A tribute to my grandfather

So far, I have avoided discussing personal matters about myself in my blog.

But tonight, while watching the TV programme "Chinese Restaurants' it struck me that I should tell the story of my grandfather's chinese restaurant too.

It was around the year 1940. China was in turmoil as communism swept across every nooks and villages. Unable to withstand the hardship, my grandfather, Choe Lan, left Guangdong province for 'Nanyang' translated as "the place in the Southern Ocean".

I do not know how many months he took to travel south. By and by, he settled in an area south of Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia. There, together with 2 or 3 partners, he started a chinese restaurant.

In those days, there was really not much a unskilled migrant could do to earn a living. Either you worked in the tin mines, became a farmer, became a hawker, set up a provision shop, or set up a restaurant. If not, you would need to join a street gang, or, for a female, worked as a maid or offered prostitution. There were no 'factories' to work in.

My father worked in my grandfather's restaurant.

After a few years, business did not do very well, the restaurant partners bickered against one another, and the restaurant was sold off.

My grandfather and father packed their bags and ventured further south - they came to Singapore. After they found a place to stay, my mother, my grandmother and all her children, took a train out of Ipoh and joined my father and grandfather in Singapore.

I was born in Singapore.

My grandfather died in 1966 after being paralyzed and bedridden for 2 years due to stroke.

This must be a typical poignant migrant's story. (Actually I left out the poignant parts.) As I pieced together the roots of my earlier 2 generations, I was deeply humbled that my grandfather, perhaps compelled by painful circumstances, had greater drive, took greater risk, and achieved much more than I. In that sense, I have failed to do better, to achieved more, in life than my grandfather. I do hope I have inherited more of his survival instinct, ability and courage.

Let this blog entry be a Tribute to my grandfather.