continuation...
This is a Memorial Chinese Temple in opposite to Nagore Darga Syarif. I have no time to properly snap the picture and I can't properly read the characters up there. I just could read it means "River Home Temple..." Perhaps, being read as Han Jiang Jia Miao which means Han River Family Temple. The last character is hidden behind the pillar. We read it from right to left just like in Arabic.
Let us see, what is inside? Just a square and at the door we can see door post gods. I thought that no one in the temple because I looked around for a guide. But then I saw an ah sook (uncle) sitting at the entrance of the memorial hall.
He thought that I'm a Chinese because a Malay would not normally entering the temple. He just asked me in teochew slang: "naa dee laiii?" (where are you coming from?). I just answered him simple and avoid talking further because my Chinese would sound foreign. Some people would think that I tried to lie when I answered that I am a local and not even a Chinese national. Even to the extend they wanted to check my ID.
I would try to avoid standard mandarin accent next time. Now, I'm learning to speak like normal Malaysian Chinese. I don't think that I speak with Northern Chinese tongue twister accent. I myself hate that sound and it sounds ugly. I thought that only Chinese speaking person could tell the difference. However, last time brother Firdaus the Tabligh kid also noticed that. I don't know how did he hear me speaking when I talked with brother Yunus or brother Idris in the Tabligh center or in musalla at our hostel.
Since those brothers are fellow Muslims, I might also use Arabic and Persian terms while speaking in the common speech. That's normal, just like when we speak in Malay or English. I don't speak any foreign chinese dialect, the closest dialect that I speak is the standard Taiwanese Mandarin one or might be the same with those in Ha'erbin because I can understand them well and they do understand me.
I feel uncomfortable when people listening to me speaking in Chinese especially Malay kids because I had bad experience being treated badly by some racist officers in the airport while working after my STPM. I don't even look like a Chinese anyway and they are just envious because of contract workers get more pay than them who had secured the job and received allowances and other benefits from the government. Such an ugly behavior. They might also need glasses with high concentration power like myself just in case if they were blind or dim at young age.
This is the interior of the memorial hall. If you watch HK movies, you would also see almost the same feature where there are hundreds of ancestors' name plaques in the hall. I just read some of the names and later I remembered a "prohibition" that we should not read deceased people name while memorizing Quran so I went out of the hall. Although it is not carved at the grave stone but the principle might be the same. Just signed the guest-book and say thanks to the friendly ah sook for entertaining me.
to be continued...
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