Teng Ek Kiew (front right) with her daughter Hamsiah Mohamad and sons Ling Kok Heng (back left) and Ling Kok Ong in Kuala Lumpur. - JOSEPHINE NG
SINGAPORE (The Straits Times/Asia News Network): Teng Ek Kiew, 90, was sitting in her wheelchair in a hotel lobby looking out on the streets of Kuala Lumpur when she was startled by someone touching her hands. When she realised it was her long-lost daughter, she grasped the woman’s hands as her eyes watered.
It had been 58 years since she last held her daughter, Hamsiah Mohamad.
Having reconnected in September 2022, Teng and five of her six children crossed the Causeway on Dec 5 to meet Hamsiah, who was given up for adoption at birth to a Malay-Muslim family in 1964.
The Straits Times reported in September that Teng’s son, Ling Kok Ong, 66, and his wife, Josephine Ng, 62, tracked down Hamsiah in Bukit Payong, Terengganu, with the help of the Malaysian History Association in Dungun.
When asked about the reunion, the reticent Teng smiled, gave a thumbs-up and said: “She’s grown up to be a very good person.”
Teng, a housewife and a great-grandmother, gave her daughter up for adoption when she was living in a kampung in Bukit Besi, Terengganu, about 400km from the hotel where they were reunited.
In 1964, Teng, who already had five other children, gave in to a prominent Malay family in their kampung after they begged her incessantly for her newborn daughter. The family relocated to Singapore in 1969.
After Ling and Ng met Hamsiah on Sept 4 at a coffee shop she owns in Taman Tasek, Bukit Payong, they introduced Teng to Hamsiah over video calls, and the two spoke regularly.
After months of planning, the family was reunited on Dec 5 when the Ling family went on a four-day visit to Kuala Lumpur.
Hamsiah took her two children, granddaughter and other relatives to meet her biological family, while her husband stayed behind to run the coffee shop.
Teng, whose husband Ling Ek Koon died in 1989, praised Hamsiah’s cooking skills, recalling the fresh spring rolls her daughter had made for her and taken to the reunion.
There are now plans for Hamsiah to visit Singapore after Chinese New Year.
Until then, the mother and daughter speak a few times a week.
When ST visited Teng at her Ubi flat in mid-December, her children, aged 54 to 68, arrived soon after. They visit her almost daily.
Teng received a call and beamed when she saw the name “Hamsiah” appear on her phone.
She has forgotten how to speak Malay, so the conversation between her and Hamsiah is translated through her children and daughter-in-law into simple English.
Over the video call, Hamsiah showed the Lings her daughter making roti canai in the kitchen, as the liveliness in the flat picked up.
But Teng was content to sit quietly and smile as her children gathered around her phone excitedly to talk to their newfound sister and niece.
