“When you cook with love and joy, you transmit that to those who eat your food,” Mak said. “Never underestimate the power of the chi vibrations. When you eat food cooked by grumpy, miserable people, the food will turn sour in your stomach.”
What my mother said became my mantra for life. I sing cheerfully when I cook.
After the kueh-kueh were baked and stored in biscuit tins, it was time to spring-clean the house and to prepare for the reunion dinner. I lugged the heavy baskets as Mak went round Tekka, Joo Chiat and Geylang Serai markets to buy her ingredients as New Year approached. On the stove, she boiled the duck in salted mustard leaves or kiam chye for our New Year’s special, itek tim, eaten with a generous dollop of spicy sambal belachan. It would always remain a special dish for me, the memory of it linking back to my mother. She also made a second soup, bakwan kepiting, a meatball with crab and bamboo shoot soup, which she was going to enhance with slices of abalone for my first taste.
Then I helped her to grind the spices on the granite batu giling for her ayam buah keluak. The heavy granite slab sat on the ground, so one had to kneel or squat to be able to handle the granite rolling pin. There was an art to crushing the fresh onions, garlic, chillies, lemon grass, candlenuts and other ingredients before rolling the pin on them. If one was not careful, bits of the chillies or spices could fly into one’s eyes or all over the place. A few drops of water were added to aid in the rolling process, and all the spices were pressed and rolled continuously till they combined into a smooth paste. When Mak fried this in hot oil, the aroma was absolutely heavenly, creating bursts of saliva in my mouth!
Before we sat for dinner for our reunion dinner, Mak sent me and my sisters round our village with small plates of the various kueh for our neighbours. We were met with warm greetings and exclamations of joy.
“Nonya make the best kueh!” our neighbours complimented Mak’s skill.
“I love her kueh tart,” Fatima said, popping one into her mouth straightaway.
“Oii!” her mother slapped her hand. “Leave for others also!”
Each neighbour placed a spoonful of loose, white sugar on one of the empty plates after they had emptied them, and then returned them to us.
“Why did they do this?” I asked Mak afterwards.
“It’s the Chinese custom to give an ang pow when we receive the other races’ New Year’s cake offerings,” explained my mother. “But for the other races, they give us sugar as a symbol for us to have sweetness in our lives.”
By the time we finished our rounds, we had a full jar of sugar!
“Sin Chia Ju Hee!” we said in Teochew to Mak when we presented our pair of Mandarin oranges to Mak on Chinese New Year morning with a genuflection. In Baba Malay, this is called a soja. The oranges represented gold.
“Tang, Tang Ju Hee,” Mak responded by presenting us with an ang pow, a red packet with some cash inside, to represent prosperity.
The Chinese New Year had begun.
The sound of firecrackers and fireworks going off punctuated every single day and night of the New Year celebrations. It was all going well, as it did every other year. Companies and businesses would make it a point to burn more firecrackers in greater lengths than their rivals. These became known as Cracker Wars. The prolonged explosions and splintered red were proof of their success and superiority. In some places, you could see small hillocks of splintered red paper. The only thing that swept it was the outdoor breeze, which shovelled up the small bits of paper and dropped them back down like crimson snowflakes. As the firecrackers burst, they emitted a pungent smell of gunpowder that gave the Chinese New Year celebration its distinctive smell. Even householders developed this sense of rivalry and the need to prove their wealth. They competed by firing more fireworks than their neighbours. At some point, the competition became intense and the firing became more reckless, shooting in through open windows and doors.
And worse, into people and faces. Some naughty boys would put one firecracker or more on the ground, light them, then cover them with an inverted, empty milk can, and run as far away as possible. When the firecrackers exploded, they would send the milk can up into the air like a rocket! The trouble was that the milk can’s missile-trajectory could not be controlled and that could lead to injuries and dire consequences.
On 21 February, Chap Goh Meh, when it was the last opportunity to fire the firecrackers, the Cracker Wars intensified on Aljunied Road, not far from Kampong Potong Pasir, and also on MacKenzie Road and North Bridge Road. No one wanted to be the first to reduce their firing. Originally a joyful activity, it had metamorphosed into a display of conceit and ego, endangering lives as the firecrackers and fireworks were fired without due caution and care, flying into houses and properties. One person in Aljunied landed his lighted firecracker into a nest of firecrackers, which caused an explosion and a fire. In all, there were 29 incidents of reckless firing. In three neighbourhoods, a total of eight shops caught fire and burned down, injuring seventy people. Six people died.
Prime Minister Lee said it was a useless waste of lives and properties.
The government decided to ban the indiscriminate firing of firecrackers and fireworks in the future. By March, the new law had come in, that anyone intending to let
