From Bai Qiao to Kuching: In search of family roots

MY great great-grandfather Ong Ewe Hai had landed in Kuching in 1846. He was just 16 years old then.

His father Ong Koon Tian had migrated from his home village in Bai Qiao, Xiamen, in China in 1832 to seek his fortune in Singapore.

Over the last weekend, 10 members of the Ong Clan village in Bai Qiao made the same journey my forefather made 178 years ago, and paid us a visit in Kuching for the very first time.

Over the last three decades many of my Kuching Ong relatives had made this ‘journey home to ‘White Rock’ – a direct translation of Bai Qiao – on their own steam.

It was only on Dec 22, 2013 that a formal delegation of Ongs from Kuching and Singapore had made the pilgrimage back to Motherland Xiamen to join in their 600th anniversary celebration.

The formal delegation from Xiamen spent three days in Kuching and were hosted and feted by the Kuching Ong family members, with grand feasts and much jubilation. We had arranged a guided tour to all notable places associated with the Ong family of Sarawak.

The Ong clan in Kuching is descended from three princes from northern Shanxi Province way back in the Tang Dynasty (618- 906 AD). They had fled after a battle and settled in Bai Qiao.

The eldest was Wang Chao, the second brother Wang Shen Gui and the youngest Wang Shen Zhi. Their portraits preside over the ancestral hall, and three golden idols representing them stand alongside various other Ong tablets on the grand altar.

There is documented evidence showing that I am of the 36th generation in the line of the Ongs from Bai Qiao in Xiamen. In Sarawak and elsewhere in Malaysia today, there has been birthed a new 40th generation of my family.

The story of the search for our roots in China had begun almost half a century ago in 1974.

It had started with my fifth uncle Henry Ong Kee Chuan handing over to me, for safekeeping and further research, a giant piece of rolled up parchment that had contained the names and details of members of the Ong Ewe Hai family tree – tracing back to China.

He had, together with his brothers Kee Hui, Kee Bian (my father) and Kee Huat, had started their records back in the 1950s (the parchment was turning yellow in colour by then!), and had exhausted their research and wanted me to take over and continue updating the family tree for posterity.

I had felt humbled, but honoured.

However, during my mid-20s to late 30s, I did not do much to further add on to the tree until one fine day, an Australian named Sean Collum had expressed his keen interest to do a deeper and more in-depth study of our Ong family.

I had found an enthusiast located in Sydney, who had married into the family, and who was a keen and ardent amateur genealogist.

I had happily handed over whatever I had to him sometime in the 1990s. With the advent of the Internet, easy communication by emails and later, on WhatsApp, came about the setting up of various family related webpages and searches on social media and by simply pursuing referrals, links and even whispers and gossip, Collum was up and running.

Within a period of less than three decades, Collum had managed to increase, input and collect Ong-related material sufficient to add on thousands of new names from the original few hundreds that we had started with in the 1970s.

Kudos and thank you, nephew-in-law Sean!

Over the years and within my own family members, my father Kee Bian, my brother Edric and my son Dylan and wife Felicia have made visits to Bai Jiao.

Edric has done it four times, including leading a small delegation for the 600th anniversary celebration in 2013.

A cousin from Singapore, Ong Poh Neo, was part of the group then, as was Uncle Raymond Ong from Kuala Lumpur. My nieces Lynette Sue-Ling from Zurich and Elaine Chan from Jakarta were in that party too.

We were informed in early October – through recent links made between our family member Valentine Tnay who is the general manager at the Intercontinental Hotel in Xi’an, China, and via Collum’s recent visit as well as through my Kuching-based nephew Fernandez Ong – that the Bai Qiao Ong Clan Association wished to pay us an official visit, after 178 years.

Our local Kuching Ong clan, chaired by Roland Ong Thiam Eng with the exco including myself, Daniel Ong and Anthony Ong, had quickly come together and we co-opted Fernandez as well as Ong Chiang Ewe (who would be our Mandarin-speaking liaison coordinators).

Sadly our hitherto exco team were all educated in English mission schools and did not get a chance to learn the official language of China.

Luckily, the visitors had also informed us that ‘Amoy’/Hokkien would suffice in our verbal repartee.

The visiting delegation had prioritised that they were coming to experience and see all thing related to Ong Ewe Hai and his descendants and our itinerary for their three days in Kuching should focus on that.

We had then racked our collective brains and had arrived at a Top 10 of landmarks to visit for all things related to Ewe Hai and his family members.

The first part of the schedule involved paying respects to the Ong Memorial Garden at the Nirvana Memoriam at Jalan Bau, where 17 of our Ong ancestors were laid to rest in a ‘Golden Memorial’: moments of silent bowing and kow-towing were dutifully performed.

These were remains transferred from other older cemeteries throughout Kuching, now collectively ‘interned’ here forever.

The visitors’ itinerary had included these Ong landmarks in Kuching:

• (Ong) Ewe Hai Street, named after the row of 40 shophouses that Ewe Hai had rebuilt after the Great Fire of Kuching in 1884;
• Ong Tiang Swee Road, named by Rajah Charles Vyner in recognition of services rendered by the Kapitan China of Sarawak;
• SMK Ong Tiang Swee Road School, built on land donated by Tiang Swee and gazetted to remain so named for posterity;
• Ong Kwan Hin Road, named after Tiang Swee’s second son, former Kapitan China and president of the Hokkien Association and Buddhist Temples Custodian;
• Tan Sri Ong Kee Hui Road, named after the eldest son of Kwan Hin, founding president of Sarawak’s first political party Sarawak United People’s Party (SUPP), former mayor, former MP and former federal minister;
• Ong Hap Leong Road, named after Tiang Swee’s fourth son, former member of the Rajah’s Supreme Council;
• Wee (nee Ong) Siew Eng Road, named after eldest daughter of Tiang Swee, sister of Kwan Hin – was married to Datuk Wee Kheng Chiang, banker/philanthropist, also the father of Wee Cho Yaw, chairman of Singapore’s UOL Group;
• Hui Sing Garden, named after Ong Kee Hui and Singaporean Ong Moa Sing, who had developed the satellite town in the 1980s;
• Liong Seng Garden, off Rock Road – named after Albert Ong Liang Hee (Kee Hui’s eldest son) and Ong Moa Sing, the joint developers. Name slightly changed for reasons of ‘feng sui’;
• The Ong family antique ancestral bed, donated by Ong Kwan Hin to the Sarawak Museum in 1962 and displayed at the museum between 1963-1990s. From the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) reputed to be worth US$500,000 today. Now being kept in storage. Photos were shared;
• The Chinese Museum at Main Bazaar, with pictorial and written histories of the early Chinese settlers in Sarawak, featuring four Ong family members prominently.

At the end of their brief visit here, it was plain to see that our Bai Qiao Ong relatives from our land of origin had seen first-hand for themselves how their ‘migrating Ongs’ had fared so far away on an island in Borneo, and that they had seemed happily impressed, especially by the warmth of the reception given to them.

They were abundantly feted and there were exchanges of gifts.

Among the visitors were a restauranteur, a village head, association heads and self-made entrepreneurs – they range from ages 45 to 72.

They were able to appreciate that their family members in Sarawak had settled in well and become true and outstanding citizens of their adopted new ‘motherland’.

None had ever looked back in regret to say that their forefathers’ before them had taken a misstep in seeking greener pastures by journeying to Kuching.

As for us here, many of us will continue to pay our visits to Bai Qiao and will, in turn, tell stories to those who come after us about how in a time long forgotten, the first Ong had taken a decision to venture into a foreign unknown land 178 years ago. It was a stroke of genius and a fortuitous decision that was made.

China may be where our ancestors had come from, but Sarawak is today our beloved Motherland and where we call home. That has been the case for almost two centuries.

* The opinions expressed in this article are the columnist’s own and do not reflect the view of the newspaper.