This was kampong spirit at its best.
Our family did not give out goodies during Christmas but only at Chinese New Year. But we had to be sensitive and conscious of the religious restrictions of our neighbours, as much of Chinese Peranakan food could possibly be unsuitable to them, since Muslims were not permitted to eat pork, Hindus could not eat beef and many Sikhs were vegetarians.
Mak was wise, as was expected. She would hand out Peranakan kueh which did not contravene any religious taboo. During this time, although Muslims ate halal, they were not opposed to receiving food from a non-halal household. At least that was the practice in our village in that era, though these days, the Islamic laws are stricter. Malay women in our kampong never had to cover their heads whilst going about their daily routines. They were bare headed. However, when they were going out, they would wear a light, pretty veil, called a selendang, hung loosely around their head and shoulders, their hair visible, usually tied up in a chignon, perhaps with flowers inserted. Most men would wear a songkok when they were going to the mosque or on an outing. Like us, the women would pinch their cheeks and bite their lips till they were red, to add colour to their faces before going out. Village women did not wear any make-up. At best, we would use Hazeline Snow to moisturise the face and bedak sejok to smoothen it. Make-up was deemed for the likes of cabaret girls and prostitutes.
“Ah Phine ah,” Mak asked, “can you take leave from work for two weeks before Chinese New Year, so you can help me make the kueh-kueh?”
There was so much preparation as everything had to be done by hand, and we only had one charcoal stove and one kerosene stove. Our oven was created from a dapur arang, a clay stove using charcoals. A large aluminium pot was put over the burning charcoals and lighted charcoals would be put on the lid which forced the heat to go down into the pot. That was how we created an oven. Mak sat on a wooden stool and baked all her mouth-watering, melt-in-your mouth kueh in this way. It was laborious work but the dapur arang oven turned out amazingly delicious cakes, kueh bangkit and kueh bengka. For the kueh baolu and kueh belanda (also called kueh kepit), she had to use an archuan or mould over the charcoal stove.
I had a dream to ease my mother’s burden. I was secretly saving some money each month, so that I could buy my mother an electric table-top oven, now that we had electricity. The normal size oven would be beyond my financial capacity. I had seen a small Baby Belling oven that you could place on a table top. It cost about $50, what my mother gave me out of my wage package each month.
But even before we started making the kueh, we had a long preparation process. We had to buy the appropriate type of rice, normal or glutinous, wash and dry it in the sun on straw trays, turning the grains over till they dried properly. Then I would help Mak carry the bags of rice on our backs to the millers in the parade of shops across the road from Kampong Potong Pasir, between Masjid Alkaff Serangoon and Macpherson Market. There, the millers would pour the rice grains into massive milling machines that ground them into flour. There was a whole row of millers there and the fragrance and smells were varied and intoxicating, the aroma and fine sediments from the open-mouthed funnels rising into the hot and humid air, making you cough. They clung to your nostrils, hair and clothes: coffee beans, pepper seeds, cardamom, star anise and other spices, plus of course, flour from rice, wheat, lentils and others. Generally, the millers milling coffee beans and rice or wheat into flour were Chinese, whilst the millers milling spices for curry powder were Malays or Indians, but this was not decreed. It evolved naturally.
After he had milled our rice grains, the Chinese miller scooped our rice flour into small gunny sacks, tugging the string to close them up. Made from jute and hessian, these sacks had a rough texture and an innate scent. The shape and weight of each sack was such that when he handed each sack to me, I would receive it into my arms. I could feel its warmth, generated by the machines, penetrating into my chest. It was an extraordinary feeling that I would always remember and cherish.
“Ah Phine ah,” Mak said on one of our trips, “now that you’re earning money, I don’t have to worry so much about the New Year expenses. Maybe we can even afford to buy the cloth to make new clothes.”
Indeed, my siblings and I had, in some years, been the cause of some snickering in the village. Mak always tried to put up new curtains for Chinese New Year. It was tradition to buy new things and wear new clothes for Chinese New Year, to bring in new luck. She was a whizz on the Singer sewing machine and
