There is on internet a story on "My family's slave" by an Filipino American.
Here's an abstract of my grandma's slave from my book, From China to Borneo to Beyond.
The pronunciation of my Quang Ning dialect MUI ZUI, for a slave sounds
like the sour plum, and MUI ZAI as a girl is different. I don't know
what it is in other dialects.
It must have been 1900s when my grandmother brought her over to be her slave. The girl was very young. It is not sure if her parents gave her the slave while she was a young child, or whether she was given when Grandma married Grandpa.
My
father, John remembered fondly of Grandmother’s mui zai (slave) whom he
called Ah Jia, (big sister.) In fact he saw her more than he saw
Grandmother. Grandmother worked in the rubber garden, the mui zai took
care of him and his siblings. She did all the housework. His fondest memory was her kindly
separated the rough green husk of the sweet mung bean soup, so he would
have it as a smooth watery thick soup. We used to tease him to be a super spiolt brat because we ate the green bean husk.
There was talk that the British
government in Malaya and Singapore was going to pass an emancipation of
slaves, and those not releasing the slaves would be punished.
To
preempt this, when this mui zai was 16, a marriageable age, Grandfather
Kee Seng arranged for a suitable mate and married her off. This was much
to the aghast of Grandmother. Grandmother whinged that this mui zai was
paid for by her parents; therefore she was her property. This mui zai
was her slave for life. Grandfather Chan had no right to sell her
property. But Grandfather would not have any part of this old feudal
slavery system. They married her off to someone up the Rejang River.
The emancipation law was never passed and Grandfather never heard the end of Grandmother harping on and on about it.
Some of those mui zais maintained a good relationship, coming back to
the family as though they were part of the family. In many cases where
they had suffered abuse from their owner and hated them; they never came
back to visit. Some, their new
family forbidden them to. Grandmother’s mui zai never came back. Father said Grandma was a difficult person to handle. The Mui Zai was probably so glad to have her freedom.
Father did meet the mui zai many years later. Father was on official
duty in a school near where she was married off to. She came and was
hesitant and afraid to talk to Father, now an official of the government.
She
called him "Young Master" and she wanted Father to help her grand children to get into teachers’ college.
She said quietly that it wasn’t that she didn’t want to visit the
Chans, it was because she was not allowed to. She had been emancipated
from one family into the slavery of another. She mentioned what a good
family she had grown up in, and she would rather be old and single and
be a mui zai in the Chan’s home. She had always loved Father very much.
I wrote about my grandma's Mui Zai in my book. I also remembered my
mum almost got a Mui Zai too. It was after the World War Two. My great
Grand Mother aka Ah Tai didn't want my mother to work too hard. So she bought a
girl slightly older than my oldest sister. My father declined and packed
the girl away. My father's rationale was in this day and age, him being
a Christian should not have a Mui Zai aka slave. How could he have the
conscience of having a Mui Zai who slaves away while hi
s
own daughters went to school. Ah Tai aka Great Grand Mother argued we we
just pay for her in the beginning which she had already done, and don't have to pay her anymore.
Mother said we just had to feed her. Ah Tai probably argued that we were doing a humanitarian favour.
We knew about this returned Mui Zai
when we had to do house work. We complained and wished we still had the
Mui Zai.
My
parents had 6 girls, MOI ZAI SEE (bloody useless girls) as my Bodai (maternal grandma) would call us. She said,
if we were in China, I would be sold off as a slave. I was the third girl. So would all subsequent girls.
When Father paid for my University education first to Canada and then to New Zealand, Bodai said my fate was very good. Instead of being a slave, I got to fly half way round the world. Bodai said there was something wrong with Dad's head. He studied too much in England. He educated all his MOI ZAI SEE. She also
said my Dad had a Father-in-law look.
