I went with my mother one day when I was nearly ten, to visit her mother. My grandmother lived in the Chinatown area of Singapore, in a house that had, it seemed to me, a thousand rooms.
Each room was let out to tenants, and she was the landlady who threw her weight about when rent was due.
Towards the end of the visit, all of which was conducted purely in Cantonese and so went above my head, there was a general getting together of things, indicating that it was time to go. To my surprise, we all piled into my uncle’s car rather than just my mother and myself making our way to the bus-stop.
After a short drive, he parked it, and we got out. What caught my eye was a shop with cage upon cage of chicks, all sqeaking and trilling. I was instantly interested, and could barely believe my luck when we actually went into the shop. It was a hive of activity.
There were men adding cages to tops of piles of cages; men moving empty cages around; men checking shelves pulled out from what looked like large ovens; men picking up eggs from trays and shining torches at eggs; men picking up chicks and examining them with some chrome-covered instrument; men calling out to each other in Cantonese and people engaged in some activity or other.
Binding all of this was the sound of the chicks. Above all that were the voices of my mother and her mother. They were either arguing or bargaining with the shop men. Then I was ushered out by the two seemingly disgruntled women and into the next shop where a very similar activity and atmosphere existed.
The same act was played out in two more shops.
Eventually, a box of what I later discovered to be twenty chicks was carried out by my mother. The cardboard box was tied with string which also formed a loop to serve as a handle of sorts. I cannot remember how we got home, but I can remember the excitement and joy that evening when we brought home twenty chicks, all of which I was told I had to look after: a warm and golden moment of childhood.