Hokkien roots, Brunei soil: My father’s journey across borders and spiritual planes [Eye on Fujian series]

(All images provided by the writer.)

My grandfather, Fang Qing Xiang (transliteration; 方庆祥), was born in Leiyu (also known as Little Kinmen, located southwest of the main island) around the early 1900s. He had left for Nanyang with his first son, Pang Boon Ting, leaving behind his first wife and daughter. 

Shortly after arriving in Brunei, my uncle Boon Ting stayed on while my grandfather moved to Lawas in Sarawak, Malaysia, where he met his second wife, and subsequently to Labuan in Sabah, where he met his third wife, my father’s mother. 

My uncle has since passed away in the late 1990s, but my 93-year-old aunt is still a sprightly woman living in Kinmen.

My father, Richard Hong Kuan Yin, was born in Sabah in 1948. At 77 years old, he spoke with great clarity about his childhood when I brought up the subject during my trip back to Brunei earlier this year.

His mother had passed away from an illness when he was just two or three years old. He recalled his earliest memory of a sombre mood of a funeral, seeing his mother’s body lying supine. That day a Kadazan (an indigenous ethnic group in Sabah) had cheered him up by putting him inside an overturned rattan chair. My young father laughed wildly as he was dragged back and forth by the kind man.

My grandfather had zou jianghu (走江湖, make a living on the road), roaming the different towns to make a living with my father in tow. What my grandfather did to earn money, my father did not know for sure, but he recalled seeing my grandfather buy a live chicken from one end of the market just to resell for profit at the other end.

My father described the first decade of his life as one of wandering, living with and under the care of four different families while my grandfather worked during the day. My father would help out with whatever business the families engaged in. He rolled cigars; packed bee pang (rice cake snack) in plastic to sell; cooked leftover food with water hyacinth from the nearby pond to feed pigs; and planted vegetables and killed worms and pests that turned up to make sure the crops grew well. He had also followed the rubber tappers in the wee hours of morning to tap rubber and process rubber sheets through flattening pressers. He had accidentally pressed his thumb into the machine and still bears a scar from that injury today.

While these jobs were mostly to help out the host families, my father fondly remembered receiving a one-time salary of three ringgit (US$0.75), a hefty sum at the time for a young child. He splurged it all immediately on a toy car. 

“Was it all work and no play back then?” I asked.

“We would play football! I was a goalkeeper once and was kicked unconscious,” he laughed. 

My father was the youngest kid on the field, and once he gained consciousness, an older boy asked in Malay, “Boleh kira satu, dua, tiga?” (Can you count one, two, three?). My father counted and was deemed fit to continue playing.

Another one of his pastimes was picking leeches from the pond before school, which naturally led to him being scolded by his teacher and punished during after-school assembly.

“I was a little rascal, always getting into trouble. Everytime before the school bell rang, I would pray for rain. There’s no assembly if it’s raining, so I wouldn’t be forced to stand outside in punishment,” he said.

At night, yearning for my grandfather, his only family member around, my father would sniff my grandfather’s pillow to drift off to sleep. 

My grandfather, who was literate, having received schooling in Leiyu, had emphasised the importance of education to my father.

He would say to my father in Hokkien, “Geok bu tok, bu seng ki; lim bu hak, bu ti gi.” (玉不琢，不成器；人不学，不知义; if a piece of jade is not carved and polished, it is not a piece of jewellery. If a man does not learn, he will not know what righteousness is.)

My father described the simple life among the other people who were also just living to get by. Meals consisted of rice paired with canned food, such as fermented black bean fish, or barbequed shark meat — simple yet delicious and enough to satisfy the appetite. The homes he lived in were spare with just one or two bedrooms, and open-air living rooms. There was no electricity in these homes, and the night would be lit by paraffin lamps or carbide lamps that you had to pump twice a day. He would sleep under a mosquito tent with the other children of the household. 

My father spoke fondly of his childhood in Malaysia, saying that despite being poor, “at least there was renqing (人情, human connection)”.

At around seven or eight years old, my father, donning new brown canvas shoes, took his first plane ride with my grandfather to Brunei. My grandfather had enough of wandering and decided to give my father a more stable life, so he decided to reunite with his first son in Brunei. My uncle had set up a general provisions shop in Kampung Serasa, and it eventually thrived into a big business that still exists today, carried on by my cousins (my uncle’s business acumen eventually earned him the title of Pehin Kapitan Cina, conferred by the sultan of Brunei).

My father was enrolled in St Andrew’s School, although he was two to three years older than his classmates, and helped out at my uncle’s store during his free time. He had brought his rebellious streak from Malaysia to Brunei, with a reputation of being in fights preceding him. Just shy of being promoted as a bank officer in his first job at Maybank, he had gotten into a fist fight. On another occasion, a broken glass bottle and a sickle were involved.

But the father that I know is a gentle pacifist that speaks eloquently and reasonably to dispel any conflict — perhaps that is in his later years, after decades of service to the Taoist temple.

During my childhood, my family went to a Taoist temple twice a week. The temple was set up in a residential house, and around a dozen other families would come together for temple services. I was particularly fond of these evenings as it was a great time to meet children from the other families. We were given free rein to run around the house and play with the dogs while the adults busied themselves with the service.

It was all fun and games, but when the thunderous booms of the small wooden chair that was used as a spirit medium sounded, us children knew it was time to observe or play quietly at the side. 

The wooden chair, about 30 cm in height and width, was held by two people during each session. Only a handful of men had that responsibility, one of whom was my father. It is said that a deity (and there could be multiple taking turns in one session) would take control of the chair, using one of the legs of the chair to trace Chinese characters on the table to communicate with the temple worshippers.

My father described that there were deities that were more aggressive and would cause the chair to swing aggressively. Especially during festive occasions, where one deity after another would take control of the chair, it could be physically demanding for the two men holding the chair, and they could be drained of their energy once the deity departed. 

“One time, I almost fainted. Your mom saw that my lips had turned pale,” my father said.

My father admitted several times during our conversations, “I’m a believer but not superstitious.” 

When he was called up by a deity to helm the chair and be able to invite deities or loh tang (loosely translated as communicating with the spirits), it was made clear that this responsibility would be taken up without any expectation of rewards. At most, my father said in Hokkien, “Dua shi huat sio shi, shio shi huat bo shi.” (大事化小事，小事化无事; major issues would be reduced to minor ones, and minor ones to nothing.)

Aside from the charged or solemn atmosphere, I remember the joyous mood during special occasions, such as a deity’s birthday. 

I would sing my heart out during the chorus of a birthday song sang in Mandarin (as I did not know the words to the other parts of the song):

“Zhu he ni, zhu he ni, zhu ni shou bi nan shan gao!” (祝贺你，祝贺你，祝你寿比南山高; may you live as long as the Southern Mountain)

My father estimates that there are currently close to a hundred informal private Chinese temples in residential homes, but only a handful that use a wooden chair as a spirit medium.

In a country where the nightlife is sparse, the temple became a communal gathering place for the Chinese community. Chinese people make up 10% of Brunei’s total population, of which a majority are from the Hokkien dialect group, with many of our ancestors originating from Xiamen or Kinmen. Even among those from the other dialect groups, such as Hainan, Foochow and Hakka, Hokkien is the most commonly used dialect. During temple services, people would talk to each other in Hokkien, but Mandarin was used when the deities were present. 

The temple worshippers would come forward to ask for guidance in making decisions, resolve an inner conflict, seek protection or luck ahead of an event, or inquire about a person who had recently passed. These temple services were not for profit and conducted purely to help the community.

And it was not just to help the Chinese community. Many years ago, the Malay reserve unit of Brunei’s police force had conducted border patrols between Brunei and Malaysia. A young policeman was afflicted by a spirit from the forest and became hysterical. Brought back to the police barrack, the young man was held down by four men, one on each limb, all throughout the night, but each group was exhausted from trying to subdue him. My father was called in to help the next day. 

He arrived at the barrack in the afternoon and saw a young man in a fit of rage with his eyes looking around wildly, and my father immediately knew it was an aggressive mountain spirit that was causing trouble. He lit a fire to burn a paper talisman halfway before dipping it in water, and recited a prayer. He splashed the water on the young man, who immediately slumped backwards. My father described, “His body went limp like a sotong (squid).”

This was not the end, as the mountain spirit could still linger. 

My father chuckled and said, “That night, four trucks carrying policemen in plain clothes came to our temple.”

The group came to the temple for three consecutive nights before the young man was deemed alright. The deity gave him a protective talisman and advised him to continue to stay strong and pray in his own faith.

“Once that was done, one by one the other two dozen policemen also asked for protective talismans,” he laughed as he recalled.

Months later, on a trip driving from Brunei to Miri in Sarawak, a rifle-wielding security guard stopped my father and mother in their car at the Brunei post right before the border. 

The guard said, “Uncle, kau lupa saya kah?” (Uncle, have you forgotten me?)

It was the young policeman that my father had helped. 

My father told me, “When we do good deeds, it is not for recognition, I couldn’t even remember what the young man looked like. I don’t try to commit to memory who I help, thinking that they owe me. We should never hold that mentality, especially when we do this in service of the temple and deities.”

My father has since retired from temple services and from his profession as a photographer. He is now a tea enthusiast, spending his days lunching or lim kopi (catching up over a drink) with his buddies from St Andrew’s School, and welcoming visitors at home for a chat and to enjoy his collection of teas.

However, there is one story I can never seem to get even after several attempts. 

“How did you and Mama meet?”

Both my mother and father gave a cheeky smile and said that they can’t remember. 

My father pointed to my mother and chuckled as he said, “It’s you who chased after me, wasn’t it?” 

Maybe on my next trip home, I’ll press them again for the story.

Related: Fujian merchants: Fearless for gain, faithful for clan | Mandarin learning in Brunei’s Chinese schools: Practical considerations