Chapter 7: The China Man Who Married a Dusun - 1

I do not know much about my maternal grandfather, Yee Chen Kong (余振光). By the time I was born, he had already passed away. The only photograph of him that I could find is this one found in his tombstone.

Yee Chen Kong
22.6.1882 - 25.5.1950

He came to North Borneo (later renamed Sabah) from a place in China called Guangtong XingNing (广东兴宁碑下村).By the time he left China for North Borneo, he was already married with three children. He was probably in his late thirties or early forties when he reached Sabah. I discovered later that he did not come straight from China to Sabah. He landed in a place called Sungai Lembing in Peninsular Malaya first. (Read here).

In those days, many young men left China and travelled thousand of miles to countries in southeast Asia in search of new opportunities hoping to transform their economic misfortune. My grandfather was one of them and he hoped to work hard in this new found land, make enough money and then return back to China. Somehow in the case of my grandfather, that did not happen. Instead, he stayed on, got married with a Dusun girl and raised a new family. He was 45 years old when he married my grandmother who was then just 14.

In the 1930's and 1940's, the only major economic activity these new immigrants could do was opening up land for coconut, rubber and coffee plantations. Coconuts were planted in northern part of Sabah, rubber in the west and coffee in the interior. I am not sure whether my grandfather had worked in any of these agricultural sectors. I was told by my mother that he had at one time worked in a timber company sawing timber logs into sheets of timber boards for sale. In those days, there was no sawmill and every piece of timber board or sheet was cut manually. That was really hard life!

He worked, grew old without ever having the satisfaction of returning  to his original birthplace, China to see the other part of his family. He died at the age of 68 and was buried at the Roman Catholic Church Cemetery in Mile 1.5, Jalan Tuaran, Kota Kinabalu.

 

Sawing a long piece of timber log into sheets of board takes good understanding, coordination and chemistry between two sawyers.

 

My grandfather also had a younger brother who came to settle down in North Borneo. He worked as a pastor in Basel Church. I knew him well because he and his family used to stay in the same village in Harrington Road. His life will be told in another chapter.