The Moon Between the Coconut Palms (by Edmund Arozoo)

Digital Photography has indeed simplified the task of producing quality images of the moon. The ability to mount my old 600 mm manual mirror lens to the body of my DSLR has allowed me to capture some good images indeed. However to push the challenge further I have for past few years been a keen “Moon transit” photographer i.e. capturing aircraft as they fly across the face of the moon.  I am fortunate that where I now live the Moon’s orbit and most of the commercial flight paths make it easy for me to set up my gear in my back balcony or backyard to achieve this. In addition there are many on-line apps that allow real time monitoring of flight paths. However this quest requires lots of patience and luck. Often there are long periods of waiting in-between flights. During these breaks I find myself staring at the moon and my mind wanders back to my kampong days in Singapore.  I start thinking of the significance the moon played then and the beliefs both religious and superstitious of the various races and groups of people in my kampong.

Copy of an old slide image taken in Jalan Hock Chye digitally post processed

One colourful memory that I always chuckle when I think about it is the ritual that my Chinese neighbours undertook during the eclipse of the moon.  I remember as a kid suddenly hearing the din of pots and pans being struck constantly. Even the large kerosene tins would be brought into play. Most of the Chinese households would be involved and I learnt that the belief was that a Dragon was swallowing the Moon and the noise created was to scare the dragon from completely removing the Moon from the sky. This ritual did go on regularly whenever there was an eclipse for most of my early years but as society became educated the practice faded away.

When I relate this to some of my friends a few remember this practice but others think I made it up.

The significance of the moon is central in Chinese culture. Most if not all festivals are tagged to the lunar calendar

Likewise the Indian celebrations are also pegged to their own lunar calendar. The two main ones Deepavali  which occurs  during the New moon of Ashvin (Hindu calendar) and  Thaipusam which  is celebrated during  the full moon day of the Tamil month of Thai

In the past the Malay Hari Raya dates were determined by the sighting of the new moon by local religious authorities. During those pre mobile phone years the method of relaying the successful sighting was by the use of carbide cannons. Carbide was mixed with water in the hollow of a bamboo cylinder and when the fuse was lit a small explosion took place and this could be heard for miles in the quiet of the evenings. When this was heard in a kampong one of the Malay families would then in turn fire a cannon and the message would then spread from kampong to kampong until the entire Malay community across the island would be informed to start celebrating the following day.

For the Eurasian and Christian households the main festival linked to the moon was Easter which is held on the first Sunday after the first full moon occurring on or after the vernal equinox. The other Holy days of Lent are adjusted accordingly. As kids when we were brought by our parents for the traditional “visitations of churches” on Maundy Thursday we often noticed the bright nearly full or full moon as we walked along the Queen Street / Victoria Street area. The significance of the moon was unknown to us or rather we were more focussed on the treats that we were rewarded with for being well behaved. Treats like freshly baked Hot Cross Buns from the two well-known bakeries around the vicinity “Ah Teng” and “The Red House Bakery”. The other treat would be the Kueh Putu Piring (or Kueh Tutu as it is now known as).

Similarly the dates of Ascension Thursday and Pentecost Sunday vary each year. The former celebrated forty days after Easter, and the latter ten days after the Ascension (50 after Easter).

When Armstrong landed on the moon in 1969, you can just imagine the reaction from the different families in the kampong. There was disbelief, taunting and scepticism.

The full or near-full moon was often a blessing if you came home late at night because it lighted your way home. There were no street lights in the lanes leading to our houses. With the moonlight we could avoid the portholes and on rainy days the resultant puddles that were ever so present.

However the moonlight also did cast numerous shadows from the trees and bushes. With movies like “Pontianak” on our minds combined with the fragrant scent of the newly blossomed frangipani flowers walking home usually turned into a quick paced trot.

I guess these days in Singapore, the Moon between coconut palms is only a recollection of some of the older generation. Moonlight between high-rise would be the norm.

Kan Te Ko (lead male pig)

In my book Good Morning Yesterday, I wrote about an itinerant service from the kampong days known as Kan Te Ko. I am reminded of this interesting profession when I saw a photo by Andy MacDonald posted at Tom O’brien’s Memories of Singapore.

Here’s an extract from pages 67 to 69 my book;

So far I have told you about itinerant services provided by food vendors, tinkers and koyok sellers who visited our kampong. But there is one more which is sure to tickle you, and that is the itinerant farmer who provided a service called ‘kan te ko’. Kan te ko which literally means, “to lead (male) pig”, is best translated as stud service. Basically this man – let’s called him KTK for short - will visit the pig farms with his ‘stud’ and impregnate the sows for a fee of $3 per sow. Apparently results were guaranteed; otherwise they would be happy (not sure about the poor animal though) to do a repeat job. Farmers were also advised to feed their sows with eggs to increase the chance of pregnancies.

(According to my friend James Seah) Whenever the KTK arrived at the village to provide this ‘baby-making service’, all the young girls who were unmarried were not allowed to watch. The curious girls were told not to ask why the animals were making so much noise. My friend Yeo Hong Eng who grew up in a farm in Kampong Tanah Merah Kechil shared this interesting information with me.

"My father used to rear several sows. When the sows were ‘in heat’, they would become agitated and want to break out of their sty. My father would send for the KTK. This farmer would tie a light rope on the shoulder of the boar and drive him with a small stick to our pig sty. There consummation would take place. Sometimes the KTK had a hard time trying to get the pig to walk as directed. When passing by a muddy pool, it would wallow in the mud first in spite of coaxing and beatings. It would only get up when it was satisfied with the bath. A bigger boar could be so stout and strong that instead of the farmer dragging the boar, it was the boar that dragged the farmer.Farmers often met and shared their experiences. Some lamented having so many sows and having to spend a fortune for the stud service. But the ‘service provider’ also had his business risks. Sometimes the sow had a false alarm and refused to consummate or the heat was over and the sow was not in the mood. In such cases the sow owner had to pay a reduced fee of $1.00."

Of course the KTK was a job that no woman would not want to take up. But sometimes when the man of the house was unavailable or sick, she had no choice but to stand in. Like the night soil carrier, this profession became extinct in Singapore. After the Primary Production Department was set up, technicians bearing syringes of Berkshire sperm from Australia took over the job. Subsequently, pig rearing was disallowed in Singapore.

UPDATE (24/2/2013)

Reader Lye Khuen Way’s comment about seeing the carcasses of drowned pigs in the Alexandra Canal, during the floods of the 1960s, reminds me of some photos that I have seen at the National Archives’ Picas website. Dated 03/12/1978, these photos describe the plight of pig farmers at Braddell Road, which was quite near to the kampong I grew up in. These photos come with the following description.

“The rains held off as flood waters receded in all parts of Singapore. The flood had caused heavy damage to property, livestock and poultry. The worst hit area was the farm belt stretching across Woodlands, Braddell Road, Potong Pasir and Changi. At least 2,000 pigs and a large number of poultry have perished as flood waters swollen by heavy rain, swirled through the farms on Saturday and Sunday morning.

Picture shows pigs stoically await rescue in their pens as rising water level slowly creeps up to their snouts. They are the luckier ones to be rescued although they will probably end up in a frying pan. Scores of others drowned in the floods."

Kampong household items

Last week, Wee Kiat and I visited a former Foyer (Friend of Yesterday.sg), Cha Aun at his home in Skudai. He brought us to see his father’s small Gaharu tree plantation. My wife and son who are very much into life science topics came along. We had a swell time; and as a bonus, I spotted some household items that I used to see in my kampong.

1) Dustpan

This is a dustpan made from ‘recycled’ materials. The base is made from a sawn-off kerosene tin or oil tin. Just nail a piece of wood to it and voila, you have a dustpan.

2) Jamban (Toilet)

This is what a typical kampong toilet looks like. Notice that the roof is simply made of a couple of zinc sheets nailed to two beams. I deliberately avoided the toilet bowl because it looked too modern and would spoil my photo. Leaning against the toilet is a home-made ladder. No need to describe how to construct one, I think.


3) Well

One reason that got me quite excited about this visit was the prospect of finally being able to take a photo of a well to use in my next book Good Morning Yesterday. Unfortunately, Cha Aun’s well turned out to be a ‘small’ disappointment. Firstly it is so small and shallow compared to the one we had in our kampong house. Secondly it did not have a pulley. Still that did not stop my wife from showing off how to scoop a pail of water from the well. (By the way, how can you tell from this photo that this is not a well from the 1950s?)

So I am still without a photo of a well like the one in my kampong house. I heard that Ivy Singh Lim’s Bollywood Veggies in Lim Chu Kang has a well with pulley. Is any reader able to confirm?

3) Punki (basket)

This one is not ‘authentic’ because it was made of plastic. A genuine kampong punki should be made of rattan.

We also saw a number of fruit trees, like dragon fruit, rambutan, papaya, pineapple and star fruit; but the one that got us most excited was this one.

Quiz Time

As always, I end my post with a quiz. You see this photo of the three of us - from left, Wee Kiat, Cha Aun and myself? Do you know what the building behind us is used for? No it is not Cha Aun’s ‘good class bungalow’ :)

Can you guess what is this object?

Nowadays the kids are quite fortunate in that they get to travel all over the world. My youngest daughter is only 17 and she has already been to Japan twice – and that’s not counting our family vacations. In comparison, I never set foot on a plane until my twenties when the SAF sent us for Ex. Starlight in Taiwan. I remember one of my section mates was so excited he asked to take a photo with the SIA girl.

During the recent June holidays, my daughter traveled to Cambodia as part of her school’s project and looking through her photos I found this interesting object. I doubt many of the younger readers, like Icemoon for example, will know what it is. Maybe a city boy ‘oldie’ like Victor also won’t know.

Last Village

Last night, Australia Network ran a short video about Kampong Lorong Buangkok. Yours truly was one of the interviewees. You can watch it here. (Click on Last Village.)

(Photo from Victor's blog)

The interview took place on 2nd of February. Would you believe that that was the first time I visited Kampong Lorong Buangkok, and I was surprised that it was so near to Yio Chu Kang Road.

Well actually, it is not my first visit to this kampong. But in the early 70’s we had a family friend who lived in Lorong Buangkok. But I remember at that time we had to access it from Upper Serangoon Road and Ponggol Road.

Anyway, as I had expected, there wasn’t much of a kampong left to see. As I told the reporter Norman Hermant, if Singaporeans want to show their children a real-life kampong, all they need to do is to take a short trip up north - lots of kampongs in places like Pekan Nanas and Pontian.

Related Posts:

1) A Last Look at Kampong Lorong Buangkok (By Victor Koo)

2) Kampong Buangkok videos

3) To everything, there is a season

More than 1 type of kampong in Singapore

My young friend PY of Oceanskies 79 once wrote an article about her visit to Sentosa where she learned about kampong life in Singapore in the old days. I pointed out to her that what she learned was essentially about a Malay kampong. Chinese kampongs like the one I grew up in were quite different actually. Come to think of it, not only were Chinese kampongs different from Malay kampongs, among the Chinese kampongs there were differences too. So I take this opportunity to tell you what I know was different. I consulted my good friend Chuck who grew up in the Hillview area next to a Malay kampong in nearby Bukit Gombak.

First of all there are the games. I believe that the games played by the Malay kids and us were quite different. In PY’s article, she mentioned games like gasing and congkak. But as you have probably read from my articles (you can click on the label Toys Were Us on the right side to read these articles) the games we played were quite different.

There were also a number of things in a Chinese kampong that you would not find in a Malay kampong. These were usually related to the difference in religious faiths; Malays being mostly Muslims. For example, in a Chinese kampong like Lorong Kinchir which I grew up in, pigs roaming freely was a common sight. Another thing which was mandatory in a Chinese kampong was the Tua Pek Kong temple and wayang stage. Depending on the size of the kampong, the size of these two features also tended to be different. During the Lunar 7th Month, opera shows would be performed. I have blogged about this before here.

This is what a kampong where pig-rearing was carried out looked like. Hard to believe that this was Singapore just one generation ago eh? Photo courtesy of Memories of Singapore

A typical Malay kampong house in old Singapore.

Another thing we had was the Chinese Medicine Shop. Practically all Chinese kampongs had one of these. Today, they are still a common sight in our HDB heartlands. Another thing I can think of is the village school. In our kampong, we had a small Chinese school called Chong Boon School （崇文）. I spent one year there in fact doing primary one. But later I went to primary one again, but this time in an English school. In those days, they were not particular about ages and so even though I did two years of primary one, I was not over-age.

As I said before, even among the Chinese kampongs there were differences. This was mainly due to differences in economic activity. For example, compared to our closest neighbour which was Potong Pasir, we had more fish ponds whilst they had a lot of vegetable farms. We also had quite a bit of rubber estates. especially towards the Thomson end of Lorong Kinchir. Potong Pasir was to our south and separated from us by Braddell Road. It was mainly a Cantonese area. We used to refer to it as San Par. You can see some photos of the ponds of Lorong Chuan here.

To our west, was Kampong San Teng which is called Bishan today. They too were a Cantonese area and we referred to them as Pek San Teng (Pek San is the Cantonese pronunciation for Bishan). We were separated from them by the Kallang River. I am not sure about the economic activity in Kampong San Teng. What I do know is that they had a lot of cemeteries; and every Qing Ming we would go there for the ‘grave sweeping’ exercise.

I think the population of Kampong San Teng must have been considerably bigger than ours. As such their temple was much bigger and their annual wayang festival was a much bigger affair. My sister and mother used to go there to watch the Cantonese operas. But as far as the rest of us were concerned, the chief attraction of Kampong San Teng was the open air cinema called South Country Theatre (南国戏院) where we enjoyed many hours of watching black and white Cantonese movies. But I suddenly recall one English title. It is Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Please don’t ask me what was so special about this movie. I remember next to nothing about it. I think it was a cowboy comedy. My older brother Chun Chew (Zen) might remember more.

In case you are wondering what an open-air theatre looked like, here's a photo of one in Somapah Village from the collection of the National Archives of Singapore.

Well I hope this short article helps to enlighten my young friends a little about the kampongs that your parents grew up in. Below are some photos from the Lam family album.

Photo of me (right) and my younger brother James. On the left is the pond where we caught our fighting fish. Do you see our dog behind us (butt facing camera).

1951 photo of my mother carrying my elder brother David. I was not born yet. The fish pond like this one was very common in Lorong Kinchir and Lorong Chuan area. So were the coconut trees which helped to bring in some income for us.

You can see more photos of bona fide Singapore kampong scenes at these websites:

a) The kampongs at Jalan Kayu.
c) Lorong Kinchir in front of our house

Kampong Buangkok Videos

In one of my earlier articles, I mentioned that young Singaporeans simply have no idea what life in a kampong in the old Singapore was like. Well I have some good news. You can catch a glimpse of kampong life in Singapore from the videos below.

Last year, I was approached by three young ladies from the Nanyang Technological University's School of Communication and Information. They were doing a final project on Singapore’s last kampong at Buangkok and as part of their research, they wanted to speak to guys like me who had experienced life in a kampong in Singapore. I roped in my friends Chuck Hio and Peh Seng Ket to speak to the girls.

Good thing I still have their contact and I asked them to put their videos on YouTube to share with you. Altogether there are three videos. Here they are.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Thank you Ms Sarina Md Rasol, Dayanna Md Tahir and Wong Po Fong for sharing your videos with us.

‘Sick’ foods

The other day, I was shopping with my family at NTUC Fairprice when my youngest daughter picked up a can of Jacob’s cream crackers saying that she loved it. “Hey; that’s called Sota-pang”, (or “soda” biscuit in Cantonese) I said. When I was young, we only ate that when we were sick.

“Oh yes. My friend’s mum told me the same thing”, she replied. “I thought it is called wheat crackers?”

Jacob’s cream crackers was a very well known brand in the old days. I bet my older readers can recall the iconic flat rectangular can of this brand. What I would like to know is whether their mothers also made them eat this when they were ill. I also vaguely remember seeing this tin can being used to keep donations during funeral wakes - anyone can confirm that?

Actually, I never quite liked it. I preferred biscuits which had sugary-cream in between the biscuits, such as the lemon puffs; which I still buy from the supermarket. Nowadays, such biscuits come in plastic packaging. When we were young, we would buy them by katis. The shop keeper would transfer them from a big tin can and wrap them in newspaper folded into a conical shaped.

Another ‘sick’ food that I can recall is Glucolin (glucose). This is a very fast to prepare energy drink which my wife and I also used to feed our kids when they were young. In Cantonese we call it Pu-to-tong (葡萄糖)。 I don’t think the packaging of this product has changed over the decades. It still comes in a circular blue tin with the glucolin packed in a translucent waxy paper or plastic bag.

Yet another one is Quaker Oats. Like the Glucolin, I think there is little change in the packaging of this product. The only difference is that nowadays they have a pre-cooked version where you simply add hot water to it. Like the cream crackers, I did not quite like this because it wasn’t sweet. What I would do is add condensed milk to it. Come to think of it, I suspect that for kids of my generation, anything that wasn’t sweet didn’t appeal to us.

The final ‘sick’ food that comes to mind is macaroni which is called Tong-sum-fun in Cantonese. Again I did not like it. But I do recall that in my secondary school days in ACS Barker Road, there was a stall that sold excellent macaroni. I blogged about it before here.

Anyway, as an adult I never liked the above ‘sick’ foods. I wonder if there is some psychological reason behind this; you know; like associating them with the unpleasantness of falling sick.

PS: For an explanation of why this is called ‘cream crackers’, and what the original tin can looked like, read this Singaporean blogger’s post about the Jacob’s cream crackers here.

Seven ain’t too bad

I have never been very fit physically. In my active NS (national service) days, it was always a struggle just to pass my running tests by a tiny margin. In BMT we had the 5 km run and in section leaders we had the 10 km run.

Still I was quite consistent in maintaining an average fitness and never had serious problems with my IPPT (Individual Physical Proficiency Test) during my reservist days. Most times I was able to pass with a comfortable margin; but with much effort of course, I must add.

Why this sudden talk about fitness? Yesterday I was at the National Canoeing Championships at the MacRitchie Reservoir and saw some young kayakers doing their chin-ups in the very strange fashion that I used to do in my kampong days. At that time, my brothers and I liked to do our chin-ups on the horizontal cross bar of our door frame. Instead of pulling upwards till our chins crossed the bar, we would bend our heads forward so that the back of the neck touched the bar. I wonder if there is a name for this style of doing chin-ups.

By the way, how do you usually do your chin-ups? Is it with the palms facing inwards towards you or outwards? I have been told that facing inwards is easier, but I always found it more comfortable to do it with my palms facing forwards.

Recently we had a reunion with my ACS classmates of 1968. We all could remember the “Chin-up king” in our class, my friend Lim Hock Kheng. He could to do something like 15 to 20 chin-ups (sorry cannot remember exact figure) during the annual physical fitness test. What is more impressive is that today, at age 56, when most of us cannot even manage 1 chin-up, he could still do several (again, unfortunately I cannot remember the figure).

As for me, I was able to do 7 back then; which ain’t too bad right?

My Sec 3 & Sec 4 results

This photo taken about 5 years ago at the Kent Ridge Park shows me struggling like crazy to challenge my son at chin-ups. I think I won that day with 2 chin-ups. But today, it would be difficult to beat him. Being in the combined schools kayaking team, he can easily manage 30 at one go.

Our first kampong barber – Lam Chun Chew

(** this article was first posted on 9 June 2007)

My younger brother, Chun See wrote in one of his earliest articles about Our Kampong in Lorong Kinchir, off Lorong Chuan. He wrote about the barber who operated his shop across the road from our house. But Chun See was probably too young to remember that before this gentleman, there was another barber who operated in a cubicle inside a grocery shop (kek ai tiam in Hokkien) on our side of the road, just to the left of this photo.



This barber, who I addressed as Mr Low, was a short man with big round eyes with sharp eye-sight, rather skinny, but very talkative only losing his verbal skill to his thin, tall and skinny wife who always complained something. They had 2 sons and 1 daughter.

His special trade-mark was wax clearing of the ears, the job being done with deft skill, using a wax plastic scrapper, a thin reed-like loosener, and a chrome steel pincer to pick out pieces of stuffed waxes from his client’s ears, making the customer felt ‘shiok’ in the process. For safety reasons, a lighted bulb would be hung near the client’s head for the on-going task. This service had endeared many old kampong folks, including my father to this skilful barber. He had another skill that enabled him to clear sand or small particles which got in his customer’s eyes by accidents. I saw him on one occasion lift a guy’s eye-lit, picking out a sand particle using a chrome pincer deftly. While doing his job he would engage his client in small talk, usually on whose children did well or not in their studies. This was his pet topic, probably because his elder son did quite well in a Chinese language medium school (Catholic High).

His elder son, Ah Hoon was a good friend of mine. One day Ah Hoon fell sick with typhoid and the sickness persisted despite seeing many doctors. He became weaker by the day, face as pale as a white sheet of paper, thin as a stick, and not able to attend school for a long period of time. He was approaching death and both parents cried bitterly over him. By a stroke of good fortune, a new doctor was engaged to treat him and things took a turn for the better. The medicine worked well, and Ah Hoon slowly recovered to his. It brought great relief to his family. Chinese believes that patients possess good karmic relationship with certain doctors who are able to bring them good health. Ah Hoon’s parents certainly held on to this belief. Later on my friend went on to pass his senior middle three examination and subsequently got a job in the civil service. His father was so proud of his son that he would relate his son’s achievement to everyone, especially to his customers, as though his son had passed some high level imperial exam in ancient China.


In the late fifties luck smiled on barber Low. One day I saw him holding a piece of paper excitedly as he ran and leapt over a drain, announcing that he had touched big sweep, winning some ten thousand dollars, which was a big sum of money at that time. Now he felt that he should leave for a bigger and nicer place. Eventually he moved into another barber shop at Serangoon Road (3rd mile), opposite the present SCDF depot, with his younger son carrying on his trade. One day, I met Ah Hoon. He was no more with the civil service, and had become a successful renovation contractor.


Below are a couple of photos from the collection of the National Archives of Singapore showing a Chinese barber performing ear cleaning and his tools he used.

Check out a related post at Yesterday.sg here.

Itinerant food vendors of yesteryears

Scenes like the one above were a common sight in the Singapore that I grew up in. (Photo taken in Ipoh last year). Today, of course you won't be able to see hawkers on mobile stalls like this anymore. Hence, reading YG’s recent post about the roving hawkers from his kampong days brought back some fond memories. In my kampong we too had such itinerant vendors who came around regularly to peddle their foodstuffs to the delight of us kampong kids. Let’s see how many I can recall.


1) Roti (bread)

This guy came around in a bicycle with a huge wooden box mounted on the back (see photo courtesy of Flickr member Justin.z). The bread he sold was the traditional ‘chow tar’ roti with burnt top. You can still find some places in Singapore selling such bread; for example here and here. He would slice off the burnt portions on the spot and if requested cut the loaf into thin slices for the customer. We used to enjoy watching him deftly slice the loaf of bread and marvel at how sharp his bread knife was.

He also sold home made kaya. Unlike the modern versions that come in plastic or glass jars, his kaya was packed in recycled tin cans with a circular piece of banana leaf covering the top. His kaya was brown in colour. I never saw green colour kaya in my kampong days.

Oh yes; the burnt portions were not discarded but used to feed our dogs.


2) Ice cream

I think I blogged about this fellow before. He came around every afternoon, at around 2 o’clock. We would look out for the sound of his bell. He sold two types of ice cream. One was ice cream cut into rectangular blocks and sandwiched between 2 wafer biscuits. The other was two scoops of ice cream sandwiched between two small slices of bread.

Unusually one of us boys would take the orders from the other siblings and walk out to his tricycle along the main road, which was a dirt track, to do the purchase. Sometimes, on the way back, with both our hands full, we would encounter a passing car. We tried in vain to shield our precious ice cream from the cloud of yellow dust churned up by the passing vehicle.


3) Ham Chim Pang

Another sound our young ears were well tuned to was this cry; “Ham chim pang … pak tong koeeee…” We liked to imitate his cry, especially the way he dragged the last word. I guess there is no need for me to explain what this chap was selling to local readers. For oversea friends like Tom and Brian, it’s quite difficult to visualize anyway if you have never seen it before.


4) Nonya Kueh

There was also an Indian boy who came around, also in the afternoons, to sell home made nonya kuehs. I think I blogged about this Bartley School boy here where I described how we became friends with him and often exchanged stamps with him. The kueh I remember best from him was a banana kueh (photo on right is not banana kueh).


5) Yong Tau Hoo

I finally I come to the most amazing of the itinerant hawkers of all – the yong tau hoo seller. He was a young man who stayed not far from our house on a hillside. He did not come around in a vehicle but carried the load on his shoulders like what you see in this photo of a satay seller. Among the many things stuffed into his tiny 'stall' were a huge pot of soup, stove (and presumeably, charcoal), ingredients, bowls and utensils.

I remember how he would come to the front of our house, took the various orders and then proceeded to cook the yong tau hoo on the spot. Often he would take the opportunity to top up the soup by adding some water from our well. My siblings and I often found ourselves admiring this guy for his strength.


Besides the five vendors I have described above they were others; but I cannot recall much. For example, we had the popular tick-tock mee and an Indian guy who sold putu mayam. Although I don’t remember much about him, I enjoyed his putu mayam tremendously. Nowadays, when I get the chance, I would still like to order this item from the coffee shop near my house at Sixth Avenue; but somehow it doesn’t taste as nice as the ones from my kampong.

And even as I try to recall all the wonderful stuff that we ate in our kampong days, I simply cannot figure out how we were able to eat so much snacks in the afternoons!

Related post: Traditional food packaging

***
For the benefit of Tom and other British friends, here is a photo of the Pak Tong Koe (白糖糕 for the younger Singaporeans who may not know) I mentioned. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any ham chim pang at the place where I took my lunch today. Maybe another time.

Kampong Plants

Recently, I visited the newly opened HortPark with my family. It is located at Hyderabad Road, opposite the Gillman Village. I think gardening enthusiasts would like this place. It is huge and divided into several sections each focusing on a different theme. You can see many types of gardening plants there. I think my friends John and Ann Harper would have enjoyed this place. Unfortunately, last November, when they visited Singapore, I didn’t know about this place yet. Anyway, I saw some plants there which brought back memories of my kampong days.



I like this picture (above) very much. It’s taken in the Recycling section. I wonder if young readers know what this container is. In Hokkien it’s called ‘tam pui’. British journalist, Neil Humphreys once joked that his Singaporean friends called him this name. In Cantonese, it’s ‘tam tong’. It is a spittoon. Older Chinese folks liked to use it. In fact, I read that President Nixon was surprised to find Chairman Mao Tse Tung using it during his historic visit to China. It also served as a potty for young children. In the old days, kampong folks often used metal containers and pails as flower pots. In fact, I am not surprised if some homes still do.



The second plant I noticed was an Elephant Climber (Argyreia nervosa). It has big leaves with silvery underside and purple flowers. I used to pluck the young unopened leaves to use as a book mark. We planted this creeper once and let it climb up a tall wooden frame at the side of our house. It served as a porch and garage for our car. Unfortunately, I do not have any photos of this. But in the 1969 photo below of my father, you can see part of an aluminum porch on the left. This was built to replace the wooden one with this climber.





The third plant is a kind of pomelo tree - actually I am not sure of the name. Hope readers can help. Both the tree and its fruits are much smaller than the pomelo trees I have seen at a pomelo farm in Tambun near Ipoh. What I remember most is the nice smell of the leaves and the sharp needle-like thorns. We used to pluck a few pieces of leaves and place them in a tin box to keep our prized (fighting) spiders; which is called ‘pow fu’ in Cantonese or ‘hor sin hor’ in Hokkien.



The last plant that caught my ‘nostalgic’ eyes was the buah long long which Chuck blogged about earlier. Finally, I have a photo to show you what the fruit looks like.

What do you do when you have sore throat or a cough?

What do you do when you have sore throat or a cough? Why, take some medical hornets and olives of course. Yes, that what my mother would get for us from the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) shop or Yok Choy Poe (药材铺). In Cantonese, this medicine is called chook fong yok lam (竹蜂药榄). “Chook fong” is bamboo wasp or hornet, and “lam” is olive (橄榄). Yes, it’s really ugly looking. She would boil it in hot water and make us drink the water.



Nowadays it’s difficult to buy such products. Maybe the bamboo hornet or wasp is an endangered species. Anyway, for the worthy cause of educating my younger readers, I bought a small packet to show you what it looks like. Hope my friend Siva and his fellow wildlife conservationists will not condemn me.

By the way, does anyone know why TCM shops always wrap their products in pink paper? That’s a genuine question, not a quiz question.

When we lived in the kampong, we had a TCM shop just a stone’s throw from our house. Guess what we called the shop owner? Yok Choy Poe lou (药材铺佬) of course! He was a Khek (Hakka). You may recall that our kampong was a Hokkien kampong. Practically everyone was Hokkien until when I was older. As far as I could remember, we were the only Cantonese family, and this TCM shop owner’s family was the only Hakka family. Across the road to the right, was a Hock Chew guy who ran a small coffee shop (with attap roof). Guess what we called him? Fook Chow lou of course!

In our kampong we had a lot of ‘lous’; e.g. fei fatt lou (barber), kopi char pou lou (coffee shop owner), mai yu loe (fish monger), mai arp lou (duck seller) etc. Good thing no koon choy lou (undertaker)

While I am at it, let me show you some photos of other equipment that the TCM practitioner uses. My father-in-law used to run such a shop in his younger days in Ipoh; which explains why my wife knows quite a bit about traditional Chinese herbs. When she was little, being one of the oldest children, she had to help out in the shop. Life was tough for her.

After my father-in-law passed away, a couple of years ago, we found these gadgets among his things. I will just show you the photos and you try to figure out what they are used for. That way, I don’t have to embarrass myself by giving the wrong ‘education’.

One Scoop of Porridge

In the early sixties, when television was not yet widely available because of the high cost of owning a tv set as well as the short transmission hours, our main form of news and entertainment was the radio. Unlike my friend Victor who lived in town, we did not have rediffusion in our kampong. Our favourite programme was the wuxia (Chinese pugilistic) stories told by the late story-teller Lee Dai Soh. But did you know that besides such stories, we also had radio dramas. These were usually in Cantonese and broadcast in the afternoon at around 2 pm, whilst Lee Dai Soh’s programme came on at around 6 pm. My siblings and followed these mini-series faithfully.

It’s been a quarter century, and of course I am not able to remember most of the stories that we heard, but a few titles remain fresh in my mind. The first one goes by the title of Yat Sat Chook (pronounced in Cantonese) or “一失足“。 This is actually derived from the Chinese idiom, 一失足成千古恨，回头已是百年身。Roughly this says that one wrong step can lead to a life time of regret. The reason why I could remember this title was because we gave it a nickname of our own. At the start of the programme, there was this announcer who read out the title in a solemn drawl - Yat …Sat … Chook. We thought it was rather comical and promptly changed the title to Yat Putt Chook which, in Cantonese, says, one scoop of porridge.

There were some stories which were actually adaptations of famous English classics. I seem to recall that Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre was one of them. Do you know what was Jane Eyre in Chinese? It’s 简爱. I also vaguely recall that Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights was another. It’s Chinese title was 魂归离恨天. Yet another one could be Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. But I have to admit that my memory could be playing tricks on me. It could be that I actually saw the Cantonese movies of these stories in the South Country Theatre in Kampong San Teng and got things mixed up. Anyway, I hope some of my older Cantonese readers like Zen or Frannxis can help me out.

But one title I am quite sure about was Lei Pik Wah (李碧华). Do you know what was the original title in English? It’s Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier; which incidentally was a wonderful love story with a bit of mystery. My siblings and I enjoyed this story tremendously.

I think my love for reading English classics could be attributed in some way to these radio dramas. Anyway, I hope my young readers have gained a bit of knowledge of Singapore’s history today. I bet your history teachers never taught you this in school.

Days of Black and White Television in Singapore

Man, Woman, Birth, Death, Infinity. A solemn voice reads out these words as a hand writes the symbols on a blackboard. This was the iconic introduction of every episode of the medical drama series, Ben Casey (which you can now see on YouTube here), a very popular programme shown over RTS, or Radio and Television Singapore in the early days of black and white television. And it was one of my favourites. Its rival was Doctor Kildare, which starred the dashing Richard Chamberlain.

Television made its debut in Singapore in 1963, the same year we merged with Malaya to form Malaysia. Initially, there were only two channels – Channels 5 and 8. At that time, in our kampong, there was only one family which had a television set. The owner, a Mr Low Thiam Aik would place his television outside his house for all the neighbours to watch. Transmission hours were from around 6 pm to midnight. Some of us even brought along stools to sit down in front of his courtyard to watch television right until the time when they played the Majullah Singapura.

Photo of our neighbour, Mr Low's house courtesy of his grandson, Lau Eng Leong

Subsequently, more households began to own their own TV sets. When our 7th Uncle who lived nearby to us, bought one, we switched to his home. Not much later, we too acquired our first TV set. Like my uncle’s, ours was a Siera.

In those days, transmission breakdowns were a common occurrence, and we frequently saw a graphic with these words: “We apologise for this breakdown. Normal service will resume as soon as possible.”

Photo of me (in singlet), my parents and my younger brother in front of our first TV set

Let’ see now. What are the some of the favourite programmes that I can recall from those days.

 I think the most popular programmes with us boys would be the cowboy Westerns. The two most popular series were Bonanza and The Big Valley. These two shows had some similarities. Both centred around families with 3 brothers and good-looking male stars. Lee Majors was the heart throb from Big Valley whilst Bonanza had their Michael Landon. Bonanza had its patriarch in the person of Lorne Greene whilst The Big Valley had its matriarch, Barbara Stanwyck. Other cowboy shows I enjoyed were Have Gun Will Travel, Maverick and Gunsmoke.

The children’s favourites were cartoons and animal shows. We loved those cartoon characters like Tom and Jerry, Daffy Duck, Woody Woodpecker, Huckleberry Hound, Bugs Bunny and so on. Of course there was also the Walt Disney show. When my children were small, I used to buy some VCDs of these old cartoons for them to watch. Somehow, I felt they were more wholesome compared to the modern cartoons. As for the animal shows, I can remember three. They are Flipper, Lassie and Rin Tin Tin.

Then of course there were the detective/crime series. The earliest ones I can recall were Everglades and Sea Hunt which starred Lloyd Bridges. Later ones included Starsky and Hutch, Streets of San Francisco which starred Michael Douglas. The most popular one was Hawaii Five-O, which starred Jack Lord. It had a very catchy title tune played by the Ventures. Like the tune from Bonanza, it became a big hit in the pop music charts.

Speaking of detective/crime TV shows, there is one from the black and white era that I think even the teenagers of today might know. It starred the legendary Bruce Lee in the supporting role of martial arts experts Kato. The show of course was The Green Hornet. Although in each episode, our real hero of the show only got to display his lightning-fast moves for hardly one minute, it was the highlight for us. I remember one particular episode where he got to fight a karate expert. In their first encounter, the bad guy sneaked up on him, bashed him up and slammed him into a huge dust bin. His ego was thoroughly bruised. But of course, at the end of the show we got to savour their showdown where he had his chance to vindicate himself.

We even had a spy series called The Man from U.N.C.L.E. starring Robert Vaughn as Napoleon Solo and the handsome-as-devil David McCallum as Illya Kuryakin. There was another one that I think many of you younger readers will know. Can you guess the title? I give you a hint. Not longer ago it was made into a successful movie starring Tom Cruise. Yes, it’s Mission Impossible.

But, not all the good shows were from U.S. The British gave us the ever popular The Saint starring the debonair Roger Moore as Simon Templar.

TV is incomplete without comedies and sitcoms. I Love Lucy, The Jack Benny Show, The Flying Nun which starred the evergreen Sally Field, Mr Ed the Talking Horse, Green Acres, Bewitched were some of the familiar titles. There was an interesting time travel series called It’s About Time. But my favourite was Get Smart. And then of course there were the hilarious Three Stooges and Little Rascals.

I have always enjoyed legal dramas. Back then the most famous lawyer was Perry Mason. Others included The Defenders and Owen Marshall. I liked Owen Marshall because the stories usually involved controversial issues. For example, there was one episode where the court had to decide whether or not to force a mentally-retarded girl who had been raped to undergo an abortion. Such dramas helped me in my General Paper.

We also had Scifi. You must have heard of Star Trek. The original series was shown in black and white and the main character, Captain James Kirk was played by William Shatner. Two other famous ones which were partly Scifi and partly supernatural, psychological thrillers were The Outer Limits and Twilight Zone.

There were lots more; and I have not even talked about the Chinese programmes on Channel 8. Heard of Wang Sar and Yeh Fong? But I must mention The Samurai which was popular not only in Asia but in the west as well. The hero was one Shintaro. Try to picture him doing battle with ninjas and their deadly star-shaped darts.

So if you young readers think that your parents’ days were ‘dullsville’, think again. Even though we did not have pc, or internet, there were lots of good TV shows to keep us entertained. And I should add that ‘parental guidance’ was not necessary then because most of the shows were far less violent and sexual in content.