Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Roots (Part 3).

This is exciting news! My cousin Khoo How Ghee (eldest son of "second uncle" Khoo Ghee Liam) contacted me and provided key missing details (and a correction: Jalan Puspa, not Lorong Puspa).

Now I know that Ah Ma's name is Yeo Cho (just two parts to her name, the surname Yeo and the given name Cho), that she was born on 17 Dec 1892, and that she died on 6 Feb 1980. Ah Kong was born in the same year, on 16 April.

How Ghee also gave me an idea of what life was like for Ah Kong and Ah Ma:

Grandfather was a karang-guni man. He worked very hard pedalling a tri-cycle to buy rice guni-sacks to mend and resell. The tri-cycle had a registration no. 20. He lived at 644 Pasir Panjang Road (later changed to 8 Jalan Puspa).

Grandma had coconut trees at the kampong. She occasionally engaged a man to climb up those trees to collect the coconuts, and de-husk them to put up for sale. There was also a small sugar-cane plantation. Our grand-parents lived in the same house with "third uncle" (Khoo Ghee Teck).

According to the death ad for Ah Kong that I posted yesterday, his burial site was at this place called Hock Eng Sueh. It is actually Hock Eng Seng Chinese cemetery, with its location beside the former Lorong Panchor off Sixth Avenue. That burial ground no longer exists and my grandparents' remains now rest at Mandai Columbarium. I will be paying a visit there at the earliest opportunity.

My nephew Tan Huat uncovered this tidbit: in 1997, local film maker Tan Pin Pin made a short movie, Moving House, which featured the 1995 exhumation of her great-grandparents' graves from this same Hock Eng Seng cemetery. It is 21 minutes long...

http://vimeo.com/43436279

1 comment:

  1. Are the more information about the Hock Eng Seng Cemetery? I have tried to find it in the forrest, but could not get in there. I tried opposit the Regent Villa busstop. Please realy on mail: anker@ankersteen.dk.
    I am from Denmark. Kind regards Anker

    ReplyDelete