Tale of a man and his community
In telling the rags-to-riches story of an illustrous ancestor, author daryl yeap provides glimpses into the historical life of Penang’s Straits chinese.
“WHO are we” and “where do we come from” are questions almost everyone asks at one point or another. It’s especially so in a country like Malaysia with its rich immigrant history, where many share a similar narrative – that is the message at the heart of The King’s Chinese: From Barber To Banker, The Story Of Yeap Chor Ee And The Straits Chinese.
Written by Daryl Yeap, a great-granddaughter of Yeap Chor Ee who was one of early Penang’s biggest immigrant success stories, the book delves into the history of not only the self-made “merchant prince” but also the communities in which he grew up in and laboured with.
From the realities of famine, civil war and poverty in China, Yeap starts the story with how millions of Chinese ended up leaving the motherland in waves, resulting in people of Chinese ethnicity being found in practically every corner of the world today.
“When Chor Ee left China in the late 1800s, it was during the first wave of the Chinese diaspora. Millions of young men like himself fled China. This mass migration would carry on until the mid-20th century.
“It was a significant period in Chinese history and I wanted to find out why: What drove them out?” Yeap says.
While many Chinese children in Malaysia today are told of how their great-grandfathers and great-great-grandfathers “jumped off a boat from China”, there were specific push and pull factors that led the Chinese to Malaya’s shores.
“What drove them out (of China) was mainly extreme hardship as a result of the famines, rebellions and unrest which occurred in 19th century China.
“In the areas most affected, people were so poor and destitute, they had to burn their furniture and parts of their home for warmth.
They resorted to eating tree bark, leaves and dust from the ground. There were even accounts of cannibalism. That was pretty shocking.
“As children, we were often reminded of how lucky we were compared to kids growing up in China during my great-grandfather’s days. We knew life was tough but I didn’t realise how hard it was until I was reading through accounts of what happened during the famines,” Yeap says, adding that these calamities were recurring events for over a century.
At the same time, there were events happening in different parts of the world that encouraged young Chinese men to set sail.
“There were also ‘pull factors’ which enticed them to leave. The world was changing: abolishment of the slave trade in the US, the opening of the Suez Canal which promoted trade and heavy industrialisation required manual labour throughout the world – hence, resulting in huge waves of migration from China,” she says.
From China To Penang
The tale of The King’s Chinese starts off in China and moves to Penang, a “land of eternal summer”, as Yeap describes.
Accounts of late 19th century and early 20th century George Town that she has managed to gather are fascinating, from the price of a single egg (about $0.01 Straits dollars) to the various calls of street peddlers and the many khek-pangs (boarding houses) on China Street that housed new Chinese arrivals.
Most of the story revolves around the lives, perspectives and events surrounding the sinkheks, a term referring to “the new guests of the Celestial Empire” or, put simply, Chinese immigrants.
Yeap says the motivation to make the book about more than just one man – Yeap Chor Ee – was to broaden its appeal and relevance to the wider community.
“If you look around Penang and for that matter Malaysia, almost every one of us are of immigrant stock. Our forefathers came from China and, for that matter, India, the Malay archipelago and elsewhere.
So I thought it would make sense to write a book which is more inclusive rather than just focusing on one man. But using Yeap Chor Ee as a vehicle in the narrative, it personalises the story,” she says.
For hundreds of years until the early 20th century, Chinese men were mandated by custom and authorities in China to wear a towchang or queue from birth – a hairstyle where the front and sides of the head are shaved and the back is plaited into a long braid.
As a result, barbers were in strong demand wherever the Chinese emi