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    Grandmother's Story: Does Anybody Want to Hear?
    Grandmother's Story: Does Anybody Want to Hear?
    Grandmother's Story: Does Anybody Want to Hear?
    Ebook123 pages1 hour

    Grandmother's Story: Does Anybody Want to Hear?

    By Lin Guifeng

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    About this ebook

    This book unfolds the true-life story of a Singaporean grandmother. It spans the entire years of her life, beginning with her birth in 1943 during the Japanese Occupation of Singapore and ending in the new millennium of 2013.

    The book reveals periods of Lin's difficult and near-death infancy, her underprivileged and struggling childhood, her impoverished teenage years and her emergence from a poor young woman to a successful educated career woman and happily married woman of the 70's, 80's and 90's. After the year 2000, her life took an unexpected turn and she suffered severe financial loss and emotional trauma.

    Her family life is filled with unbearable sadness and unspeakable pain. In addition to their emotional agony, Lin and her husband lost half a million dollars of their hard-earned life savings and retirement funds through the inconsiderate actions of their loved ones. Their subsequent struggle to stay financially afloat and independent is fraught with tears and heartache, yet she overcame these obstacles to remain sane and normal to tell her story for her children and grandchildren.

    "Grandmother's Story" is a poignant tale of what it means to be a daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother and a grandmother, told simply and sincerely. Do you want to hear? Read on.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherXlibris AU
    Release dateMay 17, 2013
    ISBN9781483621746
    Grandmother's Story: Does Anybody Want to Hear?
    Author

    Lin Guifeng

    Author Lin Guifeng says, “Nobody wants to listen to old people talk these days. Often the younger generation go through life without the slightest inkling of what their parents and grandparents have gone through. I don’t want them to wonder what it was like with me, as I often wonder what it was really like with my parents and grandparents. Now that they are all gone, I can only remember bits and pieces of the puzzle. I know little or nothing at all of my own grandparents and my roots may just as well be buried in the ground. At the least, I would like to provide a start for posterity to learn more about my family. My life’s priority has been my husband, my children and my grandchildren and I have loved them all with every fibre of my being. Perhaps when they do read this book they will understand how deep my love is for them. The only regret is my decision not to disclose my actual name and the real names of my children and grandchildren in the story”.

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      Book preview

      Grandmother's Story - Lin Guifeng

      GRANDMOTHER’S STORY

      Does Anybody Want to Hear?

      Lin Guifeng

      Copyright © 2013 by Lin Guifeng.

      ISBN:          Softcover                                 978-1-4836-2173-9

                         Ebook                                      978-1-4836-2174-6

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

      in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

      without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

      Rev. date: 06/21/2013

      To order additional copies of this book, contact:

      Xlibris Corporation

      1-800-618-969

      www.Xlibris.com.au

      Orders@Xlibris.com.au

      503551

      Contents

      Preface

      Japanese Occupation Baby

      My Parents and Grandmother

      I Was a Part-Time Maid At My Aunt’s

      My Brothers and Sisters

      My School Days

      Mediums, Trances and Fortune-Telling

      Pimp and Prostitutes

      Sodomiser Goreng Pisang Vendor

      Child Molester Uncle Willy

      Floods Were Disruptive Fun

      Riots, Time To Play Hide and Seek

      My Teaching Days

      My Husband and Best Friend

      My Career Change, My New Friends

      My Children, the Centre of My Universe

      My Journalist Days

      New Challenges

      Life at an International Hotel

      The Day I Met a Prince

      A New Entertainment Resort Opens

      The Bubble Was Bursting

      My Own Master—Consultancy and Lingerie

      My Retail Woes

      My Grandchildren, My Pride and Joy

      Another Grandson, Another Phase

      When Our Roof Came Tumbling Down

      Looking Back and Going Forward

      My Favourite Things… .

      My Peeves…

      My Final Say…

      About the Author

      Acknowledgments

      This book is dedicated to Pierre, my best friend, a wonderful husband,

      a great father and the best grandfather.

      Preface

      Author Lin Guifeng says, "Nobody wants to listen to old people talk these days. Often the younger generation go through life without the slightest inkling of what their parents and grandparents have gone through. I don’t want them to wonder what it was like with me, as I often wonder what it was really like with my parents and grandparents.

      Now that they are all gone, I can only remember bits and pieces of the puzzle. I know little or nothing at all of my own grandparents and my roots may just as well be buried in the ground. At the least, I would like to provide a start for posterity to learn more about my family.

      I never knew or had the chance to see my paternal grandparents, but I was fortunate to have been brought up by my maternal grandmother. Ah Ma was an amazing woman, a toiler and survivor. She was a matriarch in her own right, even though she did not possess the trappings of wealth and fame. She devoted her entire life to her children and all her grandchildren. She lost two husbands at a young age. Her second husband, my grandfather was a scholar whom she fell in love with. It was not a matched marriage like those of her time. But unfortunately, he died of tuberculosis and she was left to fend for herself and raise all her children, three from her first marriage and three from her marriage to my grandfather, as a single mother. When her favourite youngest son died tragically in a motor-cycle accident at Finlayson Green at the age of 29, she was devastated, but she picked herself up and focussed her love on his year-old baby son, whom she cared for till her death at the age of 96. She was up on her feet and still working till the final two years of her life. Long-suffering, self-sacrificing and loving: these are words that best describe her.

      As for me, I cannot hold a candle to my grandmother, but my life’s priority has been my husband, my children and my grandchildren and I have loved them all with every fibre of my being. Perhaps if they do read this book they will understand how deep my love is for them.

      Japanese Occupation Baby

      I was born in Syonan island at the height of the Japanese Imperial Supremacy in Asia. So I was actually a Syonanese, a citizen of old Japan of the 1940`s. Syonan was the name Japan gave to Singapore island after the Japanese army vanquished the British on 15 February 1942. But my Syonanese nationality was a short-lived one. When World War 11 ended in September 1945, the Japanese returned Syonan to the British and I was deregistered as a British Subject several months after.

      Actually, I am a Chinese Teochew by race. My father was an orphan from China. He was named Heng Cheng Joo at birth, but in later years he acquired a new name, when he was affectionately called Ong Lee Heng by his Hokien friends. It meant Heng, you are lucky. He was among many Chinese youths who had been shipped off by British missionaries to Singapura. At the age of 10, this big buffalo as he was referred to by his teacher, formally entered school at St Josephś Institution. Christened Peter, he proved to be musically inclined and excelled as an organist. But he never pursued a musical career. He had other pursuits in mind. He had many talents and became a land-owner. He owned expansive hectares of orchard, growing durians, coconut trees and other tropical fruits on his pig farm.

      I was born on a very dreary hot, stuffy, afternoon in Singapore in July 1943. My mother, Wee Guek Beng, must have been the saddest mother alive. She wept buckets. She did not want to be saddled with another daughter. Her first-born was a daughter and it had been a humiliating experience for her. But my elder sister, born exactly two months after the British surrender of Singapore to the Japanese, was a beautiful baby and that somehow made up for her disappointment. Besides, when she came out into this world, she wore her umbilical cord around her neck, like a string of pearls. This was auspiciously interpreted by my grandmother, whom we all addressed as Ah Ma. What a beautiful girl. She will have great fortune bestowed on her, she consoled my mother. My sister was feisty and spirited and my Ah Ma, who loved giving strange names to all her grandchildren, called her chilly padi, which is the Malay name of the tiny chilly pepper. So Padi she was known throughout her life.

      When my mother was expecting me, she prayed fervently for a son every day. For her, a boy would have been the greatest gift to her. Sons were prized trophies. They elevated a womanś status as a mother and wife. On the day I was born, her sorrow was unspeakable, to say the least. Ah Ma, who was always midwife at all her grandchildren’s birth, was also secretly disappointed, but she tried to make light of it. I was told she was tempted to suffocate me, but could not find it in her heart to do so. All she could do was comfort my mother, while promising that she would find adoptive parents for her unwanted baby girl.

      However, my physical appearance did not make me a likely candidate for any offers of adoption. I was puny, scrawny and pretty sickly, too. Not a very pretty sight. Soon after birth, I developed pneumonia and was wheezing and struggling, as if every breath was going to be my last. My Ah Ma really thought I would be dead within the first two months, for, each time a gust of drought swept by, I would be gasping for breath and she would just watch helplessly and wait for nature to take its course. But by some divine intervention, I lived through my two months and kept living, even though we were all under-nourished and subsisted in extreme poverty in a wooden hut in my father’s vast orchard in Loyang. I did not have a name and was referred to as Ah-ah because that was the sound I made while I was crying perpetually. Many a-time, my Ah Ma had to muzzle my mouth with her palm to stop me from making too loud an ah-ah-ah sound that might bring some undesirable attention from passerby Japanese soldiers.

      When I failed to expire after several months, my father registered my birth and called me Guifeng (Precious Phoenix). After the Japanese occupation, this tattered orangey-red certificate of birth, by then defaced,

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