The other unforgettable smell from my childhood was swill. I sometimes thought that the stench from this was even worse than the night soil. At least the night soil collector did not call around mealtimes. The swill collector, on the other hand, invariably came around dinner time, so it became a daily rush to finish our dinner before they came.
Today, people bag their food waste and dispose of it with other trash. It is not uncommon to see a half-eaten bun or surplus pieces of meat and vegetables thrown away. Back then, food waste was put into a bin fabricated from metal tins that could have held cooking oil. These were provided by small-scale farmers from family-run farms in the fifties and sixties.
They came in the early evening as that was when they would have completed their chores on the farm. We could smell their arrival before we saw them. When they happened to come while we were still eating, we had to hold our breath or act as if the smell did not affect our appetites, if we still had any.
The funny thing is, we look forward to the collection each day. If the garbage were not collected on a certain day for any reason, the stench from the swill bin would be with us throughout the night and the next day until the next collection. The communal kitchen had no doors, and the doors to the communal residential unit were never closed. We needed the ventilation.
Grandmother would not let us complain about the smell of the night soil and swill collections. She said that the waste and smell originated from us and that people had survived eating swill. As a child, I believed her. I remember watching a Cantonese movie in which a filial daughter hid in the kitchen to eat swill so that her mother-in-law could feed on the little porridge left in the house.
One of my after-dinner chores was scraping all the food remains into that bin. At that time, the so-called ‘remains’ were likely bones and inedible parts. Vegetable peel, fish scales, or any parts resulting from the food preparation stage also went into this bin.
The farmer brought these tins of swill back to his farm and cooked it into some stew mix for animal feed. In today’s context, with the concern of all kinds of diseases, that would never be allowed.
For all our ‘contributions,’ the farmer will bring each household a gift just before Chinese New Year. Depending on the volume he can collect, it could be a dozen eggs or even a whole live chicken. As the chicken was a rare treat then, we would forget about the smell we had to put up with.
To be continued, Smells Remembered III
Carena Chor
Carena Chor is a retired ITE lecturer interested in drama, reading, writing and craft work.
