By

TG Richardson

I married my Chinese wife Anna on the beautiful island of Penang, Malaysia on the 19th January 1960. She had been brought up by her auntie and uncle having been orphaned during the war. Our first date was on a Sunday morning at Mass in church. This was so I could convince her that I was in fact a devout catholic (God must have been shaking his head at the time). Outside the church I was looked over by a group of her relations, aunts, uncles, cousins. I seem to pass muster as I was invited to the Chinese New Year celebrations.

Chinese New-Year celebrations are held over a four day period during which there is lots of drinking, eating and gambling. The Chinese are not noted for their drinking but make up for it in the eating and gambling sections. They are a very polite race and do all they can to make any guest welcome including Kwai Loh (white devils or white ghosts). Anna’s uncle had asked her what I liked to drink and she had replied that I liked a glass of gin. A glass of gin is what I got! A full half-pint glass full of gin!

In some respects the Chinese and North Easterners have similar natures. Both cultures hate to lose face. I had just turned nineteen and considered myself a bit of a drinker so felt I could hardly point out that you don't normally drink gin in half pints. Her uncle who spoke no English handed me the glass with a smile. I took it and started to sip it. Looking around I spotted a large bottle of lemonade and kept topping up the gin to try and thin it down. The point is with alcohol however much you thin it down if you drink the lot it still has the same effect. I slowly got drunker and drunker. I needed to use the toilet and was shown a door. I opened the door and stepped into a small room. To one side was a gutter and in the centre a large tiled square sunk into the ground. It was filled with water and I proceeded to urinate into it. It looked to me in my drunken state like a posh kind of toilet. During the evening I paid several more visits to this magnificent toilet. After about my third or fourth visit Anna whispered, "When you go to the toilet where are you doing it?" "In that square thing in the middle of the room". ' Oh my god! That’s the bath' she said. '1'11 have to tell my uncle as it will have to be emptied and cleaned before they can use it'.

She whispered in her uncle's ear and a broad grin spread across his face. The word spread around and there was giggling and polite smiles. Fortunately everyone thought this was an hilarious joke. As I said to Anna "I wonder if they would have thought it so funny if I wanted to do something other than urinate?"

I know that I have gone down in their families race memory as the foreigner who pee'd in the bath because thirty years later we had a visit from one of Anna's many cousins. We were laughing about the various mistakes you can make in a foreign country and leaning across he said, 'We still laugh about the time you used the bath as a toilet'.

I admitted that so do Anna and I. Recently in 1998 we returned to Penang for a holiday and I went to the same house. I was casually looking around for this small room which had been on the ground floor when I saw her cousin smiling. "I know what you are looking for", he said. "It’s the toilet but it no longer exists we had it removed a few years ago and everyone burst out laughing!