born of Christian parents, he embraced Christianity when he came of age. He was unexpectedly called to holy office and ordained as a priest of the Anglican Church. He was also unexpectedly sent to China by the Asia-Pacific Telecommunity in 1986 to lecture in Rural Telephone Development. It was at a time when all Malaysian Chinese around his age were barred from visiting China. The story ends with his unexpected meeting of the Queen of England at the Cathedral of St Mary the Virgin, Kuala Lumpur in October 1989.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Aug 29, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483689760

Kwok Hon Kai

Born in 1932. Lived through Japanese Occupation. Studied in a Missionary School. But during the chaotic time of the British Military administration, attended Chinese school for six months. Finished secondary school. Obtained Telecommunications Engineering Diploma in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Worked in the Telecoms Department. Did a Telex course with Siemens in West Germany in 1971. Well into retirement, obtained a Computer Science Hon. Degree from the Greenwich University London in 2004.

Book preview

A HILL AND THE

BLUE SKY

Kwok Hon Kai

Copyright © 2013 by Kwok Hon Kai.

Library of Congress Control Number:        2013915321

ISBN:        Hardcover        978-1-4836-8975-3

Softcover        978-1-4836-8974-6

Ebook        978-1-4836-8976-0

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 08/26/2013

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris LLC

1-800-455-039

www.Xlibris.com.au

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504458

CONTENTS

Chapter One:

War Events in Penang

Chapter Two:

The Flying Cross

Chapter Three:

What Happened to College Boy

Chapter Four:

Happy Time in Germany

Chapter Five:

The Leprosarium

Chapter Six:

His First Clergy Conference

Chapter Seven:

His Second Clergy Conference

Chapter Eight:

The Long Bus Ride

Chapter Nine:

Teaching in China before the Tiananmen Demonstration

Chapter Ten

Learning from the Youngsters

Chapter Eleven:

Praying With the Queen

CHAPTER ONE

War Events in Penang

In the first month of the year nineteen thirty-nine, a 7-year-old boy named Hanphy enrolled in the Anglo-Chinese Primary School, Penang. The school was a Methodist missionary school. However, in spite of its name no Chinese was taught.

Hanphy had an exceptionally low forehead that appeared to some keen-eyed boy to resemble that of a chimpanzee. This peculiarity later earned him the nickname of ‘Missing Link’ when he took up Telecommunications Study at the Technical College, Gurney Road, Kuala Lumpur, the forerunner of University of Technology Malaysia.

The ‘Missing Link’ theory refers to an anthropoid between the chimpanzee and the early man that has not been found. He was explosive in nature and when angered, tended to fight with boys even bigger than himself. This occurred in his third and last year in this missionary school before war came to Penang and South-East Asia. The fighting incident is described later in his third year in school.

At home he had troubles with his two brothers, one sister, and four cousins. He was nicknamed ‘The Big King-Eye’. Big King-Eye is a Chinese folklore character who claims a greater portion of anything that is to be shared or divided.

His table manners annoyed his uncle. He peeled his bananas not from the top downward but from the centre. A quarrel with a neighbour’s child of his age ended up with punishment by his mother with caning while he noticed that his antagonist was carried away in his mother’s arms.

He liked to fly kites and keep fighting fish for fighting. His mother disapproved all these things. He found his mother disapproved the things that he liked to do while other mothers would have appreciated them. And so he kept his small kite and fighting fish under the bed while unnoticed.

He managed to save enough money to buy one fighting fish that he fancied would be a champion because of the bright blue body and the red in the tail it displayed when in the fighting mood. He pitched his fish against another boy’s. The other fish was bigger but showed a dull colour while fighting. His fish lost. This was his greatest disappointment in life. His fish cost him eight cents while his friend bought his from another vendor for one cent. Hanphy knew he had very poor judgement on values.

He seldom saw his father. He left for school before his father got up and retired to bed before his father returned home. He did not complain to his father even if he had something to complain as he had no chance. The same could be said of any consultation or request.

His father ran a Chinese medicine shop at Campbell Street in the city. Campbell Street can be accessed from Penang Road. Campbell Street and Penang Road form a T-junction with Campbell Street being off Penang Road. Chinese medicine shops served to dispense herbal concoction for patients. A Chinese physician, on examination of a patient, would prescribe on paper with brush and Chinese ink; pen-using was not preferable at that time though pens were available.

The items of the prescription were always given in weight, never in volume. The shop assistants would weigh out the dried herbal ingredients and place them on a piece of square-cut paper. The herbs were wrapped, and the folds of the package were secured with a reed straw or alternatively with a rubber band. The patients would be instructed to boil the herbs in a clay pot, never in a metal pot.

The negative aspect of using metal pot is the chemistry of, for instance, iron and some complex compound in the herbal extract. The patient consuming the brew would not benefit from the prescription but might have an unfavourable effect. The patient would further be given sweetened dried plum or raisin to sweeten his or her palate after drinking the bitter brew.

The final instruction to the patient would be the process of making an excellent brew. Add three rice bowls full of water to the pot of given herbs and boil to extract the essence from the herbs. He would boil the concoction until and not more or less than 80 per cent rice-bowl full could be poured out of the pot. He would drink the contents warm and not leave it to get cold.

In the first two years, school life was rather happy with a few skirmishes with his classmates, one which resulted in his being taken before the Headmistress. He was being a busybody as the matter did not directly concern him. It was during recess time, and he was walking around the compound where he chanced upon a boy getting rough with what seemed to Hanphy the weaker one. He took side and intervened. It resulted in a fight, and he hurt the bully a little on the cheek.

His major trouble, however, came in the third year. He went to school by school bus. One morning while in the bus, there was an exchange of stamps by Hanphy and a newcomer, a first-year boy. A third-year boy who was of bigger build than Hanphy came and interfered with their stamp-exchange negotiation. He wanted a stamp, a stamp that Hanphy fancied to be beautiful and rare. Hanphy did not give in, and, being explosive, he did not bother to negotiate. A fight ensued, and he took on the bigger boy.

In the fight he tore the shirt of the bigger boy and was summoned before the Headmistress, Miss M. Brown. He was given a letter to be taken home. An unforgettable event took place in the difficult life of Hanphy. The report in Miss Brown’s letter resulted in Hanphy being caned at home and having to reimburse the boy whose shirt Hanphy had torn with eighty cents British Settlement Currency. He went back to school in shame with caning marks all over his legs.

Hanphy was not happy with the way he was treated at home, and the thought of running away from home came to him more than once. He pondered about pouring out his troubles to one whom he called ‘elder sister-in-law’ who was not related to Hanphy’s family. Her husband, Mr Chan, was a seaman of British nationality, and they had a daughter, Evelyn, who was three years younger than Hanphy. Mr Chan joined the merchant fleet at the age of sixteen after leaving school. He was allowed to be part of the crew because of his nationality as he was born in Penang.

Mrs Chan was very fond of Hanphy, and she welcomed him to stay with her family. Hanphy spent many a weekend with them, especially those weekends when Mr Chan’s ship came to port, and Mr Chan’s ship, TSS Matang that plied between Penang to Renong via Bhuket, Takuapa, and Victoria Point with excellent passenger accommodation, came to port regularly; every Friday’s evening.

At this point in time, Mr and Mrs Chan lived in the city, and Hanphy lived three miles away at the foot of a hill. How did they have such good relationship when they were so far apart? This was the situation. Hanphy was born right in the heart of the city of George Town. His address was 10 Penang Road, the busiest road at night in Penang. Mr and Mrs Chan lived next door to them, and one door after that was a shop run by a Japanese couple where a variety of only Japanese products were sold, from medicine to sandals.

So Mr and Mrs Chan were their immediate neighbors, and Mrs Chan was so fond of Hanphy that she spent many hours cradling, changing diapers, and feeding him. She was particularly fond of spoon-feeding Hanphy when he was being weaned because the weaning baby gave a grateful smile without fail every time he received a spoonful of food.

The happy time of being neighbours did not last long for before his sixth birthday, Hanphy’s family together with Grandfather, Grandmother, and an uncle’s family moved to the foot of a range of hills three miles away. Mr and Mrs Chan were now their former neighbours, no more their immediate neighbours, but because their friendship was so great, they saw each other often and especially Hanphy who spent not only weekends but also holidays with them.

Hanphy’s thought of running away from home was not altogether an empty dream but something that could turn into reality. Anyway, after pondering and weighing the consequences, he chose to stay without letting anybody know that he ever had this thought, not even Mrs Chan.

After the school bus incident, he disliked using that facility and made excuses how convenient it would be to use public transport. He teamed up with an older schoolmate named Jin. They would walk a long distance in the early afternoon sun to miss a section of the bus route to save one cent. Together with two cents, they would spend one cent in renting a Chinese comic book and, with the other, buy a syrup-filled ice ball that they asked the ice-ball hawker to split into two halves so that they could each have one half to quench their thirst. This was done without their parents knowing about it.

He was an above-average student in his class as well as the whole standard of over a hundred boys. After his final term examination of his third year in this missionary school and while holidaying at home, on the morning of 10 December 1941, ‘boom-boom’ sounds were heard from the direction of the city, the city of George Town, Penang. The sounds were the sounds of explosions from the bombs dropped by Japanese Zeros bombers; war had come, and Hanphy’s life took an uphill turn. He lost touch with the missionary school for more than four years, longer than the average boy, for the average boy returned to school in less than four years when the British returned to resume administrations.

The home of Hanphy was on a slope of a hill, half a mile away from the main road. It was on the left side of the Ayer Itam River as it flowed downhill. On the right-hand side of the same river was the largest Buddhist temple in Malaysia and probably also the largest in South-East Asia. The township, which bore the same name as the river, was made famous by the temple. Tourists and devotees visited this temple on Sundays. On festival days it was crowded with people. On normal days the town and temple were quiet.

The air raid began in the morning, and by noon Ayer Itam was full of people. Nearly a hundred refugees converged at Hanphy’s, a tenfold increase in the number of occupants. As he had no worry at all at that time, the great crowd excited him, and for a time it was really fun to see the adults organizing themselves. It can be said that every home in that district was undergoing the same transformation.

For those who did not go to stay with friends or relatives, there was the Refugee Center. The Red Cross Society provided medical aid to the sick and wounded. At its height the population must have increased a hundredfold as the whole city and its surrounded areas were deserted, and the refugees poured into Ayer Itam. This was the aftermath of the bombings.

The marketplace was the hub of activities with vendors displaying their rich merchandise the price of which they did not know. They were selling goods looted from the shops and storehouses in the deserted city. A woman who knew the price of an expensive perfume bought a fourteen-ounce bottle for one dollar, the usual price of which should have been about ten dollars, without much bargaining. Many goods were traded in this way for a period of one to two months.

After a few months, imported items became scarce because the shops had been emptied of their goods and there was nothing to offer. The economy came to a standstill. The inhabitants took to tilling the soil to supplement their merge ration of two gantangs (Malay measure of about nine pounds) of rice a month. Others indulged in black-marketeering. A great tightening of belts had come to the people of Penang.

Without formal education, Hanphy had too much time on his hands, and he became a restless boy. He was always looking for something to do, and, without proper guidance, he got himself into mischief. He mixed with the local boys. Had he continued with his schooling in the missionary school to learn English and prepare himself for the Cambridge School Certificate, he would not have mixed with the locals; the local children went to a private Chinese school while the missionary school Hanphy attended was three miles away. Hanphy learned many things from the boys who also lost formal schooling.

Hanphy’s father, who sensed that his son was whiling away his time aimlessly and getting into mischief, proposed to keep some goats so as to keep him busy. At dinner Mr Gerk said, ‘Goats are very economical to rear. They eat grass and leaves. I would like to purchase a few for the family to look after.’ ‘Yes’, Hanphy cried out enthusiastically. ‘I like goats.’ ‘When the goats give birth to young ones, we can have goat’s milk’, continued his father.

‘Goat’s milk is very nourishing. In this wartime, we lack nutritious food.’ ‘Who will be looking after them?’ asked Hanphy mischievously. ‘Everybody in the family takes turns to do it’, retorted his father slightly annoyed, knowing full well who would in the end have to do it. Hanphy kept silent.

A week later, the first nanny goat arrived. Hanphy just loved it, with its beautiful bright white and brown coat. For the first time, he had a very good look at a cud-chewing animal. The family was very excited for a few days.

It was a wonder to Hanphy to see how an animal brought out what it had swallowed earlier and chewed the cud at its leisure. In the afternoon, he led the goat out to graze in the patches of green found between houses and fenced gardens. He gave it a name and called it by its name, but it never learned to respond.

After some months, a kid was born, and it was the loveliest thing to behold. Everyone wanted to know how it suckled its first liquid meal. Legend had that a newborn kid gives thanks for its life and kneels in gratefulness for its milk when it suckles. Of course it is not true as the newly born kid is too weak to stand up, and it goes through the process of dropping on its knees and trying to stand up again; it does not always suckle on bent legs, and at times it stretches its four legs to balance itself.

The kid grew stronger day by day, and it was soon allowed to follow its mother to graze. In the field it gamboled and ran, and Hanphy was never tired of watching its antics. One afternoon a light rain fell while they were in the field. Hanphy took off his shirt and wrapped it round the kid and hugged it close to his chest. The kid snuggled in the wrapping without any struggle. Passers-by made fun of him, but he ignored them. He would have taken it home had the rain continued.

He had ventured farther to look for greener pasture during the dry season. Sometimes he led the goat, together with the kid, into the field and sometimes into the nearby coconut plantation. In his daily outings, he was not always alone for there was, in the neighborhood, a family that owned two cows.

The cows were looked after by a boy called Din. Hanphy was younger than the cowherd Din, and he looked up to Din as an elder brother. Din was kind and helpful, so they became good friends.

Din often went to swim in the nearby rocky hillside river. The section of the river he frequented had been dammed to raise the water level to work a watermill. The dam had been abandoned. There used to be a family that lived by the river and operated the now-abandoned watermill.

Two years before, there had been a downpour for two days and two nights. Much damage was inflicted on the waterway between the dam and the watermill, so the miller’s family left, leaving the waterwheel intact.

That memorable downpour two years earlier nearly took Hanphy’s life. It happened in this wise: George Town was flooded after the incessant rain, and news of the flood did not reach his home because he lived some distance from the township of Ayer Itam, which means ‘black water’.

He went to school as usual. He had to walk down a slippery path to the main road and wait for the school bus. The school bus did not turn up, so he decided to go to school by the municipal transport. Of course, the municipal electrical trolley bus did not take him to the school entrance as the school bus did. He had to walk the three-quarter mile from the bus stop to the school.

This was a hazardous undertaking even for a grown-up and what more for a boy alone, carrying a bag of school books. As long as he was away from the edge of the road, he was safe, but unfortunately sometimes four-wheeled vehicles passed by. To avoid the splash created by each passing car, he edged closer and closer to the side drain, which was not only full but also completely hidden by murky water.

Hanphy’s mind was troubled by the fact that he was late for school. It never occurred to his inexperienced young mind that there was a death trap by the side. The moment he stepped into the drain, for the first time in his life, he knew fear and the sensation of being dragged down a bottomless pit. He was carried by the current which soon joined up with a monsoon drain where rescue would be difficult.

Fortunately, his head did not go under the water, not because he knew how to swim but because he held fast to his school bag that was fortunately not fully packed with books and therefore had air trapped inside it. This contributed to its buoyancy and thus kept him afloat.

With his head above the water, he quickly surveyed his surroundings, and as he was slowly drifting towards a shop, he caught sight of a man sitting on a high stool in front of the shop and, with imploring eyes, sought help from him without uttering a sound, as he could not, in that shocked state. The kind man stretched out one hand and pulled the floating boy out of the drain. Hanphy was saved from drowning in the gutter.

Having escaped the jaws of death, Hanphy found himself wet, cold, and much shaken up. He went on his way half dazed without thanking his rescuer. This is an account of the power of the river. This river, at the time of writing, fifty years later, has been dammed up by the government to make into a reservoir to supply water to the inhabitants of Penang.

One fine day, sitting side by side under a luxuriant coconut palm, cowherd Din said lazily to goatherd Hanphy, ‘At what time do you have your midday meal?’ ‘Around twelve o’clock.’ ‘Come to meet me at about half past twelve.’ ‘What for?’ Hanphy asked. ‘We shall go swimming at Batu Lubang,’ replied Din.

Batu Lubang was the name of the dammed up section of Ayer Itam River, meaning Black Water River, and Batu Lubang, which means ‘holed rock’. It was located just above the base of the mountain range, which forms a great part of Penang Island; it was below the Ayer Itam Dam that was built to store water twenty years later. The river had cool, clear, running water despite its name, unless after a rain; depending on how heavy the rain was, the river could be from gray to yellow.

Batu Lubang was no ordinary swimming pool. It was sculptured by nature and assisted by man. The pool area was disorderly stacked with boulders of various sizes. There were submerged tunnels when the pool was deepened by the unpredictable current after a heavy rain.

At times the tunnels were so choked with sparkling sand by the same agent such that no local boys cared to go for a swim, not that it was unsafe but because the pool was only ankle deep. This man-made swimming pool had its opening and closing seasons entirely dictated by nature. The best thing about this pool was, it was admission free, and it imposed no time limit and attire regulation on any swimmer, young or old. When nature declared it open, boys from far and wide flocked to it as the giant tiger moths would to a light.

The suggestion of going swimming was both good news and bad news to Hanphy. The good news was, like most boys, Hanphy loved swimming, and his love for swimming was more intense than for most boys. The bad news, unlike most boys, Hanphy shunned swimming, not because of his fear for the submerged rocks and tunnels but because of his mother’s fear for his safety. His mother could fly into a rage and deliver to Hanphy anything from twenty to thirty strokes of the cane. Anyway, Hanphy had, had that experience before.

Hanphy, at first, hesitated to consent, but his love for swimming was so great that he took the risk and finally said, ‘OK, I’ll meet you at your place. But don’t mention it to anyone in my family.’

‘I promise not to tell anybody’, said Din. ‘Why do your parents object to your going swimming?’

‘Yes, very much. Because my mother forbids me to go to the river without adult supervision.’

‘It is different for me. My father used to take me and my brother to the river.’

‘You are very lucky.’

The next day, the two were at the pool. There were others too, with the same intention. The bigger boys and those who went there with their parents’ consent had a spare of shorts to serve as swimming trunks. Others, like Hanphy, who went without their guardians’ or parents’ knowledge, swam nude.

Since there was no one there to teach proper swimming techniques, each developed his own unique style. Besides frog stroke, there were dog stroke and tortoise stroke and many others. Everyone swam freestyle, the style that was free for him to choose.

As a newcomer, Hanphy just observed the one he thought was the best swimmer and copied his style hoping that one day he would become just as great a swimmer. So Hanphy had his first swimming lesson.

After that, Hanphy went often to the pool for as long as the pool stayed in that condition, that is, deep enough to swim under water from tunnel to tunnel and deep enough for plunging from the rocks above water level. He soon graduated from the paddling stage to swim underwater, in and out of the tunnels.

He also learned to plunge into the water, using the crops of rocks as plunging platforms. There was one particularly high one, from which only the experts could execute that art because the executor must know how to avoid the submerged rocks as he sliced through the water. To demonstrate this delicate performance was the earnest desire of daring Hanphy. He knew it was dangerous as there was not much room to manoeuvre, and life could hang on a hairline. For this he consulted one old acquaintance, Jin.

‘It is a lovely sight to see you plunge from the big rock’, Hanphy said to Jin. ‘How you do that?’

‘It has taken me a long time to master it. I must aim accurately when I take the plunge to avoid submerged rocks to the left and to the right’, said Jin.

‘I would like to try’, Hanphy said to Jin. ‘You guide me!’

‘All right, I’ll stand on the sand bank directly in line with your plunge. You follow my directions.’

Hanphy climbed up the high rock. His heart beat fast, and he felt a chill creep up his spine as he looked at the waterline twelve feet below. but he could not back out now. He looked at Jin, ready to take directions from him.

‘You move from the rock there’, Jin said while pointing with his left hand to a submerged rock slightly to the right of Hanphy.

Hanphy took aim and began to plunge. As he did so, he could see the horror in Jin’s eyes. He had moved too much to the left while trying to avoid the hidden rock to the right. As he sliced through the water, he felt his hair brushing against something hard: it was the side of a bladelike submerged rock.