Ah Sum or Ah Ma Jie (Majie 妈姐)
The Majie of the Yesterday
The majie and it dawned on me that these were FDWs of yesterday. Not unlike the FWDs of today, these single women in black and white samfu outfit with their hair tied in buns were from the Guangdong province. They worked here from the 1930s to the 1970s. These sturdy women were not called “maids” though they took vows of celibacy to dedicate themselves to their vocation. The word majie is made up of the word ma (mother) and jie (elder sister), though some have suggested that amah may have originated from the Portuguese ama meaning "nurse". In Taiwan and China, the word amah refers to an older lady in general, As many were also nannies, it could well have come from the word nai ma (literally "milk mother" in Chinese). Variants such as amah-chieh or mahjie have also been used. Similar terms in the same context includes ah-yee, yee-yee or ah sum (aunt), or jie-jie (elder sister).
Again, not unlike the FDWs of today, the majie of yesterday worked very long hours. It was normal to be up at 5 am in the morning, and they worked to around 8 or 9 pm in the evening. But unlike the FDWs of today, they did not have families to return to. Many were treated as part of the family as they served their employers for a long time. In fact, it was not all that uncommon for majie to have lived with their employers until they retired or passed on. Some, however, chose to retire in China (a traditional desire of the Chinese in the past), while others retired in jointly rented rooms in Chinatown as their living quarters called coolie fong. During their working lives, some majie also rented rooms in Chinatown as a collective and would return to their rooms daily or on their days off if they lived with their employers.
Some majie also got together and formed their own clans – such as the Seng Cheow Tong Clan, which was formed by 51 majie in 1963 and disbanded in 2004. Others chose to stay at chai tong (vegetarian houses) after they retired. These homes were organized by Buddhist associations to provide food and lodging for elderly unmarried women, or women who had no family or relations. They charged a nominal rent, if at all. In some cases, the aged residents worked for their keeps within the community. Significantly, there was hardly any reported abuse of these majie ( According to 韩山元 [Han, S. Y.]. (2009, August 14). 自梳女 [Majie]. 联合早报 [Lianhe Zaobao]. Retrieved from Factiva). The relationship between the majie and the employers were such that a kinship relationship was developed over time.
The Samsui women who built a city 三水妇女or 三水婆 or 紅頭巾
Many worked well into their 70s
Many of us might have never seen a samsui woman in the flesh, but these ladies were once the backbone of our developing infrastructure, just like the transient workers who build our country today. The first wave of Chinese immigrants who arrived in Singapore in search of a new life were largely male.
Over the years, the sex ratio in Singapore became overwhelmingly skewed towards males, such that by 1928, the colonial government introduced immigration controls to limit the number of male Chinese immigrants into Singapore. Furthermore, the Great Depression in the 1930s caused widespread unemployment in Singapore, forcing the colonial government to further limit the influx of male Chinese immigrants. However, these limits were not imposed on female Chinese immigrants. And by the mid-1930s, female Chinese immigrants, including samsui women, were entering Singapore in droves.
Samsui women came mainly from the Sanshui district of China's Canton province. It is estimated that about 2,000 samsui women came to Singapore. Life was a struggle for these women. They usually had to pay recruiters (via a year-long debt) to help them arrange for transport to and accommodation in Singapore. Many of them left China in the prime of their youth, between 18 and 20, and had to rely on fellow samsui women to get by. Once here, they often congregated together in Chinatown and stayed in cramped lodgings within shophouses, not unlike the bad living arrangements of today's foreign labourers.
