SS Quah's Anything Goes

Chinese wedding customs

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Sun, 15 Nov 2026 03:07:17 +0000

Having made all arrangements for my son's wedding a fortnight ago, I became curious about how much Chinese wedding customs have changed over the years, and how some of the arrangements differed even from those at my own wedding. We had to take into account and reconcile the advice of both the matrimony matron (送嫁庵) and the date-selection master. My son's wedding was very much a modern affair, but even so, there were still quite a number of traditional rituals and customs to observe. Some were familiar, while others were followed more out of respect for family traditions than anything else.

Then Chinese Creeds and Customs emerged from my cupboard. What did Burkhardt have to say about Chinese betrothal and wedding customs in his account of life in China and Hong Kong? His descriptions turned out to be quite fascinating, although they belonged to a very different era. Much of what he wrote was based on practices of the 1950s and, in some instances, customs that had been around for generations before that.

There is quite a contrast between the weddings we attend today and the elaborate arrangements he described. I thought it would be interesting to revisit some of his observations and share them here. Burkhardt wrote mainly about the Cantonese customs in Hong Kong and southern China. Marriage in those days was very much a family affair, with a go-between, usually an older woman, arranging the match. She obtained the birth details of the prospective bride and bridegroom and submitted them to a fortune-teller to check whether their horoscopes were compatible. Only when everything was considered favourable would the negotiations proceed.

The betrothal involved an exchange of gifts. The bridegroom's family sent presents of gold, pork, chickens, wine and coconuts, together with Dragon and Phoenix cakes symbolising a happy married life. These cakes were distributed among relatives and friends to announce the forthcoming wedding, rather like the invitation e-cards we receive today.

The bride's family also returned gifts, including steamed rice cakes, lotus roots and cloth for a pair of trousers. Interestingly, the bride was expected to demonstrate her sewing skills by making the garment and embroidering shoes for her future husband's female relatives. One can imagine her future mother-in-law keeping a close eye on her handiwork!

In the days leading up to the wedding, the bride was attended by her unmarried girlfriends, who acted as bridesmaids. She was expected to show sadness at leaving her parents' home, sometimes weeping when relatives came to inspect the wedding presents. Whether all that crying was genuine or merely part of the performance is another matter!

On the eve of the wedding, her furniture and belongings were transported to her new home in a procession. Even the traditional chamber pot had its place of honour, leading the procession. Since no household article was supposed to be sent empty, it was filled with eggs or pomegranates.

On the wedding morning, the bride took a ceremonial bath using water infused with pomelo leaves, before having her hair dressed in the style of a married woman. She then paid her respects to the ancestral tablets and her parents before leaving home, traditionally in a red bridal sedan chair. Motor cars, however, had already begun to replace these in Hong Kong.

There was still some bargaining to be done before the bridegroom could take his bride away. The bridesmaids demanded lucky money before allowing him to approach the sedan chair. Apparently, a little negotiation was customary, and the bridegroom had to pay up before he could proceed! The bride's parents did not accompany her to the wedding. The go-between went along in their place, together with the bridesmaids, while the parents remained at home and entertained their own relatives and friends.

Among the Cantonese, the bride returned to visit her parents on the third day after the wedding. She arrived dressed in her red skirt and black jacket, with all her jewellery on display. The bridegroom's family sent food offerings, including two roast pigs, portions of which were distributed to relatives and friends who had given wedding presents. The custom of reciprocating gifts was important, as even a small present called for some form of acknowledgement.

Burkhardt also described differences among other Chinese communities. Swatow brides, for instance, travelled in a larger sedan chair and, on reaching their husband's home, had to step over a fire of dry grass to rid themselves of evil influences. Unlike the Cantonese, they did not return to their parents' home until four months after the wedding. The Hakkas had their own variations, including the use of the red bridal chair and the inclusion of a lion dance in the celebrations.

Some of the customs Burkhardt described were considerably more unusual. In the Shun Tak district of Kwangtung, a live cock could stand in for an absent bridegroom since many of their men there had emigrated overseas. The bride went through the usual wedding arrangements and was received into her husband's family, even though he might be thousands of miles away and might never actually meet her. Burkhardt called this the "Chicken's Bride". He even recounted a court case involving one such marriage, where the validity of the union became important in determining the widow's inheritance rights.

There were also marriages between deceased persons. When a young man died before marrying, his family could arrange a marriage with a girl who had also died unmarried. The customary betrothal and wedding ceremonies were performed, with ancestral tablets representing the deceased couple. The girl's remains might subsequently be reburied beside those of the young man in his clan's cemetery. Such arrangements reflected the importance attached to family continuity and ancestral worship.

Another aspect of Burkhardt's account was the position of women in traditional Chinese society. The birth of a son was generally welcomed because he would carry on the family name and perform the ancestral rites. A daughter, on the other hand, was expected eventually to leave her parents' household upon marriage and become part of her husband's family.

A young bride could therefore find herself in a rather difficult position. She was expected to obey her mother-in-law, adapt to an unfamiliar household and fulfil her responsibilities as a wife. Producing a male heir was particularly important, and a woman who failed to do so could find her position in the family considerably weakened. Burkhardt also described the Golden Orchid Society, whose members pledged themselves to remain unmarried rather than submit to arranged marriages. Some even refused to return to their husbands after being forced into marriage.

Burkhardt's account reveals a glimpse of just how elaborate and sometimes demanding traditional Chinese marriage customs could be. Many of these practices have since disappeared or changed considerably, particularly with the spread of education and greater freedom for young people to choose their partners.

Some traditions, of course, have survived in one form or another. The exchange of wedding cakes, the giving of angpow, the selection of auspicious dates and the importance attached to family blessings are still familiar to many Chinese families today. But the days when a bride had to leave her parents' home in a red sedan chair, with a chamber pot leading the procession, are certainly a different story altogether!

Chinese creeds and customs

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Sat, 14 Nov 2026 02:56:59 +0000

Sometime in the late 1970s or early 1980s, I picked up a rather worn copy of the first volume of Chinese Creeds and Customs by VR Burkhardt from a second-hand bookstore in Penang. Even at that time, I was already quite interested in Chinese customs and found the book useful as a reference whenever I wanted to look up something about traditional Chinese beliefs and religious practices. Unfortunately, despite looking around, I couldn't find the second and third volumes anywhere in Penang. After a while, I simply left it at that and made do with Volume One.

Then, during one of my trips to Hong Kong in the 1980s, I came across something quite unexpected. I was there to play in one of the Asian Cities Chess Championships which the Hong Kong Chess Federation used to hold rather regularly in those days. While browsing the bookshelves in a bookstore, I spotted an attractive hardback book with the title Chinese Creeds and Customs and the author's name, VR Burkhardt, prominently displayed on its red cover. But this was not just another copy of Volume One or Volume Two or Volume Three. The subtitle on the cover read, "A compilation of the best-selling trilogy". It was the complete work, bringing all three volumes together in a single book!

Immediately, I bought it. No hesitation. One doesn't hesitate when a gem is discovered. The book was published in 1982 by the South China Morning Post Ltd in Hong Kong, with printing done by Yee Tin Printing Press Ltd, also in Hong Kong. It was a substantial hardback, with red cloth binding and gold lettering on the front cover and spine.

And there it has remained in my book cupboard all these years. More than four decades later when I brought it out, both the original red dust jacket and the hardcover book are still in excellent condition, almost as good as new. The dust jacket has survived particularly well, which is something I am quite pleased about.

I suppose this is one of those occasions when a chance find during a trip abroad turns out to be more rewarding than expected. I had started out with a worn copy of the first volume, unable to locate the other two in Penang and then quite unexpectedly, I found the complete trilogy in one book in Hong Kong. And unlike many other books that have come and gone from my shelves over the years, this one has stayed with me.

I don't know how many times I have actually taken it down from the cupboard to refer to its contents, but I have certainly been glad to have it around me. Some books are worth keeping, not necessarily because they are valuable, but because of the story behind how they came into our possession. This is one of them.

Now about the book itself. What makes Chinese Creeds and Customs particularly interesting to me is that although Burkhardt wrote mainly about the Chinese in Hong Kong, much of what he describes is also recognisable to someone who grew up in a traditional Hokkien family with Baba-Nyonya roots in Penang. After all, many of the customs and religious beliefs practised by the Chinese communities in Hong Kong and Penang have their roots in southern China, particularly Hokkien province, from where many of our ancestors came. Over the generations, however, these traditions developed along somewhat different paths, influenced by the local environment and the communities in which they took root.

Take the Chinese festivals, for instance. Burkhardt devotes considerable attention to the lunar calendar and the various celebrations throughout the year. There is Chinese New Year, the God of Wealth, the Beginning of Spring, the Dragon Boat Festival, the Hungry Ghost Festival, the Mid-Autumn Festival and the Double Ninth, among others. For a Penang Hokkien, many of these are familiar territory. We know Cheng Beng, when families visit ancestral graves to pay their respects; and the seventh lunar month, when Phor Thor committees organise prayers, food offerings and traditional performances for the wandering spirits. Then there is the ninth day of Chinese New Year, when Hokkiens celebrate the birthday of Thnee Kong, the Jade Emperor. This is an especially important occasion among Penang Hokkiens, with elaborate offerings and prayers at midnight. And towards the end of the year, there is the Tang Chek Festival, marking the Winter Solstice.

There are also the subjects of marriage, betrothal, funerals, ancestor worship, fortune-telling, Fengshui, charms and talismans. These are not merely descriptions of old Chinese practices. Many of them would have been part and parcel of family life in Penang, particularly among the older generations. Some of us would remember how our parents and grandparents consulted the Chinese almanac before choosing an auspicious date for a wedding, moving house or undertaking an important activity, and we still do it today! Even the mourning rituals were governed by traditions passed down through the generations.

Of course, not everything described by Burkhardt would be familiar to us. His accounts of certain Hong Kong religious practices, the customs of the Boat People and some local beliefs reflect the particular communities he studied. Penang, too, has developed its own distinctive Hokkien customs, with influences from the Malay environment and the local Baba-Nyonya culture. The way we celebrate certain festivals, prepare food offerings and conduct religious ceremonies may therefore differ from what Burkhardt recorded in Hong Kong.

So in this book, we can look back at a period when traditional Chinese beliefs and customs still played a much greater part in everyday life. Some practices have changed or disappeared, while others continue to be observed quite faithfully in Penang. Flipping through Burkhardt today, I recognise certain things from my own cultural background, while discovering others that I might never have come across. And that is perhaps the attraction of this three-volume compilation. It is not just a collection of descriptions about Chinese customs in Hong Kong. Rather, a useful point of reference for understanding the cultural heritage that many of us in Penang have inherited from our forefathers.

The gift of the truth

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 13:36:36 +0000

Kathina Day was celebrated at the Nandaka Vihara last Sunday. It was a whole-day affair, beginning at about six in the morning and carrying on until two or three in the afternoon. I had dropped Saw See off at the Vihara at 6am before returning home for a quick snooze. Then I made my way back to the monastery at around nine. As I was locking my car, an official-looking vehicle carrying Steven Sim arrived. He is now a Minister in the Federal Government, but had found time to return to his parliamentary constituency and join in the Kathina celebrations here at Nandaka Vihara.

"Steven!" I called out as he alighted, and we shook hands. Some people might be horrified that I don't address him as YB, short for Yang Berhormat, the honorific normally used for elected representatives in Parliament or the State Assemblies. But that's not my style. Besides, we are not exactly strangers to one another, although I suspect he probably still cannot remember my name. But I don't mind.

So there I was, practically arriving at the same time as a Federal Minister and walking into the Nandaka Vihara alongside him. We parted company at the main gate, as I got caught up with the procession of monks going on their alms round. There was quite a sight: a line of 46 monks, comprising resident monks and those who had come from elsewhere, all gathered to celebrate Kathina Day. As they walked round the perimeter of the monastery, devotees lined up to scoop rice into their alms bowls.

Leading the procession was a visiting monk from Thailand, the Venerable Chantharathat Phramaha Prachuap, who had completed 53 vassa. That made him the most senior monk among the 46, even more senior than Nandaka Vihara's own Chief Abbot, Venerable Dhammasubho, who had completed 37 vassa.

A little later, before the food stalls were officially declared open, came the speeches we had expected from Penang State Executive Councillor Lim Siew Khim and the Guest of Honour, Steven Sim. I was particularly impressed by the depth of Steven's speech and I thought it was worth reproducing here:

"Dear friends, ladies and gentlemen, salam sejahtera, salam Malaysia Madani. A very good morning to all of you and blessed Kathina. Is this your first time here, Ms Lim? YB? This is your first time. Then we should give her a round of applause because this is her first visit.

"Everyone knows that I've been here since 2008 when the Vihara was set up. But the first time I came, it was not good news. When I first came, the Council wanted to tear down this place. So that's why they called me. But I feel that over the years, almost 20 years now, this Bukit Mertajam is my area. I feel that I have also grown up not just with the people of Bukit Mertajam, but I have also grown up with Nandaka Vihara.

"I always say in Penang, there is freedom, there is diversity, not just in religious belief and culture, but also in language. Today is the celebration of Kathina. Even though I'm not a Buddhist, as I said, I have grown up with Nandaka Vihara. Sometimes I come here to listen to the guidance and advice of Bhante Dhammasubho as well as some of the seniors here. And of course, today I saw when I arrived that everyone was giving rice or dana, and later they are giving the robes.

"There is a verse in the Dhammapada that says sabbadānaṁ dhammadānaṁ jināti. And I was reflecting on this: what does it mean to me, who is not a Buddhist? Of all gifts, of all dana, the greatest gift that you can give is the gift of the Dhamma, the gift of the truth. I think this is very important in an era where there is so much fake news, so much hatred, and so much anger. If you look into the internet, you look into your WhatsApp, every day somebody is scolding somebody.

"So, I think as we are giving our dana to the elders and to the monks, let us also remember the teaching of the Dhammapada: that the best gift is not the material gift, but really the gift of the truth. And the truth, as we Chinese say, fo fa cibei [佛法慈悲], the truth is compassion. This is about compassion.

"Last Wesak Day, I was thinking, what is the difference? Why don't you just say love? What is the difference between love and compassion? Then I realised from my reflection and my reading that love has a specific target. You love your wife, you love your husband, you love your political party, you love your race, you love your religion. But compassion is universal. There is no boundary to it. You love everyone, including people you don't think that you can love. So I think every one of us, including people like me who are politicians, if we practice this -- the gift of the Dhamma, the gift of compassion -- then I believe our society will be a better place.

"Thank you, and blessed Kathina to all of you."

Finally, our son is wed

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 22:07:00 +0000

It's been more than a year in the making. Our son and new daughter-in-law registered their civil marriage in October last year and at the time we'd thought the Chinese wedding ceremony could be held sometime in April or May. As it turned out, that wasn't to be. They preferred to have it towards the end of the year instead and so, after consulting a date selection master to determine an auspicious date compatible with both of them, we settled on 01 November 2026.

That left us with roughly a year to prepare. To be honest, not much happened during the first six months. Like many things in life, the deadline seemed far enough away that there was always another day to think about it. It was only around June or July that we started looking at the preparations in earnest.

Saw See bore the greater share of the burden. She's the sort of person who delves into the details and makes sure everything is in proper order. That's simply her nature. I'm rather different. I tend to look at the broader picture and trust that somehow things will fall into place. Between the two of us, perhaps we struck a reasonable balance. Still, as September rolled into October, there was no escaping the fact that the wedding was fast approaching and preparations began accelerating accordingly.

The first significant event was the sang jeet (送日) on the 11th of October. We enlisted the help of my sister-in-law and her husband who made the trip to the bride's family home bearing a Nyonya siah-nah filled with gifts, angpow, biscuits, fruits and other customary items. It marked the formal betrothal ceremony and the beginning of the final stretch towards the wedding day.

Then on the 28th of October came the ahn chhng (安床), the setting up of the bridal bed. Traditionally this would have taken place at the couple's future residence but after some discussion we decided to hold it at our house instead. My son's home in Tanjung Bungah was simply too far away. Given the timing requirements surrounding the wedding ceremonies, it would've been inconvenient for the newly-weds to travel back there afterwards. So his old room upstairs was temporarily transformed into the bridal chamber.

On the eve of the wedding day was the lau tniah meh (鬧廳夜), one of the more memorable customs in the Nyonya wedding tradition. The sangkek-mm or matrimony matron (送嫁庵) arrived early to oversee the proceedings. My son was instructed to change into his wedding pyjamas and, when the prescribed time arrived, we led him downstairs. There followed the ritual combing of his hair, the eating of sweet glutinous rice balls and prayers offered to Thnee Kong (天公).

Meanwhile, our own preparations over the preceding months continued relentlessly. Looking back now, it seemed an endless list of arrangements. We had to book the siah-nah from a wedding shop, engage the outdoor canopy contractors, order endless quantities of fruits and kueh and organise catering for both the wedding eve gathering and the wedding morning. The food came from my brother-in-law's eatery, Sampan Garden, in Kulim. At some point I completely lost count of the number of fruits involved. Every time I thought we'd bought enough, another basket seemed required.

Perhaps the most important task was distributing the invitations. The wedding dinner venue selected by my son was Wu Jia Chinese Restaurant in Taman Pekaka. It was a suitable venue but could accommodate only 34 tables. The bride's family requested 15 tables, leaving us with just 18 for our side, excluding the main table. Space was at a premium.

Faced with limited seating, I gave priority to Saw See's side of the family which is considerably more extensive than mine. From my own side, I invited only my sister and brother-in-law from Singapore, two Quah cousins and the three Oh cousins with whom I am closest. I had also invited another cousin who was my best man at our own wedding but he was unable to attend. We also made sure to invite our immediate neighbours. Not only have we enjoyed a good relationship with them over the years, but practical considerations also came into play. The wedding canopies would occupy part of the road and inevitably affect roadside parking. It seemed only right that they should share in the celebration rather than merely endure the inconvenience.

As often happens, circumstances changed. After the initial invitations had gone out, we discovered that a few additional seats were available. So invitations were extended to several friends from Nandaka Vihara, Swee Cheok Tong and The Old Frees' Association.

Then came another challenge which anyone who has organised a wedding will understand. Attendance confirmations began arriving and with them the complicated matter of seating arrangements. Who should sit together? Who definitely should not sit together? Where should senior relatives be seated? Which tables needed vegetarian food, or a baby chair? I soon realised that filling tables could sometimes require as much diplomacy as arranging an international summit. Alongside this, I had to prepare the list of relatives who would participate in the morning phang teh or tea ceremony (奉茶).

By the wedding eve, relatives and neighbours were gathering at the house and the atmosphere had noticeably changed. What had been months of planning suddenly became something real. My daughter and her friend had returned from Kuala Lumpur to lend a hand and the house, which had been relatively quiet just days before, was now bustling with movement and conversations from every direction. At this stage, maybe I should cue in the inquisitive relatives. Every family gathering seems to produce a few. They are so charming!

On the morning of the big day, several of my son's friends arrived early to accompany him as part of the groom's entourage. They left at eight o'clock to fetch the bride and that gave us a few precious hours to straighten the house and steady ourselves for the arrival of relatives attending the phang teh ceremony.

Fortunately, everything went smoothly. The senior relatives, I should note with some relief, displayed exemplary behaviour and did not require the customary persuasion to take their seats. In earlier generations, this ritual reluctance could sometimes become a prolonged affair as the honoured guests were expected to decline repeatedly before accepting. Thankfully, practicality prevailed.

After the tea ceremony, the couple proceeded upstairs to the bridal room where our youngest nephew performed the khui tham pooi (開探盆), breaking open the cover of the bridal chamber pot as part of the wedding ritual. And with that, the principal daytime ceremonies were essentially complete.

But there still remained the wedding dinner at Wu Jia that evening. Thankfully the dinner went well and everyone appeared to enjoy themselves. There was good feedback on the food, even praise for the name cards that were thoughtfully prepared for some of the tables. I, of course, rose to give a brief speech to thank everyone for their presence, saying:

Good evening, everyone. On behalf of my family, I would like to thank all of you for joining us to celebrate this special occasion. Your presence means a great deal to us. To our daughter-in-law's parents and family, thank you for welcoming our son into your family. We are very happy that our two families can come together today to celebrate this happy occasion. To the newlyweds, may your marriage be filled with love, understanding, patience and happiness. Remember to take care of each other, respect each other and learn to give and take as you build your life together. Thank you once again for being here. Please enjoy the evening and have a wonderful time.

By the time everything finally concluded and we returned home after midnight, exhaustion had set in. The guests had departed, the ceremonies were over and a year of planning had come to an end. The house was quiet once more.

And that was that. Our son was married. The young couple were beginning a new chapter of their lives and we ourselves were beginning a new chapter too. For the first time in many months there was nothing left to do. No more planning, arranging, confirming or worrying about.

Well, almost nothing. Actually, there was still the cleaning up to do the next morning, and the afternoon, and the night, and for the next two days after that. Some traditions continue long after the wedding is over...

Baju kebaya

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 02:32:23 +0000

At our son's wedding dinner on Sunday, we had cousin Amy, cousin Peggy, dear wifey and sister Judy surprising everyone, including themselves, by their Baju Kebaya attire. Totally unplanned but the message was very clear: you can take the Baba Nyonyas away from Penang but you cannot take Penang away from the Baba Nyonyas. With the Baju Kebaya at the dinner, we revealed our true-blue Baba Nyonya identity. Despite some of us not staying in Penang any more, these are still our roots, and they are not something to be easily forgotten.

What's with the 21st of October?

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 04:30:19 +0000

The 21st of October is one of those dates on which quite a number of important events took place, spread across different parts of the world and several centuries. Some changed the course of wars, some helped shape the countries we know today, while others had a lasting effect on everyday life. What follows is based on what I have uncovered in my reading. And for us in Penang, this date has a special significance of its own.

The earliest event in this collection goes back to 1097, when the forces of the First Crusade began the Siege of Antioch. The siege, which started on this date, lasted until June the following year. The capture of Antioch became one of the major episodes of the First Crusade, although the crusaders themselves paid a heavy price in hunger and disease during the campaign.

On 21 October 1520, the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan reached the entrance to the passage at the southern tip of South America that would later bear his name. The Strait of Magellan eventually provided a sea route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. It was a significant moment in the expedition that would go on to complete the first circumnavigation of the world, although Magellan himself would not survive the voyage. It is worth distinguishing between sighting the entrance to the strait and completing the passage through it, which took longer.

Moving to Japan, 21 October 1600 was the date of the Battle of Sekigahara, one of the decisive battles in Japanese history. Tokugawa Ieyasu’s Eastern Army defeated its opponents, leaving him in a position to consolidate his power. In 1603, he was appointed shogun, establishing the Tokugawa shogunate, which ruled Japan until the Meiji Restoration in 1868.

The 18th and 19th centuries also saw several important events fall on this date. On 21 October 1794, Captain Francis Light, the founder of the British settlement on Prince of Wales' Island, died of malaria. His death came just eight years after the British established their settlement on the island in 1786. Light's name remains closely connected with the early history of George Town.

On 21 October 1797, the American warship USS Constitution was launched at Edmund Hartt’s shipyard in Boston. Nicknamed Old Ironsides after its celebrated engagements during the War of 1812, it became one of the best-known ships in American naval history. It is still afloat today and is recognised as the world's oldest commissioned warship afloat.

Eight years later, on 21 October 1805, the Battle of Trafalgar took place off the coast of Spain. The British fleet under Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson defeated the combined French and Spanish fleets, thwarting Napoleon Bonaparte's hopes of challenging Britain at sea and helping secure British naval dominance for decades. Nelson was mortally wounded during the battle and died later that day aboard HMS Victory. The victory came at a great personal cost to the British, but Trafalgar became one of the most celebrated events in their naval history.

For Penang Free School, 21 October 1816 is particularly important. On that day, the Prince of Wales' Island Free School first opened its doors to boys on the island, initially operating from rented premises in Love Lane. The word “Free” referred to the principle that education should be free from racial and religious prejudice. It did not mean that every pupil necessarily received a free education, as fees were paid by families who could afford them, while assistance was provided to those who could not. The school is widely recognised as the oldest English-medium school in South-east Asia.

Another event on this date concerned a woman who would change the way nursing was regarded. On 21 October 1854, Florence Nightingale left England with nurses bound for the military hospitals at Scutari, in the Ottoman Empire, during the Crimean War. The conditions there were appalling, and her work in improving nursing care, hygiene and hospital administration would help shape the development of modern nursing.

There is also a familiar American story associated with 21 October 1879: Thomas Edison and his team working on the incandescent electric lamp. The date has long been celebrated as a milestone in the development of the light bulb, but historians who examined the laboratory records have questioned the claim that the decisive experiment took place on that particular day. While Edison and his team developed a practical incandescent lamp as part of a wider electric lighting system, the system was publicly demonstrated later in 1879.

The 20th century brought its own share of significant events on this date. On 21 October 1943, Subhas Chandra Bose announced the establishment of the Provisional Government of Free India, also known as Azad Hind, in Singapore. Bose and his supporters hoped to end British rule in India, and the government was closely associated with the Indian National Army. Its declaration was an important episode in the wider struggle for Indian independence during the Second World War.

On 21 October 1944, the German city of Aachen surrendered to American forces after weeks of fighting. It became the first major German city to fall to the Allies during the Second World War. The capture was an important step in the Allied advance into Germany, although the fighting in Europe would continue for several more months.

On 21 October 1966, Penang Free School was celebrating its Sesquicentenary which marked 150 years since it first opened its doors. Yet, almost halfway around the globe, a tragedy was unfolding. A coal-waste tip had collapsed onto the Welsh village of Aberfan, and the black slurry engulfed another educational institution, Pantglas Junior Schoolm and nearby homes, killing 144 people that included 116 children. While Penang was marking a proud milestone in its educational history, the people of Aberfan were plunged into grief by one of Britain's worst mining disasters.

On 21 October 1967, tens of thousands of people gathered in Washington DC to protest against American involvement in the Vietnam War. After a rally at the Lincoln Memorial, many marched towards the Pentagon, where clashes took place between demonstrators and security forces. An estimated crowd close to 100,000 people. The demonstration became one of the best-known protests of the Vietnam War era and reflected the growing opposition to the conflict within the United States.

There is also a notable birthday to record. Alfred Nobel, the Swedish chemist, inventor and businessman whose will established the Nobel Prizes, was born in Stockholm on 21 October 1833. He made his fortune through inventions including dynamite, but his lasting public legacy is the series of prizes that bears his name. The first Nobel Prizes were awarded in 1901, five years after his death.

It is quite a collection of events for one day in history. And for many of us in Penang, the reason to remember the 21st of October as the day in 1794 when Superintendent Francis Light died and in 1816 that the Prince of Wales' Island Free School first opened its doors. More than two centuries later, that date continues to hold a special place in Penang's history.

The Light-Hutchings connection

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Sat, 24 Oct 2026 05:28:21 +0000

Since 1948, the Prefects of Penang Free School have attended an annual commemorative service at the grave of Robert Sparke Hutchings in the old Protestant Cemetery along Northam Road. The tradition was started by Dennis Roper, who was the headmaster of the school at the time, and it continues to this day.

Normally, once the service is over, that's about all the formal activity at the cemetery. There would be the usual photography sessions, with the schoolboys and prefects getting to know some of their Old Frees seniors, before everyone headed back to the school for Speech Day. But this year, things were a little different. There was time to spare because Speech Day had already been held on the first of October. There was no rush.

After the service, I brought the boys and the Old Frees along to see the grave of Francis Light, which was only a stone's throw away from Hutchings' resting place. From their reactions, I could tell that almost everyone had never seen Light's grave before, not even known that he was buried there. Well, there's a first time for everything, I suppose!

Will I show the grave to next year's batch of Prefects as well? That will depend on whether I can drag myself out of my warm bed early enough next October. Let's see how things go.

Anyway, while we were there, I posed a question to the boys and the Old Frees. What is the one surprising fact that connects Francis Light and Robert Sparke Hutchings, even though the two men never met each other? Light died in 1794, while Hutchings arrived in Penang in 1814, a gap of 20 years. What connects them?

OFA annual dinner 2026

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 01:52:54 +0000

I've attended so many OFA annual dinners that I've long stopped counting them. In the early days, the dinners were held at the club premises, first in Leith Street, then Hutton Lane, Mandalay Road and finally Northam Road, until this latest clubhouse was renovated in 1997. Since then, the dinners have been held elsewhere, usually in hotels with big ballrooms, although restaurants have also been used once or twice. For the past several years, St Giles Wembley has become the venue of choice.

Last Tuesday, the 103rd OFA annual dinner was held there, and I attended with five other mates from my batch in Penang Free School. I had hoped more of our old schoolmates would sign up, but that wasn't to be. They all had their own reasons, of course. Still, with those of us from the 1970 Form Five and 1972 Form Six batches getting on in years, I thought this would have been a good opportunity for more of us to get together again for old times' sake. Better response next year, perhaps?

Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed myself at this year's dinner, catching up with these mates and bumping into many more old farts along the way. At our age, there's always plenty of pleasantries to share and talk about, even if we sometimes have to remind one another of names and events from years gone by. Never mind. That's part of the fun of meeting up again. Some of my personal pictures follow below.

Dr Amir Shah, Ivan Ooi, Dr PP Shah and Dr Choong Sim Poey

See Swee Sie (present PCA President) and Dr Choong Sim Poey (former PCA President)

Penang Free School Prefects

My batch mates

My chess kakis

Miss Asia Global 2026 brought dozens of beauty contestants from multiple countries to Penang this week, and they chose to introduce themselves at our OFA annual dinner. I had bumped into five or six of them earlier when they squeezed into the hotel lift. As I left on the 10th floor, I gave them a bye-bye and said, "Too bad, we can't follow you up to the 26th floor."

Remembering Hutchings 2026

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 05:42:42 +0000

Every year, I tell myself that this shall be the last time I attend the annual Robert Sparke Hutchings commemorative service at his grave in the old Protestant Cemetery in George Town. But when the 21st of October comes around again, I somehow find myself dragging my body out of bed at five o’clock in the morning, getting ready for the 45-minute journey from home to the cemetery. There is something about this little service that keeps drawing me back.

I first attended the service in 2012 and, over the past 15 years, I have missed it only twice. The service itself is a fairly brief affair, usually lasting just 10 to 15 minutes, but it brings together representatives from Penang Free School, Hutchings Sixth Form College, The Old Frees’ Association and St George’s Church. An Anglican priest from the church leads the service at Hutchings’ grave, where those present gather to remember a man whose influence is still felt in Penang today.

Each of these four institutions has its own connection with Hutchings. Penang Free School is perhaps the most obvious, as he founded the school which opened to boys of all races, religions and creeds on 21 October 1816. Hutchings Sixth Form College, formerly Hutchings Secondary School, inherited his name after Penang Free School moved from its Farquhar Street premises to Green Lane at the end of 1927. The Old Frees’ Association is the alumni association of those who passed through the Free School, while St George’s Church has its own historical connection with Hutchings, who was the colonial chaplain in Penang and was associated with the church in its early days. The church itself was completed in 1818 and consecrated the following year.

There are usually a few other Old Frees who turn up as well, myself included. Although I attend as a member of The Old Frees’ Association, I suppose each of us has our own reason for making the early-morning trip. For me, it has become one of those annual occasions that I keep telling myself I can do without, only to find that I am back there again when the date comes around.

The Old Frees at the commemorative service

Triangular chess match

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Sun, 18 Oct 2026 02:34:52 +0000

Only the second year that the OFA-OXA-MBSU triangular games had included chess but we're quite happy to have won it this time. Last year was a disappointment because we had only managed the second spot. This time, we made sure to have our reinforcements ready: a line-up that included Chern Ee, Ronnie and Jonathan. Plus, a steady back-up from Ing Kiat, Thean Keat and Kah Poh ensured we would take full points from the Old Xavierians' Association and the Methodist Boys' School Union. There's more of what I want to say about the triangular games but I'd rather prefer to show these pictures below to commemorate the event.

Cheap wills

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 02:24:59 +0000

I came across a report in Free Malaysia Today yesterday about why we should take the preparation of a will seriously. A poorly prepared will can leave a family fighting in court for years, and that was what happened to the family of a woman named R Letchemy, whose will was signed just five weeks before she died.

Letchemy was 74 when she signed the will on 06 October 2021. She died on 11 November that year, but instead of settling her estate, the document became the centre of a legal dispute that dragged on for four years. Her brother, R Supparamaniam, challenged the will and sought to have the whole document declared invalid.

The High Court in Malacca eventually upheld most of the will's provisions. The judge found that Letchemy had the mental capacity to make a will and understood and approved how she wanted her assets distributed. This included leaving out her brother and his family. It may not have been a decision that everyone agreed with, but a person is generally entitled to decide who should inherit their estate.

However, one clause did not survive the court challenge. It was intended to penalise anyone who challenged the will or helped someone else to do so. The judge found insufficient evidence that Letchemy had understood and approved this particular provision, and it was struck out.

There was another complication. Letchemy could not read English, the language in which the will was written. Although a solicitor had explained the document to her in Tamil before she signed it, the court found shortcomings in the way her instructions had been recorded and in the evidence showing how the will had been explained. There was no contemporaneous note documenting the explanation or the solicitor's assessment of her understanding.

So it is not enough to produce a document and get the client to sign it, there is a need to establish that the client understands what the will says and that it reflects their intentions. This becomes even more important when the will contains unusual provisions or excludes close family members from an inheritance.

The law firm involved had charged between RM500 and RM700 for preparing a will. In a postscript to his judgment, Judicial Commissioner K Raja Segaran made the point that the care required in preparing a will should depend on what is at stake, not on how much the fee charged. As he put it, “A modest fee does not lessen the duty.”

The judge also recommended several safeguards, including recording the client's instructions carefully, checking the assets involved, explaining the draft in a language the client understands and keeping a record of the questions asked to establish that the client understands the document. He also warned against simply reusing standard clauses from earlier wills without checking that they reflect the wishes of the person making the will.

So this report reinforces the importance of having a properly prepared will in the first place. Through companies like Rockwills Corporation, the aim is to help ensure that a will is drafted clearly and satisfactorily, and that it is based on the testator's instructions and wishes. The person making the will should understand what is written, have the opportunity to clarify anything that is unclear and be satisfied that the document says what he or she actually wants it to say.

Of course, no one can guarantee that a will will never be challenged. But taking the time to explain the provisions properly and making sure the instructions are clearly documented can help reduce the risk of misunderstandings and disputes later. In Letchemy's case, probate was eventually granted to her niece, N Selvarani, subject to the removal of the disputed clause.

The lesson here is that making a will is one thing, but making sure it is properly prepared is another. Most of us would prefer not to think too much about what happens to our estate after we are gone, but it is worth spending some time getting our affairs in order while we are still around to explain what we want. Otherwise, our family may be left trying to interpret our intentions, with the possibility of years of disagreement and legal expenses.

If there are questions about making a will, or about how Rockwills Corporation can help, anyone can get in touch with me. I'm happy to help clarify the process and answer any questions. It is better to sort these matters out while we are still around to explain what we want, rather than leave our family to work it out for themselves later.

Malaysia's chess predicament

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 22:28:00 +0000

I don't like to say this, but I believe the Malaysian Chess Federation has got itself into a fine pickle over the FIDE World Amateur Chess Championships scheduled to begin on 04 November 2026.

Some two months ago, I learnt that the World Chess Federation, FIDE, had awarded Malaysia the rights to organise the championships, with the Selangor Chess Association entrusted with staging the event in Klang. As far as I knew, preparations were proceeding normally. Then, a few days ago, news emerged that the Israeli Chess Federation was complaining that it had not received an invitation for its players to participate. And that's where the trouble begins.

FIDE's rules on hosting official international chess events include a principle of free access for representatives of its member federations. Israel is a member of FIDE, just as Malaysia is. So, from the chess world's point of view, Israeli players should be able to take part in a FIDE championship on the same basis as players from other member federations.

But Malaysia has its own government policy on Israeli nationals entering the country, and that is where the two positions seem destined to collide. Given the Malaysian government's longstanding position, I find it difficult to imagine Israeli chess players being granted entry visas simply because they have the right to play in a chess tournament. The Israeli Chess Federation is huffing to participate in a FIDE event, while the Malaysian government has made its position on Israeli athletes very clear. How is the Malaysian Chess Federation supposed to reconcile these two positions?

This is not the first time Malaysia has found itself in this position. In January 2019, the Malaysian government confirmed that Israeli athletes would not be allowed to participate in the World Para Swimming Championships scheduled to be held in Kuching that July. The International Paralympic Committee subsequently withdrew Malaysia's right to host the event because the government could not guarantee that Israeli athletes would be allowed to compete. The championships had to find another host.

That episode should have served as a warning. The government's position has been known for years, and I see no reason to assume that it will suddenly make an exception for chess players. If Malaysia cannot admit Israeli participants, how can it fulfil its obligations as host of a FIDE world championship? This is not simply a question of whether an invitation letter has been sent. An invitation is of little use if the players cannot obtain permission to enter the country.

So now, this is a problem that was not properly considered before Malaysia took on the hosting rights. When bidding for this international championship, the Malaysian Chess Federation and the organisers overlooked the conditions imposed by FIDE and the practical requirements for bringing players from all member federations to Malaysia. The government's position on Israeli participation in sporting events was hardly a secret. Did nobody consider what would happen if Israeli players wanted to take part?

I should add that I don't think the same difficulty necessarily arises with every international chess event held in Malaysia. Asian-level competitions, for instance, do not involve Israel in the same way because of the geographical zones used by FIDE. Israel belongs to a European zone in FIDE's classification, despite being geographically part of Asia. That distinction can make a difference to which federations are expected to participate. An event open to the whole world, however, is another matter altogether.

For now, I don't know how this will end. Perhaps FIDE and the Malaysian Chess Federation are still trying to find a way out of the predicament. But with the championship due to begin on the fourth of November, time is running short. After all the work that must already have gone into preparing the venue, accommodation, tournament arrangements and other logistics, it would be a real pity if Malaysia were to lose the event.

And that brings me back to the question that bothers me most. Who made the decision to accept the hosting rights without first resolving this obvious conflict between FIDE's requirements and Malaysia's policy? Was the issue raised at all when the bid was being considered? Somebody in the Federation ought to explain how this situation was allowed to develop.

I say this as someone who has been involved in Malaysian chess for many years. We should be proud when FIDE entrusts us with an event of this standing. But accepting the honour of hosting a world championship also means accepting the responsibilities that come with it. We cannot simply hope that a problem everyone should have anticipated will somehow disappear when the tournament draws near.

To Balik Pulau and back

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 08:43:12 +0000

We did something a little different yesterday. We followed the monks from the Nandaka Vihara Meditation Society on a visit to two Buddhist monasteries in Balik Pulau and a meditation centre in Bukit Mertajam, and it turned out to be quite a day, almost like putting in a full day's work. We left home at 9.30am and didn't get back until 5.30pm. Eight hours out and about, and thankfully, I wasn't the one behind the wheel.

That job was left to a younger person, which was just as well because it rained heavily for much of the day. Driving in that sort of weather can be quite challenging for me, especially when visibility is poor and the roads are wet. I was quite happy to sit back and leave the driving to someone younger!

Our first stop was the Balik Pulau Buddhist Hermitage. Getting there was an adventure in itself. We turned off onto a road that seemed to get narrower and narrower until it was barely wide enough for a car to pass through. For a moment, I wondered whether we were heading in the right direction, but eventually we arrived at the hermitage. It was a rather secluded place and practically deserted. We had to let ourselves in through the gate. The only person there was the chief monk.

After that, we made our way to Vihara BoonRaksa Forest Monastery, also in Balik Pulau. This place was more accessible than the first, without the narrow approach that had made our earlier journey so interesting. We'd actually visited both places two or three years ago, so this wasn't our first time there. Not much seemed to have changed, although I had the opportunity to explore a little more this time around.

From Balik Pulau, we headed back to the mainland for our final stop at the Bukit Mertajam Buddhist Meditation Centre. By then, the day was already getting on, and after all that travelling in the rain earlier, I was beginning to feel the effects of being out for so many hours.

We finally got home at 5.30pm, feeling thoroughly bushed. And this was despite having done none of the driving! I suppose eight hours of travelling, getting in and out of the vehicle and walking around the various places can take its toll on an old fellow like me. Age is catching up. Even a day spent visiting Buddhist monasteries can feel like a day's work...

PS. Did I mention lunch? No? Well, our lunch was in Bayan Baru, at a restaurant known as Foong Yean, which served fabulous Chinese food. Quite notable were the curry prawns, braised pork and steamed fish. Standard items in their menu, but cooked very well.

Advanced glycation end products

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 22:50:00 +0000

Lately, I've been attending more health talks than ever before. Whether this is a good thing or not, I don't know lah. Maybe it's a sign of getting older when health becomes a more frequent topic of conversation. On Friday night, I was at The Old Frees' Association for a session that included constipation and hernia. Yesterday, I was at the Adventist Church in Bukit Mertajam for a talk on kidney health. Some of the slides certainly opened my eyes to a few things.

This wasn't my first visit to the church. In fact, I go there quite often, even though I'm a Buddhist. The church members have been very accommodating to both my wife and me, and we've taken part in some of their activities as well. Religion aside, I've always felt comfortable joining in. I don't see why we shouldn't be able to take part in one another's activities.

The talk included something called Advanced Glycation End Products, or AGEs for short. These are compounds that can form when food is cooked at high temperatures, especially when meat is fried, grilled or roasted. The slides explained how AGEs are associated with inflammation and oxidative stress, which can affect our health, including our kidneys.

We all know that too much fried food isn't good for us, but how often do we think about the way our food is cooked? Dr Kuan suggested steaming, boiling and stewing instead, as these methods generally produce fewer AGEs than high-temperature cooking. Nobody is asking us to give up our favourite fried chicken or roast meat altogether, of course. But perhaps we can make a few changes to the way we prepare our food.

The other advice was very familiar enough: eat more vegetables, fruits, whole grains and beans, and pay attention to our diet. Unfortunately for me, these things are easier said than done. I know that as someone who has to keep an eye on his health, understanding what we should do and actually doing it are two different things.

Anyway, that's another health talk attended and another bit of information picked up along the way. I've certainly been going to more of these talks lately. Whether I'm becoming more health-conscious or simply more aware of the things that can go wrong as we grow older, I'll leave that to my wife to decide.

Constipated

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 22:48:00 +0000

I quite enjoyed a medical talk which The Old Frees' Association organised last Friday. Found it quite practical with easy-to-understand information on some common health issues. About 50 to 60 people attended, and we listened to four doctors from Aptus Surgery & Specialist Centre, namely, Dr Ong Hean Teik, Dr Lim Su Sian, Dr Cathy Heng and Dr Sabrina Jane Dass.

One of the segments was Dr Cathy Heng's presentation on the colon, particularly constipation. She began by asking how many people in the audience were constipated and invited us to raise our hands. Only one person responded. I suspect there were others who weren't quite prepared to own up, given that this isn't exactly the sort of subject we normally discuss in public.

But Dr Cathy made the point that constipation isn't simply about whether we pass motion every day. Some people go more than once a day while others may go only a few times a week. What matters is whether this is normal for us and whether we experience difficulty or discomfort. She also reminded us to pay attention to persistent changes in our bowel habits, particularly if accompanied by blood in the stool, unexplained weight loss or other worrying symptoms. These shouldn't be dismissed, as they could be signs of something more serious, including colorectal cancer.

Another point she made was about keeping our colon healthy through sensible eating and regular exercise. Eating more fibre, drinking enough water and staying active are simple measures, but they are easy to neglect in our daily lives. I particularly liked her comparison of exercise to putting money into a savings account. We save for a rainy day, and in much the same way, maintaining our muscles gives us a reserve to draw on when we grow older or when illness or an accident leaves us less active.

It was a useful reminder that looking after our health doesn't always require complicated measures. Sometimes, it begins with paying attention to what our bodies are telling us and doing the ordinary things consistently.

Deaf championship

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 06:17:59 +0000

Writing this story was not easy. Initially, I was debating with myself whether to use the word “deaf” or a more politically acceptable term like “hearing impaired”. But then the organisers themselves wanted the event to be called the Asia Pacific Deaf Chess Championship, which was part of a wider Asia Pacific Deaf Multi-sport Championship in Penang. Medals were also being contested in other sports, viz, athletics, badminton, bowling, table tennis and orienteering. So perhaps I had been worrying unnecessarily about being politically incorrect.

It was last December that I first heard about the Asia Pacific Deaf Chess Championship and that it would be held in Penang. Subsequently, the Penang Chess Association was invited to provide the technical expertise needed to make the championship a success. And so, what had initially been just an announcement became a reality this month, with the championship getting under way on 03 October 2026 at the 1st Avenue Mall.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to make it to the mall to watch the games until the final day of competition. By then, the players had already gone through the individual classical and blitz events, and what remained for me to watch was the final of the rapid mixed team event. So that was where I caught up with the championship, with the teams fighting it out for the medals.

In this mixed team rapid event, India emerged as the champions after beating Kazakhstan in the final to take the gold medal. Malaysia then beat Kuwait to secure the bronze. It was good to see the Malaysian team getting onto the medal podium in an international chess competition, particularly one being held on home ground in Penang.

If there is one Malaysian player who deserves a special mention, it is 14-year-old Leong Ee Hern with his three medals. He won Gold in the individual blitz, Silver in the individual classical event and Bronze in the mixed team rapid. That's quite a haul, and a good achievement for the Malaysian player. Winning a medal in one event is already something to be pleased about, but to collect medals in all three formats is another matter altogether. There was also Yoshni Ramakrishnan who won a Gold in the women's individual classical event. So all in, quite a successful campaign for Malaysia.

For Penang, hosting the championship at the 1st Avenue Mall was yet another opportunity to bring this side of chess to a wider audience. We are accustomed to seeing chess tournaments played in hotels, school halls and other designated venues. A shopping mall offers a different setting, with members of the public having the opportunity to see the games as they go about their usual business.

And so, congratulations to all the medal winners, especially Leong Ee Hern for his Gold, Silver and Bronze. It is always nice to see a Malaysian player doing well, and even better when the competition takes place right here in Penang.

The automatic fuel adjustment factor

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 01:46:03 +0000

Most people don't pay much attention to their electricity bills. Or at least, not until something looks unusual. And I'm one of them. Every month, I generally consider my electricity usage to be normal. There will always be some fluctuations, of course, but they don't usually amount to very much. I'm quite happy as long as my monthly bill doesn't exceed RM150, and generally, RM90 to RM100 is about my average.

But yesterday, I attended a talk on ESG and one of the speakers mentioned something that got me wanting to know more. It was a feature on our electricity bills called the Automatic Fuel Adjustment or AFA. Apparently, this has been causing our Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) bills to fluctuate quite a bit this year. So I decided to find out a little more about this AFA thingy.

As I understand it, the AFA is a monthly adjustment determined by the Energy Commission to reflect changes in the cost of fuel used to generate electricity, particularly coal and gas, as well as movements in the US dollar-ringgit exchange rate. When the costs are lower than the standard baseline, consumers get a rebate. When they are higher, we pay a surcharge. The adjustment is calculated according to how much electricity we use. One sen per kWh may not sound like much, but it works out to RM1 for every 100 kWh consumed. For households using a lot more electricity, the difference can become quite noticeable. And this year, the difference has been anything but small.

January 2026 started with an AFA rebate of 4.99 sen per kWh. The rebate gradually became smaller over the following months before disappearing altogether. By May, we were paying a surcharge of 1.38 sen per kWh. Things got worse from there. The surcharge reached 3.80 sen per kWh in August before easing slightly to 3.67 sen in September. That meant September was the fifth consecutive month in which the AFA was a surcharge rather than a rebate.

For a household using 1,200 kWh a month, the difference amounts to quite a lot. In January, the AFA effectively reduced the bill by about RM60. By September, the same amount of electricity attracted an additional RM44. That's a swing of roughly RM104 a month without using a single extra unit of electricity. For those using 800 kWh, the January-to-September difference is about RM69. At 1,800 kWh, it is around RM156, while someone using 3,000 kWh a month would see a difference of roughly RM260.

I am quite fortunate in the sense that my electricity consumption is low enough that I don't have to worry about the AFA surcharge. Under the normal arrangement, domestic users consuming 600 kWh or less a month are exempt from the AFA charge, the RM10 monthly retail charge and the eight per cent service tax. And there's some good news for those using a little more electricity. Following concerns about the rising cost of living, the government has temporarily raised the protection threshold from 600 to 800 kWh a month, covering electricity consumption from 01 September 2026 till December. The move came after Cabinet discussions, partly in response to the hotter weather and haze, which had pushed up electricity consumption in some households.

There's one important detail about this 600 kWh rule, or the temporary 800 kWh rule, that can easily catch people out. If our monthly consumption stays within the applicable threshold, the AFA surcharge is waived. But cross that threshold by even one unit and the AFA applies to all the electricity we use, not just the units above 600 or 800 kWh. So a household that normally stays just below the limit could suddenly find its bill going up quite noticeably in a hotter month, simply because the air-conditioning has been running longer.

For households consuming up to 800 kWh a month, the temporary protection means they are also exempt from the RM10 monthly retail charge and the eight per cent service tax during this period. For those using between 601 and 800 kWh, the savings can amount to roughly RM40 to RM47 a month, depending on consumption.

The good news is that there should be a retrospective adjustment for our September consumption, to be automatically reflected in bills issued from October onwards. And for the remainder of this year, households using up to 800 kWh a month have a little more breathing space. But what happens when the temporary protection expires at the end of December is anyone's guess.

There's another point I learnt from looking into all this. The AFA outlook isn't particularly encouraging either. The latest forecast had suggested that the surcharge would ease to 3.36 sen per kWh in October and 2.81 sen in November, before rising sharply to 5.48 sen in December. The October rate has since been confirmed at 3.61 sen per kWh, slightly higher than forecast. The November and December figures remain projections for now.

Come 1 January 2027, the 800 kWh protection is due to end unless the government decides to extend it. That may be when we find out just how much of a difference this temporary protection has been making to household electricity bills. So, while we may sometimes blame TNB when the bill arrives looking rather unhealthy, the story is a little more complex. Much of the fluctuation has to do with the cost of producing electricity, particularly fuel prices and movements in the ringgit against the US dollar. The continuing conflict in the Middle East hasn't helped matters either, given its impact on global energy markets.

For the moment, at least, households using no more than 800 kWh a month have some welcome protection. But it is only temporary. Perhaps this is a good time for the rest of us to pay a little more attention to our electricity bills, instead of simply paying them every month and assuming that everything is normal. I know I shall be doing that from now on.

The non-missionary English free schools

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 12:17:00 +0000

I have always been interested in the early history of the three old English schools in the former Straits Settlements, namely, Penang Free School, Malacca Free School which later became Malacca High School and the Singapore Free School which eventually became Raffles Institution.

They were established at different times in the 19th Century but there is an interesting connection between them. All three came into being at a time when education was not yet really the responsibility of the colonial government. They depended on a mixture of public subscriptions, private benefactors, government assistance and people connected with the Christian missions.

So were these actually mission schools? Penang Free School is probably the easiest place to start. It was founded in 1816 through the efforts of Revd Robert Sparke Hutchings, the Anglican chaplain in Penang. That gives it a Christian connection, but the school was not set up as an Anglican mission school. In fact, the early proposal was quite deliberate about making the school open to children regardless of their religion and about not offending parents who might object to Christian teaching.

The 1817 school report called it a Public Free School, with the school being entrusted to a committee on behalf of the public. The word “free” also did not quite mean what we might assume today. Children who could afford to pay fees did so, while poorer children could be maintained by the school. So while there was a Christian chaplain behind its establishment, the institution itself was intended to be much broader than a church school.

The Malacca Free School, established in 1826, has a somewhat similar story. Its origins can be traced to a proposal in 1825 by trustees of various charitable funds in Malacca to establish a good English school which would be free for poor children. James Humphrey, the superintendent of the London Missionary Society, was among those involved, while Thomas H Moore who became its first master had also been connected with the missionary educational world.

The school eventually opened in the Parsonage House (building on the left in the above picture. On the right is Christ Church) with 18 pupils. Interestingly, it was not simply an English school. There were Portuguese, Chinese and Malay classes as well, with children initially being taught in their own languages before progressing in English. Again, there was a missionary connection, but the school was run by trustees and supported from several sources rather than being simply a missionary institution. It remained the Malacca Free School until the trustees eventually handed it over to the government, which took over in 1878 and renamed it Malacca High School.

In Singapore, the story gets a little more complicated. Stamford Raffles had the idea for an educational institution almost from the beginning of the British settlement. In 1823 he worked with the Presbyterian missionary Robert Morrison who was already running the Anglo-Chinese College in Malacca. There was even a proposal to transfer the Anglo-Chinese College from Malacca to Singapore and incorporate it into Raffles' new institution. But that never happened.

The original Singapore Institution building was started in 1823 but the project more or less went no-where for several years. It was only when the Singapore Free School moved into the completed building in December 1837 that things began to take shape. The school then became the Singapore Institution Free School in 1838 and eventually evolved into Raffles Institution.

But if these three schools were not really mission schools in the strict sense, it doesn't mean that there weren't any. Certainly, there were proper mission schools in all three settlements.

In Malacca, for example, there was the Anglo-Chinese College, founded in 1818 by the Protestant missionaries Robert Morrison and William Milne. That was very much a missionary institution. Morrison had envisaged it as a place where Chinese and European learning could be brought together and the college became an important centre of Protestant missionary education in the region. It remained in Malacca until 1843, when it was moved to Hong Kong.

Malacca later acquired its Catholic mission schools. St Mary's School was established in 1872 and in 1880 moved to larger premises and became St Francis School. The La Salle Brothers eventually took it over and it became St Francis Institution. It was once even described as a French mission school.

Penang likewise had its proper mission schools. The best-known is St Xavier's Institution which began in 1852 when the La Salle Brothers arrived in Penang. Unlike Penang Free School, this school was established by a religious order and part of the Brothers' missionary educational work.

Meanwhile in Singapore, there was St Margaret's School, founded in 1842 by Maria Dyer of the London Missionary Society to provide a home and education for girls who were at risk of being sold as bonded domestic servants. It began in a small shophouse and was very much a missionary undertaking.

Then came the Catholic schools. In 1852 the De La Salle Brothers established St John's School, which became St Joseph's Institution, while the Sisters of the Holy Infant Jesus established their first convent school in Singapore in 1854. And, of course, Anglo-Chinese School came along in 1886, founded by Methodist missionary William Fitzjames Oldham with just 13 boys in a shophouse.

So, looking at the three settlements side by side, I think there is a useful distinction to be made. Penang Free School, Malacca Free School and Singapore Institution/Raffles Institution were among the earliest attempts to provide a broader form of English education in the Straits Settlements. They had Christian and missionary connections in their early years but they were not quite the same thing as schools purposefully established and run by a church or religious order.

Alongside them, a proper network of mission schools gradually developed: Anglo-Chinese College in Malacca, St Xavier's in Penang, St Margaret's, St Joseph's and later Anglo-Chinese School in Singapore, together with the various convent schools.

Modern writers with a particular leaning towards the mission-school tradition still tend to put all the old English schools into the same basket and call them “mission schools”. But back in the 19th century, there was a difference between a Free School with missionary involvement and a mission school actually established by missionaries. And when the three settlements are looked at together, I think that difference becomes fairly clear.

#penangfreeschool #malaccahighschool #rafflesinstitution

Tan Heng Swee, 1945-2026

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 02:20:25 +0000

Well, today I just want to say that one of my friends from The Old Frees' Association passed away late on Monday night, on the very day of his 81st birthday. Tan Heng Swee died at the Sungai Bakap Hospital, more than two weeks after he had fallen down in his house for the very last time.

Although we were both OFA members, I didn't actually get to know Heng Swee until 2010. We were among those who attended the state funeral of Dr Lim Chong Eu. We got talking and somehow, the friendship grew from there. When I was hospitalised in 2013, Heng Swee was among the first people to come and visit me. I remember that very well and appreciated it a lot.

Ever since the death of his wife, Alice, three years ago, I had watched his health steadily decline. In the last year or so, he had become so frail that even a walking stick was no longer much help. He kept falling down, sometimes repeatedly, although fortunately he never suffered any serious injury apart from the bruises. There were times when he told me that he had been lying on the floor for hours before he finally found the strength to get himself up.

I can write so much about him in the last years of his life because I had been visiting him almost every week, always carrying a bag of eggs to supplement his diet. So at least I was seeing him with some regularity, albeit only for a few minutes, and could keep an eye on how he was doing. It was probably the least I could do.

I kept telling him that something had to change, like getting himself a full-time live-in maid. But he steadfastly refused. He had a helper who came in once or twice a week, but that was obviously never going to be enough for someone who was falling down as often as he was.

His refusal had a lot to do with his stubbornness, and anyone who had known Heng Swee for any length of time would know what I mean. He was very loyal to his Old Frees friends and believed that he could always depend on us when he needed help. What he never seemed willing to accept was that there was only so much we could do.

All of his Old Frees friends lived far away from his house in Simpang Ampat and, besides, most of us are more or less his age. We're all getting on in years ourselves and beginning to have our own physical difficulties. Expecting one of us to rush over and lift up a grown man who had fallen on the floor was simply not realistic. But these were realities that Heng Swee chose to ignore.

As an alternative, I even suggested that he should call his neighbours if he ever got into trouble. They were so much nearer than any of us and you never know when you might need their help one day. I tried explaining to him that, as we grow older, perhaps we should become a little more accommodating. But Heng Swee was stubborn right to the end. Unfortunately, it also left him rather lonely.

And yet, despite all the challenges, he was my friend. I had known him for many years and I shall miss him. Strangely enough, I am also relieved that his struggles are now over. At least he no longer has to worry about falling down, lying helpless on the floor or trying to get himself back on his feet. Goodbye, Heng Swee. I shall miss you for the friendship we shared.

More today than yesterday

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 02:21:13 +0000

I was going through some of my old records today when I spotted an album that I hadn't played for quite some time. It was More Today Than Yesterday by The Spiral Starecase. I pulled it out of my collection, put the record on the turntable and let the music take me back to the late 1960s. I knew the title song, of course. More Today Than Yesterday was one of those songs that was everywhere when I was younger. But although I remembered the song quite well, I realised that I knew very little about the group that recorded it. So, with the album playing in the background, I started looking them up.

It turned out that The Spiral Starecase had quite an interesting story. The group began life in 1964 as The Fydallions, a four-piece instrumental band formed by Air Force servicemen in Sacramento, California, for a talent contest on their base. They eventually expanded to five members, with Pat Upton on vocals and guitar, Harvey Kaye on organ, Dick Lopes on saxophone, Bobby Raymond on bass and Vinny Parello on drums. After leaving the Air Force, they headed for Las Vegas and spent several years playing long lounge sets there and gradually developing their sound.

When Columbia Records became interested in them in 1967, the record company wanted something a little more suitable. The musicians chose The Spiral Starecase, taking the name from the 1946 film The Spiral Staircase. But they deliberately changed the spelling to “Starecase”. I suppose they wanted to be different, although I wonder how many people who bought their records ever noticed the spelling.

They signed with Columbia in 1967 and released a few singles, but none made much of an impact. Their fortunes changed when Columbia's A&R man Gary Usher encouraged Pat Upton to write some original material. While the group was performing in Las Vegas, Upton wrote More Today Than Yesterday. The song was released in early 1969 and suddenly everything changed.

It became a sizeable hit on the Billboard Hot 100 and the Cash Box charts. For a group that had spent years playing lounges, this must have been quite a transformation. One moment they were working their way through long sets in Las Vegas and the next they were appearing on the national charts.

The album followed in 1969, also titled More Today Than Yesterday. There were original songs alongside covers such as Proud Mary and For Once in My Life. The Spiral Starecase had a fairly distinctive sound, with the horns and organ giving the music that bright, almost sunshine-pop quality, while Pat Upton's voice gave it a soulful edge.

The group had a few follow-up singles, including She's Ready and No One for Me to Turn To, but none came close to repeating the success of More Today Than Yesterday. In fact, their period in the limelight was brief. Less than two years after their breakthrough, The Spiral Starecase had broken up. And yet, the song has survived all these years.

I'm rather glad that I pulled this old album out of my collection today. I had only intended to listen to a song I remembered from my younger days, but ended up finding out a little more about the five musicians who recorded it. The album is back on my shelf now. But I don't think I'll leave it there for another 50 years. And there are quite a lot more old records in my collection that deserve another spin.

PFS heritage walk

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 04:02:28 +0000

Let me begin with some irrelevance. I was just thinking that, since the oldest participant in our Penang Free School heritage walk last Saturday entered Form One in 1956, there must have been at least 50,000 students who had walked through the gates of the old school over the past 70 years. Just an estimate, mind you, because it is a number that no one can easily verify. So I plucked it from the air.

Then I considered that with the 30 participants who turned up for the heritage walk, they constituted only 0.06% of those 50,000 Old Frees. My devious mind then thought, wow, the other 99.94% of Old Frees must already know everything about their old school, and that's why they weren't interested in this activity at all. 😁

Anyway, Siang Jin and I concluded that even with only these 30 participants, the heritage walk was still a great success. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves thoroughly. Some had not returned to the Free School for a very long time, so for them it really was a walk down memory lane.

We began in one of the classrooms where we introduced the participants to the Free School Guide and explained how it came about. Although we usually trace its beginnings to the school's Bicentenary celebrations in 2016, the seed was actually sown a year earlier when Lean Kang, a former Prefect of the Free School like Siang Jin, was the organising chairman of the 150th anniversary dinner of the school's Prefects' Board. He had, at some point, taken a peek into the Prefects' Room and wasn't particularly impressed with what he saw.

Funds raised from that dinner went towards improving the Prefects' Room, among other things. Both of them then channelled the excess funds towards organising a series of exclusive student leadership workshops for the Prefects and other potential student leaders from 2017 until 2024. Myself and one or two others were invited to assist. We had Tan Soo Choon as our bedrock trainer until his untimely demise at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. He is still greatly missed. Somewhere along the way, Siang Jin realised that nobody was going to read Let the Aisles Proclaim, my 350-page book on the school's 200-year history, and we decided that perhaps we should do something more manageable. So we took the information from the book and turned it into 10 short videos.

We asked some of our schoolmates from the Class of 1970 (Form Five) to get involved, and they responded enthusiastically. This is perhaps an appropriate time to mention Teik Wah who did the voiceover admirably, Chei Jin lent his voice to the School Rally and the main man behind the video productions, Kumaraveloo. That was in 2019. Then, in 2024, Siang Jin and I worked on the Free School Guide itself, an interactive mobile app that would allow people to access information about the school from anywhere in the world. In a way, the student leadership workshops, the videos and eventually the Free School Guide were our own small way of giving something back to society. We had benefited from our years at the Free School, so what better way to give something back than to contribute to the school itself and to the students who would come after us? That, in a nutshell, was how it all started.

Then came the shock about two months ago when we learnt that the PFS210Years organising committee had suddenly announced a PFS heritage walk through the school grounds on the morning of the third of October. This caught us completely by surprise because we hadn't been informed of any such plan. Ivan Ooi, the organising committee chairman, subsequently spoke to Siang Jin about it and the two of us decided to chip in and help. At the very least, we had to defend our turf and make sure that whatever was told to the participants would be based on correct information and not hearsay. But the fact that the organisers announced the event without consulting us was not quite right. A fait accompli for them, perhaps, but it was boh sui.

We anticipated that perhaps 70 to 100 people might register for the walk, but in retrospect, the 30 participants turned out to be quite a comfortable number. We could take our time and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. After the introduction, we proceeded to the Pinhorn Hall which I have always considered to be the soul of the school. My main focus there was on the wall plaques, where I explained the story behind the donors who had contributed towards the construction of the former Penang Free School building in Farquhar Street, now occupied by the Penang State Museum. Their names are permanently etched on three marble plaques there.

When the present school building was completed in 1927 and the school moved into these premises on 9 January 1928, the same donors' names were reproduced on a wooden plaque and mounted in the space above the main entrance to the school hall. Very few people today know about its significance. Most visitors tend to concentrate instead on the plaques bearing the names of the Head Boys, the Queen's Scholars and the Headmasters. I thought it was worth bringing this little piece of the school's history back into the picture.

From Pinhorn Hall, we took a short walk to the Archives building, which had already been opened up for the visitors. For many of the participants, this was the first time they had even realised that the Archives rooms existed, let alone stepped inside them. I could only manage a preliminary explanation because everyone seemed much more engrossed in exploring the rooms for themselves, which was probably a good thing. After all, an archive is something you really should be allowed to poke around in rather than simply have someone standing there telling you what you're looking at.

Eventually, we returned to the classroom for a quiz and, after that, called it a day with a fairly robust singing of the School Rally. Thirty people may have been only 0.06% of my rather fanciful estimate of 50,000 Old Frees, but judging from the enthusiasm in the room, I don't think we needed the other 99.94% to make the morning worthwhile.

PS. There was a special dinner at the school on the same night to commemorate the 210th anniversary, but I did not attend because I had a prior appointment elsewhere. For me, the next significant events will now be on the 21st of October itself. The traditional visit to Robert Sparke Hutchings' grave in the morning followed by The Old Frees' Association's annual dinner in the evening.

Digital transformation

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 22:45:00 +0000

There is something about October that excites me every year, and it always revolves around Penang Free School. When October comes around, there is usually the school's Speech Day, or Founder's Day, which followed the visit to Robert Sparke Hutchings' grave on the morning of the 21st of October. Then, in the evening, there is the annual dinner of The Old Frees' Association that I look forward to.

This year, Speech Day was brought forward to the first of October because of clashes with the examination dates. Last year, it was also held earlier, that time because of its proximity to Deepavali when the school took a break. And there have been quite a few such instances in the school's long history. So, while most Old Frees would probably like to see Speech Day held on the 21st of October every year, it is obviously not quite etched in stone.

I almost missed this year's Speech Day because I was given the impression that it would be open only to those who had contributed to the school's Digital Transformation Fund. But what the heck, I thought to myself. Nobody's going to stop this Old Free from attending Speech Day, fund or no fund. I have attended every Speech Day since 2012 and I wasn't going to break my consistency. So there I was at 8am on the first of the month, walking into the school hall and immediately being greeted by familiar faces from The Old Frees' Association. I was right to attend after all. There was no such restriction. A miscommunication, if ever there was one.

One of the first people I bumped into was Danny Quah. I would consider him a cheen-lang, as his forefathers had migrated from the same locality in Amoy as my ancestors. Danny was there as the Old Free invited to address the school.

This was also the first time the new Penang Governor, Ramli Ngah Talib, attended Penang Free School Speech Day as Guest of Honour. Traditionally, the Governor attends the school's Speech Day every year, a tradition that harks back to the days before Independence when the Resident Councillor Penang would attend the school's annual Speech Day on the Government's behalf. After Independence, it fell upon the Penang Governor to continue with this tradition. Thus, Ramli Ngah Talib is the latest in our long list of Penang Governors to fulfil this role. 👍

This year's Speech Day was, of course, part of the celebrations for the school's 210th anniversary, and Ivan Ooi, president of the Penang Free School Foundation and organising chairman of the PFS 210 Years celebration committee, reminded Old Frees that an anniversary was not just about looking back. It was also about thinking about what we would leave behind for future generations.

While the traditions and character of the school must be preserved, he said, the school also has to prepare its students for a very different world shaped by artificial intelligence, robotics, data science and other digital technologies. That was where the Penang Free School Digital Transformation Fund came in. Supporting the fund, he said, was not simply about buying technology but about creating opportunities for the next generation of Frees. After all, the school had given us an education, friendships, discipline, confidence and character. Now it was our turn to give something back.

Danny's speech took a rather different tack. Having left Penang Free School in 1976, he began by calling himself a relic and reflected on how much the world had changed in those 50 years. His generation (and obviously mine too as we are only three of four years apart in age) had slide rules, black-and-white television, rotary phones, handwritten letters and examination papers passed down by seniors. We waited for buses, waited for replies to letters and quite often got lost. There was no mobile phone to keep track of where we were and much of our lives left no digital record.

The 1976 Free lived with "unreachability, waiting, uncertainty, shared scarcity, and forgetting", while the 2026 Free lives with "instant knowledge, continuous connection, digital identity, machine intelligence, and collapsed distance".

But Danny was not suggesting that life was better in our day. Today's young people may have more information than they know what to do with, but they also have to navigate deepfakes, misinformation and algorithmic feeds while dealing with much bigger problems such as climate change, geopolitical conflict and the uncertainties brought about by AI.

Yet his message was ultimately an optimistic one. Today's Frees also have access to tools that our generation could never have imagined: almost unlimited knowledge, global communities and the ability to learn, create, publish and build things from almost anywhere.

In other words, today's young people may have inherited bigger problems than we did, but they have also inherited much more powerful tools with which to tackle them. Fifty years ago, our generation walked out of Penang Free School into our world. Now it is the turn of today's Frees. "Go out and make your world a better world," was his parting advice.

Quiet presence, but powerful

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 22:58:00 +0000

I was pleased to see Uzbekistan win the Open section of the 46th Chess Olympiad in Samarkand yesterday. It was rather appropriate that the Uzbek team won the gold medal on home soil, especially considering the remarkable crop of young players the country has produced in recent years.

The five members of the team were Nodirbek Abdusattorov, Javokhir Sindarov, Nodirbek Yakubboev, Shamsiddin Vokhidov and Mukhiddin Madaminov. An exceptionally talented bunch, led by Sindarov and Abdusattorov, both still very young by any normal measure of things. Sindarov is only 21 and Abdusattorov 22, yet both have already established themselves among the world's strongest players.

But as I watched the matches over the past couple of weeks, I found myself noticing somebody vaguely familiar who wasn't actually playing. Didn't really recognised him at first, but there he was, Rustam Kasimdzhanov, the team's non-playing captain.

It was in 1998 that I first met Kasimdzhanov. He was just 19 years old and playing for Tashkent in the Asian Cities Team Chess Championship at Genting Highlands. I remember him because he spoke excellent English. He was already a grandmaster then, but of course nobody knew what the future held for this young Uzbek player.

I happened to be involved in that tournament as an arbiter, so I saw him around the event. Six years later, he would become FIDE World Champion. He subsequently went on to become a highly respected coach and second, working with players such as Viswanathan Anand and Fabiano Caruana in their world championship campaigns.

Now, nearly three decades after I first saw him in Genting, here he was again, this time supporting a new generation of Uzbek players. During the Olympiad, he was constantly around. He was there from the beginning of the rounds and when the games were over, he was still there. When one of his players won, he was there to congratulate him. When one of them suffered an occasional loss, he was there to offer some consolation.

He wasn't doing anything dramatic and for the most part, he wasn't the person the cameras were looking for. The attention naturally belonged to the four players sitting at the boards. They were the ones winning the games and collecting the points. But Kasimdzhanov provided the quiet, steady presence behind them.

I thought that was quite important in a team competition like the Chess Olympiad. These young players may be tremendously strong, but they are still playing 11 demanding rounds under considerable pressure. There will inevitably be good days and bad days, and having somebody with Kasimdzhanov's experience around throughout the tournament must have been useful, even if much of what he did would never show up in the tournament statistics.

And there was something quite nice about it for me. In 1998, I was watching an 19-year-old Kasimdzhanov playing first board for Tashkent. Yesterday, I was watching a 47-year-old man on the other side of the chessboard, so to speak, helping Uzbekistan's latest generation of young stars win the Olympiad.

The players received all the attention after their victory in Samarkand, but there was also the quiet man who had been with them throughout the journey, and whom not many people noticed. Perhaps after nearly 30 years in top-level chess, Kasimdzhanov knows that sometimes the most useful thing you can do is simply to be there when it matters.

PFS heritage walkabout

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 03:45:09 +0000

Calling all Old Frees...

If you are free on 03 October 2026, come join the PFS Heritage Walkabout & Quiz from 9:30am to noon at your alma mater, Penang Free School. There are cash prizes to be won.

Register via this form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeXes6eH3bbD2oir_xdL0-NRxCQoUB4lv0ilZPMXVMPD0Binw/viewform

The quiz is based on the Free School Guide. Download it via this link: https://mega.nz/file/DexgVRyD#BIXEhVptqHrwwxlpZLK_7lHLnJQBqNdk7XVA1ijBtUI

Celebrating the mid-autumn festival

noreply@blogger.com (SS Quah) — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 22:02:00 +0000

With today being the 15th day of the Chinese eighth lunar month, I started thinking about what we in Penang actually call it. In English, there are two names commonly used: Mid-Autumn Festival and Mooncake Festival. But when I was growing up hearing, speaking and breathing Penang Hokkien, there was yet another name that sounded more familiar: pek-gueh chap-goh. That is how many of us first knew the festival: not by its formal Chinese name, 中秋节, or by the English name "Mid-Autumn Festival", but simply as pek-gueh chap-goh.

So which name should be used? There isn't really a rule saying that one must be used and the others avoided. "Mooncake Festival" is perfectly familiar in Malaysia, Singapore and among Chinese communities elsewhere.

But if I had to choose one in English, I'd still go with Mid-Autumn Festival. The reason is quite straightforward. The Hokkien name is 中秋节 (Tiong-chhiu chek). Tiong-chhiu means "mid-autumn" and chek means festival. So the literal translation is Mid-Autumn Festival. There is another Penang Hokkien expression that is worth mentioning here. The mooncake itself is known as tiong-chhiu pneah, literally the "mid-autumn pastry" or biscuit. So there is a nice connection between tiong-chhiu chek, the Mid-Autumn Festival, and tiong-chhiu pneah, the mooncake we associate so closely with it.

"Mooncake Festival", on the other hand, is a popular name that has developed from one of the customs associated with the occasion, but it does make the festival sound as though it revolves around a particular pastry.

However, there is considerably more to it than that. The festival falls on the 15th day of the eighth month of the Chinese lunar calendar when the moon is traditionally regarded as being at its fullest and brightest. It is closely associated with the autumn harvest, the full moon and families gathering together.

There are also lanterns, moon gazing, poetry and the familiar stories connected with the moon, particularly the tale of Chang'e. Different parts of the Chinese-speaking world have their own customs and foods too. In some places, pomelos and osmanthus feature prominently.

Here in Penang, we have our own particular way of celebrating. Lanterns are still a familiar sight, especially where children are involved, while mooncakes come in an a confusing variety of flavours. Traditional lotus paste and salted egg yolk still have their followers, but these days we're also seen everything from durian and chocolate to artificial flavours. All sorts of combinations that our grandparents would probably eye with some suspicion.

And then there is the packaging. Mooncakes have become big business. Every year the boxes seem to become more elaborate, more expensive and, occasionally, considerably more impressive than the mooncakes inside them. Hotels, restaurants and bakeries compete to come up with new flavours and presentation, while companies send them out as corporate gifts.

This is another reason why I prefer the name Mid-Autumn Festival. "Mooncake Festival" puts the emphasis rather heavily on the commercial and culinary side of things. It is a bit like calling Christmas the English Pudding Festival. The pudding may be an important part of Christmas, but it doesn't really tell us what Christmas is about.

Still, I can understand why "Mooncake Festival" has caught on, particularly in Malaysia and Singapore. It is simple, catchy and immediately gives people an idea of what the festival involves. If someone unfamiliar with Chinese customs hears "Mooncake Festival", they at least know what to look out for.

So I'm not suggesting that we should start correcting people every time they say "Mooncake Festival". That would be taking things rather too seriously. For me, though, Mid-Autumn Festival feels more appropriate because it describes the occasion rather than the food.

And perhaps pek-gueh chap-goh is the most Penang way of looking at it. It doesn't even try to explain the festival. It simply tells us when it happens. Those words would have been enough for an older generation of Penang Hokkiens to know exactly what you were talking about.

Which brings me back to the question of what we should call it. Mid-Autumn Festival, Mooncake Festival or pek-gueh chap-goh? Perhaps all three are perfectly valid, depending on who you're talking to. But when I look up at the full moon, I'd still rather think of it as the Mid-Autumn Festival. The moon, after all, was there long before the mooncakes.