SKETCHES FROM MALAY

Greymouth Evening Star, 29 March 1930, Page 11

SKETCHES FROM MALAY

THE RICKSHAW COOLIE.He is übiquitous. Mid-day or midnight is all the same to him. Scorching sun or torrential downpours trouble him not a jot. He asks for no overtime, whatever hour you use him; although he is only human, and if he thinks he can get it, he may ask for double his legal fare, says a writer in the Melbourne “Age” on the rickshaw coolie of Malaya. With his small peaked straw hat, under which he tucks away his bobbed hair, attired only in a pair of patched-up blue shorts, with a dirty towel over one wrist, with one hand pushing against the cross bar of the shafts, the other hand pulling your human gee-gee will take you anywhere at a steady dog trot. The dusty roads resound to the patter of his naked feet as he skilfully dodges the traffic, giving vent to a “Hi Hi!” instead of using the bell provided, or roundly giving off a stream of Asiatic invective .should another compatriot come too close to him. When he comes to this El Dorado fresh from the Celestial republic, the first thing he turns his hand to is rickshaw pulling. It requires training and wonderful stamina; he develops legs that would put a Greek statue to ehame. He hires the rickshaw with wooden or tired wheels, according to the class, and plies for fares at a fixed municipal rate.

Waiting in a queue, you will see him polishing up the brasswork of his vehicle or cleaning the spokes. With a fare he follOAVs the main roads and streams of the traffic; you steer him by grunting at him. As he does not know your language, nor you his, and the local vernacular names of places (Malay) convey nothing to him, a stranger to the town, sight-seeing by this medium, is apt to have an adventurous time. A bump of topography would stand him in good ktead. At noon you may see him, if disengaged, sitting on the floor of his “shaw” seriously absorbed in choosing .his slight repast from an itinerant sweetmeat seller, who planks down for inspection a portable table that only the Chinese language could put a name to. The coolie’s meal will probably cost him twopence. Bpt he is ever on the alert for a possible fare, and always ready to pick up bis shafts and bring his interrupted meal to a close. Midnight may find him patiently waiting on the rank outside the big hotels, qnder the glare of the lamps, till the queer foreign devils have finished practically rushing up and down the floor with their womenfolk to the strains of a band. When he takes you home after your pleasurable evening, and you lie back settling yourself in his vehicle, letting the lovely coolness of the tropical night invigorate you, do you ever wonder what your puller may be thinking about? Or do you suppose he has no soul? Do you wonder how many miles he has run that day in the glare and heat? Or what happens when he goes sick? If he has a home at all, it is a smokeblackened attic, which he shares with umpteen more of his colleagues, using the floor as his bed, and a little wooden block fitting the nape of his neck as his pillow. Recreation he has none, unless he can snatch a moment between times, when a policeman is not in view, to indulge in a little game of dice or cards. Yet he is intensely human, and ever ready with a smile. Monthly he remits most of his wages, won by hard, merciless toil, to his aged and august parents in far Cathay. He often dies young. What he gets he certainly earns. It is a. short life, and a man must be fit and robust to do it in a tropical country, even for a short spell. There are many rich Chinese Twokays now in Singapore who commenced life as humble rickshaw pullers.