The articles, essays and profiles in The Sultan and the Mermaid Queen were written over a period spanning several decades; some information and facts might be dated but the essence of the stories remains intact. And I’ve gone beyond a strict geographical limitation for the Asian designation of the book’s title to include subjects that are Asian in spirit.
THE
SULTAN
AND THE
MERMAID
QUEEN
THE
SULTAN
AND THE
MERMAID
QUEEN
Surprising Asian people, places and things that go bump in the night
PAUL SPENCER SOCHACZEWSKI
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book represents travels and encounters that span about half my life. I thank countless people, some rich and famous, some poor and overlooked, people who have offered me rice wine and insight, who have taught me to slash and burn the forest and have tolerated my stumbling attempts to communicate.
Special gratitude to Monique, who joined me on some of these journeys, and who provides love, unconditional support, and a special brand of Gallic perception. And to the kids, David and Shynta, for laughter and understanding.
Most of the articles in this book have appeared in various international publications, and the author acknowledges and thanks the editors of the International Herald Tribune, Wall Street Journal, CNN Traveller, Geographical, Reader’s Digest, Travel and Leisure Golf, GQ, International Wildlife, Destinasian, Earth Times, Golf Vacations, Gemini News Service and other publications for their support.
For David
Continue to dream with your eyes open
CONTENTS
Title Page
Acknowledgements
Dedication
I. INTRODUCTION - THE FLYING KRIS, TIGER MAGICIANS AND THE “SNOWMAN OF THE JUNGLE”
LEFT BRAIN/RIGHT BRAIN
What’s the modern equivalent of the Iban berjalai, the rite of passage, the need to wander?
II. THE REAL EMPEROR OF CHINA – PERSONAL ESSAYS
AUNT SARAH RATHER LIKED HER ORIGINAL CHILDHOOD NAME
Popping balloons instead of Chinese firecrackers; “mystic influence to the center”
ALMOST A KNIGHT TO REMEMBER
I rather liked being called “Sir Paul”
CHINA’S EMPEROR IS TANNED, RESTED AND READY
Homeless Hawaiian heir to the throne seeks financial support to restore Ming Dynasty greatness
THE GIRL BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD
Thirty years on, searching for the girl whose eyes said, “I’m going to surprise you.”
KILL MOSQUITOES ‘TIL THEY’RE DEAD
Choreographing the singing chicken, goat and twin rabbits
LIFE: ENDLESS KARMIC LOOP OR ONE CHANCE FOR GUSTO?
Philosophy on the trail in Upper Mustang, Nepal
IMMORTALITY: THE KID COULD BE THE KEY
Designer sperm banks; nature vs nurture
III. THE SKIES ARE ALIVE IN LANKA - TRAVELING INTO THE FORGOTTEN CORNERS
THE SULTAN AND THE MERMAID QUEEN
A love story for the ages
THE GOD WHO FLEW OFF WITH A MOUNTAIN
It takes chutzpah for an Indian villager to stay angry at one of the most popular gods in the Hindu pantheon, but Padhan Patti feels she has a good reason. She wants her mountain back.
JUMPING THROUGH BUDDHIST HOOPS IN BURMA
Tina Turner does it, Tom Cruise does it, so does Arnold. Is the Middle Path suitable for trained felines?
LAST GREAT ELEPHANT HUNTER ACHIEVES INDOCHINE GLORY
He’s notched up 298 pachyderms, and a lucrative product endorsement contract
BURMA’S GENERALS HOPE WHITE ELEPHANTS PROVIDE JUMBO SUPPORT
Trying to restore some of the good vibes that come with rare pale pachyderms
MONA LISA ON MY MIND
Vietnamese artists search for that enigmatic smile
THE SKIES ARE ALIVE IN LANKA
Sri Lanka is Ground Zero for hard-to-explain aerial phenomena
SEARCHING FOR SMALL FOLK AT THE END OF THE TRAIL
A visit with three types of Hobbits on the isolated Indonesian island of Flores
UZI FEVER
Letting the macho urges go out with a bang in Cambodia
VIEW WITH A ROOM
Dirt floor, share toilet with yaks, a pricey view to die for
MOSES DREAMS OF REVERSING JEWISH EXODUS IN BURMA
The caretaker of Rangoon’s only synagogue dares to dream. Will his children go forth and multiply?
WANT A BUSINESS BOOST? MAKE FRIENDS WITH THE DRAGON PRINCESS
Komodo dragons, woodcarvers and the princess who controls them all
LIGHTNING TEETH AND SORCERERS
Ready-to-use potions are big business in the Philippines
DRAGON’S BREATH
It’s not such a good idea to get too close to a Komodo dragon
IN SEARCH OF THE LOST WHITE TRIBE OF HALMAHERA
Where have all the giant Caucasian cannibals gone?
WORLD’S SMALLEST PHOTO LAB “USES ONLY MAN ABILITY”
Burmese photographer has achieved success by thinking miniscule
INTO THE FRYING PAN
Vietnam’s street kids learn the restaurant business
SEARCHING FOR ORWELL
A backwater town in Upper Burma was the site for Orwell’s Burmese Days, a book that takes no prisoners
IV. BRUNO AND THE BLOWPIPES - NATURE CONSERVATION
BRUNO AND THE BLOWPIPES
Who will determine the future of Sarawak’s isolated Penan?
SPIRITUAL LEADERS HELP TO RE-GREEN KRISHNA’S BIRTHPLACE
Sadhus combine religion and pragmatism
TO CUT THAT TREE, CUT THROUGH ME
Chipko women’s movement keeps on huggin’
“NO TO POISON” SAY PHILIPPINES FISHERMEN
How were your aquarium fish caught?
GOD’S OWN PHARMACIES
Asia’s sacred groves survive because they provide spiritual and practical benefits; with thanks to a flying monkey god
WATCH WHAT YOU SAY IN BURMA’S SACRED FORESTS
What’s a more powerful conservation incentive - a government jail or a spiritual punishment?
CONSERVATION EXPERIMENT IN PHILIPPINES PROVIDES BENEFITS AND FRUSTRATIONS
Twenty-five percent of world’s coral reefs already gone; community management one way to stop destruction
PRAYER FLAGS OVER RIO
Should we trust the eco-bureaucrats or the farmer in Bhutan for eco-solutions?
ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES IN TINKERBELLS’S SACRED FOREST
Dragonflies point the way to eco-cultural conservation
WE BETTER COLLECT THE BIRDS’ NESTS BEFORE THE OUTSIDERS GET HERE
In isolated eastern Indonesia, the big question is who owns the resources
DIVERS IN INDONESIA DO IT DEEPER, THEN DIE
Chinese middle-men put huge pressure on nature and people
RELIGIONS ON THE WING
Everyone in Irian Jaya wants a piece of Zakarias’s soul
“TRUST US, WE KNOW BETTER THAN YOU DO”
Brown-brown arrogance is the new standard
BORNEO NATIVE GROUP SCORES LAND CLAIM VICTORY
How a poor Iban longhouse took on Big Timber and won; sort of
HEADHUNTERS FIGHT FOR CONTROL OF FORESTS
Ethnic massacre is one more bloody battle in history of eco-conflicts
“MIRACLE RICE” UNWITTINGLY DESTROYS BALI’S CORAL REEFS
It seemed so simple and good; it turned out so complicated
LONGHOUSE COMMUNITIES IN BORNEO HOPE VISITORS WILL FLOCK TO “WATER RIVER
” NATIONAL PARK
New conservation approach involves local people in park management
NEW SPECIES CAUSE GROWN MEN TO “TREMBLE WITH EXCITEMENT”
Discovery of the coelacanth in Sulawesi and why scientists go red when they find something new
LIFE AND DEATH ON SHIVA’S BEACH
Is a turtle worth risking your life?
V. AN INORDINATE FONDNESS FOR BEETLES - ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE IN ASIA
SHOOTING ORANGUTANS AND PONDERING THE UNIVERSE
Alfred Russel Wallace spent 18 lonely months in Sarawak, writing the precursor to his theory of evolution
WILDERNESS IN SINGAPORE? WHO WOULDA THOUGHT?
Singapore proved a Coleoptera paradise for Victorian explorer Alfred Russel Wallace; new creatures still emerge
WHY TRAVEL FAR?
Wallace’s rite of passage and the teenage imperative
THE MAN WITH PINS IN HIS LUNGS
After dinner in Sulawesi, chatting with a man who speaks with Moses
THE LITERATE ORANGUTAN
Trying to teach a red ape to write
DREAMING OF MALTHUS
During a malarial fit, Alfred Russel Wallace has his eureka moment about natural selection
HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALFRED
Is a man’s most valuable possession his bow and arrow or a butterfly or a memory or simply time? What do you give a guy who lived a hundred and fifty years ago?
WHO GETS CREDIT, WHO TAKES CREDIT, FOR CHANGING THE WORLD?
Did Darwin steal from Wallace? Attributing glory can be a tricky business
VI. WALTZING BANANA ISLAND - THE NEXT FRONTIER
SEARCHING FOR ENIGMAS
I know where the dinosaurs are; not far at all
About the Author
Other Books by the Author
Copyright
LADAKH, India.
A young girl, identified 30 years later as Tsewang Dolma, sets off to school. Her eyes seem to promise “Watch me, I’m going to surprise you.”
Photo: Paul Sochaczewski
I.
INTRODUCTION
THE FLYING KRIS, TIGER MAGICIANS AND THE “SNOWMAN OF THE JUNGLE”
LEFT BRAIN/RIGHT BRAIN
What is the modern equivalent of the Iban berjalai, the rite of passage, the need to wander?
SOLO, Indonesia
The Sultans of Yogyakarta and Solo, in Central Java, Indonesia, trace their ancestry, and their legitimacy, to a Mermaid Queen.
To a kid born in Brooklyn and raised in New Jersey, this concept, this practice, this conundrum, is spectacularly tantalizing.
Since I was a child I’ve been intrigued by distant pastures. It was armchair imagining, mostly, writing school reports about Tibet and reading The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, the first book I ever read that had no pictures.
Every day in Asia I realize that I will hear of an occurrence that I not only do not understand but in a dozen lifetimes would have no hope of comprehending.
And each day I will find someone willing to explain what’s going on, with more patience, probably, than I would explain the rules of baseball to a first-time visitor to America.
My Cartesian, logical, scientific, fact-oriented left brain says one thing, but the smoke and mirrors-reality in front of me says something else. It’s reminiscent of the line from Hamlet: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,/ Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
• Several varieties of “Hobbits” have been reported on the Indonesian island of Flores – who are these small folk at the end of the trail and what do they teach us about our own humanity?
• Some Indonesians, specifically some Javanese, believe that a wavy-bladed kris can be endowed with magic. Such a dagger can fly on the volition of its owner, can take an enemy’s life with no human hand guiding it, and so intimately represent its owner that there are tales of men who got married by sending their krises to stand in for them while the men were occupied with more substantial matters than betrothal.
• The King of Thailand and former kings of Burma and Cambodia, owe their power to a white elephant, a symbol of Lord Buddha, and a harbinger of a fruitful and just reign.
• People who live near the forests of Sumatra tell of a small-version of the yeti, let’s call it a “jungle snowman”, which helps some rural folk define their humanity.
• A Japanese zen monk mobilizes the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy to attract golfers to practice meditation.
• A homeless Chinese man in Honolulu is convinced he is the real “last emperor of China”, he’s following a long tradition of self-declared royalty.
• Alfred Russel Wallace wanders for eight years in Southeast Asia, catching, pickling and selling an extraordinary diversity of beetles, butterflies, birds, and animals, including 17 orangutans. In the process Wallace has a malarial dream and devises the theory of natural selection and gets usurped by Charles Darwin.
• A Swiss shepherd travels to Borneo to incite tribal nomads to fight against Big Timber and Big Government. He is only marginally successful and disappears under highly mysterious circumstances.
• The last elephant hunter of Vietnam has achieved such prominence that he has his own brand of medicinal wine.
• The Chinese, who created just about everything else, stake a claim to having invented golf.
• The caretaker of Rangoon’s only synagogue dreams of reversing a Jewish exodus.
• Tough mountain women in India tell intruders, “If you want to cut that tree you have to first cut through me.”
• Religionists of various ilk fight for the soul of a confused man in Indonesian New Guinea.
• The Hindu monkey god Hanuman flies from Sri Lanka to the Indian Himalaya in search of medicinal plants – he rips a mountain off its base to save the life of Lord Rama’s brother, but in doing so incurs the lasting wrath of a few feisty villagers.
I would not have learned of these people and situations without one of the 20th centuries most senseless and controversial periods – the Vietnam War.
Not to make it sound too romantic, or push the pun, but the summer of 1969, when I graduated from university, was a heady time. I had just one big, wouldn’t go-away constraint, the Vietnam War.
I earned a temporary reprieve by joining the Peace Corps.
I asked for Botswana, deep in Africa and about as far from my middle class milieu as possible. The bureaucrats sent me to Borneo, more precisely to the Malaysian state of Sarawak, and my world changed.
I was introduced to places whose names resonated with history and incense, glamour and promise. There’s Sumatra, Java and Borneo; Malacca, Vientiane, and Makassar; Kelantan, Kathmandu and Ayudhya. Not to mention the rivers: Ganges and Yangtze, Mahakam and Mekong. Names rich with allure, and also ripe with the sense that they were somehow unobtainable, unknowable. The Call of the Maybe, the Cry of the What-If.
Consider the search for the tribe of giant, cannibalistic, Caucasians who reputedly live on Indonesia’s Halmahera island and who kill trespassers by hurling stones with their feet. They’re called the Orang Togutil. I actually found the tribe, but quickly saw they were neither white, large, nor violent. They were basically like other Indonesians, but without electricity and consumer goods. “Where are the real nasty guys?” I asked them. Basically the answer I got, similar to when I searched for tiger magicians called pawang harimau in Sumtra, was, “It ain’t us boss. We’re cool, but if you go over the next hill, towards the rainbow, you’ll find some really bad dudes.”
Peter Kedit, former director of the Sarawak (Malaysia) Museum, might call this kind of travel a form of berjalai practiced by the Iban tribe, a young man’s right of passage which in previous times, at least in Borneo, included the taking of enemy heads.
Similarly, anthropologist Robert Sapolsky discussed self-exile in the context of young male primates leaving the nest. “Another key to our success [as humans] must have something to do with this primate legacy of getting an itch around ado
lescence. What is going on with that individual’s genes, hormones, and neuro-transmitters to make it hit the road?…An adolescent female chimp cranes to catch a glimpse of the chimps from the next valley. New animals, a whole bunch of ‘em! To hell with logic and sensible behavior, to hell with tradition and respecting your elders, to hell with this drab little town, and to hell with that knot of fear in your stomach. Curiosity, excitement, adventure – the hunger for novelty is something fundamentally daft, rash, and enriching that we share with our whole taxonomic order.”
Here are some of those stories.
MOUNT BROMO, Indonesia.
A sister and her infant brother watch another dawn.
Photo: Paul Sochaczewski
II.
THE REAL EMPEROR OF CHINA
PERSONAL ESSAYS
Chapter 1
AUNT SARAH RATHER LIKED HER ORIGINAL CHILDHOOD NAME
Popping balloons instead of Chinese firecrackers; “mystic influence to the center”
HONOLULU, Hawai’i
I filled out the forms and wished my ancestors had been Burmese or Chinese. I was changing my name to my grandfather’s original, and Win or Wong would have been a lot easier to put on a new credit card than Sochaczewski.
But we have little control over whose descendants we are. My grandfather, Josef Sochaczewski, came to America from Kalisz, Poland, then part of Russia, in 1912, part of the great wave of European immigration. His family – my grandmother Esther, my father Samuel, and my aunt, whom I always called Syd – followed in 1913. I have an old family portrait which I treasure. My moustachioed grandfather looks like a Polish Pavarotti, my grandmother, pregnant with my uncle Bill, resembles a weary but very wise Madonna. Apparently she had tuberculosis when the photo was taken and died a year later.
A few years after passing the Statue of Liberty and arriving on Ellis Island, it came time for little Syd to go to school. Her Aunt Lena, the only relative who spoke good English, accompanied the girl. But the school official, apparently aghast at such an odd and difficult name as Sochaczewski, refused to register the girl and told Lena to come back with a simpler moniker. Today, the school official’s politically-incorrect action would be grounds for dismissal (if not a law suit); around 1915 he had simply made my family an offer they couldn’t refuse. Aunt Lena, thinking quickly, suggested that Syd Sochaczewski be registered instead as Wachtel, which was Lena’s married name.
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