The Chinatown street scene provided much entertainment when I was a child growing up on Trengganu Street. There wasn’t much for us kids to occupy ourselves with. When I was living at 25B Trengganu Street in the 1950s, we did not even have a Rediffusion set. Every morning, my brother and I would sit at the window to watch the fresh food market stalls set up on the street below.
The fishmonger wore a plastic apron over his clothes and a pair of clogs or rubber boots. Each had his style of cleaning fish. Like those used to clean metal files, a wire brush was first used to remove scales. Then, with a sharp knife cut, the fish belly was opened, and the entrails removed. Unlike the chicken, the entrails of the fish were unwanted unless it was roe. The fish is then plunged into a pail of water, already reddened by the blood of the fish, which had taken their turn earlier. While doing this with one hand, the fishmonger reached for a piece of old newspaper. The fish is wrapped in this, and the customer carries it home in her basket. If the customer wanted only a cutlet from a bigger fish, the fishmonger used a cleaver and a horn-shaped mallet to cut the piece desired.
Then there were the vegetable vendors. Their wares were displayed on piled-up crates or cardboard on the street. Some were pre-weighed and bundled in fixed quantities to be sold, while others were in rattan trays weighed only after the customers decided the amount they wanted to buy.
A stall I have fond memories of is the man who sold a delicious grass jelly drink at the southeast corner of the Smith Street and Trengganu Street junction. Sometimes, I would save my precious pocket money for a recess snack. The reward was a cool drink when I returned from school in the afternoon.
At the northwest corner of the junction of Smith Street and Trengganu Street, a crowd would gather as they waited for the intriguing daily free performance. It was a display of reptile slaughter by the man (he happened to be one of our neighbours) who sold turtles, snakes, and all kinds of creatures, all of which looked scary to my young eyes then. The most vivid image I recall is the man slamming some long reptile on the ground until it became senseless. I cannot remember what else happened, for I must have walked away from our window vantage out of fear or disgust.
He would be around for only part of the morning, for his place would be taken by the sugar cane juice vendor later in the morning. We did not observe whether the sugar cane had been rinsed before being squeezed between rollers to extract the juice or how it had been stored to keep rats and cockroaches away. But we survived drinking sugar cane juice throughout our childhood.
Sometimes, something interesting would spice up the street scene further. Two stallholders would fight or quarrel over “infringement of territory.” Sometimes, they became pretty violent. These daily observations showed us which stallholders were not on friendly terms.
Most of these daytime stalls would be packed and gone by late afternoon. Just before dinner time, the ‘night shift’ came along. The pasar malam stalls sell various items, including cooked food, clothing, stationery, shoes, toys, houseware, and sundry goods. I remember the stall selling turtle soup, run by the neighbour’s family, who slaughtered reptiles in the morning. Then there was the stall selling chee cheong fun (rice rolls). The one selling porridge had a large menu board detailing the different kinds of porridge they have. We would recite what was written, like some reading practice we had to do. It was quite a feat for us to distinguish the Chinese characters from such a distance.
And this change of scene provided our after-dinner entertainment.
Carena Chor
Carena Chor is a retired ITE lecturer interested in drama, reading, writing and craft work.
