Durians Are Not the Only Fruit

by Wong Yoon Wah

  One worker can tap 500 to 600 trees a day. When starting work, his first job is to pick off the encrusted strands of rubber from the previous day’s tapping—these accumulated oddments can be worth a fair amount, which is why every worker carries around a large cloth bag to gather these fragments and the crust at the bottom of the collecting cup. When a tree has been tapped from top to bottom, and a new layer has grown over its cuts, it may be exploited a second time, but the latex will not be as good as from a virgin tree. If the worker’s technique is poor and he cuts into the deepest layer, that tree will never recover its original state, but will sprout bulging scars that resemble tumours.

  When rubber prices are high, some tappers start work very early, cycling through the dark plantation at four or five in the morning—but even at regular times, they’re at their posts by six. With kerosene or gas lamps affixed to their foreheads, they hurry to finish by noon, because that’s when the sun is at its strongest and the searing heat thickens the sap so that it flows less freely. No one works on the plantation any later than noon, and from afternoon till early the next morning, the rubber jungle becomes once again a paradise for birds, beasts and insects.

  Rubber plantation workers hate the monsoon season, because their trees have such dense foliage that after a burst of rain, the damp trunk requires a whole day to dry out. The trees cannot be tapped while wet, otherwise they’ll scar easily, making them vulnerable to infection. Rubber tappers earn no income on rainy days. My mother used to scan the sky anxiously in the direction of our land, even though it was two or three miles away. She had a pair of radar eyes that predicted with accuracy whether rain was on its way, and how much. Some afternoons she’d look out and say rain was coming, but not a lot, and the trees would dry overnight. The next day we’d look and, sure enough, she’d be right. I suppose all experienced rubber tappers have such weather-sensitive eyes.

  Apart from when it rains, rubber trees must undergo this cutting ritual every day, bleeding white sap. They are the most economically valuable trees, but also the ones that suffer the greatest torment.

  • • •

  Not only do rubber trees provide jobs for rural dwellers and bring great wealth to plantation owners, they also add a hint of golden autumn to the Malaysian landscape. Yet this imported autumn is even hotter than summer.

  Nanyang’s native trees are mostly evergreen, sprouting thick thatches of green all year round. The rubber tree, being a migrant from Latin America, is different. Each year from January to March, when the land is arid and the monsoon a distant memory, the green sea of rubber trees slowly turns as yellow as a maple forest. Pale red leaves drift slowly to the ground, until the complex network of branches is exposed nakedly to the malevolent sun. Although the heat is as fierce as always, the broad expanse of the plantation turns into an autumnal landscape at this time, bleak and silent, the lush green of the tropics entirely gone.

  The local rubber tree has oval leaves, about four inches long, that grow in clusters of three—so the Pará rubber tree is also known as the three-leaf rubber tree. The young, tender leaves are almost yellow, becoming a deeper green as they mature. When the leaves drop, the birds and squirrels vanish from the branches, and the latex flow is greatly reduced. The poorer rubber tappers find their earnings reduced even further at this time, while the better-off plantation smallholders simply take a couple of months off, resuming work when the leaves grow back.

  At this time every year, our mothers would make us wear hats on the way to school—parasols for the girls—because with the green canopies gone, our path was no longer under shade. We imagined the tropical trees, the durians and rambutans and mangosteens, still thickly shrouded in green, mocking the pathetic bald rubber trees and their searing hot autumn.

  • • •

  Around March or April, a small amount of rain returns to the equator, and the rubber tree branches put out tentative leaves again. As these deepen into green, the tree also blossoms with tiny yellow flowers, which fall at the slightest wind, dispersing a mouldy smell throughout the clean freshness of the plantation.

  Soon after this, fruit the size of green apples appear on the tree, each containing three creamy-white seeds, a little larger than lotus seeds. Monkeys and squirrels love these little morsels. When the fruit is ripe, its outer shell, originally green, turns pale brown and becomes so hard, even a squirrel’s sharp teeth can’t penetrate it. When the seeds enter the ground and germinate, the fruit bursts open with a bang, shattering into six fragments and propelling the seeds outward with great force, hurling them far from the parent tree.

  The sharp crack of the rubber tree fruit is the most unforgettable sound of my youth. I’d be on my way to school or at home, lost in thought, when the sudden report of rubber seeds would startle me out of my reverie. Sometimes a piece of shell would hurl itself painfully against my head or body. While napping through the torrid afternoons, I’d sometimes be woken from pleasant dreams by several thunderous sounds—seeds landing on the roof, followed by the gurgling bounce of them rolling off and thudding onto sandy ground.

  The ripe seed looks a little like a gingko nut, protected by a hard oval shell, brown with black markings. As children, we loved gathering a bright, shiny pile of seeds, racing to snatch up the sturdiest ones. We played at placing two between competing palms, squeezing until one seed crumbled. If you were lucky enough to find a really hard one, you’d defeat all your classmates. Each year, when the rubber fruit appeared, we children dreamed of finding that one perfect seed, holding it in our pockets, unbeatable.

  • • •

  Rubber trees not only provide an income to grown-ups and entertain children, but in death they also fill the household stove.

  When the tree has run out of sap, or when tapped too deeply and afflicted with sickness, the rubber tree quickly dries out. This wood rots easily, and after a month or two exposed to the elements, the timber becomes infested with insects, which makes it unusable for anything other than burning. When I was a schoolboy, gas and electric stoves were still uncommon, and many Malaysian kampung homes relied on rubber tree wood as their main source of fuel. Behind or beside every house would be a pile of chopped rubber tree wood. Rubber tree wood is soft, and splits open with just a little pressure from the axe, after which it only needs to be dried beneath the sun. At a time of rising oil prices and fuel shortages, I find myself missing those dry rubber tree carcasses.

  I still remember clearly our large kitchen, which had a large space beneath the stove that held a week’s worth of wood. Before cooking, we’d use a ball of rubber strands as a firestarter, then around it pile the rubber tree wood, which caught light easily.

  Rubber tree wood burns silently, with no crackling at all, and although it catches fire easily, it smoulders for a long time, leaving very little ash behind. You could say that this tree really does live and die for the sake of rural folk.

  Cathedrals of the Tropics

  SINGAPORE WAS ONCE an island of tropical rainforests, a paradise of vegetation. Today, plants continue to grow abundantly here. Living in this botanical heaven, my greatest pleasure lies in observing the characters and lives of these plants, and listening to their conversations with birds and the weather.

  Amongst these many trees, my favourite is the rain tree—the best representative of our ecology, the symbiosis between the people of Nanyang and their environment. When travelling to Europe, ancient cathedrals are considered a must-see—a symbol of the age-old history and culture of the European people. To me, rain trees are the cathedrals of the tropics. In every rain tree, you can find the beliefs, the lifestyles, even the legends and dreams of our people.

  Whenever I pick up visiting friends at the airport, I always take care to introduce the rain trees standing tall on either side of the expressway as we drive down the wide boulevard leading to the city. Each crown of leaves expands in all directions, its lush design looking for all the world like an enormous green umbrella, providing shade from the harsh sun o
verhead, and shelter when an unexpected cloud suddenly lets loose its cargo of rain.

  Before the arrival of modern life as we know it, each rain tree was a clock tower for the indigenous people and early Chinese settlers. At five every evening, rain tree leaves furl like human hands at prayer. And at five the next morning, they open again. To the people of the tropics, they announced the start and end of the day, and were known in Malay as pukul lima, or the five o’clock tree.

  The giant rain tree has ancestors in common with the mimosa, whose name in Chinese means ‘shy grass’. The rain tree’s feather-shaped leaves are as fine and sensitive as its smaller cousin, and react to the sun, opening to receive its light and folding back on itself on cloudy days or at dusk. The closing leaves trap raindrops and dew that fall from the tree when they open again—hence its name.

  As with the people of Nanyang, the rain tree’s age is hard to conceal—once past youth, the climate takes its toll. By the age of 20 or 30, the humidity will have brought a variety of guests, from ferns to orchids—and the most eye-catching of all, the staghorn and phoenix tail ferns. This too is linked to the opening and closing of the leaves—as water drips from the leaves each day, the trunk receives a large amount of moisture, which encourages the growth of parasites. After two or three decades, the tree will become an airborne botanical garden, a creation of sheer beauty.

  Ordinary plants use their flowers to dazzle us, but the rain tree is different. Its red and white fan-shaped blossoms appear at the tips of upward-facing branches, and bloom for the benefit of birds and clouds. No wonder the rain tree’s branches seem especially full of birdsong.

  In the wild, naturally occurring rain trees can grow till their crowns are the size of a football field, their branches drooping downwards under their own weight, forming green tunnels by the sides of Malaysian country roads. Sadly, these majestic specimens have gradually disappeared. In order to make the most of limited space and land, and for the convenience of heavy goods vehicles plying the roads, the rain trees’ branches frequently meet the evil fate of pruning, and can only expand skyward, not allowed to come near the earth.

  These changes affecting the ecology of the rain tree—those of us who’ve grown up in this tropical climate with its unrestrained passions, we have experienced them ourselves.

  Cast from Paradise

  I ONCE PASSED a night on the edge of the primeval jungle of Malaysia’s East Coast. All night long, I grappled with nameless terrors and nightmares. The next morning, I hurried back to the city. I realised that those who tumble into the city and stay there for too long are unable to return to the mysterious embrace of the great natural world.

  I was born on a rubber plantation on Malaysia’s West Coast, and for almost 20 years lived on the border of the tropical jungle. Behind both my primary and secondary schools lay the dark heart of the jungle. Even the gurkhas, the fiercest of the British colonial forces, dared not enter in pursuit of the Malayan Communists they were battling. Yet after such a long separation, not only had the jungle become strange to me, but even the sound of twigs snapping underfoot filled me with a nameless dread.

  • • •

  We left Singapore around two in the afternoon, a day of such strong sunlight we could barely keep our eyes open. In order to drive safely, I put on my sunglasses. The car contained, apart from Dan Ying and myself, Professor Gu, Mrs Gu and their two children. We were excited at this rare opportunity to reconnect with nature, especially since it was neither the weekend nor the holiday season. As other people remained trapped in their busy lives, our car slipped out like a fish through a net, swimming unencumbered to the vast green sea of rubber plantations.

  In less than 45 minutes, we had left Singaporean soil, passed through Johor Bahru—the largest city in Southern Malaysia—and were heading directly north on the North-South trunk road. Rubber trees crowded densely on both sides of the road, making me feel as if we were sailing down a narrow river, the lush greenery like waves beating our little boat, the mountain ranges on either side like high, distant shores. As we surged down the rapids, I plucked off my dark glasses because the sun that had blazed so brightly when we set off was now nowhere to be seen.

  • • •

  Arriving at Kota Tinggi, a tiny hill town, we asked many passers-by before finding the narrow road that led to the waterfall. We held our breaths until we saw a sign assuring us our destination was no more than 10 kilometres ahead.

  Yet how long that 10-kilometre road was, like a grey snake winding its way through the uneven hills of the rubber plantation, its head hidden in the darkness of the jungle. During storms, this road became a channel for floodwater, and as a result was littered with debris and loose soil. Our car often paused at forks in the road, with no indication as to whether to turn left or right. There was still a large gap of time before sunset, but dusk was already falling like a withered rubber tree leaf, drifting slowly onto the road ahead. Our cheerful voices stilled as we held our breaths, trying to detect the sound of a waterfall—but apart from the engine and an occasional distant dog bark, the hillside was deathly silent.

  Just as a green ridge seemed to block the path ahead, we heard a mighty roar and saw to our left a white sheet of water seemingly cascading from the sky. Not even the shadow of a person could be seen, just a few squirrels scavenging amidst the rubbish left behind by previous tourists. Malay-style huts on stilts were scattered over the slope, far enough apart that each looked lonely, abandoned. They were all painted different colours, for ease of recognition.

  • • •

  We were aware that evening was gathered on three sides of the jungle, and so hurried down to swim. An American hiker, perched on a great rock like a mountain god, watched silently as we played in the water. Before long, he too had vanished into the dusk. I gazed up the waterfall into the jungle and saw night approaching, flowing rapidly from between the black trees. As darkness rose like the tide and engulfed the hillside, we scurried back to our stilt huts and turned on the electric lights. Only then did the raging jungle, so intent on its prey, stop closing in on us.

  We had our own hut, separate from the Gu family’s. Their hut was on the other side of the hill—out of earshot, even if we’d shouted. Before getting into bed, I carefully shut all the windows, hoping to keep the terrifying jungle and fearsome night at bay. But the doors and windows were so simply designed that it seemed a hand pushing with sufficient force could easily open them all. To a city dweller, this seemed most unsafe, and I was extremely worried. Finally, I extinguished all the lights, thinking perhaps this way no one would guess the place was inhabited. There were more than 10 huts on the hillside, but ours were the only two occupied.

  • • •

  Lying in bed, unable to see my hand in front of me, I could only make out a dim outline of trees through the window. In the distant valley, the waterfall’s roar seemed to grow louder with the passage of time. Forcing myself to spend this night in nature’s embrace, I energetically recollected my early years in the mysterious jungle. Although the fruits of technology had long been available in our cities and towns, the rubber districts were so sparsely populated—only one household could be found every couple of kilometres—that modern entertainments such as movies were not easy to obtain. To amuse ourselves in our spare time, we had to seek out our pleasures from amongst the mysteries of nature in the tropical jungle.

  • • •

  Equatorial Malaysia has only two seasons, wet and dry. From October into the first two months of the new year, daily storms are guaranteed as if on a timer, sometimes for 30 minutes, sometimes for an hour or two. Low-lying areas, normally jade green with wild grass, disappear underwater. Those of us growing up in the kingdom of the rubber trees knew that in these places, or in shallow water year-round, we could find a species of fighting fish (known scientifically as Betta splendens), a creature most at home in remote, weed-filled regions. We caught them with empty hands, reaching into the water with palms wide open, then closing n
eatly around the fish and scooping them out. During the mating season, we’d often see a male and female setting up home by a stalk of underwater grass, white bubbles floating to the surface above them. As we stalked our prey through ankle-deep water, the sight of these sudlike emissions told us where to reach in.

  Fighting fish are three centimetres long; the females are stark white; the males as vividly coloured as roosters, with wide fins and tails that open like fans, with alternating patches of red and blue, their bodies the exact shade of goose down. Only the male fish are beautiful. The females are not only plain; they don’t fight either. If we lifted a hand to see a female nested in its palm, we’d immediately let her go.

  A male fighting fish, seeing another of its sex, immediately goes into battle mode. Each must be kept in a separate jar. Even when you put two of these jars together, upon seeing its counterpart, each fish will combatively display its dazzling colours, and charge at the other, never mind that a sheet of glass stands in the way. We had to be sure to keep a sheet of thick paper between our jars, so each viciously solitary fish would be unaware of the others’ existence.

  Before a fight, we’d keep our fish in a dark corner, isolated from the world for three days, making them even more aggressive, withholding food if we wanted them to bite their opponents. And during our leisure time, we’d meet for a tournament, each person bearing a jar. The fight consisted of putting two fish into a wide tank, giving them plenty of time to pursue each other. When they met, their fins and tails would spread like peacock tails, revealing the sky blue and pink tints within. They’d first swipe at each other with their tails, then open their jaws wide, going for the other’s fins and tail. In the heat of battle, the water in the tank would roil like the ocean waves, bits of scale or fin bobbing on the surface. After 10 minutes, victory would be plain, the defeated fish slinking away, its body pale, tail and fins shrivelled as fallen flags, the winner in pursuit. In order to save the wounded fish, we’d have to quickly reach in to separate them.