Hello there all
i have a family story about Hong Hong on an audio tape which i would like to share. It would be 1902/3
I have to say it’s racist/almost cruel ..
my great uncle (Joe) is talking and refers to an event when one night when the family were sleeping (in married quarters - probably in Lei Yue Mun).
There was a punkah wallah (interestingly I thought that this was an Indian name/phrase). His job was to pull a rope, which i believe was attached to his toe, all night which was connected to a fan, fanning those sleeping indoors.
reference is made to him lying outside on his ‘rapins’ i can’t find a definition of that …??
during the night the fan stopped and my great grandfather, believing the punkah wallah to fallen asleep, poured a jug of water out of the window hoping to awaken him.
Joe refers to him as a ‘chinee’
in the morning
‘there was pandemonium, he had died of the plague, everybody was panic stricken and disinfected and isolated and God knows what’
no mention of the poor punkah wallah or his family
I understand that there had been an outbreak of the the plague in the 1890s, perhaps being the reason for panic
As an aside, is there any way to find out which married quarters they lived in ??
I have a bit more on the ‘cook boy’ and the ‘amah’, if this is the right forum
Alison