Some 20 years ago, my late Grandfather wrote a short account of some parts of his life. He had this published and distributed to quite a few persons. I too was given a copy when it was first published. Sadly, he wrote it in Chinese and for all these years that I have had it, I could only appreciate the grainy black and white photographs. Until now. My uncle Stephen had it translated and earlier today he emailed the translated work to us. There were quite a few gems.

 

In the late 40’s he was sent to prison on suspicion (yes those detention without trial days started all those years ago) of being a collaborator for the Communists in Malaya. There were 2 reasons for this suspicion. He and someone else were going around canvassing investments in post-war China. Of course, the communists were on the ascendancy then so the tenuous link was there I suppose. The other reason was apparently, an Englishman had a few years before, wanted a gala trip to Pulau Ketam for some surreptitious moral dereliction. He approached the Hwee Ann (a branch of Hokkien) Association for assistance and grandfather who was a chief of sorts then, refused. This Englishman (named Hilbert or something) was unfortunately the District Officer of Klang and had a grudge to accompany his good memory. He was the one who falsely dobbed grandfather in. The result was that grandfather was wrongly imprisoned for almost 2 years with immense consequential sufferings on grandmother.

 

The other was less heroic and came as no surprise. It was his abject failure in reading business trends. He went into a diverse range of business ventures, almost all of which failed, resulting in gargantuan debts. I recall him complaining once, about an uncle of mine who buttered his bread and then had some jam on it as well. Grandfather thought it should be either, not both butter and jam. I guess such frugality always has its roots and in my grandfather’s case it was the serial failures of his business ventures. I recall citing the family’s poor track records in business ventures as a reason for getting out of practice as a partner in a wonderful law firm in KL. We just don’t have it in us to mint the dough.

 

I’m itching to put the whole account in a blog but I don’t know how grandfather would feel about that…