Ho Shui Nen, born 1935, died July 17, 2023. – Image from Society Atelier Sarawak
HO Shui Nen, who died this week at the age of 88, was a tinsmith in Kuching’s old town who came to personify traditional artisanship in the Chinese community.
Although known to most people as Ho Swee Neng, his family has asked that he be remembered by the Hakka form of his name – Ho Shui Nen.
Ho Shui Nen was born in 1935 on Bishopsgate Street, Kuching. His father, a first-generation Hakka Chinese migrant, established the Ho Nyen Foh workshop in the 1920s after serving a long apprenticeship with a master tinsmith, also from the Hakka community. Although ownership of the business passed from their father to Ho Shui Nen’s oldest brother, and then later to his brother’s son, Ho Shui Nen remained working alongside his extended family.
He loved his craft, and took great pride in the objects he made. Perhaps the most prized item he produced was the hunting lamp – known in the Hakka dialect as Jiew Ten – with its curved, highly polished reflector hammered into a perfect concave dome.
The sorrow over Ho Shui Nen’s death goes beyond the loss of one revered man. He embodied a way of life that is fast fading: shophouse living; the tradition of artisan skills passing down the generations; and the relationship between dialect group and trade. Even in his everyday ‘uniform’ of shorts and a white T-shirt or vest, he embodied the typical mid-twentieth century working man. In Ho Shui Nen’s story is the story of old Kuching.
In an awareness of this setting sun, recent years have witnessed a new-found appreciation for the tinsmiths and their work as a vital part of Kuching’s history. Ho Shui Nen’s place in the cultural landscape was cemented in 2018 when he became the first of three tinsmiths celebrated in a larger-than-life mural on China Street by the artist Leonard Siaw. He was honoured again in 2019 when he was one of 22 Kuching craftspeople selected for a ‘Living Legends’ award given by the state in recognition of his skills.
Despite his love of his craft, Ho Shui Nen thought little of his social and cultural significance. It was a sign of his modesty that when he was taken to view Siaw’s mural, his reaction was self-effacing.
An exuberant child by all accounts, Ho Shui Nen developed a reservedness in his adult life, which increased as his extended family grew. Ho Shui Nen never married, but quietly enjoyed the company of his many nephews and nieces, and later his grand-nephews and grand-nieces.
He had a phrase, ‘Luk Po La La Sam Tung Lao’, which he would often repeat to the children, much to their merriment. No one seems quite sure of its meaning beyond a vague reference to fizzy drinks. He is also remembered for his generosity, often giving pocket money to the children in the family. ‘His heart was very big,’ one told me this week.
Ho Shui Nen took joy in seeing crowds: he would come out of his shophouse to gaze at life in the street, and he loved the buzz around such events as the Mid-Autumn Festival. It is his family’s belief that they reminded him of a time before the exodus to the suburbs, when the old town still teemed with people.
Like most Sarawakians, Ho Shui Nen loved his food and drink, with kolo mee, Ann Lee’s curry rice, and Indian rojak being particular favourites. His consumption of 3-in-1 coffee was robust.
He also loved music of all kinds, and even dabbled in the guitar himself. It seems all the more unfair, then, that a lifetime spent hammering metal on metal resulted in a profound deafness in his later years.
Ho Shui Nen died peacefully in his bed on July 17, 2023, in the shophouse where he was born and where he lived and worked. His father sailed to the Nanyang one generation before him, and now Ho Shui Nen’s ashes have been scattered in the same South China Sea. The son returns to the water his father crossed many decades earlier, and so the circle is complete.
Good night Uncle, and may the Jiew Ten illuminate your path to glory.