A FEW MONTHS AGO, WHILE writing text panels for a local exhibition, I asked a friend to give them a quick once-over. He came back with something unexpected:
“…. the lives they established long ago as strangers in a strange land form the backbone of our present community.” Reflect on your use of ‘our’ in the last sentence – it’s something that you need to think about: I have a feeling that the word has sort of sneaked into your text semi-consciously – has it?
For the sake of objectivity, the word ‘our’ was changed to ‘the’, but the answer to his question was a resolute no. If I belong anywhere it is here in Sarawak, and so no, there was nothing semi-conscious about it at all.

On one hand, my claim to being a member of the Kuching community may seem tenuous. Though a daughter of a Sarawakian-Chinese mother, I am also a product of a Northern Irish father. Though there were extended visits to Kuching as a child and then shorter, more frequent visits from my mid-twenties onwards, I was born and raised in England, and English is my mother tongue.

However, in Kuching there exists for me a physical rootedness to my identity in the form of a traditional style shophouse on Carpenter Street, in the heart of the old town, from which my maternal family flows. My great grandfather migrated to Kuching from China’s Guangdong province at the turn of the nineteenth century, having apprenticed as a watch repairer along the way, and it was in this house that he eventually settled. Within it he worked and raised a son, my grandfather, to whom the trade and the house passed, and in which my grandfather raised a son and three daughters of his own, the youngest of whom is my mother. Upon my grandfather’s death the trade and the house were inherited by his son, my uncle, and it was in here that my uncle raised his own seven children. After his death two years ago, the trade went to one of his sons, my cousin.

You may ask why all this is so important to me. The answer may be that because my identity is split along the fault lines of race, culture, and continents, I’ve always felt a need for something physical, something definitive, to help me see in part who I am. This extends to the bricks and mortar of the house itself, to the blackened belian staircase as steep and narrow as an attic ladder, to the rusted iron frame of my grandmother’s bed, its dismantled parts now propped against a wall. It further extends to my aunt’s calligraphy desk, sable brushes in jar, to the black-and-white photo of my late uncle as a young man – hung now with the photos of his parents – to my cousin mending a customer’s watch at his work bench, eye loupe on, bent over his microscope as his father had done before him, and our grandfather before him, and our great grandfather before him … . ‘The poetry of the everyday’, I believe it’s called.

There’s a continuity present that stretches outwards to the rest of our quarter, in particular to the thin triangle formed between the family shophouse, Lau Ya Keng temple, and the food court. The coffee stall here has likewise remained in one family, in the same location, for generations, and is now operated by two branches of the family in two shifts. It has been a daily part of family life reaching back to my mother’s childhood, and during those extended visits, part of mine too. I now feel a deep-seated recognition of the smell of kerosene from the mobile cookers mingled with freshly brewed coffee, of the sight of boiling water ladled from one pot to another, while the sound of torrential rain pounds on corrugated metal roofs. This food court was where my uncle and I last spoke before his final Great Illness, where he whispered to me in his failing voice: ‘I used to bring you here for satay when you were a little girl, and now you are bringing me’.

One cousin tells me I have a tendency to romanticise life in these parts, and I fear she is right. After all, for all the familiarity there is the unfamiliarity – what the writer Amin Maalouf describes as ‘being estranged from the very traditions to which I belong’. I think about the metal grille across the front of the shophouse which, when the shop is closed, needs to be pulled back to let anyone in or out. I have never been able to manage it. Not because it is heavy or stuck, but like a mortice key in a tricky lock, it takes a sleight of hand gained through habitude to make it shift – something I do not possess. On more pensive, introspective days, it becomes a symbol for the alienation I know exists between myself and this society in which I both belong and cannot one hundred percent belong. I speak none of the local languages, without which no person can ever truly inhabit a society, and for all my extended childhood visits, ultimately I was socialised in England. The consequence is that there are social and cultural complexities within both my family and the wider community which I may never truly understand.

Nonetheless, the feeling of belonging is stronger than any sense of non-belonging. Were anyone to ask me where my first point of identity lies I would say right here, among these narrow streets and dark, dilapidated shophouses, in the chaos and in the heat. I would say I belong to one house in particular – the place where I’ve found the steadfastness I’ve always needed, the wellspring where four generations of my family have lived, worked, married, birthed, and died (five if you count my cousin’s wave of children now being born). When the time comes, throw my ashes in the back yard. I’ll be home.

Charlotte Hunter descends from a shophouse family in old Kuching. Dividing her time between Sarawak and the UK, she can often be found staring into space at Lau Ya Keng food court on Carpenter St. Feel free to buy her more coffee.

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FIRST NEWS by Alan Lau

IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD

WHEN THE FIRST ISSUE OF the Sarawak Gazette appeared on 26 August 1870, it consisted of a three-page summary of a Reuters telegram’s coverage of the Franco-Prussian war. It also laid down its twofold mission: “to provide those Europeans who reside at Outstations with concise statements of official business and other matters of public interest…” “to serve as a recognized report of the condition of the various residencies under the Sarawak Government, in their relations to the natives and to the trading interests which most of them possess, for circulation in other countries and settlements.”

The Sarawak Gazette was established under the energetic Sir Charles Brooke, the second Rajah of Sarawak, who took an avid interest in its publication. A Government Printing Office was established, and the Gazette then proceeded to play a central role in recording Sarawakian life for the next 100 years.

The Gazette was the first regular English newspaper in the country. Published monthly or twice-monthly, during its heyday it was Sarawak’s most important printed source of news and information, circulating information within Sarawak and on Sarawakrelated matters to the outside world.

Historic editions of the Sarawak Gazette can be accessed today, notably on the website of the Sarawak State Library, which has helpfully made its collection of Gazettes fully accessible to the public at www.pustaka-sarawak.com/gazette/home.php.

When confronted with an actual early paper edition of the Gazette however, one is struck by its dimensions. It was printed on sheets of paper larger than foolscap, but smaller than a modernday
tabloid. The paper itself, formerly white, now ranges from amber to sunset yellow. The first page is emblazoned with the Brooke Sarawak crest, and the words “Sarawak Gazette” in large, elongated gothic font, giving it a distinctive, if slightly musty, air of authority. Most specimens you’ll see today are leather-bound in annual hardcover compilations but, when newly circulated, they would have been folded like miniature newspapers, all the better for mobility.

Like the presence of the Rajah Charles, copies of the Gazette were once ubiquitous, in club lounges, libraries, and European households throughout the land. It was fondly called “the parish rag”, a reference to the relatively small size of its readership (Europeans and the English-educated), as well as the fact that nearly all its publishers and readers were acquainted with each other. Pseudonyms were regularly used by contributing writers, but they were generally useless as maskers of identity.

Apart from being an invaluable record of events and the comings-and-goings of the Brookes, their officers and other personages, the editorials and contributed articles give a fascinating glimpse into life in pre-war Sarawak.

Despite its quasi-official status, the editors of the Gazette were largely given free rein over the content. While some self-censorship certainly went on, especially in matters pertaining to the Rajah and his family, the Gazette seems to have been relatively free from government interference, and the editorial could pick and choose topics of discussion at will.

Its content generally fell into 3 main categories. The first consisted of official government-related material, such as the proclamation of new laws, announcements of major state events, promotions and postings of government officials, and the comings and goings of the Rajah and his family members. There were also extracts from the monthly reports of the Residents of the various Divisions, which recorded the day-today dealings between the Brooke-era officers and the natives. They make for some informative but dry reading, preserving for posterity such minutiae as the sago trade surpluses of Mukah, as well as the number of absconding prisoners at Kapit. These accounts paint an overall picture of the Brooke-era officers, not as sedentary bureaucrats but as well-travelled civil servants in close contact with the natives and the country they governed.

The second category consisted of editorial material, which included articles on a broad range of subjects. An Op-ed article about rising car ownership and traffic etiquette might share a page with a detailed account of the 1922 British Empire Exhibition in London, where Sarawak had been allocated a pavilion. Short fiction often made an appearance; the Ranee Sylvia, who was herself a well-known writer in England, contributed several short stories. There were also articles of an anthropological or scientific nature, written for lay readers with minimal technical jargon. They might detail Melanau burial rituals, a traditional tuba fishing ceremony or an account of the latest research expedition to the interior. These articles demonstrate the Gazette’s lively interest in Sarawak, as well as the customs and traditions of its native peoples.

Printed monthly or twicemonthly, the Gazette added on crossword puzzles and advertisements in later years.

A third category comprised practical data for public use, such as price lists for market products, almanac information on weather and tides, and passenger lists within and without the country.

Even a quick browse through an old copy of the Sarawak Gazette will reveal how strange a publication it is, compared with modern periodicals and newspapers, with its unusually diverse content which defies easy classification. There might be, on the first page directly below the crest, an official proclamation outlining the Rajah’s latest decree, followed by a slew of notices on the latest movements of the Rajah and his family, the appointments or movements of various Sarawak officers and announcements or descriptions of major social events, such as notable weddings or funerals. The main body might consist of articles, wide-ranging in scope and tone (an account of a newly discovered beetle might sit, cheek-by-jowl, with a humorous story on stolen tennis apparel). Extracts of bureaucratic reports from the outstations might ensue, and the issue might close with a barrage of figures and tables on market food prices and meteorological data.

The unusual nature of the Gazette’s offerings stemmed from the fact that it played an indispensable role in distributing information in Brooke-era Sarawak. As the sole English-language newspaper, it was the only portal of international and local news for the populace. As per its stated mission, it was intended to provide European officers and locals in the remote corners of the country with as varied and useful a source of information as possible, hence its heterogeneous content. You might say that the Gazette was a juggler of information in distant places, offering one reader a gobbet of social gossip, official information to another, and important trade information to a third.

The Gazette was also Sarawak’s window to the outside world, filtering information from without while also presenting a particular vision of the country to observers peering in. The British public’s fascination with the “white rajahs” of Sarawak meant that Fleet Street’s editors often perused the Gazette to divine the inner workings of an exotic, perplexing and colourful country.

Publication of the Gazette ceased during the Japanese Occupation. In any case, the editors, writers and most of the readership were held in internment camps, and the new Japanese authorities saw little use for a publication so closely associated with their British enemies. After liberation, the Gazette returned to circulation just in time to document the end of the Brooke era and the cession of Sarawak to Britain.

Thereafter, the Gazette seemed to continue in time-honoured fashion; it kept its distinctive pre-war appearance and format, the reports of outstation Residents remained, and the latest racing results and tidal cycles continued to be published. The only difference was that mention of the departed Rajah had been replaced with that of the new Governor.

However with the departure of the Brooke-era officers, the Gazette gradually lost its casual intimacy. The new colonial administration could not abide free-wheeling editorials, and the Gazette’s once egalitarian tone took on an increasingly institutional flavour.

After Independence, the Gazette’s former ubiquity began to diminish in the new Malaysia, as other new English-language newspapers emerged. Publications such as the Sarawak Tribune and The Borneo Post assumed the coverage of local and international news. In the new globalised era, the Gazette’s diverse offerings became a disadvantage. Its scientific and cultural articles were now too elaborate for a general audience, but insufficiently technical to rival other scientific journals.

The versatile juggler that once played so many roles to a diverse readership now found itself without an audience. Monthly publication became annual, and then eventually ceased regular publication altogether. It was a gentle end to a unique, once-essential and uniquely Sarawakian institution.

Alan loves to collect old bits and bobs, but perhaps none more so than gobbets of information about old Sarawak. Interested parties can apply to The Editor, Sarawak Gazette.

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FIRST TOUCH by Maclean Patrick

CREATING ORGANIC COSMETICS

THERE IS A CERTAIN EXPECTATION given when one reads the blurb at the back of a book. It is supposed to tickle your curiosity. Using the span of words normally reserved for a Twitter post our assumptions and opinions are made and we either put the book back onto the rack of bookstore obscurity or into out basket to be added to that obscure rack of homebound books.

This is the enigma of a person like Dr Mohd Razip Asaruddin. He’s that book we discover is deeper than just a mere blurb.

Dr Mohd Razip Asaruddin’s journey began as a young man from Perak, who made his way to Sarawak to be part of the pioneer batch of 118 students of Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) in 1993.
What drew him to Sarawak? “I wanted a change in my life and starting a new life in Sarawak just felt like the right thing to do,” he told me as we talked over coffee. “When I came to Sarawak, my father did not even know I had hopped onto a plane and arrived in Kuching. I eventually told him where I was but by then it was too late to ask me to come back to Perak.”

And he is proud to call Sarawak home, eventually settling down and starting a family of his own.

“As a young man, I have always been interested in ways to better one’s self. I have accomplished much as a silat practitioner in my youth and was always attracted to traditional healing methods especially the use of natural ingredients like plants or various elements anyone can find in nature.” He said as he recalled his youth.

“FROM OUR DRUG DESIGN APPROACH, WE EXHIBITED THE MONOLAURIN AND LAURIC ACID FOUND IN VIRGIN COCONUT OIL (VOC) SHOWED A HIGH POSSIBILITY TO INHIBIT THE COVID-19.”

VIRGIN COCONUT OIL
“The healthiest Oil on Earth” contains both monolaurin and lauric acid, two ingredients that have powerful antiviral, antimicrobial, and antibacterial properties. Studies have found that these ingredients are effective in fighting certain viruses, including herpes. The possibility of using VCO to fight the deadly coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is being studied extensively by
researchers globally.” Dr Mohd Razip Asaruddin Pharmaceutic Technologist
Dr Razip a university lecturer, holds a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry (Hons) (UNIMAS), Master of Pharmaceutical Sciences (Pharmacognosy) (Kyoto University) and a PhD in Pharmaceutic Technology(USM).

Dr Razip, as he is fondly known by, is mentioned in reverant tones within the circle of local cosmetic industry players. And for good reason; he is hugely trusted, well respected and aversely inventive. His inventions have help generated wealth for many who have had the privilege of engaging his services.

An alchemist who works exclusively with natural ingredients, he designs cosmetics for a customer base hungry for all things natural, organic, nonchemical or non-artificial.

Soft-spoken, with a whisper-like voice, his gentle demeanor disguises the mad scientist who is more at home in a chemistry lab and happiest when out foraging for ingredients than in a board room.

Yet, for all his accomplishments, he stays out of the limelight. Choosing instead to allow others their chance to shine. Happy to see his inventions brought to market yet shuns being caught up in the rush of business and the art of making money.

And while most researchers bask in the light of winning a single gold medal at an international invention expo, Dr Razip won three gold medals in 2019 alone; including one gold at the Seoul International Invention Fair 2019 (SIIF 2019), held at the COEX Convention Center, Seoul, South Korea from 27-30 November 2019 for his work on Virgin Coconut Oil (VCO) Solutions for Beauty Products.

And there is more to this awardwinning designer of cosmetic products than just cosmetics or skin care.

This unassuming university lecturer holds a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry (Hons) (UNIMAS), Master of Pharmaceutical Sciences (Pharmacognosy) (Kyoto University) and PhD in Pharmaceutic Technology (USM).

His PhD research was on viruses and specifically the class of viruses known as Coronavirus of which the COVID-19 is a part of. And in recent days, Dr Razip’s opinions have been in high demand by local news agencies for his thoughts Coronaviruses and COVID-19.

“Most people know me as the cosmetic-guy so when I started talking about viruses; I received criticism. But they either forget or do not know that my seven-year PhD research was about Coronavirus. So, I have every right to talk about the COVID-19 virus.” He commented when I asked him about his recent comments on the virus. Viruses aside, he is particularly excited when talking about his work into Virgin Coconut Emulsion (VCE) – a process that makes Virgin Coconut Oil (VCO) 100% soluble in water while leaving all the raw beneficial nutrients intact.

“My work with Virgin Coconut Oil has allowed me to work with about 15 cosmetics products, which various companies have used to introduce coconut-based cosmetics in Malaysia. And it is not just cosmetics. My work also covers coconut-based products for skin-care and health supplements.” He said when asked about his pioneering research into Virgin Coconut Emulsion – the world’s first stable emulsified Virgin Coconut Oil.

VCE reduces the size of the coconut oil molecule, rids the strong oil scent and allows the coconut molecule to better bond with other natural elements. The VCE process itself is patent protected and is gazetted with the Register of The Japan Patent Office (JPO), Malaysia Patent Office (MyIPO) and United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

And as if one patent is enough, he has five other patents in the bag that covers items such as cat food, hair cream, an antimicrobial composite, a cosmeceutical composition and an oral care spray (patent pending).

Dr Razip has other works which uses ingredients such as Aloe Vera, natural stingless bee honey or kelulut, bird’s nest and rice.

“If you look at the products I have designed, you can actually eat them since most are ingredients that appear in cooking recipes.” He joked. Edible cosmetic products? Now that’s uniquely, mad scientist level genius at work.

“There is a huge market for local products like cosmetics or health supplements that use naturally available produce. This is Borneo, this is Sarawak; and she has provided so much for us to use. It’s simply boils down to whether we want to put in the effort to learn her secrets or not.”

Maclean Patrick has published two books, written political commentaries and is active in the activities of the Wordsmiths of Kuching, a Sarawak based poet’s community and SaraLawak, a Kuching based comedy group. Experienced in theatre, spoken word performances and stand-up comedy shows, he was in the Petronas short web-film – Baju Burung Apai released in May of 2019.

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FIRST STEPS by Ching Yi. Yi.

INGENUITY TO TOURISM

TOURISM IS SOMETHING WHICH MOST Sarawakians have grown up with. We can reel off the tip of our tongues without a second thought a laundry list of the many unique local events, attractions and delicacies which visitors should not miss. In fact, the world- renowned Rainforest World Music Festival — the crown jewel of Sarawak tourism — probably best symbolises how sophisticated and important tourism has become for the state.

But tourism in Sarawak wasn’t always this organised. As recently as 40 years ago, it was barely on the State Government’s radar and there were only a handful of tour operators, says Dato Lim Kian Hock. This sprightly, snowhaired, 80-year-old retiree who is also the longest-serving Sarawak Legislative Assembly Secretary, joined the Sarawak civil service as a junior officer in 1962. Through his 60-year career in public service, he has witnessed firsthand the beginnings of many of modern Sarawak’s crucial administrative and political developments. He has seen it all, in many ways, culminating in whole new career, begun at a time when most of his peers were retiring, as advisor to Sarawak Tourism Federation. Who better to tell us how Sarawak’s formal tourism efforts got their start and how Sarawak scored a tourism and PR coup at the 33rd Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference (CPC) in Kuala Lumpur in 1987.

But first, a history lesson. As recently as the early 1980s, tourism was not considered an important sector by the government, according to Lim. During the formation of Malaysia in 1963, tourism was not listed on the federal, state or concurrent list under the Federal Constitution. Nobody talked about tourism at the time. It was the private sector which first began sowing the seeds that would give rise to the tourism industry in Sarawak. A few stakeholders got together to establish the Sarawak Travel Association. A few tour operators also got together and formed a pro tem committee in 1963 to form the Sarawak Tourist Association.

As for the State Government, sometime around 1985, tourism came under the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports. The state’s very first and sole tourism officer at that time was Bibiana Pek, tasked with monitoring and developing tourism efforts. It was only in 1987 when the Ministry of Environment and Tourism, led by the late Datuk Amar James Wong Kim Min was set up that tourism received its own portfolio. Within the Ministry, a tourism unit was established, overseen by Denis Hon. Then, on 12 November 1994, the Sarawak Tourism Board was incorporated to achieve its objectives of increasing tourist arrivals into the state.

Given the relative youth of Sarawak’s tourism portfolio and industry at the time, how then did Sarawak succeed in becoming the talk of the town among the more than 400 international delegates and observers at the 33rd CPC in KL in 1987?

The idea was sparked two years earlier at the 31st CPC in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. Lim had been selected and appointed as secretary to the Commonwealth Parlimentary Malaysia delegation.

“I thought I’d better bring something from Sarawak on tourism. I went to Hilton and Holiday Inn (now Grand Margherita Hotel) and collected their pamphlets to bring along, I also brought some books on Sarawak. When I arrived in Canada, there was nobody displaying tourism materials. So I asked the conference secretariat if I could borrow half their table space to display my materials. I arranged all my materials on the table and I tied the books to the table legs. I told the girl there: ‘These are not allowed to be removed. The rest, if anybody comes, they can have it’. At the end of the conference, I gave the girl a souvenir, a keychain. So that was the start. There was no one else doing that.”

A Sabah delegate who was attending the conference, recognised a good thing and quickly joined Sarawak, adding pamphlets about Sabah he had brought to Lim’s display.

“At that time, it was pure conference. There were no visits (tours), except the occasional dinner here and there,” Lim recalled.

On a similar trip the following year, in Cyprus, Lim was better prepared with more magazines and brochures. He also brought a ‘pua kumbu’ and some photographs which he trimmed and pinned to the cloth to display. He also took along some travel information material from Choo Poh Hin, the founder and operator of Sarawak Travel Agencies (now CPH Travel) as well as holiday pamphlets from Holiday Inn and Hilton.

At the venue, he requested and got a table, along with a caution not to stick or nail anything to the wall. No problem as he had his ‘pua kumbu’ which he suspended along the wall with the help of some string. He wasn’t the only one to have a display this time as New Zealand also had a table. Once again, the Sabah delegation tagged along with Sarawak to display its travel and tourism materials.

“After that, Malaysia won the bid to hold the CPC in 1987 in KL. The team were worried they could not speak English, so I volunteered. I told them I would go to KL throughout the conference period and that I would like to join the committee. And I would contribute in writing to their daily newsletter and help in the editorial. I reserved the bottom part (of the newsletter), where I would put something about Sarawak.”

The newsletter would be placed in every room for delegates to read. That meant that every day, the delegates would have the chance to read about Sarawak.

In KL, the CPC also started offering pre-conference tours. In a twist of good fortune, Sarawak had the Package 1 slot. This was an opportunity to promote Sarawak which Lim was determined to make the most of. With the support of the State’s Ministries of Environment and Tourism and Social Development, tourism agencies and government departments, Lim pulled out all the stops to make sure the visitors would have an unforgettable ‘Sarawak experience’.

Denis gave Lim 150 dollars to engage someone to shoot video. The cameraman was instructed to follow the delegates everywhere they went and to ensure every delegate was featured in the video. The plan was to enable the visitors to see as much as possible within their short stay and romance their interest and imaginations with the State’s historical and cultural heritage. Lim played the role of guide as the coach took the visitors around.

The tour kicked off with a visit to the then Sarawak Legislative Assembly (now known as the old Dewan Undangan Negeri) followed by a tour of the Sarawak Museum. They also visited the Kuching Festival, where the visitors took part in a blowpipe demonstration and a Melanau swing. Also on the itinerary was a visit to a crocodile farm, Semenggoh Wildlife Centre as well as Kampung Gayu, Padawan a beautiful, traditional bamboo longhouse where the visitors were lavished with warm Sarawakian hospitality.

“We would know that we had done a good job if they were happy,” Lim said. He got his confirmation when the visitors spontaneously burst into song on the coach bus on the way back to Kuching.

The master copy of the tour video was handed to Denis while Lim brought another copy to KL to the conference. Denis also arranged for a TV and video player which they used to play the video throughout the CPC. Anyone who wanted could buy a copy to take home with them to show their family and friends. In the late afternoon, Lim would relay the number of orders for the day to Denis who reproduced copies overnight and entrusted them into the care of an airplane pilot the next morning to bring to KL, where they were delivered to Lim who distributed them to the buyers. Sarawak made back the 150 dollars it invested and more.

Lim also made sure there was a bigger and better display counter to promote Sarawak at the KL conference. Denis arranged for traditional carvings of a hornbill and an orangutan and also five framed posters to display at the special counter. The ‘pua kumbu’ was again roped into service. Every morning, the photos would be rearranged so the display always had a fresh look. In an ingenious PR move which created even more goodwill, the Sarawak team made sure that all the MPs from each Malaysian state, as well as the foreign delegates who had visited Sarawak earlier, stopped by the room where the counter was set up. Lim had asked the travel operator Choo, who was also a member of theSarawak Travel Association, if he wanted to attend the conference in case anyone was interested to book a trip to Sarawak, which Choo did. Choo also helped to man the Sarawak counter together with one of Lim’s staff who was there to assist with any matter pertaining to the Sarawak government.

“After the second day, I asked him (Choo): ‘Did anyone make any bookings?’. He said, ‘Nothing’. I told him,:’Uncle, I’m sorry I brought you down to KL and you spent so much money, but you did not get any business. You can go home tomorrow if you want.’ He said: ‘Nevermind, I will stay until it finishes.’ So he stayed until the end. When we came back to Kuching, there was still nothing,” Lim recalled.

But two years later, they saw the first fruits of their labour. “Uncle Choo rang me. ‘I got two coaches of foreign visitors. This is the result of that conference!’ ” This was exactly the good news that Lim had wanted to hear. This group of tourists was the first batch of many more to come. And so it was, with a keen desire to present Sarawak in the best light possible, some ingenuity and a dash of good luck, that Sarawak’s civil service and tourism players pulled off a marvellous marketing feat which significantly helped to create the foundation of the Sarawak tourism industry and what the Sarawak global brand represents today.

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FIRST ROOTS by Dr Timothy Hatch

REFORESTATION IN SARAWAK

RIOR TO THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION in Europe, it is estimated that there were some 6 trillion trees on the planet. In a relative blink of an eye, we have reduced this to 3 trillion. Of most concern is the fact that net forest clearance globally is still running at 20 billion trees per annum and this does not include those areas destroyed by wildfires and other natural disasters. Virtually all climate scientists and the United Nations agree that, to combat global climate change, we must reduce carbon dioxide emissions and most vitally replant our indigenous forests as fast as possible, in addition to halting continued forest clearance for agriculture and other human activities.

It has been estimated that planting one trillion trees would, over time, eliminate two thirds of all of the emissions pumped into the atmosphere by humans since the industrial revolution began. With a planting cost of about $2 per tree, the total cost would be US$2 trillion (or about RM8 trillion). This sounds a lot of money but when taken in context it is not such a great amount when one realizes that the world spends this amount annually on defense! Is not the safeguarding of our planet for present and future generations more important than vast spending on military hardware? What value do we want to place on defending our planet for future generations? With determination, political and social will, and not that much money, this task could be achieved relatively easily.

It is in the wet tropics, supporting lush and highly diverse ecosystems, that the greatest opportunity lies for the carbon sequestration that is so desperately needed to reduce levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Indigenous trees in the wet and monsoonal tropics are key – the basic skeleton than can sequester carbon about three times faster than in temperate areas. The great wet tropical forests of Amazon, West Africa and Southeast Asia are carbon sinks which can mop up and render harmless the excessive emissions that human activities have created and restore the relative equilibrium that we have enjoyed since the last Ice Age. Borneo, the Indonesian Archipelago and New Guinea are vital habitats at the heart of the Southeast Asian system.

Historically, reforestation in Sarawak has been largely constrained by the lack of dependable quantities of suitable planting material. The primary skeleton of Borneo’s forests is species of Shorea. Aside from being one of the most important sources of hardwood timber, several species of Shorea produce the highly sought after ‘illipe nuts’ – locally called tengkawang and teglam – a source of valuable fat used in the manufacture of chocolate, and for cosmetics (lipsticks, etc.). As recently as the 1970s, the irregular but mass seeding of Shorea produced a great financial windfall for the rural people of Sarawak who sold the oil-rich nuts to companies like Unilever who sent over mobile processing plants to extract the butter, which was highly valued, most particularly in chocolates. That trade has now mostly vanished, at least partly because so many of the shores have been removed for timber.

We have been working for the past decade to try to solve the problems of planting material supply and we have now successfully developed two techniques which maybe hold the key to resolving these issues. Of course the collection of seed when available would also be vital but Shorea species do not seed annually and seldom in the vast quantities required to support major reforestation.

First, we have developed a method to produce rooted cuttings of several species of Shorea, including representatives of the Engkabangs (species for fat nut production), and the Merantis (the primary source of high quality timber). The method involves taking appropriate cuttings from mother plants and rooting them, after they are dipped in hormone gels, in mist houses that keep the cuttings stress-free over the several weeks/ months that it takes for them to start producing roots and shoots. Generally these cuttings seem to root most readily in perlite but we are looking at other substrates as well. Thereafter the rooted cuttings can be transferred to a more balanced and nutrient sufficient growing medium and then acclimatized in shaded, moist nursery sheds prior to being prepared for planting into their permanent positions.

Normally it would take up to a year to produce, from an initial cutting, saplings that were ready to be planted back out into reforestation projects. However, there is some considerable variation in the effectiveness of producing viable cutting material. While some species are rather slow, there are others that appear to be recalcitrant when it comes to producing rooted cuttings.

A second and very reliable method of producing planting material can be achieved from ‘harvesting’ the seedlings of appropriate trees that occur in the understory of remnant forest. These so called wildings are the offspring of previous flowering and fruiting of mature trees, often carpeting the forest floor beneath their parents. So often, these wildings go completely unnoticed and just form part of the green mass of plants that litter the forest. The vast majority of these seedlings will not survive anyway because their parents continue to shade out their offspring, which eventually wither and die. With special care, these wildings can be readily harvested and relocated to customized mist houses where they will recover and re-shoot to relatively rapidly produce very viable new planting material. In practice, over 80% of the wildings will survive this harvesting process and, within six months to a year, yield viable and robust new planting material. This method can be used, so far as we have been able to determine, for nearly all of the shoreas in Sarawak.

We have used this planting material for experimental plots to test growth rates and tolerance to various levels of shade/sunlight. What has become transparently clear from our trial plots is that several species of shoreas, which are also extremely valuable hardwood trees, are extremely fast growing and the popular myth that all Sarawak hardwoods are very slow growing is just that – a myth. Such indigenous trees conserve soils, reestablish local ecosystems, restore forest habitat for indigenous wildlife and by restoring native forests encourage ecotourism. They can easily match the growth rates of the potentially ecologically damaging foreign trees like Acacia and Eucalyptus which produce effectively sterile habitats and are potential fire risks, as has been so dramatically and tragically shown in the recent Australian bush fires.

An important and rather interesting initiative we are trying is to establish indigenous trees underneath existing oil palm to determine if it is possible to seamlessly convert oil palm plantation back to indigenous forest, or develop agroforestry systems in which oil palm is grown together with high value indigenous timber. Such systems would be more sustainable and provide the opportunity for another income via carbon credits, a system that enables money to flow from the developed and high carbon emission world to the tropics. Indeed it would appear that very soon a tidal wave of investment of this type is on the horizon and Sarawak will be very well placed to take advantage of this seismic shift in global investment that is more focused on carbon sequestration and hence climate stability.

Dr Timothy Hatch came to Sarawak in 1977 and has really never left. His background is in Agriculture but he now devotes all his time to reforestation issues and projects and administers a Facebook page called Rescuing Borneo.

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FIRST LOVE by Dr Geraldine Law-Lee

MUSIC IN MY LIFE AND MY FAMILY

GRANDMA WAS A PIANIST. BORN in the 1890s, she was of high society and was privileged enough to have studied music in Singapore. My working-class parents, believing that their daughter should know music, bought me a very old piano which I fell in love with. These were the first seed of real interest and passion.

Fascinated by Strauss waltzes and showy piano pieces, I explored the world-famous pieces with whatever books I could find. I would save up pocket money to buy them, getting them secondhand from my teacher’s advanced students and from friends. Very quickly, I could read many things on my own and explored many genres.

Music, all kinds of music, excited my soul. At 11 years old, my first music anchor outside of lessons and small concerts was in the church choir. In the Roman Catholic Church of St Joseph’s, we sang church music and Latin masses – such amazing heavenly melodies and harmonies. I was mesmerised by the compositions and started exploring the yellow pages of many old manuscripts left in the cathedral.

To this day, I believe God had a mighty plan for me. It was only years later, when I was fully in Ministry and service, that I realised music was His purpose for me. God also found me a husband who loves and appreciates music and is always my greatest supporter.

As a school pianist at St Teresa’s, I was introduced to so many musicals, thanks to my Canadian music teacher, Mrs Victoria Apau. The huge variety of musical pieces that I got to play opened a door… and my heart.

My then piano teacher Datin Julia Chong kept the scales rolling with her many musical evenings and by encouraging me to see as many visiting artistes as possible whenever British Council brought them in. When she retired, it was Londontrained soprano Mrs Chan Hui Ling who exposed me to musical evenings and operettas.

About to leave for further studies, I was at a crossroads: my genuine interest – Education, or Medicine, which also inspired me. I thought about how being in school never fed the creative part of me, and about how my artiste friends who were gifted outside the academic structure never received any recognition.

My father brought me to speak with a lady doctor after my Victorian High School Certificate and I made my decision that same night. I would pursue music and do it well. My parents were disappointed but still supported me. Looking back, God had placed the right people there for me at that point of decision.

I started taking students as soon as I got my Diploma in Music at 15. Teaching came naturally to me. I often assisted my teachers in helping younger music students. To excel as a musician, one needs to be an educator at some point of the journey. Teaching accelerated my creative thinking, causing me to think of pedagogical concepts and helping me understand that not everybody.

When I was the Music Director of the Sarawak Music Society, I realised that I needed further education. Even as a young teacher, my thirst for knowledge and advancement was not easily satisfied despite being packed to the brim with students and despite being able to put up big and successful concerts.

But God had a mighty plan for me. I was offered a British Council scholarship to study music in London at Trinity College of Music and later at the Royal Academy of Music. I worked hard and completed my Fellowship and Bachelor’s degree. I wanted to perform more instead of being stuck in teaching, so I began taking master classes from international educators and invested all I had in learning better skills in playing, theory and music education.

My father and I started International Music House (IMH) and my diploma students became my earliest staff. The very first music specialist school in Kuching was off to a start! I took care in the education and musical excellence side. Dad ran the business side of it until my sister returned from Singapore to take over the reins, leading it into the limited company we are today. Whilst in UK, I was inspired by nationalistic composers who wrote music of their homeland. I too dreamt about writing and composing music for Sarawak and Malaysia.

My big break came in 1993 when IMH was appointed the main facilitator of the National Day Symphonic Band and Night Concert for Sarawak’s 30th Anniversary National Day held in Kuching. It took all my creative powers and abilities to pull off managing compositions, junior choirs, a combined symphonic band formation and national concert … although there are moments when I wished I listened to dad and became a medical doctor or lecturer instead. As Conductor of Sarawak State Symphony Orchestra (SONS) for seven years, I’ve single-handedly trained the choir and orchestra from scratch, bringing them to international shores. I’ve produced musicals and dance dramas, including The Sarawak Dream, which gained outstanding reviews.

This opened my heart to search for and compile ethnic compositions, to arrange them for orchestra or choir and to compose new pieces based on the cultures and villages I visited. In Sarawak, it is music that gave each ethnic group its identity, placing it on the world map. Its songs, dances, instrumental sounds and rhythms signified identity, fame and fortune for Sarawak and Malaysia.

When I started the IMH Academy for higher learning in Music, it was because our many talents couldn’t afford to go overseas. The cost of running a higher learning institution was too much to bear, but all that we gained from it was worth the price.

In my journey, I am thankful that God has planted this rare seed in my heart and gave me this fulfilling life today. I do not teach anymore except for some exceptional talents, and autistic kids who come searching for the joy of music. But I continue writing and reaching out in many ways because there is still much to share about what music has to offer the world.

Dr Geraldine Law-Lee is theExecutive Director of the IMH Group of Companies. She is also National President of the Music and Medicine Society (MSMM) and President of Society of Professional Musicians Sarawak (SPM). This article is a tribute to all who have shaped my life in this journey with music.

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AN EXHIBITION IN BARIO by Datin Valerie Mashman

A MATTER OF TRUST

PLEASE NOTE: Because of the health situation with COVID-19, this exhibition has been postponed.

THE JAPANESE INVADED BORNEO IN 1941. Despite the risks involved, local populations began supporting the Allies, as they disliked the occupation of Borneo by Japanese.

Borneo people work with the Z Specials
Covert Allied operations were organised to insert trained operatives behind enemy lines to gather intelligence and train and arm local peoples, many of whom had already been conducting guerrilla warfare against the Japanese. The highly trained operatives, most of whom were Australians serving in Z Special Unit, lived and worked in difficult jungle terrain at constant risk of discovery by the Japanese, and depended heavily on support and assistance from the Dayaks. The special operations carried out in Japanese-occupied Borneo during World War 2 saw two remarkable groups of people come together: on the one hand, the operatives of Z Special Unit, forerunner of today’s SAS and Commando units; on the other hand, the indigenous Dayak peoples of Borneo. In the face of discovery and Japanese reprisals, Dayaks and operatives discovered surprising affinities and formed remarkable alliances.

Secrecy and lack of recognition
Neither of these groups has ever received the recognition it deserves: the Z Special Unit men because of the highly secretive nature of the Unit and its operations, secrecy which continued to be maintained for 30 years after the War; the Dayaks because Western memorialisations of war tend to overlook the contributions and sacrifices made by the indigenous peoples on whose soils our wars are often fought.

What the exhibition is about
The exhibition focuses on three secret operations carried out by members of Z Special Unit behind Japanese lines in Borneo in 1945: Operation Agas in then British North Borneo, Operation Platypus in then Dutch Borneo and Operation Semut in Sarawak. These three operations all had as their aim the collection of intelligence in support of the Australian landings on Borneo that began in May 1945, and their success depended in large part on the support and assistance of the local Dayak peoples.

Operation Semut
At midnight on 25 March 1945, a reconnaissance party of eight men under the command of Major Tom Harrisson set off from their base in the Philippines, heading deep into Sarawak’s remote and uncharted highlands.

The men parachuted in close to the longhouse at Bario, and gained the support of the local Kelabit and Lun Bawang people. In the space of just one day more than 500 locals had come to Bario to help with the operation.

The Australians also had no idea whether the Japanese were in the area. Jack Tredrea, a surviving veteran of Operation Semut 1, remembers being issued with a cyanide pill to swallow if he was captured. The party landed not far from the longhouse of Bario, but their stores were scattered over several kilometres. Soon villagers carrying a white flag came towards them; runners were sent to nearby villages, and by nightfall over 500 people had come in to help find the scattered stores.

One of the two B24 Liberator bombers that dropped the Semut recce party at Bario never made it back to base.

There were three main Semut operations, with a fourth coming in at the end of the campaign to help with “mopping up” activities. They mostly operated in the rugged inland areas of Sarawak, often in dense jungle inhabited only by Dayaks. Travel was either by foot or by river, and was dependent on assistance from the local people.

Chiefs within three days’ walk assembled to discuss the question of supporting the Australians. The Kelabits had no direct experience of the war but had felt its effects, like most people on the island, because they were prevented from trading. They were experiencing great hardship from a lack of medicine and food, and they feared Japanese reprisals if they helped the Allied party. Harrisson wrote: “I rather think the people who dropped us in half-expected the headhunting hill tribes to chop our heads off as we touched down. But they didn’t. Within a few days it was obvious we could rely on one hundred percent support from them.” In a festive atmosphere a significant amount of borak, a local rice wine, was consumed before the men went of on their covert missions.

The war in Borneo ended with the official surrender of the Japanese 37th Army by Lieutenant General Baba Masao on Labuan on 10 September 1945. But there were many incidents in which Japanese troops ignored the surrender or refused to believe it. It was a difficult situation for the SRD operatives who had pledged to support the locals of the interior and now had official orders to cease hostilities. However, by the end of October civil order was generally restored and and a temporary administration installed. The Semut operations in Borneo had been a success, but that had only been made possible with the support of the local indigenous peoples.

Top secret missions 

Z Special Unit operatives inserted into Borneo in 1945 were on top secret missions to gather intelligence and to train and arm local peoples, many of whom had already been conducting guerrilla warfare against the Japanese.

The operatives were trained in unarmed combat and how to survive in the jungle. They were briefed not to keep cameras, diaries or notes. The records if captured could endanger the mission and reveal vital intelligence. Despite this, some of the operatives brought cameras with them and others kept records. Some of these photographs and records are on display as part of the exhibition A Matter of Trust. The photographs provide a unique visual record of the island of Borneo and of the people these operatives fought alongside in 1945.

Datin Valerie Mashman is the local curator and organizer of this exhibition in Bario. This article is an adaption and taken from the Australian War Memorial website. https://www.awm.gov.au/

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CONSUMING FOOD IN PUBLIC THAT is ready to eat, often hot, and always prepared by another, has a long and varied history in the west. Inevitably, some of the earliest eating places were born of necessity, with the roadside tavern being one such example. As early as the third century BCE, Tres Tabernae was purposefully positioned for the traveler, situated at the convergence of three major roads fifty kilometres beyond Rome. Then there were the cookshops – collections of stalls selling bread, cheese, and cooked meat – operating in urban hubs throughout Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire. Some excavations have revealed the existence of rooms behind the stalls, supposedly to function as dining rooms, and thus forming another type of eatery where meals could be eaten in situ. These cookshops owed their existence to another need – to serve the urban poor who lacked the kitchens necessary to prepare meals at home.

The old Bedford Head, a celebrated eating house and tavern (1872-1878).

This engraving depicts one of the first ‘proper’ restaurants in England catering to the privileged.

Selling food, under an awning, to customers and travellers in Italy

Much like their predecessors in the Greco-Roman world, medieval and early modern England had its own versions of the tavern and the cookshop. A twelfth-century monk recorded ‘a great public place of cookery’ by the river Thames in London which contained a designated room for dining, similar to the cookshops of old. The term ‘tavern’ soon came to describe eating houses both on the road and in town, with the most famous in Tudor London being The Mermaid, and The Boar’s Head. Most tables were communal, and the food they served simple and inexpensive, limited to a basic fare of bread, meat, cheese, and pie. These establishments and their variations (‘ordinaries’ in the sixteenth century, ‘chop houses’ in the seventeenth and eighteenth) lasted well into the nineteenth century, and like their ancient counterparts, catered primarily to the hearthless sector of society. Those with the means to roast their own meat and bake their own bread continued to enjoy the luxury of eating privately at home.

Meanwhile, as eighteenth-century England ate its pies, over in France seismic changes were afoot. There emerged a surplus of private chefs after the summary execution of the nobility – the chefs’ employers – during La Terreur. Obliged to forge a new path, many chose to cross the Atlantic, carrying their skills to the new world. Others, however, remained and ventured into a new style of eating place designed to feed the new middle class, with the first ‘official’ restaurant considered to be Paris’ Grande Taverne de Londres. Rather than simply addressing the necessity of eating, it and other new establishments gave consideration to décor and introduced formal place settings and menus. The food they served was rich and delicate, consisting of such dishes as veal chops grilled in buttered paper, and sauces made with cheese, truffle and cream.

Chinese street food sellers in Kuching, circa 1915.

It took until the mid-nineteenth-to early-twentieth-century for a similar dining culture to gain traction in England. It emerged in the restaurants associated with the new hotels, with perhaps the most well known in London being The Ritz. As in France, the concept of ‘going out’ for a meal for the sake of pleasure developed, and service and décor played a crucial role in the experience. Another French influence was the food they served, which was unabashedly Gallic in flavour, with such dishes on the menu as duck a l’orange, and steak with foie gras. Dining out became an event, with patrons expected to dress well and behave well.

The Aurora Hotel around the mid-fifties

In the meantime, different food culture was beginning to emerge in Sarawak. While in the scattered Malay kampungs it is almost a given that cooked food was bought and sold, it was within the denser Chinese communities that the culture of street food grew commercially. Early stalls in Sarawak sold what was essentially the one-bowl-meal, typically rice-based with a scant helping of meat, before developing into the popular dishes we enjoy today. By the mid-twentieth century, a number of Malay sellers were operating alongside the Chinese, with satay being especially popular. Over time, clusters of makeshift stalls became permanent and developed into the hawker centres we have now, with many becoming the heart of their communities.

Alongside the presence of the Chinese, Malay, and indigenous peoples in Sarawak were of course the British. By the late-nineteenth century, around fifty years after their arrival, The Sarawak Club was formed as a private institution for the officers of the second Rajah. If the colonists in contemporary India were anything to go by, they likely requested food as close to home as could be mustered, along the lines of meat joints, potato in all its forms, stew, bread, and pie. While a small number of British cooks were present among the personnel, a larger number of Chinese were employed both at the club and within the houses of the British. As a result, the western staples of toast and coffee (with the option of tinned evaporated milk) soon became part of the Chinese repertoire.

After the Japanese occupation, Sarawak in the mid-twentieth century witnessed an economic upturn, resulting in the development of its first Chinese restaurants. Meat became the central feature of a meal, rather than the cheaper carbohydrate-based dishes found streetside. One of the most popular restaurants in Kuching was Ann Lee, with some of their signature dishes being Hainanese pork and chicken chops. As in the west, these restaurants became special occasion places, popular for wedding receptions and Chinese New Year dinners, unlike food court dining, which existed as part of the everyday. Additionally, the commercial availability of Malay food increased at this time, and was well received among a new generation of British government workers.

Ann Lee is one of the first Chinese restaurants in Kuching (still on Carpenter street) popular for their wedding receptions and dinners.

The mid-fifties’ introduction of a western restaurant for the public (as opposed to the members-only Sarawak Club) may be considered a turning point in Sarawak’s dining history. Much like the early high-end restaurants in England, it came attached to the newest hotel, The Aurora, in Kuching. It catered to the elite, serving sizzling steak, French fries, and garden peas, with side plates of bread rolls and butter. Unsurprisingly, it proved inaccessible to the majority of Kuchingites, much as The Ritz in London was and is to the majority of Londoners. A key part of its significance may have lain in its function as a political statement – to promote Kuching as a modern, forward-looking city within the British Empire.

In recent years, diversification in the restaurant trade has been driven by demand. While Chinese and Indian restaurants have flourished in England since the mid-twentieth century (fuelled largely by post-war immigration), in London it is now possible to find every type of ‘exotic’ eatery under the sun alongside more traditional provision, which remains as popular as ever. Dining out in Sarawak (Kuching in particular) has also seen variation in the past few decades, with the emerging market for indigenous food worthy of particular note. While American cafes and fast food chains have reached their tentacles into every city on the globe, it is reassuring to know that curiosity for the new, the different, and indeed the old shows little sign of abating.

Charlotte Hunter descends from a shophouse family in old Kuching. Dividing her time between Sarawak and the UK, she can often be found staring into space at Lau Ya Keng food court on Carpenter St. Feel free to buy her more coffee.

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FEED ME A STORY by Alan Lau

FOOD IN STORYTELLING AND NOT-SO-HAPPY MEANINGS

IN THE AUTUMN OF 1940, barely a month after the victorious Nazis goose-stepped their way down the Champs-Élysées before the ashen-faced French, a group of teenaged boys in southwestern France stumbled upon a discovery that would change our understanding of early humans forever. The famous Lascaux Caves, now a UNESCO World Heritage site, contain thousands of wall paintings dating from the late Stone Age. Among them are beautiful depictions of horses, bison, ibex, aurochs, and other ancient animals that our neolithic forebears either regularly hunted for food or interacted with.

While the significance of these beautiful and ancient images extend well beyond the subject of animals for food, they do illustrate something very intrinsic about the psychology of our early human ancestors. Namely, food and story-telling have been intertwined in the human imagination since our earliest beginnings.

It should come as little surprise that images of food and eating are plentiful in the oral storytelling of all human cultures. As a vital necessity, the search and production of food, whether it be hunter-gathering or sedentary agriculture, would have pre-occupied all pre-modern human communities. It stands to reason that food might be a convenient metaphor for harbouring all kinds of meanings with which to populate a great story.

Food in oral storytelling tends to fall into one of two categories: The first is the use of food as a metaphor or other narrative device that harbours special meaning, such as the apple in Snow White.

The second category is the use of an origin story to explain a core food or food preparation process. In Iban legend, the discovery of ginger was made by a hunter of old who, while wandering deep in the forest, comes across some orangutans practising what appears to be herbal exfoliation with a strange-looking root. Startled, the primates drop the tuber, which the hunter finds to be of great value as a medicinal salve for his pregnant wife and for flavouring food.

In one of the oldest and most famous stories, which manages to combine both an origin story with food-as metaphor, a fruit lies at the heart of a tale of human folly and damnation. The biblical book of Genesis relates how Eve, and then Adam, were tempted to taste the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, thereby earning their swift ejection from paradise into the wider world. In contrast to Eden, where food and board is freely provided, humans now have to earn their living through painful toil and hard labour. Here the fruit becomes a symbol of mankind’s propensity for temptation, the folly of blind desire, and of our fall from grace.

The later story of Snow White, made famous by the brothers Grimm, again takes up the image of the apple (long equated with the original forbidden fruit due to it being a homophone for the latin word for evil – “malum”) as an object of temptation as well as death. The sanitised Disney version, with which you’re probably most familiar, has omitted some of the less-edifying and more illuminating elements of the story. In the original tale, Disney’s wicked queen-stepmother is in fact Snow White’s birth mother, driven by sheer jealousy of her own child to attempt filicide. Furthermore, the Queen’s instruction to her huntsman, to bring back Snow White’s heart, is for the specific purpose of eating it to preserve her own beauty. These excised elements bring a guttural, cannibalistic edge to the story, as well as a dark obsession with youth and beauty that still resonates today.

Cannibalism, one of the greatest taboos in most human cultures, gets an unusually good airing in many folk tales. Like other taboos such as incest, patricide, and fratricide, what is unmentionable in polite society may be told as bedtime stories instead. And so we have the gruesome story of Hansel and Gretel, whose resident witch has enough patisserie to build her house (plain old bread in many variants), but whose own palate is partial to the flesh of young boys. This story is especially rich in food-related imagery: it contains famine (which drives the children’s parents to abandon them), abundance (the witch’s fantastical gingerbread house), a morbid take on livestockrearing (fattening Hansel for slaughter), as well as homicide (the witch gets pushed into her own oven).

In another Grimm tale with a cannibalistic bent, Red Riding Hood is a thinly-disguised morality tale about the dangers of young girls talking to strange men, whose appetites may or may not be epicurean, but are always carnal.

The link between eating and health or immortality appears is a recurrent theme in Chinese lore. In the tale Journey to the West, a mischievous Monkey breaks into a celestial garden and eats the sacred peaches cultivated to grant immortality to the gods. Aghast that this base creature has upset the social hierarchy and gained access to the exclusive club of immortals, the gods attempt to subdue him with all of heaven’s artillery but to no avail. None can put the genie back into the bottle. Having developed a taste for immortality, they could hardly be surprised that others too might want to join the club.

In the tale Journey to the West, a mischievous Monkey breaks into a celestial garden and eats the sacred peaches cultivated to grant immortality to the gods

Journey to the West may have been compiled during the Ming dynasty, but the idea that eating certain substances, such as celestial peaches or elixirs might bring immortality, has great antiquity. Qin Shihuangdi, the first Emperor of China, was evidently an ardent believer, to the point that he may have inadvertently killed himself by consuming all manner of elixirs purported to make him immortal. A man obsessed with life eternal ended up poisoning himself in his very quest – it’s a very human story.

Fruit and seeds have long been used as metaphors in stories for a host of human concerns: life and death, fertility and barrenness, temptation and desire, good and evil, and many, many more, offering piercing insights into the human psyche. We’re reminded of Persephone, scraping her pomegranate seeds; of Saturn devouring his offspring in blood; there’s Jack and his blossoming beanstalk, a humble peasant’s food pointing the way to unimaginable riches; of Rapunzel, whose father is forced to pilfer from a witch’s garden to satisfy his pregnant wife’s craving.

One Indian tale relates how a pregnant beggar woman, in great need, steals a mango from a king’s garden. Having witnessed this, a guard slays her in a moment of fury; dying, she gives birth to a boy clutching a mango seed. Overcome by remorse, the guard adopts the lad as his own, who becomes a great hero in time. Poverty and privilege, parental sacrifice, guilt and redemption, are neatly sketched out within a single narrative.

These days, you’re more likely to encounter stories about food through celebrity chef programmes, or through food blogs. Sumptuously filmed and photographed, they capture in minute detail the hiss of steak in a pan, the spit and crackle of cooking flames, and the dewy crunch of fresh vegetables, all accompanied by friendly banter. At the very end, there’s always a dinner party in a nice home for family or friends, or a very clever facsimile of one; it’s all very middle-class, familiar, comforting.

What these players have cannily grasped is that media programmes about food have transcended mere cooking demonstrations; they fill a void vacated by the loss of the age-old custom of preparation and partaking of food in a communal setting. In premodern times, food preparation – and storytelling – was out of necessity a family or community ritual. Food needed many hands to prepare, and group storytelling or singing may have helped to pass the hours of hard graft.

The modern age might have freed many of us poor, time-constrained denizens from the drudgery of food production (Grabfood, anyone?), but it’s also left a void in our collective memory. Despite the convenience of pre-prepared meals and food delivery services, we still feel an innate need to watch food being prepared before our eyes, and to have at least a semblance of social contact while doing so, even if it’s only provided by the soothing TV tones of the latest celebrity cook.

Even if we only occasionally prepare food or tell stories together today, there’s at least one consolation: our daily speech is still peppered with nuggets from an earlier age of food storytelling: be fruitful and multiply, being the apple of one’s eye, sour grapes, being in bad taste, being rotten to the core, winnowing out the chaff, crying over spilt milk, counting one’s chickens before they hatch. These are just a few pithy sayings out of a vast lexicon. But whenever we cite them, we bring to mind those ancient stories that our ancestors used to tell about food; around a fire, in the flickering dark of a cave, in a hut, in a deep forest, or under the stars.

When he was four, Alan’s parents signed him up for a storytelling competition. The experience schooled Alan in the fluidity of reality, and he has been making up artful confections ever since.

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SARAWAK IN EDINBURGH FRINGE FESTIVAL

MYSTICAL CHANTS OF THE RAINFOREST

THE SOUNDS OF SARAWAK HAVE been heard for the first time at the world-renowned Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2019, playing to appreciative audiences as part of a packed official Fringe programme and to large crowds on the streets of Edinburgh as part of the busking programme. Visitors to the show came from across the world, including the UK, Poland, Colombia, France, Italy, Germany, Denmark, Belgium, Spain, Argentina, Korea, China, India, and USA as well as many Malaysians based in the UK looking for a taste of home. With 856,541 tickets sold this year in the largest Edinburgh Fringe ever recorded, the Sarawak contingent delivered a truly meaningful performance that audience members described as mes-merizing, moving, informative and inspiring.

In a show entitled Sarawak: Mystical Chants of the Rainforest, the performance wove a story, eloquently narrated by Karen Shepherd, of Sarawak’s ancient indigenous culture and cosmology in which master weaver Helen Manjan anak Atong of Rumah Garie in Kapit performed her Sanggai, an ode to the weaver of such skill that she has the power to transform anything into thread, to the accompaniment of Borneo instruments, notably the keluri and the nose flute, from At Adau, and a backdrop of stunning visuals of Sarawak landscapes and scenes with amazing wildlife images by award winning photographer Chien C. Lee, compiled by John Paul Davies. Then Sarawak’s own band, fresh from their triumph at Rainforest World Music Festival 2019, wowed the crowd with their chanting, dance and traditional tunes, bringing the melodies of the rainforest to the summer chill of the Edinburgh stage, before the audience were able to enjoy classic Sarawak snacks and a shot of tuak to the sound of the Ooh ha!

At Adau later took to the streets of Edinburgh town in three exciting busking sets at the Mercat stage, sharing their contemporary Borneo sound with the diverse passing crowds who clapped and danced and wondered aloud where these performers had come from! Perhaps most touching, however, was the private CSR programme in which the band performed for residents at a local nursing home, bringing happiness to some of Edinburgh’s elderly in a show that was still being talked about the following day.

The response was overwhelming with at least one group visiting the show twice and many more attending the morning performance after being inspired by the busking. The show was described by one audience member as the best they had seen that year and another who attended on the final day wished openly that she had discovered the show earlier. A video of the show will now form part of the permanent archive of Edinburgh Fringe events and, in fact, the pua kumbu and loom created by master weaver Helen will now be added to the collection of the Scottish National Museum.

With over 3,800 performers, the Edinburgh Fringe is one of the biggest celebrations of arts and culture world-wide, drawing 1,000 of the world’s media who describe it as one of the UK’s number one unmissable travel destinations. The performers and organisers were all truly proud and humbled by the opportunity to bring a touch of Sarawak to the world at this festival and the world to Sarawak.

The entire programme was curated by Marian Chin of KINO magazine and sponsored and supported by the Sarawak Tourism Board.

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