Rose Chan - Childhood

Childhood

Born as Chan Wai Chang (陳惠珍) in Soochow, China in 1925 to acrobat parents, Chan was brought to Kuala Lumpur in 1931, at the age of six, by her adoptive mother. She had no formal education, save for eight months of schooling at the age of 12. Even at that young age, she demonstrated her entrepreneurial spirit by taking photographs for classmates, charging them 15 cents, and earning 10 cents a shot. Late for school on a few occasions because she had to collect the photographs from the shop, her mother stopped her schooling after the school complained.

Still aged only 12 years, she started working in a button-making shop, earning six gantangs of rice and one loaf of cornbread a month plus 12 cents per thousand buttons. In a day, she could churn out a few thousand buttons from coconut shells with a machine. She next worked at making mosquito nets, where she was better paid, with eight gantangs of rice, six katis of sugar, two bottles of oil, and one loaf of cornbread a month.

In 1941, when Chan was 16, her mother arranged her to marry an elderly Chinese Singaporean harbor contractor to become his fourth wife, as her boyfriend could not afford the kind of dowry that was expected. For her dowry, the contractor offered SGD$3,000, a pair of diamond earrings, a locket, a chain, and a bracelet, which were taken by her mother. Her marriage, however, broke up after a few months, when her husband got fed up with her mother’s constant request for SGD$1,000-$2,000 each time.

He sent her back to Kuala Lumpur and gave her SGD$600 a month, on condition that her mother got her a servant to do the housework. Her mother, however, pocketed the money. One day, when her husband dropped by the house on his way to the Penang races, he saw Chan doing housework. Angered, he not only stopped sending money, but stopped seeing her entirely.