Promises aside, there is simply an excess of the types of products marketers are pushing onto consumers such as exfoliator, essence, serum, booster, retinol… the list goes on.

Have you ever heard of the Korean skincare routine, which can include as little as 11 products and go up to as many as 40 at one go? Such is the modern skincare and cosmetics industry.

But once upon a time, Malaysian women would only need to rely on one extremely affordable product; a white facial mask made from fermented rice applied right before bed, which will deliver smooth, acne-free skin seemingly overnight.

Unless you are one of the unfortunate ones who were spooked by the ghostly sight of your grandmother applying bedak sejuk as part of her nightly skincare routine, not many young people are aware of this traditional product.

But in the Balik Pulau countryside, two brothers, Yeoh Seong Huat, 44, and Yeoh Seong Chin, 42, are hoping to keep the legacy of laboriously making bedak sejuk by hand alive.

“Perniagaan Bedak Sejuk Lean Seng was actually started by my late father, Yeoh Keng Beng, in 1975,” says Seong Chin, recalling his childhood days often spent at the factory helping his father out.

“He dabbled in many jobs before, as he was even a fisherman and was into belacan-making before starting this bedak sejuk business.”

He adds that back in the day, people would make their own bedak sejuk, but it became a dying art because of the rather long and complicated manufacturing steps.

However, Seong Chin believes that he and his brother are the last bedak sejuk makers who tirelessly make it by hand instead of relying on machines.

Bedak sejuk is made of the most basic and humble of ingredients, broken rice, which will first be washed five to six times before being soaked in water for a whole month to encourage the fermentation process.

“If you compare all the bedak sejuk products sold in the market, you would notice that ours have a distinctive smell to it,” explains Seong Chin.

“This smell comes from the fermentation process which encourages the yeast to grow. This yeast is essential in repairing one’s skin and gives the bedak sejuk that cooling effect.”

Once the month is up, the rice is washed multiple times again to reduce the sulfurous smell that usually comes from fermentation before the rice is blended to a paste-like texture.

Then, it is filtered and hung out to dry.

The dried paste will then be mixed with water once again and poured into a handmade mould before being scraped to obtain its unique yet familiar droplet shape.

These droplets will be left to dry under the sun for an hour or two, and then kept in a room overnight.

“The following day, we dry it under the hot sun again for four to five hours,” elaborates Seong Chin, adding that this step is extremely essential because if not, the insides of the droplets will still hold a small amount of water.

Should that be the case, the droplets will become watery once bottled and deemed unusable by customers.

It is understandable why many refuse to make it by hand anymore. After all, just one batch of bedak sejuk takes roughly six weeks to complete due to its month-long fermentation process and drying time.

Unfortunately, the Seong brothers’ business was struck hard by the first movement control order (MCO) in 2020, with Seong Chin lamenting that there were no orders coming in because all the stores were forced to close.

Thankfully in June last year, orders for the famous bedak sejuk came pouring in once again, but this time, there was another issue: high demand with very limited supply.

“Stores were requesting 100 to 200 kg of bedak sejuk and we can only make 10 to 20 kg,” says Seong Chin, who added that on rainy days, the drying process had to be put on hold.

“It was rather ironic because throughout the MCO, the weather was extremely hot but we did not stock up on bedak sejuk because we were worried our shop would not be able to sustain itself.”

Seong Chin is thankful that despite the second MCO, orders have been pretty smooth as stores are allowed to open. However, he still remains unsure about the future of the company.

“As for now, we still feel our bedak sejuk has a future but we have no idea what will happen in a decade or two. We will continue to make it till the day no one wants our product.”

Hopefully, the miraculous acne-solving properties of bedak sejuk will continue to be passed down from one generation to the next so these memorable bottles filled with tiny white droplets will stay on the shelves of stores forever.

Or perhaps, one day we will all tire of the influx of new products that promise many a skin- and life-changing feat, and realise that our grandmothers have been right all along.

Perniagaan Bedak Sejuk Lean Seng
160 Mukim D
11000 Balik Pulau
Penang