Growing up Chinese

By Stephen Ling

GROWING UP CHINESE is a lively book with a funny, thoroughly enlightened author doing his best to tell his story and the story of one Chinese village in Malaya with tremendous insight, detail and compassion. The diverse culture in the land has emerged through multiple voices that the author struggled with in this coming-of-age memoir. He orchestrates all these voices to depict the complex life of growing up in a truly multicultural world. Most remarkably, this is the story of the American dream an ocean away from America. A young man born into poverty seeks a better life for himself by working hard and developing his innate talents to their fullest. He seeks to create and define his own life. Shades of Horatio Alger and Oliver Twist, this is an indelibly unforgettable story of one young mans quest for freedom, an education and a new life, a struggle by one undaunted by lifes hurdles and vicissitudes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 2, 2018
• ISBN: 9781532036880

Stephen Ling

The author pursued journalism and economics at the University of Texas. He lives in a country house outside Seattle because he loves the peace and quiet outside urban American. “I grew up in a farm.” After spending 7 years in China as a visiting professor, he continues his mission to share his front-seat, first-hand experiences in China with the publication of THIS IS CHINA. BONSAI KIDS (9th book) is his third book about China. PRETENDER is his 2nd fiction.

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Copyright © 2017 Stephen Ling.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-3687-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-3688-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017919002

iUniverse rev. date: 01/03/2018

DEDICATION

This is for

Samuel Cai

Jared Lim

Today’s Youth

Tomorrow’s Future

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Preface

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Epilogue

About The Author

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I HAVE SHARED THE STORIES of my life with a ‘captive’ audience in a college campus, and many dinner guests at my home in Puyallup, Washington State.

I would like to thank my sister Suk Liang in UK, niece Hey Moy in Australia and nephew Kee Ong in USA for constantly reminding me about keeping family secrets—the Chinese way—from total strangers.

I would like to thank Samuel Cai in Malaysia for reading some parts of the original manuscript with appreciation and suggestions for improvement.

I would like to thank Mitchell Hendrickson who read the whole manuscript using his critical eye, mind and pen to make the book more palatable to any reader.

And I would like to thank Jacky Alba and the dedicated team at IUniverse for putting the book together, with integrity and professionalism.

PREFACE

THE BOOK ACTUALLY STARTED AS stories of my upbringing in a poverty-stricken village in Malaya (now Malaysia) that I would share with friends and guests at my American home in Washington State.

In the words of a dear friend, "Growing Up Chinese is a story of the American dream an ocean away from America. A young man born into poverty seeks a better life for himself by working hard and developing his innate talents to the fullest. The ideals of freedom and opportunity that are often identified with America are not just American."

And as a visiting professor in China in an elite university (2008-2015), I found it difficult to tell my stories to my Chinese college students—brought up to follow implicitly the desires of their parents, like following the divine mandate from heaven—that at times, especially during critical turning points in one’s life, one has to listen to the voice deep inside oneself. Because in my case, I refused to give in to my mother, who insisted and persisted in trying to transform me into a farmer. Why not be a farmer like everyone else in the whole village, she pleaded, like a mantra. I had to fight against her every inch of the way. I was not a good filial son, more a maverick, according to strict Chinese culture. I suspected at an early age, my future, with God-given talent and potential, would not be in a farm. I was marching, deliberately, to a different tune, one beyond mother’s reach.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life….And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, said Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, in his commencement speech at Stanford University, 2005.

CHAPTER ONE

I GREW UP IN A kampong—a word meaning a small Malay village or cluster of native huts—hidden somewhere on the west coast of the Malay Peninsula, not far from the ocean. To reach the coastline, we had to pass through a Malay kampong, Pasir Panjang, inhabited almost entirely by Malays, speaking the Malay language—now the National Language of Malaysia. Malays called our village Kampong China because everyone in my village originally hailed from mainland China. I grew up in this Chinese village with everyone speaking the Hokchia dialect, going to the same schools, worshipping in the same church, and following the traditions our ancestors had carried from China. There were fewer than a thousand people in about two hundred or so households, marked by a nameless main road with innumerable side-roads, like the veins of a broad leaf. Narrow, bumpy, dirt roads and well-trodden paths, without markers, linked the houses to each other and the main road, lined with village shops, church, school, and cemetery, all the way to Kampong Koh, a town with flourishing businesses operated by people who spoke the Hokchiew dialect, a cousin of my dialect, Hokchia. We were neighbors in mainland China.

For transportation we had bicycles. Either you operated one or another person would carry you—on the front horizontal bar if you were little and small, and on the back if you were a teenager or someone’s grandmother—to wherever you wanted to go.

Kampong China was peppered with well-built wooden houses, big and small, with one or two stories, the smallest a one-bedroom house. Our house was one of a handful that had clay tile roofs. In ancient China, houses of middle class people had thatched roofs, while clay tile roofs belonged to houses of upper class families. We had concrete floors. Because most houses had dirt floors, it was not uncommon for many villagers, by nightfall, to walk with light wooden clogs—some were decorative and painted with bright colors, the plain ones were less expensive, with front straps at times made from plastic or used bicycle tires—after thoroughly washing their feet before crawling into beds or going upstairs if they lived in a two-story building.

Two-story buildings belonged only to families who were the first settlers or early pioneers in the village and had, so to speak, made it in a new country. My grandfather had built the house which he left to my father and eighth uncle.

As I entered the parlor upstairs, I never failed to see directly in front of me, hanging on the wall—the bed I shared with my younger cousin brother behind it—the black-and-white portraits, which looked hand-painted, of my grandfather and grandmother flanking a gigantic mirror in the center (a common setup in many homes with the pictures of parents or grandparents in the center of the parlor). There were times I felt they were spying on the family’s every move from up high. They meant nothing to me, emotionally.

But they meant a great deal to the family and many people in this particular kampong, historically.

Below the pictures and the mirror, stood an ornate cabinet with delicate carvings depicting an ancient Chinese motif. Hidden inside it were the family RCA gramophone and a stack of big heavy old records, many still in their jackets. Against one wall of the parlor stood the untouchable, the family’s Singer sewing machine. The treadle sewing machine was considered a priceless possession, demanding, in our family, as much reverence as the unseen spirits of our ancestors. Up the wall were frames and frames of family pictures. The other untouchable, sitting halfway up the opposite wall was the Philips radio, hooked to a battery the size of which looked to me like a car battery.

This house, like many other houses in the tropical village, had no ceilings and the walls without insulation, making privacy almost impossible. Every conceivable human sound—ones that are associated with pleasure, pain or lust, squeaky beds and furniture—filled my innocent mind with wild imaginings, magnified a million times when kerosene lamps were turned off and silence ruled the nights.

Most of our daily chores were done in the roofed catwalk between the house and the kitchen. This was, to me, an ingenious configuration to prevent a kitchen fire from demolishing the living quarters or family valuables. There, under the roofed walkway and in the kitchen and in the open veranda upstairs, the family entertained our friends and relatives.

Grandfather had built this house, almost a replica of the architecture of houses in his neighborhood in Fuqing, a town not far from the port city of Fuzhou, in south-eastern Fujian Province, China. People in Fuqing speak Hokchia, those in Fuzhou speak Hokchiew.

I heard different stories about grandfather when I was growing up. An intriguing picture of a man, one of the first colonists, who was instrumental in the establishment of the Hokchia community, lovingly referred to as Hokchia Yong—officially known as Kampong China on the map. Who could escape the portraits of him and grandmother hanging in our parlor, his dark piercing eyes looking down to watch over us. He might be dead and buried in mainland China, but his presence was real. Children growing up in a traditional Chinese home were told the dead are not really dead, but very much alive, and their spirits could help or hurt you if you failed to take care of them, when alive or dead. Hence the abundant offerings of fresh delicious foods and golden paper money burnt to the long departed spirits in private family shrines to the ancestors (especially true in non-Christian homes) or at the many cemeteries on Qingming or Tomb-Sweeping Day—also known as Chinese Memorial Day or Ancestors’ Day in our Chinese lunar calendar. Most Chinese in the world continue to do this because they believe the deceased are very much alive.

I would not want to have been grandfather’s contemporary, because China in 1903—the year he came to Malaya—was a living hell, especially if you were a nobody, a young, able-bodied struggling peasant like him. At the beginning of the twentieth century, China, urban and rural, was not an alluring place to live, especially if you were one of the down-trodden peasants, like grandfather, trapped in poverty like a starving dog in a cage. A rapidly growing population, without availability of arable land or a strong economy to support it, added more woes and torment to the masses, and to the already weakened and corrupt imperial court—the last dynasty to rule China. Internal uprisings ravaged the countryside, which was already saddled with heavy taxation because the Qing government needed to pay huge indemnities to foreign governments for the devastation caused by recent Opium Wars and the Boxer Rebellion—China was defeated in both wars trying to protect her land and rights against the mighty foreigners who wanted a place inside China. Imagine home invasion on a national scale by a foreign power! Grandfather and other peasants who relied on subsistence farming also suffered natural calamities, typhoons, floods, famines, and crop failures because of blights. Those young men who had strong will and stamina, as well as some money and connections, were able to escape to distant lands for a second chance in life. One could opt for contract labor or become an indentured servant. Grandfather stayed because he had started a family and had neither connections or money, only healthy dreams. And a childlike faith in his God.

Grandfather got very lucky, when out of the blue came a Moses one day, sent by a government, many miles to the south, Malaya, who came preaching and spreading the good news of a Promised Land for the poorest of the poor, the creation of an agricultural colony. The Malayan government decided they needed foreigners to grow rice to feed their growing population, hoping that would curtail the expensive importation of rice from other countries in Southeast Asia. Surprisingly, this Moses was no stranger to them, but someone who had learned to speak their dialect when he first came to them as a Methodist missionary years before. He spoke their language. They trusted him. They would follow him, like children following the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

Malaya, under the British colonial government, had experimented with rice growing, employing indigenous Malays first, then Indians and a few other foreigners. Japanese rice-growers were considered but not invited. The experiments had all ended in abysmal failure. Not for lack of desire or land or financial incentives. The Chinese already in Malaya, those speaking non-Fuzhou dialects, many arriving since the 1870s were drawn to urban areas, to lucrative tin mining locations and ever-expanding profitable businesses in cities. Many, including the government, soon learned the supply of tin was not inexhaustible. The population was increasing rapidly. The British colonial government looked desperately for a way out of the economic dilemma. Diversification was one solution, with abundant arable land waiting for the right kind of people to perform an agricultural miracle. They had experiences in China and knew the Chinese had sterling qualities, indomitable spirit, and diligence. Not just any Chinese this time, but the poorest of the poor, with no known relatives residing in urban Malaya, who might be persuaded to give up the poverty of their present existence for the Promised Land. And their passage guaranteed free. They knew exactly where to go for help to recruit the potential colonists. Foreign missionaries working to save souls somewhere in Fujian Province, China. And why not! The Germans and the French, through their missionaries, were aggressively recruiting the poor masses to work in their colonies in Africa and other places around the world. The British would not be the first to try this trick. For they were not just there to baby-sit Malaya—since 1874 when they signed the Pangkor Treaty to protect the Malay states—but to exploit this region for its abundant natural resources. And they knew where to send their Moses to entice and lead the poorest of the poor in Fujian Province out of their bondage to poverty to a Promised Land awaiting them in Malaya.

Grandpa heard the good news of salvation and was ready to follow Moses to the Promised Land.

CHAPTER TWO

ABOUT A THOUSAND POOR SOULS speaking various dialects from the region around Fuzhou, heard the clarion call but, because of the unpredictability of the shipping schedules and the impossibility of gathering everybody together in one spot and feeding them while awaiting the arrival of a ship, fewer than five hundred, after a few false starts and delays, were able to leave with the Methodist missionary and his Chinese cohort—a local Hokchia preacher who had escorted and worked with another Fuzhou contingent two years earlier—to the Promised Land, Malaya.

It was not smooth sailing for the four hundred and eighty four colonists out in the turbulent seas. Five never did reach St. John’s Island, Singapore, where the rest were quarantined. During the seventeen days or so of detention on the island, men were forced to work like coolies without pay. Only three hundred and sixty three men, women and children arrived in Sitiawan, the Promised Land, by sea. Twelve died under quarantine and over a hundred disappeared—probably hoaxed or ensnared by the hustle and bustle of Singapore while waiting for a boat to take them on the last leg of the long journey.

From a small jetty through a jungle path to the mission concession, the Promised Land, the colonists were surprised to hear the promised two thousand five hundred acres for the mission concession had not been surveyed and the lots for them were not ready for settlement. Instead they were divided into groups of over fifty people in seven longhouses for the next six months, testing their faith, resolve, belief and patience—and whether they did the right thing to follow their Moses and his Hockchia cohort to the Promised Land.

I wonder how many of the colonists—some Christians, like grandfather and some who promised to become Christians—knew that the biblical Moses and his gang from Egypt did not have it easy. But eventually through trials and temptations, according to the Bible, they reached the Promised Land and built a mighty nation because of their faith in their God.

Grandfather and his fellow colonists were now going through their own trials, tribulations, and temptations. The colonial government had chosen this remote piece of land close to the ocean to keep the new arrivals geographically distant from their countrymen—speaking different dialects—who had abandoned their agricultural roots and pursued non-agricultural occupations in tin mines and businesses in urban areas when they first came to this country. The colonial government invited the new colonists for a specific task: grow rice to feed a growing population. And physical contact with the outside world—other prosperous Chinese—would undermine the current agricultural endeavor and be detrimental to the colony’s future. Segregation from other Chinese was the government’s stringent policy. A remote location, in their determination, would achieve their purpose.

Unfortunately growing rice wasn’t the first priority for grandfather and the men with him. Each day, different groups of men had to clear the jungle to build houses for different families. And formal education for their children was also foremost in their minds in a new land. The Fuzhou School—using the Fuzhou dialect was started January of the following year. Within a short time, the three clans of the Fuzhou immigrants were able to move to their settlements: The Kutian settlement, the Hokchiew settlement and the Hokchia settlement. Each spoke a different dialect from the same region in China. The colonial government promised them a teacher if the people would build their own school building. Grandfather and another man built the first Hokchia School on grandfather’s section of the Hokchia settlement. And each clan established its own clan school—using its own dialect—until 1918 when radical political and cultural events in China influenced them to adopt Baihua—literally translated plain language, a new common language for all China, replacing the classical language of the elite and the imperial administration. Thus the birth of Uk Ing Primary School, replacing the Hokchia School, using Baihua, a universal Chinese language for all Chinese-speaking people then.

In time, the Kutian and Hokchiew clans moved away, forming their own dialect communities—the Hokchiew, contiguous to us, in a town called Kampong Koh, the Kutian less than five miles away, leaving their vacant settlements to the Hokchia people.

For some unknown reasons, the colonial government did not execute their part of the deal and instead the Methodist concession, with the acres of land from the government, and the Fuzhou colonists, were now encouraged to plant rubber trees because rubber was becoming a valuable commodity in the surging world markets, fetching enormous profits for people who cultivated the trees. The British, who owned thousands of acres of land, abandoned coffee experimentation and devoted their vast resources to pursuing rubber trees, using laborers from India on their mammoth plantations. Rice became less important.

Rubber wealth gave grandfather the opportunity to build his dream house, a tile-roofed, cement-floored, spacious, two-story building for his growing family, like the ones he had longed for and envied in China. Grandfather generously allowed newcomers from China to build their thatch-roofed houses on his land—at least seven houses sat on grandfather’s land. Years later I became curious who these squatters were, and why, during certain Chinese festivals, they would bring gifts of fresh fish, eggs, chickens and longevity noodles to our family. Maybe they gave my parents "hong bao"—literally it means red envelope, a traditional Chinese custom of giving money using a red envelope. I never understood why these squatters would expand their houses without consulting our family or paying rent. They built their first houses on grandfather’s land because of grandfather’s magnanimity, like one beggar sharing his good fortune with other beggars who were new in Malaya. And also the Hokchia School he helped build on his land. And what other deeds of kindness, now lost in the past and we would never know.

My ancestors, the Hokchia people, were not indigenous to this exotic land. We were natives from the southeast corner of mainland China, from the province of Fujian. Once outsiders, strangers encroaching on a new place, we pursued a vigorous dream. It was not a political ghetto. More of a language ghetto. Where people spoke easily and understandably the same language, observed the same traditions—from birth till death, practiced the same customs from mainland China, made the same Chinese New Year rice cake, raised the children the way you were taught, went to the same Methodist church, and lived a life of simplicity and frugality.

We were a homogeneous community.

I am a proud product of this rich Chinese heritage and proud of grandfather from Fuqing, Fujian Province, China.

CHAPTER THREE

I WAS BORN IN MALAYA and spent the formative years of my life there. It is surrounded by the Philippines to the east, Indonesia to the west (and southwest), Thailand to the north and Singapore to the south, the Malay Peninsula—or Malaya—is strategically located in the heart of Southeast Asia. Ancient traders described it as The land where the winds meet. And down the centuries, strong winds had uprooted and swept many Portuguese, Dutch and English to the legendary, powerful trading kingdom of Malacca, first established in the late fourteenth century, located in the south-east corner of the Malay Peninsula. The Strait of Malacca is one of the most dangerous and controversial shipping lanes in the world.

The last to claim Malaya were the English in 1795. Eventually the tentacles of English intervention and protection permeated the length and breadth of the Malay Peninsula, flying the Union Jack by 1919. Soon thereafter Malaya became a British protectorate—not a colony—and remained in that status until the coming of the Japanese in early 1940s.

One could say I was born at the worst of times, on the eve of the Japanese assault on Malaya and Singapore. The Japanese air force was invincible over Malaya. Using bicycles, hordes of Japanese intruders swooped down the Malay Peninsula from Thailand. Unstoppable. Fiercely lusting for power. The British, in their omnipotence, thought the jungle north of Singapore would protect them from the advancing Japanese troops. Instead it became a perfect camouflage for them. The land magnanimously provided the enemy shelter and food. Singapore, once the towering, impregnable colonial center of British operations in the Far East, surrendered unconditionally within two weeks to the Japanese in 1942. For many, especially the Malays, behind closed doors, it was an auspicious time to celebrate the demise of the myth of the white man’s dominance and superiority in their part of the world. In fact, many ordinary Malays, those denied superior education because of their birth or without strong ties to the British administration, blamed the British policies for their backwardness and lack of opportunities because the British had brought many Chinese and Indians to Malaya, essentially taking away their jobs. The seeds of racial tension—especially between the Malays and the Chinese—were sown by the British. And slowly allowed to germinate and grow. And fester.

With the intrusion of the Japanese, our allegiance shifted radically from England to Japan. Down with, God save the King. Up with hail to Emperor Hirohito of Japan. Now we kowtowed reverently to the north, for the emperor, since ancient times, was believed to be descended from the Sun Goddess Amaterasu. Malaya was aggressively seeking a sense of autonomy, individuality, and full independence from England. There was a growing impetus among the Malays, even brewing visibly among the privileged few matriculating at prestigious schools in England, to free themselves from the yoke of the British rule, now that the British impotence was exposed. One wondered how long the Malays had resented the sight and smell of the British, their protection from alien marauders.

No matter what, the Japanese Occupation meant snuffing out the fire of hopes, dreams and aspirations of many young people like my brother, who was seventeen at the time. It meant the untimely termination of Chinese education, snatching away the key to their future and dreams. For my brother it was a fatal blow to his ambitions, like being struck by a sudden, irreversible terminal illness. Brother never fully recovered to pursue his education after the defeat and retreat of the Japanese at the end of World War II. Not lack of ambition, but dire poverty had crippled our family. And many other hard-working, innocent families around us. And brother, an innocent victim of a widespread economic collapse the Japanese left behind, like a havoc caused by a devastating storm. He rightly blamed the Japanese for his lack of education, which forever doomed him to a life of servitude. He never forgave the Japanese for his sudden descent into despair