The Chans

I was researching into the Chan genealogy and based of my memory of what my Grand Dad Kee Seng told me, I drew these houses.

The three houses from the front view look almost the same. Even though father's house was designed by a Foochow Architect.

The China house has two separate houses separated by court yard. It was bequeathed to my Grand Dad by my Great Grand Father to share half of it with his third brother. My Grand dad never lived in this house because he migrated to Borneo in his early twenties. He lived and died in Borneo. When Sarawak joined Malaya to form Malaysia, the Malaysian Government decreed a ban on Malaysians going to China.

In 1949, the Communist Government took over China. They confiscated this house and the family was forced to live in a dilapidated store house for firewood.

Lanang Road house has a jar for washing our feet. I think the door was exactly like the China house. There was a brass knocker on the door, inside the house, a sliding wooden plank served as the lock. It had 3 big kitchens, 4 equal sized bedrooms. The kitchens were separated by a big deck. My Grandma said, "No sensible person would build their house with kitchen attached to the main house."

There was no running water or electricity. There was a water closet but only for "water" business only. The out house was about one hundred meters deep into the rubber garden. The house and roof were good tropical timber.

Dad's house in Embang Road was in an expensive area of Sibu. While I was living there, there were no floods, but years later, a big flood submerged the whole of Sibu town, and our house was not spared.

The Sibu houses were on stilts because of the floods.