Durians Are Not the Only Fruit

by Wong Yoon Wah

  • • •

  In the dry season, with the fighting fish far off in the deeper reaches of the lake, we’d turn to our other jungle amusements.

  I’m not sure from what age I started spending all my time amongst the trees with the other village children, scrutinising low-lying leaves. When we saw two leaves stuck together, we’d carefully look between them to see if they contained a white-faced, black-bodied jumping spider.

  This creature’s body is like a little black melon seed, consisting as usual of head and abdomen. Its legs, though, are short and fine, not long like most spiders’. The jumping spider’s movements are nimble, and its method of finding food novel. Instead of spinning a web to trap its prey, it loves to lie in wait on a tree or amongst the grass, leaping lightly from leaf to leaf, darting after insects with great skill. Its home is in the space between two leaves, bound together with a sticky liquid it spits out.

  The male jumping spider works alone, its nature violent, immediately attacking any spider of the same species and sex. Sometimes neither would admit defeat until one had been bitten to death. But they were gentle towards humans, and never once bit us. When we saw a white face and black body lurking between two leaves, we’d put our palms around them and pull to break the stems, then place them on the ground so the jumping spider obediently climbed out, at which point we’d extend a palm for it to jump into. We kept the captured ones in matchboxes filled with shredded leaves for them to nest.

  Watching two jumping spiders fight is an unforgettable memory for many village youths. Since matchboxes are easy to carry around, these tournaments could take place in classrooms, by the road outside the school, even up a tree while picking rambutans. We only had to open our matchboxes a crack for the spiders to leap out. The box, or an open palm, was all the battleground we needed. Two spiders meeting would each raise their hindquarters, moving one left and one right, one forward and one back, stalking each other. If they’d been shut up for three days with no food, hunger would increase their fighting spirit to the point where they regarded each other as not just an opponent, but prey as well—the victorious spider eating the loser. Even if we tipped over our palm or matchbox so that they tumbled to the ground, each would refuse to release its grip on the other.

  We knew the habits of the jumping spider as well as our own, when they liked to hunt and when they liked to rest. After a shower, they mostly hid in their leaf homes, where they could also be found after four or five o’clock, and when the noon sun was at its harshest. We took advantage of these times to visit them. They seemed to prefer the leaves of guava, rambutan and jambu trees. In damp regions, wild taro, vanilla leaves and mango trees could also house them.

  • • •

  In the village of my childhood, we all lived in attap houses—that is, huts whose roofs were thatched from the leaves of a tropical plant which reflected sunlight without absorbing heat. In front of each house was usually a patch of firm, packed earth. In the dry season, small holes would appear in the yellow soil, each the home of a large black ant. This species of ant is unusual in that it shuns communal life, so each hole contained only one or two ants. Upon encountering their neighbours, they’d immediately want to fight—and so naturally we enjoyed luring them into battle.

  Ant fighting was a common sport in the attap house area. We’d pluck a stalk of the most common wild grass—flowering crabgrass—and place its narrow stem tens of centimetres deep into the hole. When the stalk trembled, we’d know an ant was on the hook. Like a fish, it would bite the grass firmly, allowing us to lift it from its hole.

  These black ants were like jumping spiders, seemingly provided by nature as a toy for all village children. They were vicious by nature, but in the palm of a child’s hand they would be docile, not even trying to escape. All the young residents of the rubber plantation knew this secret.

  Having obtained two ants from different holes, we’d set them to fight on the ground or in someone’s palm. Because they had a different scent, as soon as they approached each other they would recognise an enemy, and so would raise their antennae and charge, each trying to bite the other, not stopping till one was dead or had at least lost a leg.

  Because these ants were so easy to obtain, we set them free at the end of each fight. They didn’t seem to mind entering a life-and-death struggle for the mere amusement of children. When we released them they’d stroll away casually, not at all appearing to want to escape our grasp, to dash towards freedom.

  • • •

  I dozed off in the midst of recollection. Around seven the next morning, we were woken by a banging on the door and the sound of a little child crying. Still in a daze, I opened the door to see Professor Gu’s son, shivering all over, sobbing so hard, he could barely speak. His parents were missing, he managed to say. We were momentarily scared out of our wits.

  Just as we were about to run over to their hut to see what had happened, Professor Gu came sprinting up the winding path. It turned out the child’s pitiful cries were, in the silence of the jungle, loud enough to pierce through the noisy web of a rushing waterfall. Professor Gu and Mrs Gu had risen at dawn, roused by birdsong and the music of falling water. Seeing their three-year-old daughter and six-year-old son still sound asleep, they’d slipped away for a walk, not expecting the boy to wake and, finding his parents gone, come running to us for help.

  • • •

  A month later, I saw in the newspaper that in the jungle near Kota Tinggi, a grass-cutter had been killed by a tiger. A few days later, the beast returned to feast on what remained of the corpse, only to find the police lying in wait. They ambushed and shot it.

  This article was a reminder that I should not be like that tiger, and should never try to go back to the natural world and the amusements I’d enjoyed as a schoolboy. I am now a civilised city dweller, and the primeval jungle will no longer allow my return.

  The Oldest Rubber Tree

  RECENTLY, I’VE BEEN feeling nostalgic for the rubber trees.

  Of all the tropical trees, they are the ones I feel most familiar with, and closest to. I was born in the kingdom of rubber trees, and spent my childhood in their shade. My family owned a rubber plantation that was 10 mu in area. When I was in secondary school, every holiday would be spent helping tap and collect the latex. Thinking back to those years, the rubber trees form the background to my memories.

  Rubber trees are the reincarnation of the early Chinese settlers, of their hard work opening up Nanyang. Transplanted from Brazil, the trees relied on the backbreaking labour of Chinese immigrants to transform the wilderness of Malaya, with its poisonous snakes, wild beasts and primeval rainforests—these unwanted elements were all banished to the highest peaks of the peninsula’s central mountain range. So these trees represent the pioneers of Singapore and Malaysia, and are also the lifeblood of our economy. Until 1970, about 70 per cent of Malaysia’s population was employed by the rubber plantations.

  Following industrialisation and urbanisation, Singapore’s rubber plantations more or less completely vanished. Nantah, where I now teach, has Yunnan Garden—which used to be a vast rubber plantation of the same name. I’ve been at Nantah for five years, and have explored every corner of the grounds, examining every tall tree, but not one is a rubber tree.

  On quiet afternoons, I wish that the saga trees outside my window would transform into rubber trees, so I can hear once again that familiar noise: the rubber fruit bursting apart explosively, flinging its three hard seeds to the ground. This natural sound is now lost, and all I hear is the maddening commotion of humanity, invading my flat in waves.

  • • •

  One March, out of nostalgia, and also on a mission to find the earliest rubber trees in the kingdom, Dan Ying and I drove out of Singapore under the tropical sun, following the trunk road up the West Coast of Malaysia, heading for Kuala Kangsar in the north.

  Kuala Kangsar is a royal city, the seat of Perak’s Sultanate. According to the historical record, when the
British first experimented with planting rubber in Malaya in 1877, transplanting 22 Brazilian saplings from Ceylon, nine of them were sent to Kuala Kangsar, of which, it is said, a few are still thriving today.

  On the 650-kilometre journey from south to north, there was an unbroken sea of rubber trees on either side of the road. This region is the main reason Malaysia occupies the number one position in world rubber production. The East Coast has its share of rubber plantations, but cannot compare with the west in terms of scale and density—which is the main reason the West Coast is more prosperous, and more heavily populated. From the 19th century onwards, numerous wealthy towns and cities have spewed forth from the rubber plantations. Once over the causeway from Singapore, heading north, you encounter Johor Bahru, Ayer Hitam, Segamat, Sekudai, Tampin, Muar, Malacca, Seremban, Kuala Lumpur, Slim River, Tanjung Malim, Kampar, Ipoh, Sungai Siput, Kuala Kangsar, and Taiping.

  Every tree we passed stood perfectly upright, spaced exactly eight feet from its neighbours. Like the early Chinese and Indian settlers, rubber trees are immigrants who have come to love this tropical land, relying on each other for survival. The arrival of these trees increased the pace of development of Malaya’s jungles, rapidly hastening our economic growth.

  Originally from Brazil’s rainforest, rubber trees were first discovered by indigenous tribes along the Amazon River. At the time, the tribespeople only knew how to cut through the bark to collect the white sap, which they formed into latex balls. The British brought rubber seeds to London’s renowned Kew Gardens, and from there to the colonies. Of the 22 trees that arrived in 1877, apart from the ones in Kuala Kangsar, one went to Malacca, and the remaining 12 to Singapore’s Botanic Gardens, of which nine survived.

  Rubber trees love the permanently humid and rainy climate of the tropical flatlands or hills. Once the original rainforest has been cleared and the tree stumps burnt away, as long as the land does not slope too much and is well irrigated, conditions are ready for planting.

  Around the age of six or seven, a rubber tree will have reached a height of 16 feet, its trunk about 20 inches around. At this time it will be producing vast quantities of milky white latex, and be ready for tapping. The rubber tappers most fear the rainy season, as the tree cannot be cut while it’s damp; the latex will not follow its narrow channel, but flow like floodwater all over the bark.

  Rainy days bring free time, but also poverty, to the plantation workers. It rains often in Singapore and Malaysia, particularly during the monsoon season delivered by south-eastern winds, during which a heavy shower is guaranteed practically at the same time every day. I still remember clearly that during the monsoon season, the workers’ worried faces would be as grey as the sky.

  • • •

  As our car passed Malacca around eleven in the morning, we saw many workers cycling from the plantation to the processing plant. Behind each bicycle was strapped a large bucket full of liquid latex. We made a quick detour to the seaside and gazed for a while at the spot where Admiral Cheng Ho made his Malacca landing, drank a mouthful from the ‘Three Treasure’ well he dug, and resumed our journey. Malacca was the first town in Malaya to mass-produce rubber. In 1898, the Chinese immigrant Tan Chay Yan, inspired by the success of the 1877 experiment and believing in the economic potential of rubber, begin planting on an unprecedented scale—3,000 mu of rubber trees. At the time, botanists around the world were paying attention to this plantation at Bukit Asam, just outside Malacca. Sure enough, the land produced rubber in vast quantities, starting the first chapter of our local rubber industry and providing an important material for the industrial revolution.

  The noontime sun seemed hot enough to melt the tarmac. Beneath our wheels, the road behind and ahead of us was a grey-black python, well-fed and gently writhing.

  The dear, familiar rubber trees suddenly felt strange to me, even fearful. Each of them was so upright, so neatly arranged by the roadside, their umbrella crowns and reaching branches lush and impenetrable even to the fierce sun. The grey-white trunks were like so many eyes, watching us in mysterious silence.

  As we passed Seremban, the unpredictable tropical weather surprised us with a bout of violent rain, the trees on either side morphing into a blurry green sea, the road emerging from within its storm-tossed waves. At times we were unable to see the road ahead; it hadn’t yet emerged from the ocean depths. Looking in the rear-view mirror, the path behind us had already been swallowed. I had the courage of Moses crossing the Red Sea, but at the bottom of my heart couldn’t stop worrying that the parted waves would abruptly close, burying us and our car at the bottom of a great green ocean.

  By the time we arrived a day later in Ipoh, the capital of Perak, it was already afternoon. Our friends insisted on taking us to sample the local speciality, sar hor fun, before we could proceed north, so it was almost seven when we left North Malaysia’s most prosperous city—and discovered how dark the road through the rubber plantations could get. It was only 20-odd kilometres from Ipoh to Kuala Kangsar, but as we inched along the uneven road, the inky groves seemed to stretch out dark hands to block our path. Even with the high beams turned on, we were unable to banish them. Unable to see, unable to tell which way the road curved beyond five or six feet ahead, I grew anxious and the car climbed forward at the pace of an injured tortoise. Heavy goods lorries zoomed past, their drivers familiar with the lie of the land, their bright red brake lights disappearing into the blackness ahead.

  Then I had a brainwave, and when the next lorry overtook us, I quickly stepped on the accelerator to keep up before it vanished, keeping close behind as the experienced driver sped ahead, the bloody trail of his lights leading us through the twists and turns of the road. And in this way, through pitch darkness, we arrived at our destination.

  • • •

  Kuala Kangsar is a small town by the banks of the Perak River, which has its source in the untouched virgin rainforest above Banding, swelling as it’s joined by tributaries on the way down, which is why during the monsoon season, it frequently bursts its banks and floods the town. The Sultan of Perak’s palace sits on a slope above the river. We searched nearby and asked quite a few people, but no one knew where the first rubber trees in Malaya had been planted.

  Entering the palace grounds, we visited the original building, which consists of several traditional Malay stilt houses joined together. The entire structure is built of wood and bamboo without the use of a single nail, just wedges and joints holding everything together. Several centuries of being exposed to the elements had weakened the structure, though, and at some point it had been reinforced with nails. As I climbed up the steps, I scrutinised every board and pillar—the nails were still new and shiny, and had probably been driven in not too long ago.

  After repeated enquiries, we finally located the very oldest rubber tree, in front of Kuala Kangsar’s local courthouse. This tree, 101 years old, looked different from an ordinary one, whether in terms of height, leaf size or the shape of its crown. Its trunk was plump and at least 60 feet tall, while its leaves were delicate and small. Next to the trees currently being tapped for latex, it possessed a royal presence and bearing, while its successors seemed by comparison no more than peasants.

  I paced under the tree for some time, hoping to find some of its seeds, speckled like quail’s eggs, but came up empty-handed. Presumably a tree this old had given up on flowering and bearing fruit. I’ve heard that the first batch of rubber plants bloomed in 1881, at which time every seed was exceedingly precious, carefully collected and sold to the various rubber plantation owners.

  As a child, I had to walk through two or three miles of rubber trees every day to get to my primary school. Rubber seeds littered the ground. A fruit would often explode right above me, propelling a seed the size of my thumb into my head or torso. At the end of the year, and into the first couple of months of the new year, the rubber trees’ leaves changed from green to yellow and then red, before being shed in droves. The tropical weather remained ho
t, but walking through fallen leaves gave one the sensation of living through autumn. Only at this time could I observe the landscape of the plantation clearly, because this was when the sun was able to reach the ground, illuminating the sparse bushes and wild flowers that grew between the trees.

  Standing beneath this historical tree, I began to feel close to rubber trees again, even nostalgic. Once more I thought emotionally of the rubber trees of Yunnan Garden, now long dead. They brought to us civilisation and economic prosperity, but once we entered the contemporary era, they gradually vanished from our land.

  Moisture Climbs the Saga Tree

  BEFORE ARRIVING AT Nantah and its Yunnan Garden, I’d assumed ‘humidity’ was an empty word, a shapeless phenomenon that couldn’t be seen, only felt. Then I spent five years teaching on this campus surrounded by the tropical rainforest. Having lived in close quarters with humidity for such a long time, I came to recognise it as a living thing with its own form. Like the ants in Yunnan Garden, it comes in many varieties, its movements nimble and lively, its sense of smell sharp. Even in its living environment, it bears a close resemblance to the ants.