Wednesday Walk: walking around the old family house in Chinatown

After wandering around Chinatown taking photos of old buildings, I decided to visit the old family house which had been under renovation for several years. The whole area was cordoned off during the construction, so I couldn’t enter this area for almost ten years. Whenever I passed it on a bus, I would try to see if the construction project had been finished.

Chinatown was only a few minutes walk from my old family house.

It dawned on me that I never noticed how beautiful the old buildings around the main road were during my childhood. I just took things for granted and believed that things would stay the same forever. Now that I had the time to observe these old buildings, I realised how much they meant to me emotionally. They were the anchored for stability of my childhood.

To my surprise, the gate which used to be at the entrance of the renovated buildings was gone. So, visitors could walk around and explore the newly painted rows of shophouses, but there were some security guards dotted around the area. Surprisingly, some shophouses had new tenants who turned them into coffee shops and restaurants. I wouldn’t invest in property or opening a coffee shop during this uncertain economic situation.

Most shophouses were still unoccupied; I saw only three new shops during my visit. I didn’t think local people would be willing to pay high prices for coffee and cakes when you could get authentic Chinese and Thai food in Chinatown only five minutes’ walk away. Perhaps a night club would do very well but these shophouses were too small for a night club.

The buildings looked smaller than my childhood memories. The footpath had disappeared, so I wondered if rain would flow inside these shops and houses during heavy rain storm. I used to fold paper boats and let them flow away with the rain. Rainy days were full of fun for me as we could wade along the flooded road and made lots of paper boats to race on the flooded road. I could recall that cats could easily park on both sides of the road along the footpaths.

In the evening when all the cars were gone, children would emerge from these shophouses to play games on the empty road. We would play so many games till around 10 pm when all the parents would call their children back to their houses. There would be around forty to sixty children playing together along this stretch of road in front of my old house. Usually I would be the leader in persuading all the children to join my games. Those were very happy days in my childhood.

I confronted my old family home where two cars were parking without my permission. My parents sold this old house to an Indian family who turned it into a textile shop selling bundles of cloth from big textile factories. Lots of merchants made their businesses by selling bulks or at wholesale prices to retailers in Bangkok and other provinces. Sixty years ago, people in the countryside had to depend on local buyers to get the supplies of household goods and clothes from Bangkok. Those years were boom time for retailers and wholesalers. That’s how my father made a lot of money selling household goods to various provinces. I wished I had been more matured and educated during that period so I could have helped my father to become very successful and wealthy during the transition period.

Most Chinese merchants and businessmen were quite unprepared when China started to open up and became industrialised. Nixon and Kissinger did manage to move towards globalism. After a few years, cheap Chinese imports started to flood Thai markets. The hardest hit was the textile industry which went bankrupt and finally disappeared from our society. Our old family home was a good and lucky place for our family. The only drawback was that the house was highly haunted when we were small kids.

Fortunately, my uncle knew a white witch-doctor who helped to pacify the angry spirits by setting up a small shrine for them. From time to time, they would amused themselves by waking us up in the night to see their puppet show. The small fills were flying all over the bedroom making my brothers laughing so loud that I was afraid the noises would wake up our parents. Luckily, they were nice to small kids. But sometimes they played a plank on me just to frighten me. From then on, I became used to ghosts or wandering spirits, I wouldn’t be afraid of them and took them for granted or just ignored them.

Years ago, when I had a short holiday from my study overseas, I came back to see the old house. I saw the Indian family busy with rolls of textiles inside the house. I wanted to know if they had been disturbed by those spirits but I dared not approach them with my questions. I did notice that they didn’t live upstairs but they turned those rooms into storage for textiles. The small room upstairs was where two workmen hung themselves together. My uncle told me about this tragic story when I was over ten years old. All the neighbours thought our family wouldn’t last more than a week like other families who had to move out suddenly. That’s why the rent was very cheap and my parents could afford the three rooms shophouse. My siblings were never told about this story as my mother forbid me years ago. All my siblings were very faint hearted and easily frightened.

The two cars parked in front of my old family house.

The feeling from the house was quietness and emptiness. Those spirits ought to have been gone to another dimension years ago. Perhaps they were reincarnated into cats or children. Somehow I could feel that those cats that approached me with friendship seemed to have known me from my past lives. They could trust me and understand my words, they knew I wouldn’t harm them. So, I could carry them around without being scratched or bitten. The whole area seemed like a stranger to me as they had been completely renovated with new paint.

I saw a cat by the old Bhodi tree. I was glad the old tree wasn’t cut down. The short cut to Sampheng market was covered with a black partition. I use to cycle in the evening through this tunnel to Sampheng and the old temple nearby. The river was only five minutes away from that spot. The old Chinese man who sold traditional coffee and tea at the base of the big tree was long gone! I used to chat with him whenever I passed his coffee stall. Little people would find it hard to make a decent living these days. Too many rules and formalities to enable a simple and care free way of living.

I tried to search for the possibility of finding long lost childhood friend. A stray cat led me to the old shophouse which wasn’t renovated. I saw several cats in a tall cage. So, I went closer to take some photos, an elderly Chinese lady came out to chase me. I was a trespasser or a rude tourist. So, I had to talk to her in my broken Chinese telling her that we used to live there. I wanted to find out what had happened and where my friends were gone.

Once she heard my broken Chinese, she became very friendly. She told me that people who had to leave these houses didn’t take their cats with them. So, she had to feed them and looked after them during the ten years of reconstruction project. Several cats were killed by cars so she had to put them in a big cage. Her daughter gave her financial support so she could feed these cats and pay the vet’s bills.

I was quite surprised that she could stay on while other residents were ‘evicted’ as the owner of the new lease of the land started his big renovation project. Unfortunately, he didn’t have good adviser and astrologer! The Feng Shui of this area had changed, so it was no longer the right kind of energy for wealth and progress. The economic downturn fifteen years ago meant that business center had shifted to new locations with modern technological outlook. I couldn’t see how the new land owner could make huge profits from the enormous investment. I thought all billionaires had top Chinese astrologer as a consultant. All bankers in Hong Kong and all Chinese casinos relied on Feng Shui to become successful and profitable.

I had a nice chat with the Chinese grandmother and donated some money towards the food for those cats. She was quite well off but I felt bad that she had to spent her money looking after all these cats. So, there were some old shophouses’ owners who weren’t evicted. I did visit my next door neighbour over ten years ago. She told me she could recognise me as I didn’t change my hair style. She was given less than a month to vacate her house. That was the first time I had a chance to talk to her as an adult. She said she used to watch me climbing over the fence at the back of her house. I climbed over to see her fish tank which was full of colorful fish. She told me she saw me putting my hand into the fish tank and trie to catch the fish. I was very ashamed that my secretive act was observed all the time. She said she didn’t want to scare me by yelling at me, she wanted to see what I wanted to do. I never stole any belongings from her house but I thought she wasn’t in her house.

I asked her about her future plan. She told me that she had no family members left so she had to move to a distant relative’s house quite far away. She used to have many friends in this old community and neighbours looked after each other. The market was very near and fast food stalls were abundant, life was pleasant and secure until the new reconstruction project gave residents a rude awakening. I thought this place would never change, my old house would still look the same as I had captured in my memories. Changes could be seen everywhere and it could easily unnerve me at times. I had to remind myself to live in the present and let go of the past. As I could not stop time, so I couldn’t stop changes and uncertainty in life. I just hoped that all the elderly ladies I had met would have an easier life with some happiness in their old age.

Wishing you peace, good health and prosperity.

Stay strong and cheerful.

#wednesdaywalk created by @tattoodjay