Lost Singapore childhood: 05 (Catching pond-bred fish) (Singapore)

 

Grandma’s coconut plantation in Tampines in the north east of Singapore also had two fish ponds.  Two harvests a year, which were like Xmas to me, the tomboy who loved (still does) mucking about, catching things.  I’d arrive the night before, to stay over, ready to pitch in first thing the next day.

    One corner of the pond would be opened up to let the water run away.  This was a night-long process.

    Once drained, the pond would be like a mangrove swamp at low tide:  one big muddy surface.

    There would be big wicker / bamboo baskets dotted about for each person to reach without having to wade through too much mud, and drop our catch.

    As the water level drops, the fish is stuck in the mud, unable to swim freely, yet having enough water to survive.  Their dorsal fins would be clearly visible in the mud, so it’s easy to spot them and catch them (they can’t swim away).  

    The tricky bit is how to grab them without hurting your hands:  if you grab them wrongly, say plunging your hands straight ONTO the fish from the top (which an inexperienced catcher, a child to boot, might do), then you get pricked by the spines.

    The way I was taught was to grab the mouth area with one hand, and the tail with the other, pick up the whole fish that way, and throw it into the basket.  (Don’t know how professionals do it.)

    Catfish were the trickier prey left to the grown-ups.

    On one edge of the pond were earthen pots (with the mouth smaller than the body), planted firmly into the bank at an angle (mouth slightly higher / upwards).  When the pond was full, the catfish could go in and out of these earthen pots at ease — for some reason, it was catfish that liked to go and hide in these pots.  With the pond drained, the mouth of the earthen pots would be a few inches above the mud, so those catfish that had gone into the pots the night before would be stranded by the day of the harvest.  This made them easy to catch:  just stick your hand inside and pull them out.  

    It was a job for the grown-ups, though, and for the men specifically, because catfish are long and slippery, so they require strength:  to grip them (inside the earthen pot, therefore only one hand), pull them out (with one hand), and hold on to them without letting them wriggle out of your hands.

    Every fish harvest (twice a year) made me feel most grown-up and useful, being able to contribute towards Grandma’s business, as well as learning little tricks (even though I wasn’t planning on going on to becoming a fisherwoman).

(Singapore, 1960s)

Lost Singapore childhood: 04 (Catching white clams) (Singapore)

 

The mangrove swamp on the edge of Grandma’s coconut plantation in Tampines in the north east of Singapore was not the only hunting ground for clams.

    This time, white clams on a tiny sandy beach just round the corner from that mangrove swamp.

    White clams are not only circumferentially bigger than razor clams but a very different shape as well.  When they dive into the sand as the tide recedes, they also leave a hole in the sand that is the shape of the cross section of their shorter length/width.  As they bulge out more than razor clams, the hole is much wider and much, much easier to spot.  The holes are also easier to identify as a damp sandy surface is more compact with fewer hidden/buried objects underneath, so a white clam hole stands out clearly, compared to a mangrove swamp’s muddy surface that might have holes made by stones that have sunk down, or razor clam holes that then get covered over by sliding mud.

    I’d hazard a wild guess that even my cousins’ fingers of steel wouldn’t be able to plunge into the coarse sandy soil.  Definitely a bamboo strip job.  

    Once you have your own bamboo strip, though, which I didn’t have (still kicking myself for not having got one made for my own use without having to borrow my cousins’), it takes some ten minutes or so to fill a bucket of these white clams:  walk along, look, spot the distinctive-shape hole, plunge the bamboo strip, yank it up, and up the white clams come.  Probably also because it’s harder for them to diver deeper in sand (more compacted) than in mud.

    Equally scrumptious when stir fried with chopped-up garlic and fresh red chilli.

    I don’t know why I never went back to that spot regularly.  My Wuhan friend asked me recently whether I have any regrets in life and what they might be.  This would be one of them.  So many missed opportunities, silly me, with this tiny beach being gone for good, as Singapore is all built up now.  (I blame it on not having got a bamboo-strip plunger made for myself, which would’ve allowed me to go off every time on my own, without having to borrow one from my cousins.)

(Singapore, 1960s)

Lost Singapore childhood: 03 (Catching razor clams) (Singapore)

 

Grandma’s coconut plantation in Tampines, being close to the estuary in the north east of Singapore (facing Pulau Ubin in the Johor Strait), had a mangrove swamp on its edge.

    At low tide, one could go and catch razor clams in the drained mangrove swamp.

    Equipment:

• your own hand(s) if you’re not a suburban wuss like me — my cousins (who lived on the plantation) had fingers of steel for digging into the mud and yanking out the razor clam that had burrowed into the mud as the water receded;
• OR:  a blade for the above.  The ones my cousins had were homemade: a strip of bamboo, 1”– 1.5” wide, 6” long at least to hold at one end and to dig deep enough into the mud as the razor clams are ever so quick at diving deeper and deeper when they sense the intrusive (and life-threatening) human presence;
• a wicker basket or similar kind of container (e.g., a bucket) to put the clams in.

The process:

• walk along the muddy bed of the drained mangrove swamp, looking carefully at the surface of the mud for signs of the location of the razor clams;
• when the razor clam dives into the mud as the water recedes, it will leave behind a hole in the mud that’s its cross-sectional shape — takes a bit of practice at first to tell which holes are razor clam holes, and which ones are just holes, i.e., not the right shape.  My cousins were experienced enough to even reject clam holes that were too small for their trouble, so the size of the holes also mattered to them — whereas I was such a townie and a greenhorn that I was just happy to find any razor clams at all at all;
• the main skill is not so much identifying the holes, but the speed of plunging the fingers (or bamboo strip) in, to beat the razor clam in its escape.  I would often find the right holes and dive in with my bamboo strip, only to see the top end of the razor clam sinking down as it burrowed deeper, away from me, and lose it.

    In hindsight, it’s frightening now to think how dangerous it could’ve been:  walking in the mud in bare feet without knowing what lay beneath — might’ve been broken glass.  Children are so fearless — or the ignorance of youth and lack of life experience.

    It was muddy work, which children have no qualms about — most kids, in fact, love mucking about.  It was cool respite from the tropical humidity and heat, having your legs immersed in mud up to the knees.  Above all, it was really satisfying to have a dish of razor clams stir-fried in chopped-up garlic and fresh red chilli served up at the dinner table that evening.  Freshly caught by yourself!

    The hurdle to anticipate was how to explain the appearance of the clams, as we were not allowed to go and run around, but expected to stay at home and do our homework and revision.  We often had to say our cousins had caught them and given us a share — a white lie that was, luckily, never challenged.  

    The trickier bit was not to arrive home, all muddy, at the same time as my uncle whose day trip into town was the window that gave us the opportunity to leave our studies and go into the mangrove swamps.  We had to make sure we were all hosed down before he got back.  So, arriving home was a precarious undertaking, sidling round the side and back of the house where the well and bathroom were, to wash off the mud, making sure not to run into my uncle should he already have got back, but it was worth it every single time.  

    Especially now, some 60 years later, looking back, with nowhere in Singapore like it to go to.  

    I’d love to hear from any Singapore readers who might be able to tell me I’m wrong.

(Singapore, 1960s)

*wuss: (MBP dictionary) a weak or ineffectual person (often used as a general term of abuse)

Lost Singapore childhood: 02 (Picking your own coconut) (Singapore)

 

These days, when children (in Britain or Western affluent countries anyway) invite a friend or two back home, they’d more than likely be playing a computer game, or watching a children’s film on a big TV screen.

    When I was 11, the two siblings immediately above me who were sent to live on Grandma’s coconut plantation in Tampines would invite friends home to go and pick their own coconuts.

    Equipment:  

1. a very long pole — often two bamboo poles tied together end-to-end to make it doubly long, to reach the bunches of coconut up in the tree;
2. a sickle tied to the end of the doubly long bamboo pole — for cutting free the cluster of coconuts;
3. a parang (a chopper knife that's a bit like a machete) — for lopping off the top 1/6th or so of the coconut husk to reach the hard shell, and for making a hole in the hard shell to let the coconut water out; later, after the coconut water is drunk or tipped into the bucket, for splitting the hard shell to get at the flesh;
4. a bucket (or two) — to drain off whatever coconut water that can’t be drunk on the spot, to be taken home;
5. a spoon for everyone — to scoop out the flesh for eating on the spot.

    Armed with the above, we’d march off to the trees, which were all around Grandma’s thatched house, so it was no great distance to walk in the tropical humidity — in theory (if you find the right-age bunch fairly early).  

    We had to look for the right-age coconut:  too young, and the flesh would be like jelly, not quite developed; too old, and the flesh would be hard and crunchy, more for grating and squeezing to get coconut milk for making curries and other sweet things like puddings and drinks.  So, it took a bit of specialist knowledge, or you’d be bringing down bunches of coconuts that are no good for this kind of outing.

    The steps:

1. Walk around and look up at the clusters of coconuts.
2. Once the right-age bunch has been found, hook the sickle onto the stalk of the bunch — this is the tricky bit for a teenager, who may not have the strength.
3. Once the sickle blade is in place, pull with all your might, let go of the pole, and RUN AWAY from the falling coconuts and the long pole.
4. Return to the spot, and take your pick, using your eyes to ascertain the right age from close quarters.
5. Use the parang to lop off the top 1/6th or so of the coconut — you will know when you can see the shell.  If you lop off too much, you end up with a big gaping hole, spilling most of the coconut water inside, so this part also requires a bit of skill and judgement.
6. Make a hole with the parang tip in the shell, big enough to hold up the coconut and tip out the water into your upraised mouth.  Drink all you can/want, tip the rest into the bucket to take home.  (A Chinese cultural practice belief:  coconut water is yin [of yin and yang]; drinking too much of it, especially for young people who are not fully grown yet, will soften/weaken the knee/leg bones.)
7. Use the parang to split open the coconut — this is the stage when you get final confirmation of your judgement (of the age of the coconut for this purpose).  If the coconut is too young, you get jelly-consistency flesh, so you will have to go and beg some off the others in the group.  Ditto if it’s too old and the flesh is hard and crunchy, which cannot be scooped out with a spoon — you’ll need to crack the shell and prise the hard flesh off the shell, which is a tricky task that requires a bit of experience.  The older flesh type can at least be taken home for the adults to grate and squeeze the milk out, to make a curry or some sweet pudding kind of thing.

    Writing the above, I can see a replay of the scene as if it were only last week.  Not something the modern-day Singapore child can experience anymore.

(Singapore, 1960s)

*parang: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parang_(knife)

Lost Singapore childhood: 01 (Having a coconut plantation for your backyard) (Singapore)

 

My maternal grandma had a coconut plantation in Tampines [pronounced tam-pin-nees] in the north eastern part of Singapore, not far from Pasir Ris, edging on the new Changi International Airport.  (Grandma’s plantation was, in fact, requisitioned for the expansion of Changi Airport.)

    The two siblings immediately above me grew up on the plantation.  My mother was renting a room in the suburbs (not far from Kovan on one side and Serangoon Gardens on the other), so there was no space for them there.  Being the youngest, I was kept by my mother’s side.

    Although my mother bought a bungalow with a big garden when I was five, it was still only a suburban space, compared to Grandma’s coconut plantation which also housed a chicken farm (for eggs) and two fish ponds (with two harvests annually).  (The pigs went during the early 60s.)

    For a child from the suburbs visiting during the school holidays and weekends, it was heavenly.  I’d have breakfast, then go off wandering around the plantation on a bicycle, come back for lunch, then go off wandering around the plantation on the bike until dinner time.

    Wandering around meant, for example, discovering, on the edge of a pond, a coconut tree that had keeled over for some reason, but not totally uprooted.  It was lying over the water, so I could walk on it to its top end, sit there, with my feet dangling over the water, almost in the middle of the pond, completely surrounded by water — and silence.  

    I’d sit there for ages, just me and nature.

(Singapore, 1960s)

*The tampines tree in Singapore:(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sloetia) 

Sloetia is a monotypic genus (i.e. a genus that contains just one species) of plants in the mulberry family, Moraceae. The sole species is Sloetia elongata, a tree native to southeastern Asia, ranging from the Nicobar Islands to Peninsular Malaysia, Sumatra, Borneo, and Sulawesi. It has been described a number of times by different botanists, and thus has several synonyms.

Perception of colour

 

I have a pair of leather Mary Jane shoes that I would call green — “emerald” on a chart I’ve just looked up on google.  

    This pair of shoes would look green when I wore them with a(n azure/sky) blue dress, but blue when I wore them with a(n avocado) green T-shirt.

    Student Amelia (not her real name, Singaporean, aged 80) called the sweater I was wearing when I went to deliver her fruit and veg on Friday “mauve”, whilst I think of it as “reddish brown”.  Another student Ruby (not her real name, British, aged 71) said “deep pink”, and friend Vernon (not his real name, Italian, aged 67) calls it “purple” — I sent them a photo of it, so it could be the light.

    I mention the above people’s places of origin and age for a reason:

• different cultures have different ways of seeing and describing colours (see below for “brown”); 
• age might also play a part — either because that was how those colours were perceived during their childhood days (i.e., modern times might now have new words for those same colours); or eyesight deteriorating with age affects the outcome.

    I have had episodes of identifying colours differently from other people:  what I’d say was green, they’d say was blue; and vice versa.

    So, is it me, or is it them?  How does one prove which party is right in labelling a particular colour?  

    These questions have been floating in my head since the 80s when I first became aware of the discrepancy between how I see colours and how others see them.  

    I suppose the test is for each party to look at a particular object, then match them to a colour on a colour chart, and see if they end up identifying the same colour.

    This reminds me of brown:  I was teaching colours to a batch of evening class students one year.  Got a bit stuck when it came to brown, apart from 巧克力色 qiǎokèlì sè / “chocolate colour” and 咖啡色 kāfēi sè / “coffee colour” — which in themselves cause a problem:  dark chocolate or milky?; coffee with milk or not?

    There are two standard/overall words for “brown” in Chinese: 褐色 hè sè, and 棕色 zōng sè. 

 

    褐 hè is coarse cloth, therefore undyed, therefore brown — it’s more dark brown than light/pale brown.  Googling it produces a description of 黄黑色 huáng hēi sè / “yellow black colour”.

    棕 zōng is palm tree/fibre, therefore not as dark as 褐, I’d say.  Googling it nets the description of “anywhere between red and yellow”, so 棕色 for brown is definitely on the lighter side — it has “red” whilst 褐色 has “black”.  Yellow is the element common to both.

    Looked up my hard copy dictionary as soon as I got home from that lesson back in 1985 (no internet).  My discoveries:

1. English “brown bread” = 黑面包 hēi miànbāo / “black bread” (presumably the first time the Chinese saw dark bread was pumpernickel, which is darker than our now-common brown bread)
2. English “brown cow” = 黄牛 huáng niú / “yellow cow” (also = a tout)
3. English “brown dog” = 黄狗 huáng gǒu / “yellow dog”
4. English “brown sugar” = 红糖 hóng táng / “red sugar” (in my S.E.Chinese dialect Teochew, it’s “ou tng” / 乌糖 wū táng / “black sugar”)
5. English “brown [leather] shoes” = 红皮鞋 hóng pí xié / “red skin/hide shoe”

    The above list of the Chinese words for the English “brown” shows that the Chinese versions are not a constant, but vary along the black–yellow–red scale.  

(I’ve arranged the examples with yellow, the common denominator (to 褐色 and 棕色), in the middle (yellow cow and yellow dog), to make it easier to see it straddling the two extremes.)

    This is what I mean about “cultural perspective” when I gave the places of origin of Amelia (Singapore), Ruby (England) and Vernon (Italy).  I think their varying descriptions of my sweater (which I call reddish brown) might also be due to cultural perspective.  

    Only problem is:  Amelia is from Singapore, like me; she’s from the Teochew dialect group, like me; she’s only nine years older, so she’s in the same age group.  Yet she calls it “mauve” and I call it “reddish brown”….  Back to the drawing board.