Durians Are Not the Only Fruit
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Even when eaten, the aroma of durian flesh continues to linger, never mind how many times you rinse your mouth or brush your teeth. Once, rushing to a meeting after a durian feast, I found the tiny air-conditioned room gradually filling with the fumes rising from my belly. The other four people present began looking uneasily at each other, wondering what was happening, causing me no little embarrassment. Since then, I haven’t dared to eat durians if I need to leave the house soon after.
• • •
The scent of the durian is legendary. Inhabitants of my country have only to catch a whiff of it to start drooling. Those who love it will swear this fragrance trumps any other fruit from any other country. But to most outsiders, this is no sweet smell but a stink, and they rush away with their noses covered at the first hint of it, shrieking that they’re about to vomit. The first Chinese migrants to Nanyang detested it. In the Ming dynasty, Ma Huan described it as “having a stench comparable to rotting beef”, which is not too different from what the contemporary Taiwanese essayist Chung Mei-yin said about it, likening the smell to “stinky chicken shit”. Caucasians tend to reach for comparisons more along the lines of decomposing onions—though there are exceptions. The British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace wrote that if a Westerner could taste the durian even once, it would make the whole voyage to Asia worthwhile. As early as the 16th century, the traveller Linschott was already extolling the durian as the most fragrant fruit known to man.
The early Chinese immigrants had another superstition: if they were to taste the durian, they’d never be able to forget it, and so would be forced to settle in Nanyang. This is the explanation my mother gave me when I asked how our family came to live in Southeast Asia: my grandfather arrived here with the intention of making his fortune through ‘gold-mining’ and returning home after a few years, but he ate a durian and so remained here. And of course he ended up in Perak, where more durians are grown than any other Malaysian state.
• • •
Traditionally, the Malay people buy and eat durians by the sides of roads, whether out in the country or in towns and cities. Today, the older generation still ask hawkers to help them break open their fruit after they’ve bought it, then squat by the path or street to begin eating. Even those who bring their durians home won’t sit comfortably at a table, preferring to place their haul on the floor and squat around it. There is a good reason for this practice—no one wants their table scarred by the durian’s thousand spikes.
The durian is defended not only by these thorns, but also by its impenetrable husk. Amongst wild animals and birds, only the squirrel is able to eat this fruit—first using its nimble teeth to gnaw off some spikes, then breaking through the shell. People unfamiliar with the durian usually have no idea where to start. This is where the hawkers’ skill comes in. They hold the fruit in place with their left hand, protected by a thick piece of cloth, while their right wields a wooden wedge or sharp knife that is inserted into the durian’s tail end, then twisted suddenly to split it into segments along its markings. The husk has round or oval gobbets of flesh arranged neatly in four rows, each holding four or five seeds. The flesh is like ice cream, mostly yellow, known locally as ‘wong yoke kon pau’—dry, dark yellow meat. The sooner the durian is eaten after falling from the tree, the fresher it will taste, and even a few days will make the flavour less keen. Durians are therefore not suitable for export.
Rural folk, having finished a durian, will fill the husks with well-water to drink, which they say dispels the heatiness of this fruit. Similarly, washing your hands in husk water is supposed to get rid of the lingering scent that even soap won’t dispel. Another rumour is that spirits, drunk immediately after eating durians, can cause death. I’ve heard many stories of this kind, and one of my friends says his father really did die after indulging in drink following a meal of durians.
Like many people, I don’t fully believe these tales, but have never dared to take the risk of disproving them. We who grew up in Nanyang know the king of fruits is somewhat mystical, and treat it with reverence and a little fear, mutely accepting the superstitions and customs surrounding it.
• • •
In 1928, following a visit to South America, leading European surrealist André Breton sighed that nature there was so bizarre that surrealism was all around. The effects he sought to achieve with various literary tricks were effortlessly, dazzlingly present in this region.
The tropical rainforests of Nanyang would likely have provoked a similar reaction in Breton. Many aspects of nature here are mystical, like something from a legend, illusory and dreamlike. No wonder magic realism first sprang from the rainforests of Latin America. As Joseph Conrad said on more than one occasion, these jungles, whether in Africa or Southeast Asia, make white people forget their civilisation, especially their sense of morality, returning them to a primeval state in which they ultimately lose themselves. This phenomenon gave rise to his masterpiece Heart of Darkness, a novel that probes the very soul of humanity.
I’m interested in the origins of durian legends. I believe they hold great significance. Firstly, they make clear that the tropical jungle is a mystical place, and that the customs and tales surrounding the consumption of durians are in themselves a work of magic realism. When I put together the writings and oral histories about this subject, they morph from reality into legend and literature. Let’s take the idea that no brand of soap can clean your hands post-durian, and the only effective way is to rinse them with water poured from the husk—this may be a native custom that flies in the face of science, but it is part of the way we live. Ditto the idea that durians have eyes to avoid landing on our heads. As for the durian tree springing from Admiral Cheng Ho’s excreta, this surely speaks to the Chinese migrants’ need for a powerful Chinese tribe—the scar across all our hearts. The great fleet led by Cheng Ho into the South China Sea and the Western Ocean is a symbol of the power of China and its mighty civilisation, hence the irresistible urge to link the durian with this expedition, imbuing the fruit with Chinese culture. The symbolic heft such tropical rainforest icons carry with them can lure writers down the path of magic realism. In the last few decades, Zhang Hui, Xi Ni’er and Liang Wern Fook, among others, have used this mode of expression to explore contemporary Singaporean society.
• • •
The legends around durian eating should be taken seriously, because they embody many of the characteristics of post-colonial literature. The durian is a symbol of assimilation—only those who came to love eating durians remained in Nanyang, putting down roots, whereas neither the colonisers nor those merely passing through could stand the distinctive smell. This shows that they were unable to acknowledge the native culture, unwilling to embrace this country. On the other hand, the durian is a unique product of this region, not found anywhere else in the world, and so is venerated by people here as their king, showing how close they are to the land. Post-colonial literature uses a connection to the soil as one of its tropes.
In the colonial period, the durian, a foodstuff beloved of every race, brought together the oppressed people of different communities, becoming the symbol of a multi-cultural, multi-racial society, and therefore a weapon against the hegemony the British sought to impose.
As colonial-era hotels were run by white people, durians were naturally forbidden from entering their doors, a rule that has remained to this day. This is one of the clearest indicators of the scars left behind by colonialism even after we regained independence—once again, a frequent motif in post-colonial writing.
• • •
The stories surrounding eating durians remind us that literature should incorporate low culture, bringing it closer to lived reality. These legends come not from the pens of the elite, but are assembled from the words of the masses, both written and spoken, passed from one person to another—the only way to create a text this deep and compelling.
The Queen and the Concubine
THE DURIAN, KING of tropical frui
ts, has the mangosteen as its queen, and the rambutan as its concubine. These three are invariably seen growing together in equatorial rainforests, blossoming and bearing fruit in the same season, ripening together and showing up as a trio on the tables of fruit stalls, hoping to be chosen and enjoyed together.
In regular Malay kampungs, when a durian tree grows beside a house, it will always be accompanied by its queen and its concubine. Fruit orchards throughout Malaysia, apart from these three species, also contain jackfruit, cempedak, chiku and others that could be termed distant relatives of the royal family.
If we set off by car from Singapore, following the expressway up the West Coast of the Malaysian peninsula, sailing through a green sea of rubber trees, we’d see scattered Malay houses on stilts, half-hidden amongst the luxuriant foliage of fruit trees. The tallest is usually the durian tree, with the mangosteen or rambutan leaning in its shade. They love the equator’s abundant sunlight, and the damp and rain of the tropical rainforest. Rural folk plant these trees, then simply wait for the day they can enjoy their shade and fruit, never needing to think about fertilising them.
The durian, mangosteen and rambutan fruit bi-annually, once in the middle of the year and once at the end. I believe the king always turns up on fruit stands first, followed by the mangosteen, with the concubine making a delayed appearance. Every year at this time, many streets in Singapore and country roads in Malaysia sprout temporary stalls laden with gigantic mud-yellow durians, purplish-red mangosteens, and dainty, brightly coloured rambutans, traditionally displayed according to their place in the hierarchy: the durian at centre stage, with queen and concubine on either side, presented in bamboo baskets or wooden racks. The rambutan really seems as if it’s been relegated to a minor palace. The prices they command are commensurate with their status. A durian the size of a human head will fetch six or seven dollars, a mangosteen about ten cents each, and the poor rambutan sells at only a couple of dollars for fifty or sixty.
• • •
The mangosteen’s shape resembles the tangerines grown in Taiwan. Beneath a green stalk is a hat the shape of a plum blossom, which from a distance approximates a crown fit for a queen, resting atop this dignified fruit. During the Anti-Japanese War, the poet Du Yunxie travelled from the Burmese-Indian border southwards to Singapore, staying here from 1947 to 1950. He described the durian and mangosteen thus: “The durian is covered entirely in thorny armour, its body imposing, with the air of a warrior. The mangosteen’s very name is more feminine, its body slender and compact, wearing a broad green hat, certainly fit to be compared with a Southern lady.”
The mangosteen’s defeat of the rambutan in the battle for the throne is due, besides its worth, bearing and majesty, to its wondrously compatible marriage to the durian. The durian is heaty, with an aroma that assaults the nose and a painful sweetness, while the mangosteen is cooling, with a delicate, clean flavour. Most people buy a dozen or so mangosteens to go with each durian, because the former should be eaten after the latter if one is to avoid a sore throat or worse the next day. Not long ago, my older sister drove from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore to see an art exhibition. On the way, she stopped to buy ten or so durians, but neglected to pick up any mangosteens at the same time. A few days after eating her gift, a couple of pimples erupted on my face—the consequence of not dispelling the durian’s heatiness.
Mangosteens—known as shanzhu, or ‘mountain bamboo’ in Chinese, and mangis in Malay—are shaped like little apples, a couple of inches high, with a chest measurement of three inches or so. The unripe husk is green and hard, filled with yellow liquid, and even the tropical rainforest, full of insects and birds, is unable to hurt it. The husk softens after the fruit has ripened into a purplish-red shade. Placed between two palms and pressed hard, or even crushed in a single hand, the shell breaks open to reveal a ball of flesh in five or six segments. The bright red inner shell, holding the snow-white meat, makes the whole look irresistibly appetising. No wonder the British traveller Anna Forbes wrote that “if there were more of this fruit on the earth, there would be need for neither churches nor jails, for there would be no sin”.
The mangosteen tree is evergreen, between 20 and 40 feet high. Its leaves are oval and the size of a human hand, such a dark green, they’re almost black, thick enough to have some weight to them. Its sturdy branches and leaves start from low on the trunk, reaching up to form a pagoda-shaped crown—a natural parasol fending off the scorching tropical sun. Children love playing beneath this tree, and it is a common sight in Malay kampungs, providing welcome shade all year round, while the fruits that appear every rainy season are a welcome boost to a poor family’s income.
• • •
“If there were more of this fruit on the earth, there would be need for neither churches nor jails, for there would be no sin.” These words would be incomprehensible to schoolchildren in rural areas, because the mangosteen is the fruit most likely to tempt them into theft—and in their teacher’s eyes, what leads them down the path of crime.
When I was in primary school in rural West Malaysia, on either side of the road I took to school were rubber plantations and farms, with mangosteen trees scattered amongst them. The unripe fruits, green and tiny, inevitably disappeared amongst the glossy leaves. But then they deepened from pinkish to purple-red, as alluring as a red lantern by a temple’s gates at sunset. At this time, we would abandon the main road and walk greedily amongst the trees, hoping to pick up any fallen fruit. If there’d been a storm the night before, we’d find our dreams had come true. The mangosteens were not only delicate and sweet, but also excellent at quenching thirst. Arriving at school with mangosteens in our pockets, we’d be able to save a few cents, not needing to buy iced drinks.
A few feet from the base of the mangosteen tree, the trunk begins splitting into tight thickets of branches, making this the most climbable of tropical trees, unlike the durian tree with its terrifying height. On occasions when we walked past a mangosteen tree and there were no fallen fruit, we’d glance around and, seeing no one, swiftly swarm up the tree to steal a few.
Due to the allure of mangosteens, I often arrived at my primary school either late or with someone in hot pursuit. Later, I enrolled at a secondary school in the distant city, and took a bus to school instead—finally bidding goodbye to this dirt road and its tempting mangosteens.
Over the last few years, I’ve driven on several occasions to my birth state of Perak in North Malaysia, observing along the way mangosteen trees on either side of the road, their trunks a deep brown, cracked like a turtle shell, resembling the deep grooves in the skin of old Malay people. Even after so long, I still remember my many mangosteen thefts with guilt.
• • •
One June, for several weeks in a row, every afternoon would see the sky darkening, followed by a shower of tropical rain around four or five. Only when July was almost upon us did this rain cease. A short time before this, I opened the window of my office at Nantah University to see that just beyond the Yunnan Garden fence, the rambutan groves belonging to a farming family had changed—the bright red rambutans, no longer able to withstand the loneliness, had emerged in their thousands to face the world.
The Chinese name hongmaodan comes circuitously from the Malay. If directly transliterated, it would become lanmaodan, blue-haired fruit, but as the coarse ‘hairs’ on the peel are red, the first character was changed to reflect this, hong. The shaozi referred to by Ming dynasty herbalist Li Shizhen in his Compendium of Materia Medica, as well as the ‘wild lychee’ Ma Huan describes in his The Overall Survey of the Ocean’s Shores, both clearly indicate the rambutan fruit of Nanyang.
The rambutan is roughly egg-shaped, an oval about two by one and a half inches. Its ‘hair’ starts out green and unripe, but already half an inch long and the thickness of a nail; upon maturity, it turns red—or, in a tiny minority of cases, yellow. The rind is a little thicker than a lychee’s, and the fuzz may be coarse, but it remains so soft, the fruit
may be peeled open with a gentle squeeze. The flesh inside is snow-white and watery, with a refreshing flavour that, again, resembles a lychee. A good specimen tastes as sweet as honey, while an inferior fruit is more like a sour green mango, with flesh that refuses to come off the seed.
Of all the famous tropical fruits, only the rambutan and mangosteen are suitable for introduction to visitors. The durian, cempedak and jackfruit are acquired tastes, and those from outside the Southeast Asian region tend to find their scent repellent. I think it was in 1975 that the Chinese-American writer George Kao came to Nantah to give a talk. As I drove him back, I noticed a little fruit stand selling rambutans by the roadside, and stopped to buy him a bunch. He tried a couple straightaway and loved them. At his hotel, several white people noticed the huge bunch of brightly coloured fruit and commented on how attractive they looked, even asking me where they could buy some for themselves. Another time, the Taiwanese poet Yung-tzu spent a night in Singapore en route to Europe, so Dan Ying and I took her to Chinatown, where we came upon a cempedak more than a foot long at a roadside stall and encouraged her to try a bite. She wrinkled her brow at its smell but still worked up the courage to put some in her mouth. Her awkward expression as she struggled to chew and swallow remains etched in my memory.
The rambutan is small and delicately formed, with twenty or thirty scarlet fruit hanging off each branch, like a bevy of unfortunate concubines, elegantly rouged, but languishing in a back palace of the tropical fruit kingdom. Once picked, the rambutan must be consumed quickly; otherwise it grows dry and mouldy within five or six days, as if to prove the Chinese saying that beautiful women suffer unhappy fates.