A Trek Into The Past: A Side Show

A Trek Into The Past

A Side Show

by

Yakkity Yak



“A Side-Show”


Footballing interest spawned yet another side show. We were somehow intrigued by the photographs in the newspapers, showing the great athleticism of footballers; mostly of centre-forwards scoring goals or the acrobatic feats of goalkeepers foiling goals. Unable to afford our own newspapers, we begged our richer Indian neighbours for the previous week’s papers so that we could scour through them, painstakingly cut out the pictures we wanted and meticulously pasted them on a jotter book. The jotter book costs 5 cents and we needed to justify the purchase to our mother. I told her that the entire exercise of cutting and pasting those pictures were part of a class project ordered by my stern form teacher.

We were great fans of the State team then. What with personalities like Awang Barkar, Lee Wah Chin, Quah Kim Swee, Majid Arif, Rahim Omar, Wilfred Skinner and many more? The entire galactica of stars were only on parade together in Inter- State games, then known as the Malayan Cup and the FAM (Football Association of Malaya) Cup. These were played at the Jalan Besar Stadium and they charged an entrance fee, which, without saying, was beyond our reach. Our next best course of action was to watch the local league teams selectively, whenever these players were featured, gratis, at the Geylang Stadium, not too far away from where we stayed. It was within easy walking distance. Most of these State players turned out for local clubs at the local league games. We would watch the Police team which boasted of at least 3 State players, Tan Tock Seng Hospital, also at least 3 State players, Blue Rovers, Darul Afiah and Fathul Kabrib, which together accounted the rest of the Malay State players; Chinese Athletics and the Amicable Athletic Association from which the Chinese State players were hailed from. Unknown to us, it was at Geylang Stadium or at least the mosque next to it, that gave us all a fright much later. The race riots started from this particular mosque which we were so familiar with. Frankly, we could see simmering tensions borne of racial partisanship at the foot ball games which we watched at the stadium. The teams were definitely organized on racial lines. A greater proportion of the teams were Malay-based. The only Chinese-based teams were the Chinese Athletic, the Amicable Athletic Association and Hai-kow-yu . The Indians played for the Joyful Indians and the Jolly Lads, with Kinta Indians from Perak as an occasional guest–team.

The racial riots told me another facet of the secret societies and the triads. One day I saw two or three macho men, of the type whom you would call “Ah Beng’ today, scarred with tattoos of dragons, snakes and nude maidens, escorting my father back home. I was to later learn that the various SS groups operating at the Kallang Airport Estate sunk their differences temporarily during the racial riots, to help ‘protect’ whoever they think would potentially fall prey to the racial wars. These were heroic acts, carried out with benevolent intents. Much later, in the course of my Police work, I learnt that much of their rites and ceremonies, values and behaviour were inspired by Chinese legends such as the White Lotus Society, the 128 Shao Lin Monks, the Romance of The Three Kingdoms and Water Margin. And talking about sinking differences, I thought they might as well, because as far as I can see, no one gang has managed then, to establish any kind of hegemony in Kallang Airport.

The Kallang Airport Hawkers Centre is today, arguably one of the better hawkers centre in Singapore. Yet, if you know anything of its history, you will recognize that it hasn’t a really very glorious past, perhaps like most hawkers centres. I think they all started as some make-shift nondescript stalls set up by residents within the estate, to eke out a living. Needless to say, they were illegal and were frequently and mercilessly mowed down by the authorities, of course, for various reasons and mostly legitimate ones, too. For one thing, they were probably not prepared in the most sanitary of conditions (in all probability in the confines of the home kitchens).

We ate from these stalls, devouring every morsel, not so much as some savoury gourmet delights but more to satisfy a basic biological need. As growing up kids, we needed more than a generous helping to satiate our insatiable appetite! We paid a dear price for this as well. Two of my siblings; an elder brother and a younger one were struck down by typhoid fever. The Middleton Quarantine Hospital where they were treated informed us that typhoid was due to food prepared in unsanitary conditions. To us, this was traceable to the stalls where we bought our breakfast. Nevertheless, up till today I still have a yearning to visit the Kallang Airport Hawkers Centre but not really for nostalgia but because it has some of the best street food in Singapore!

Today, Kallang Airport is vastly refreshed, cleaned up, and thoroughly face lifted. It has a shine and wears a veneer of a gloss that it never used to have. It is a little up-market. It is shorn of its entire previous drab and has shed all vestiges of a scruffy past. It is distinguishably-new; no longer a nest of pigeon holes where we used to come to roost. Kallang Airport! I vow to thee, I shall return yet another day to my now, unfamiliar home!

It was once scruffy!!

A Trek Into The Past: Old Kallang Airport Days

By Way of an Introduction...

This series of posts grouped together under A Trek Into The Past is contributed by Yakkity Yak with whom I have shared good times and bad, many a cup of kopi o and quite a few zi char makans including the memorial one where the stall was raided by Environment Officers and we had to scoot off without finishing our meal. Reading his accounts stir many memories within, of the days when we were young and innocent, when gangsters ruled the streets and we struggled to make ends meet. These may not be the stories you find in books and official documents but they are nonethess richly lived experiences and real for all that. These are our little, personal histories of a past without which the Singapore of today would not be complete.




 
A Trek Into The Past: Kallang Days


 “Home Was Where The Heart Was”

   by

  Yakkity Yak



It must be my masochistic streak that moved me to rake up past ambers and take a trek into the past. If anything, my past is but a painful one. It will be far better that I consign it to the dark recesses of ‘limbo- land’, much less to revisit it.

Not unlike many others of my vintage, my childhood days were nothing to relish about. Born into a poor family (and, for that matter, not just poor but crushingly poor), my entire childhood was shaped by experiences of want and deprivation. Home was an odd-shaped, smallish cubicle opposite the now defunct Kallang Gas Works. It is Spartan by the most Spartan standards. Within this not so sweet home, eight of us siblings lived in contorted-huddle for a good many years. But come to think of it, it is only now, when I reflect back, did I realize how appalling, things were then. At that time, I think we were probably too young to truly appreciate what good and bad living conditions were. Life then was nothing more than a series of ‘sleepings and wakings” We do not know enough of what transpired in between to depress us, even if they do not impress us.

                                                          The defunct Kallang Gas Works


The next picture shows the airport that gave the place its name,

                                                             The Kallang Airport

It was only when I was in my third schooling year did we moved into what seemed to be a palatial home in Old Kallang Airport. This was a three-room SIT flat where I lived till I set up my own home in the ‘70s at the mature age of 26.

A key distinguishing feature of Old Kallang Airport as a SIT-estate, the forerunner of the current term ‘HDB estate’, is that it is a hotbed of SS activities. It was the infamous relocation-centre of all the fire-victims from Geylang and Bukit Ho Swee. Both Geylang and Bukit Ho Swee were SS-infested and boasted some of the most treacherous SS groups in Singapore. So, when rival gangs from two notorious SS hot spots congregated in Kallang Airport, an immediate flash point for gangland war was created. Quite often, the quiet of the night would be broken by the sound of broken glass as glass bottles and bricks were hurled at two particular units of flats just below our block. I cannot really say for sure why these two units were the frequent targets, except to hazard at a guess. Perhaps, they were the living quarters of some rival headmen. Or were they the ‘safe-houses’ of members of one of the gangs?

I even had a close encounter with these gangs once. It was one of my many home-duties then, to fetch my younger brother from school in Tanjong Rhu, literally a stone’s throw away from the estate. I was about 11 years or so then and in Primary 5. To reach my younger brother’s school, I had to walk through a relatively deserted area flanking a canal. I was blissfully walking along when a boy, probably not much older and in wooden clogs swaggered up towards me. He caught hold of my shirt around the front collar area and asked in Hokkien: “Tit toh tor lok” which literally means “Where do you play?” Luckily for me I was no babe in the woods and knew exactly what that meant, never mind if in the literal sense, it merely questioned the location of my playground. I knew that in gangland parlance, this really meant “What gang do you belong to?” Frankly, I momentarily froze. In that split second of frozen-fear, I made some fast mental calculations, going over in my mind and ticking off all the options that were available to me. Should I impress him by randomly throwing up some gangland numbers? I have enough local knowledge to know that the gangs that roamed Kallang Airport were known by various number-codes. Should it be 24? 08? 969? Or more appropriately, since I am a true-blue Teochew, 32 (or Sar Ji the gang-code for all Teochew Triad members)? My precocious self however, told me that discretion was always the better part of valour! I reasoned that these were no lucky numbers and none of them could save me from a bashing. Worse still, why should I pretend that I belonged to a gang when I didn’t? I then hit on the brilliant idea that I should tell him that I belonged to no gang. So I summoned up all the courage that I had and in clear, unwavering voice, told him “Sio tee boh tit toh” or “Small brother does not play at all”. I used the words ‘small brother’, consciously in deference to him. It is, after all, a stock expression of humility in the world of secret societies and triads. I supposed this only saved me from a greater disaster as I did not go away totally unscathed. He rained a few blows on me. I took the blows with the stoic of a pugilist. Nay, in fact, I managed to dodge one or two and even warded off another. Not satisfied, he dug into my pocket and relieved me of all my earthly riches. He took away my hard-earned 30 cents which I just made, helping someone in a school tuck-shop during recess-time. I was supposed to dutifully return the money to my mother. You see, another of the duties assigned to me was to help in the tuck-shop in return for what was then, a princely sum of 30 cents. Those 30 cents could buy us a small swathe of pork and perhaps a few sprigs of vegetables for the dinner table. My woes, however, did not end there. Back home, everyone felt that I had made a less than convincing account of how I was 30 cents poorer!

This is but one of the many tough lessons I learnt on the streets, imbibing from the good old ‘school of hard knocks’, as they would say. It was my first baptism of fire and I, on hindsight, am glad to have received it on the streets. From thence, I honed my street-craft so that I could survive in this rough neighbourhood. I had old scores to settle and settle them in the streets, from a young age. I am, however, not sure if that has subconsciously got myself to be voluntarily-conscripted (what an oxymoron!) into the Police Force and at fairly decent rank of Assistant Superintendent, no less! But as I ruminate over the whole matter; street fights , street justice and all, I am at once reminded of William Wordsworth’s one simple dogma which he so painlessly put in one of his better known poems, thus:

"One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man
Of moral evil and of good
Than all the sages can."

 The racial riots told me another facet of the secret societies and the triads. One day I saw two or three macho men, of the type whom you would call “Ah Beng’ today, scarred with tattoos of dragons, snakes and nude maidens and the ubiquitous Guan Yu, escorting my father back home. I was to later learn that the various SS groups operating at the Kallang Airport Estate sunk their differences temporarily during the racial riots, to help ‘protect’ whoever they think would potentially fall prey to the racial wars. These were heroic acts, carried out with benevolent intents. Much later, in the course of my Police work, I learnt that much of their rites and ceremonies, values and behaviour were inspired by Chinese legends such as the White Lotus Society, the 128 Shao Lin Monks, the Romance of The Three Kingdoms and Water Margin. One figure which most inspired all SS groups and have always been an iconic emblem of faithfulness, loyalty and brotherhood - the embodiment of the Hokkien term ‘Gee Ki’- is Guan Yu of the 3 Kingdom fame.

 Every SS member true, to his salt would burn a tattoo of him on some part of his body as a badge of honour. Otherwise, he would erect at least a statuette in the altar in constant homage of the great God of War, which Guan Yu is otherwise, known as. Like the triumvirates of Guan Yu, Zhang Fei and Liu Bei, who swore to brotherhood in the peach garden, all SS members prized loyalty and abhor treachery and betrayal. Treachery and betrayal were shown by the 7th monk in the exploits of the 128 Shao Lin Monks. Hence, anyone of suspect loyalty in the SS fraternity is branded immediately as an ‘Ah Chit” or No 7 in Hokkien.

Triad Montage

Two Views of Triads

The photographs below exemplify two contrasting views of the triads. There is one view that glamourizes and valorizes triads and their activities. That attitude is often fuelled and given crude credence by films, books and accounts of their loyalty, personal sacrifices and heroism. I am sure some of these are true; but it is even more true that the world of the triads is often marked by betrayal, deceit and self aggrandizement - a mirror portrait of the world of politics and business, which they are often mired in.

Valorizing Gangsters





A snapshot from a Hong Kong triad film. In these gangsters are smartly dressed and behaved like respected members of society.

The Truth

The second photographs shows gangsters as they are, tattooed, anarchic and alcoholic loving.






You would not like to meet these guys in a dark alley! Unfortunately, that is where most people are likely to run into them.

"The Good, The Bad and the Ugly" :Some Accounts of Triads in old Singapore

I would like to give soma accounts of triad incidents I have experienced.

My Godfather

My Godfather was a triad "controller". Which is to say, that he controlled an area. In his case, it was Hong Lim Green as well as the then rural Pek San Teng kampong. Don't ask me why it was like that because I have no idea. He married my aunt (father's sister) and somehow or other I became his godson. I am afraid he did not make much of an impact upon me - the godfather that really had a major impact on my life was (and still is) the Monkey God but that is another story altogether.

In any case, my godfather could get things done. That is, certain things. Like when my mother lost her purse while she was on the bus. There was a bit of a ruckus over that but my father went to "talk" to my godfather. In those days when you wanted something like that done, you always went to "talk" to a person, though of course that must be the right person. A few days later the purse came back minus the money. Just like that.

I don't know whether this is good, bad or ugly. But it did happen.

The second incident was when my neighbour who was a "fighter" in the Amoy Street squared off with another gangster, presumably also a fighter. A "fighter" in the triad jargon was not merely a person who fought but a leader, someone who spoke with authority and "settled" the day to day business of the triad. Ah that term "settling" brings back memories. You "settled" debts. insults, grievances and all kinds of things. I was at the back room one night (listening no less to Ong Toh on the rediffusion) when I happened to hear my neighbour challenging an unknown party to a one to one axe fight. I heard them naming a place and a time. My neighbour was never seen again. It was assumed that either he died or had to flee overseas (that usually meant Malaya) after killing someone. Nobody talked or speculated about him from that point on. That incident made a deep impression upon my young mind. You could say that it was bad to ugly.

The third incident was a religious ceremony in the house next door. In those days, Amoy Street was not what it is today - a clean, well maintained and neat street living off nostalgia lined with cafes and restaurants and offices. The street was cramped with all kinds of things spilling onto the pavement (the five foot way) and onto the road in many instances. A row of chicken cages lined the right side of the house I lived in while the house to the immediate left had wooden shelves on the pavement.

That year, a religious ceremony was held on the second floor of the house next door. There was an altar with a long table creaking with the weight of incense, fruits and other offerings. Incense smoke filled the room mixing with the clash of cymbals and gongs to make a heady mixture. Many came to pray and to make donations. However, these donations were not to the deity but to the triad group that controlled Amoy Street. To be honest, it was all beautifully done. The neighbours as well as other "well wishers" came to make donations right under the eyes of the authorities. The scribe religiously noted each household and their donations, "protection" (not from the gods but the triads) money for the year. This was one of the few times such a large ceremony was held and must have marked some significant event although what it was I could not remember. The usual way of paying "protection" money was to give "kopi liu", coffee money to the small time underlings that collected the amount each month for the triad.

We could say this was the ugly side of the triads. However, on the other hand, the chickens my neighbour kept for sale never got stolen. If anything got stolen or a thief dare break in, you complained or "talked" to the neighbourhood gangster. He would normally sort it out for you. That is not to praise these gangsters. It was simply the way things were in those days.

Although my godfather was a triad chieftain it was understood that he had no choice but to make a living then by joining the "pang" or triad. When my godbrother took over the Pek San Teng Three Flags Gang, a notorious triad grouping my father told him that he was misguided and should make an honest living. Of course nobody listened to my father.

Nothing is ever as clear as present day commentators would like to have it.