Days Gone By: Growing Up in Penang

By Christine Wu Ramsay, South Yarra: Macmillan, 2004, 96 pages, paperback, $39.95. Reviewed by Christine Choo in the September 2004 issue.

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Set in Penang island, on the north-west coast of the Malay peninsular former British colony and part of the Straits Settlements, Days Gone By recalls the lifestyles and fortunes of four generations of a Hakka Chinese family whose presence in Malaya began with the migration of the author's great grandfather, Leong Fee alias Leong Pi Joo (Kong Tai to the author) from Kwungtung Province in China to Malaya in 1876. Leong Fee was among the thousands of impoverished labourers who streamed out of China at that time seeking a better life for themselves or a way to support the impoverished families they left behind. Leong Fee's rags-to-riches story is typical of that of many Chinese who pioneered tin mining and other business interests in Malaya through sheer tenacity and strength of will. He also had fook or luck which was the magic ingredient that made him a millionaire. Leong Fee became a state senator, Chinese Consul and a philanthropist.

Written in the form of personal memoir, Days Gone By, provides the reader with glimpses of the lifestyle and manners of a Chinese family who moved from poverty to become part of the elite of Penang Chinese business society, then to a decline in their fortunes after the second world war. It elucidates some of the goings-on behind their public presence and behind the closed doors of the grand houses on Leith Street in Penang, also known as Hakka Millionaires' Row. Drawing on family recollections and photographs and on her own experiences the author describes the marriage and household arrangements in which polygamy was the norm for wealthy Chinese men for whom a number of wives and mistresses and countless other casual relationships were practically obligatory as a display of wealth and influence. But it is evident that the women too had their say. Por Tai, the author's great grandmother and first wife of Leong Fee was described thus: 'a fierce and imperious woman, the daughter of one millionaire and married to another. A powerful woman in every sense, she controlled Kong Tai's liaisons by selecting his other wives, not only in Malaya but also in China and she dominated her daughters-in-law'. (p 8)

The author's grandfather (Ah Kong), the eldest son of Kong Tai and Por Tai, belonged to the first generation of the Leong family born in Malaya. He was educated in an English medium school and his lifestyle was heavily influenced by Western values and customs. In his story we learn about the lives of the rich whose only consideration was their own pleasure, their business affairs being looked after by paid employees. (Plates 6 -- 46) Here we are introduced to some of their excesses, for example driving around a regional town each afternoon, rain or shine, in a favourite 1906 Wolseley dressed in English-style motoring ensembles, (Plates 11 & 12) and their obsession with mahjong that filled their mansions with chatter and clatter day in and day out. When Ah Kong's younger brother studied in Cambridge, he had a private tutor and his own imported rosewood furniture, all of which were matched only by the appointments of a Japanese prince. The family became part of a cosmopolitan elite who travelled the world and sent their children to the best schools and colleges outside Malaya. The author's Aunt Dolly, daughter of Ah Kong and Por Por born in 1908, completed her education in the sophisticated city of Shanghai, later graduating from the Boston Conservatory of Music. A significant marker of wealth and privilege in Penang is the ownership of a home on Penang Hill. Ah Kong owned a bungalow where the family holidayed regularly, as did his younger brother. In this chapter the houses owned by family members enter as characters in their own right, as I will discuss later.

The third chapter is devoted to Ah Kwai, the loyal servant who worked for the family for 60 years. From the opening paragraphs of the chapter we immediately sense that Ah Kwai had a profound influence on the life of the author as the domestic maidservant of the family and a primary carer. She was a black and white amah whose dress, hairstyle and occupation signified her membership of sorority bound to service and celibacy. (Coloured photos facing Prologue, Plates 48 & 56) Ah Kwai entered the service of the Leong family in 1930 at the age of 20 having been sent away from her peasant family in Kwungtung Province to work overseas. Her work took in everything from cleaning the mansion, needlework and care of the dogs to being a constant carer and companion to the author whose childhood was spent with her grandparents. Ah Kwai is a tangible presence throughout the book. In a parallel chapter, Chapter 6, the author describes other aspects of the life and work of the maidservant through the example of Loy Hey who had been taken into the family as payment of a gambling debt. Ah Kwai and Loy Hey were like chalk and cheese. Loy Hey had no fook and came to a tragic end.

Other chapters describe the Japanese Occupation (1942 -- 1945) and significant markers in the life of the author and her family as she moved from a protected childhood through school life into young adulthood when she left Penang for good, travelling to Adelaide for further education. In addition to picking up highlights in the author's memory of her childhood, these chapters also document the decline in the fortunes of the family largely due to the lifestyle to which they had become accustomed and her grandfather's personality and lack of entrepreneurial skills. Ah Kong was ignorant of business and financial matters and never had to do a day's work. He left everything to employees, many of whom, the author claims, benefited from this arrangement. Por Por, the author's grandmother, though accustomed to a life of great style and leisure was, in her own way, a formidable household manager and 'a woman of great strength and stubbornness' who insisted that her husband keep his mistress and her eight children right away from his family in Penang. (p 56) After Japanese occupation the author followed her grandparents who moved to more modest accommodation in one of the better suburbs of Penang, then to an architect-designed home they built. As these places were thought to block Ah Kong's fook exacerbating his illhealth, the author's grandparents were eventually persuaded to move to Singapore where other family members were living.

Photographs are an integral element of this book. The 48 pages of black and white prints, formal and informal photographs from family albums, compliment the text beautifully. They bring the characters to life, highlight social relationships, provide visual record of the style, activities and fashions of generations of one family, and thus a social documentary of a group of Chinese elites of Hakka Millionaires' Row in Penang. The author's choice and placement of coloured prints at the beginning of the book are telling. They indicate where her attachments lie -- with her beloved grandparents Por Por and Ah Kong, and with Ah Kwai.

The family homes also have a special place in this book and are characters in their own right. The mansion in Farquhar Street owned by Ah Kong (p 15) features significantly in the text and photographs as it was their family home until the move to a more modest homes in the suburbs. The Codrington Avenue home -- and the more modern 1950s home Ah Kong had built (Plate 106) mark a decline the the family's fortunes. Tosari the home on Penang Hill was the site of holiday memories. (Plates 76 and 83) Leong Fee's home in Leith Street is still standing and is located opposite the Blue Mansion, the beautifully restored former home of Cheong Fatt Tze, a fellow Hakka entrepreneur and business associate. (Lin Lee Loh-Lim, The Blue Mansion: The Story of Mandarin Splendour Reborn, Penang: L'Plan Sdn Bhd, 22 Gerbang Midlands, 10250 Penang, Malaysia, 2002) Another Leong family home at 32 Northam Road , owned by Ah Kong's younger brother who was educated in England, features in Days Gone By. The fortunes of number 32 are documented in four photographs at the front of the book. This mansion is now privately owned by someone outside the family and has been restored to its former glory. During my last visit back to Penang in July 2004, I stepped into the foyer or former loggia of this art deco building and marvelled at its beauty and quality, as well as the hand painted original drawings of the lavish interior décor by the company engaged to furnish the mansion, now hanging on the walls. The original dining room today functions as a top restaurant.

Days Gone By documents a life of privilege in which the reader can observe how the fortune and financial capital earned by Leong Fee transforms into social capital in succeeding generations. The author's education, professional training as an organic chemist and her subsequent careers as a much travelled art gallery owner and photographer, and her cosmopolitanism are the fruits of the social capital. This is a life I could hardly imagine as I cycled past the mansions on my way to school everyday.

Readers who are interested in another perspective on life in Chinese society in Penang fleshed out in greater detail should read Of Comb, Powder and Rouge, an autobiographical novel by Yeap Joo Kim, which is set in Penang between 1928 and 1959 (Lee Teng Lay Pty Ltd, Singapore, 1992). The very different styles presented by the memoir Days Gone By, the novel Of Comb Powder and Rouge and the documentary record of heritage preservation, The Blue Mansion, together offer the reader three different ways of entering a past era to gain insight into the lives of wealthy Chinese families living in Penang up to the early post second world war period. They are all highly recommended.

Citation

• Christine Choo. 'Review: Days Gone By: Growing Up in Penang by Christine Wu Ramsay' [online]. Network Review of Books (Perth, Australian Public Intellectual Network), September 2004. Availability: <please cite the web address here> ISSN 1833-0932. [accessed 06 September 2010].

Back Cover Blurb

• Dr Christine Ramsay describes the history of her Chinese Hakka family who migrated to Malaya before the end of the nineteenth century and, by the good fortune of tin-mining and rubber plantations, established for themselves a luxurious lifestyle which included education in the west, art nouveau mansions on Penang's waterfront, fashionable clothes, cars and entertainement and a great deal of 'mahjong'!

Visitors' Responses

• Amazing
  i am now sitting inside the leong fee's mansion and reading your review, its really amazing, you can't imagine it. i like to read more and purchase this beautiful book, please let me know how to purchase it or can i get it in penang?
  Felix Chuah (20/06/0204)

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