Lim Ah Yin still remembered vividly the evening of the 11th of December in 1948. That was the turning point of her life as a 11-year-old child. Her childhood ended on that day.

Lim Ah Yin’s father was taken away by the British troops, and was shot dead the following day in Batang Kali of Malaya during the Malayan Emergency. Her mother, who was eight months’ pregnant, was spared. However, when Lim Ah Yin first heard of the gunshots, she thought British soldiers had killed her mother. She was distraught. “What about me and my little sisters?” Lim Ah Yin loved her sisters. Continue reading →

LIM Kok used to be running around the rubber plantation where his father worked in Batang Kali in Malaya. His father Lim Tian Swee was a proud man. He drove a lorry. Every early morning when it was still dark, he would pick up his workers from the rustic villages nearby to take them to collect rubber latex in the plantation. For other workers, Lim Tian Swee was their supervisor, so he was nicknamed Lam Kow, an honorific name for ‘the head’. One day, the nine-year-old Lim Kok did not jump onto his father’s lorry for a trip to the plantation. A day later, Lim Kok’s uncle told him that his father had died.

He was beheaded. Continue reading →

A Chinese tear-a-page calendar is hanged on the wall in Chong Koon Ying’s front room. The much cherished traditional Chinese lunar calendar informs her of Chinese festivals such as the New Year, Dragon Boat Festival and Tomb Sweeping Festival. Last year, when I visited my mother in Singapore, I also saw a similar Chinese Lunar Calendar on the wall in the kitchen, even though my mother is illiterate and she could not possibly understand the Chinese characters embedded in the calendar.

People of a certain age are particularly fond of the Chinese lunar calendar. It relates to their culture and tradition. It reminds them of their ancestors’ ways of life thousands of years ago. Traditional people observe the rules set out in the calendar in their everyday life, from farming, entertaining guests, travelling, moving furniture to worshiping ancestors. By adhering to the rules, Chinese people feel attached to their root, usher in happiness, and avoid misfortunes. Continue reading →

When the writer Mr QUEK Jin Teck moved to a new village called Ulu Yam in Selangor in Malaysia in 2005, he was trying to retreat from a hectic life as a social activist, and was ready to retire due to his ill health. Mr Quek was a historian with 9 major books into Malaysian history, including the War of Resistance against Japan in Malaya and his research into Lai Teck the Spy (马新抗日史料: 神秘莱特).

However, with a twist of fate, Mr Quek did not retire quietly. Instead, he shouldered a massive burden in 2008, culminating in a moving campaign in Malaysia to bring justice home to the families whose fathers and sons were brutally killed by the British troops, on the 11th or 12th of December 1948, six months after the 12-year Malayan Emergency was launched. Continue reading →