Friday 25 December 2015

My Dad Went to Asia When Few Did

I recognise Christmas Day is a time to relax but when you have the urge to write about something it is difficult not to. Besides, I figured that now, on my first time home from China in eight months, was as good a time as any to share some of my dad's travels with the outside world. I never knew my father - he died of kidney cancer at age 56 when I was just two. I was a late and accidental child: my brother is 15 years more advanced, my oldest sister is 13 years my senior and my other sister an entire decade older. My mum, who was quite a lot of years younger than my father, was for all accounts done with nappies and milk bottles but there she was - age 40 - pregnant with a child who was only ever going to know one parent. Growing up, as my mum struggled as a single parent and downsized her house, working as a school dinner lady and then a home-help to make ends meet, I knew little about my dad. Pictures were present in the house, stories told, but the connection I had growing up was just with my mum: my father was a fictional figure, a myth, a legend who worked for Shell Oil and once travelled to really exotic places.


                                          French Cambodia, 1949, me in the same location

 
And then I found some of his old albums. Above is Cambodia - my dad even sailed down the Mekong River, accompanied by troops! Given the grimy, rough and ready charm of Phnom Penh today, I can only imagine how the Cambodian capital must have seemed in 1949 - it may well have felt like another planet! How tragic to imagine that when my father set foot there, Cambodia was 20 years away from the Nixon bombings which presented the Khmer Rouge with a road to power and, eventually, the country's holocaust. Who could ever have known that this peaceful nation would become one of the 20th century's most horrific stories?

Like me, my father travelled. A lot. I knew he was an engineer, of course, but I did not know a lot about where he went. Only now do I realise that he was active delivering oil to the former European colonies, including the Middle East (Aden and Bahrain figure heavily in his photobooks) and Suez (of course!) back in the 1940s, 50s and 1960s. During this remarkable time he saw all of his regular haunts gain their (often hard-fought) independence - from British Kenya and Portugese Cape Verde to French Indochina and the Dutch East Indies and British Malaya. To my surprise, coming across a dusty old photobook of his travels, I found that my father visited many of the same places in Asia that I have. Indeed, just recently I have been told by a friend who comes from Malaysia that my father's images of Penang are 'precious' and that her grandparents would be 'shocked and impressed' by how well kept they are! Below is some of Penang, back in 1949 - at the time Britain was fighting a hopeless Cold War-era battle in Malaya against a communist upsurge. Malaya was our rubber capital and we wanted to keep it at all costs (independent Malaysia was initiated in 1957 and in Kuala Lumpur there is a very informative museum about the period. Many of the old and vast British rubber plant forests remain).


                                         Directly above is an old Brit-created rubber plantation

My father also sailed to the Dutch East Indies in 1949, when the new Indonesia was just coming of independence after a four year long, and very bloody fight, against the Dutch (who held on to the island of Papua until 1963). From his pictures it seems as if he would mainly stop in Sumatra. I need to get there eventually too - I am especially curious about a place called 'Ghost Island' where my father had a picnic in 1950. This little known haunt (pun intended) is located in Pulau Setan, Indonesia and holds its name for quite fascinating reasons ... 

Well, who could resist? (As an aside if anyone knows the significance of the house below I would be thrilled to hear from them)
 


Most amazing, perhaps, are some of my father's images of Hong Kong in 1949 - just four years after the Japanese had retreated and at a time when refugees from the mainland were arriving by the thousands. I have an image of him fishing a drowned Chinese sailor out of the waters around the former city-colony and also some incredible pictures from the Haw Par residence (see below):



                                          Hong Kong, 1949
                                          Hong Kong, as of February 2014

My uncle and aunt lived in Singapore for many years too and this little 'red dot' in Asia - the first area of the continent I ever visited, and which I have returned to twice since, is (despite what you might hear about its authoritarian stuffiness) an aesthetically and culturally fascinating city. Unfortunately, despite protecting their colonial district, some buildings have been demolished - including the old Shell Building (see below). However, the Mariamman Hindu Temple still stands - and having discovered this photo album earlier in 2015 I was eager to visit the landmark when I returned to Singapore over the summer. Given how user-friendly Singapore is, it was a doddle to re-acquaint myself with it when I visited earlier this year.



                                          This was British Singapore, 1950

The sad thing about not being especially religious is you are under no illusions about meeting up with someone who has passed in another life, another place, but that still does not mean you cannot miss something you never had or wish for somebody you never knew. I may never have known my dad, and only really thought - well into my adult years - about my mother, her struggles, health and eventual retirement. But, recent times have made me more and more curious about the fact the parent I never got to know was, actually, very similar to me - taking pictures of many of the same sights, visiting some of the same places and dedicated to exploring and experiencing the world around him. Through learning more and more about my dad I feel a legitimate kinship and love for him and his life - and a need, a wish, to set foot in the same places he went. For those who have two loving parents, appreciate that factor and think about what you might want for your own children too. One thing I can't criticise my mother for is that, as the wife of an engineer, she always encouraged me to at least look further afield than the little Scottish village I was raised in. "It will still be here" she would tell me - unlike, as seen above, many areas of the world which have grown, and are still growing, at a rate which all too quickly replaces old with new. If I eventually do retire in Fife (I am a firm believer you can never totally run away from where you were born) - decades in the future perhaps (?) - I at least want to know I have, like my dad in his short life, seen as much as possible whilst always appreciating those who I care about, back in Scotland, to the fullest extent possible.

Now what better Christmas message is that?

                                          Shops and houses on the Mekong, Cambodia, 1949


No comments:

Post a Comment