Wife’s Paternal Grandpa

My Wife’s Paternal Grandpa

The late Mr Lee Fu Chu(已故李富初老先生) was my wife's paternal grandfather. By convention of Chinese social decorum I would address him as grandpa too.

Grandpa was a highly respected figure in the Hakka clan with the surname (seh, 姓氏) of Lee during the post Merdeka years, especially in the northern states of Peninsular Malaysia, like Kedah, Perlis and Penang.

Friends and relatives at that time used to call him “shu kun" (叔公) meaning “granduncle", out of respect for him as an elder.

People of other ethnic groups residing in the area of Alor Setar also had high regards for Grandpa and they would call him "Tok" (Datuk)when they dropped in or passed by his shop in Jalan Langgar, Alor Setar.

Grandpa was a generous and approachable person. Friends and relatives who went to him for material or monetary aid would seldom go back empty-handed. I was told by a relative that his late father had once borrowed from Grandpa eight thousand bucks to buy their first house at Bukit Mertajam in the seventies of the past century.

Of course, there were bound to be unscrupulous people who were ready to exploit his generosity in order to swindle money from him.

The modus operandi used by these people followed a standard procedure as below:

A person would approach Grandpa with a business proposal for him to invest. The major portion of the capital would be provided by Grandpa but the business would be run entirely by the proposer as the manager of the business. Usually the business would be run for several years with grandpa consistently pumping in additional money to top-up the investment fund so that the business would be sustained but in the end the proposer would pronounce the business to be in a bad shape and it had to be closed down abruptly. As a result, Grandpa suffered a financial loss as the money he invested was like tons of salt cast into the sea whereas the swindler was seen to start a new business of his own. How he managed to get money for his business is yet to be known to others. One could only deduce that "One man's loss is another man's gain."   This was how grandpa's money was depleted again and again by friends and relatives whom he had trusted.

Nevertheless, Grandpa remained a compassionate man. He had donated money to numerous schools, associations, welfare bodies and religious organizations.  He even sponsored a child of a distant relative with a monthly subsidy of M$50 for the child to complete his undergraduate study at the University of Singapore in the early Seventies of the previous century.

 

Grandpa was a very affectionate husband too. He adored grandma like a newly-wed bride. Hardly one would see them argue. To see them quarrel was even harder still. They were so affectionate to each other that they would share together their food from the same bowl and beverage from a common mug. Grandpa himself did not like to play mah-jong. However, he would encourage Grandma to play the game as a daily pastime. Grandpa always said to Grandma, “Go and gamble as long as you wish. Any money you win from the game will be yours; the money that you lose  will be borne by me.”

Normally a businessman who is successful in accumulating wealth would also be tempted to gather more BMWs (Black Market Wives). I know of a case which happened at Nibong Tebal. There was a local prominent businessman who collaborated with a medium in order to coax his own wife to allow him to marry another woman so that his illness would be cured instantly and his life prolonged indefinitely. Little did his gullible wife know that it was her husband who was suffering from ‘the affliction of greed and lust’. This strategy was a very powerful tool that many others would emulate in the later years.

For Grandpa it was a different story. It had never occurred to him to allow any other woman to come into his married life. Although a fortune teller had once predicted that Grandpa would take a second wife, he did not toe the line as he opined that a faithful and responsible husband should have a strong will to restrain his lust from taking another woman. He had well managed his marriage with full responsibility as he did not believe that marriage is some kind of arithmetic problem that one can do over again if one gets it wrong the first time.

This chain of memories of Grandpa has reminded me of a Chinese adage, ＂修身` 齐家` 治国` 平天下。＂which means that one has to perfect one's character and to generate a harmonious family and community bond as the prerequisite before one could reign a country effectively. In a way Grandpa had fulfilled the quintessence of the above saying as he was an affectionate husband, a successful businessman and an influential figure of his clan.