The buah petai is the grand illusionist of the tropical rainforest. The gorgeous lightbulb-blossoms turn into flat bean pods, each flower capable of producing anything from four to nine pods, clustered around a single thick stem like green party streamers, joyously adorning the jungle. The tall, smooth trunk repelling would-be climbers, coupled with the trees’ habitually remote location, meant for a long time the Orang Asli had a monopoly, being the only ones able to harvest these beans. On the hill road from Tapah or Ipoh to Cameron Highlands, you’d see them selling buah petai from roadside stalls. This year, I drove up to Cameron Highlands for a holiday—but my sister said the prices of petai had gone up, as the Orang Asli knew city folk sought its medicinal properties. Never mind the rapid improvements in medical technology, even in modern society, people still believe wild plants have mysterious powers and can work miracles. Today, many in West Malaysia share the Orang Asli’s belief that smelly beans combat cancer, cleanse the kidneys, cure heart disease, diabetes, kidney ailments and get rid of roundworm in children. In ancient times, the Orang Asli had already identified buah petai as one of the few truly effective medicinal plants in the Nanyang jungle; now, all of Malaysia is waking up to the value of this vegetable. Dried and brewed into medicine, they have a reviving effect on the pancreas, helping it to resume normal functions and enhancing the effects of insulin. The traditional Chinese medicine shops of Singapore and Malaysia now supply a ‘Smelly Bean Root Health Pack’ which, steeped in hot water, can help reduce body fat, fight fatigue, promote good health and lower blood pressure. It isn’t cheap, though—a box containing 16 packets sells for around 15 dollars.
You can also find buah petai these days on fruit and vegetable stands in small-town markets or at expressway rest stops, usually Malay-run. Even having emerged from the jungle as a health food, the smelly bean has retained its charmingly artistic appearance. When collecting them, the Orang Asli gather these long, winding, translucent pods in their original clusters of seven or eight. They are then collected by Malay stallowners, and transported to various locations for sale. In the city, they hang on a string, bunch after bunch in midair, looking as if they’ve grown off a washing line, blowing in the wind. This attractive image is a totem of the indigenous culture. The pods are thick-skinned and hardy, preserving their vivid green over time, even when heated. Bringing them home and splitting them open, seeing the rows of jade pellets within, oval and the size of a ring-stone, I find them so elegantly shaped and pellucid, I can hardly bear to tip them into the wok of oil that awaits them.
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My brother-in-law runs a business extracting timber from the jungle. He often travels to the tropical rainforests of Perak and Pahang, and each time he returns with a haul of smelly beans that gladdens my heart. As they grow in the primeval forest he spends so much time in, he’s able to judge the quality of the beans by the shape of their pods. In addition, he’s a great cook, and makes a most wondrous sambal petai according to a secret family recipe using sambal tumis, the spicy sauce beloved of the Malay community, which is also a key ingredient in Peranakan cooking. This is added to belacan, galangal, lemongrass, onions, garlic, curry powder and naturally sour fruit such as lime or assam. The resulting thick, claggy dish is intoxicating, especially as the sambal tumis eliminates the beans’ methane stink, bringing out instead their natural tropical fragrance and crunch. This is already delicious enough, fit to be eaten simply with rice, but Malaysian restaurants often add prawns or chicken slices to the dish—the idea being that if foreign visitors can’t cope with the taste of petai, they will at least find something on the plate they’ll be able to eat.
As the smelly bean becomes more and more famous, a local food tourists feel they simply must try—even if they remain wary of the name—Chinese restaurants have begun inventing novel ways of serving it, in concoctions such as ‘sambal petai sotong’, which pairs the sambal and beans with little squid. And when prawns are added to the dish, it can claim to come from the stable of Nyonya flavours.
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From their primeval beginnings in the tropical rainforest, pucuk paku and buah petai have supplied an exquisite, healthy food for humans and other animals. At the same time, they’ve beautified the environment, and become a totem of native culture. The Malay community has fallen in love with pucuk paku, its many forms and life force, and appropriated it as a symbol for everyday use.
Buah petai, much like the Orang Asli themselves, flourish deep within the hills and jungles; few people have attempted to cultivate this tree, preferring it to remain in a wild state, believing this enhances its flavour. Its inaccessibility means few catch its spectacular, colour-changing displays, and most people only see the vivid green pods when they show up on roadside stalls, hanging like coloured streamers, and finally appearing as jade-like pebbles on a restaurant plate. Even in this modern era, the buah petai retains a mystical aura.
Food is just one way in which plants are used by indigenous people—in the examples of buah petai and pucuk paku, we also see how in the Malaysian peninsula, they play an active part in the artistic and cultural lives of local communities. This reading takes us deeper into the living conditions of the tropical jungle. Western imperialists have focussed excessively on economic advantage, neglecting the lives of the plants themselves, including their individual characteristics and how they’ve contributed to human society, never mind the mystical dimension that the jungle possesses. In the West, it took someone with the humanity and understanding of David Attenborough to observe, in The Private Life of Plants, the mystery and marvels of the natural world: the question marks that appear both on our dinner plates and ceramics, to say nothing of the sides of bridges, and the equally magical smelly bean that makes the journey to our tables, fluttering gaily from the strings of Malay hawkers.
The pity of it is that the British colonialists, though lacking a sophisticated cuisine of their own, insisted on retaining a Western palate, rejecting Asia’s food culture—including the mighty durian—never coming to know and appreciate the enchanting flavours all around them. It is therefore up to our Asian scholars to explore these primeval, deeply rooted foods, recognising them as ours—our plant life, our cuisine, our culture.
Nyonya Dumplings for Qu Yuan
IN THE MING Dynasty Admiral Cheng Ho led the world’s largest ‘Unbeatable Fleet’ into the Western Seas seven times. This series of peaceful, cultural voyages began more than 600 years ago, on 11 July 1405, marking the start of the dissemination of Chinese people and culture in all directions. My ancestors followed a similar route, crossing the ocean in the Qing Dynasty, arriving in Malaysia.
The Straits Chinese of Malacca were the first Chinese immigrant community to embrace their assimilation, creating many new paradigms of Chinese culture, such as Nyonya dumplings, so named because they were mainly made by the Nyonya, or female Peranakans. Nyonya dumplings are traditional Chinese dumplings given a twist with the addition of tropical spices. A particularly beguiling specimen uses dye from the bunga telang flower; the cone-shaped dumpling, traditionally a dull brown, is transformed to pure white with a streak of eye-catching deep blue. No wonder people say this dumpling, when stripped of its leaf wrapping, resembles an enchanting Nyonya lady in a blue sarong kebaya—thoroughly captivating.
On one occasion, I had some steamed Nyonya dumplings which were permeated by the scent of a small pandan leaf tucked in their wrapping. When I bit into one, the delicate aroma of pandan was intoxicating, the taste mildly sweetened by winter melon sugar. The innovation of Nyonya dumplings is built upon a foundation of traditional Chinese culture, with equal amounts of local colour added in. There are five components to the finished dumpling: white glutinous rice, dyed glutinous rice, chopped pandan leaves, minced pork (or dried shrimp), and finally the leaves for wrapping—usually cut from the bamboo plant, though there are those who emphasise the native element by using large pandan leaves. This plant, scientifically known as Pandanus amaryllifolius, comes in many
varieties, including ones whose leaves are the size of a bamboo’s, broad and long, suitable for wrapping dumplings and infusing them with a more local flavour.
The use of bunga telang dye is an especially obvious process of localisation—turning a third of the dumpling blue as if from the pen of God, leaving the rest stark white. This flower is known as ‘clitoria’ in the West, and Clitoria ternatea by scientists; it does rather resemble a vagina to look at, and also has the more innocent name of butterfly-pea, which the Chinese name is a translation of. A perennial that grows as a vine, its flowers range from purple to blue. In India and Southeast Asia it is thought to have medicinal properties, effective against coughs and female ailments, and also a tonic for the masculine ‘yang’. In Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, its blue juice is a favourite natural colouring that is added to Nyonya cakes and beverages, especially Nyonya dumplings. Blue glutinous rice cakes and Kelantan’s local speciality, nasi kerabu—known simply as ‘blue rice’—also make liberal use of the purplish-blue blossoms.
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In the early years of the localisation process, Nyonya dumplings varied from the traditional Chinese version in more than just fragrance and colour. Originally, fillings consisted of diced pork or chicken; in order to accommodate the different local faiths and their attendant dietary restrictions, fragrant fish floss was used instead, allowing Muslim Malays to enjoy this dish too. This is still the filling of choice in supermarket-bought dumplings, or those sold in our multi-racial hawker centres and food courts.
In order to suit tropical tastebuds, Nyonya dumplings also incorporate a little heat in the form of chillies. Thus they provide many regional flavours in a single mouthful: a delicate pandan aroma, salty with a hint of sweetness, followed by a spicy kick. The glutinous rice provides a soft texture in the mouth, rich without being cloying, leading one to crave more, bite after bite.
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Throughout Southeast Asia, Chinese communities preserve the memory of the historical figure Qu Yuan, every Double Fifth Festival—and especially if they are poets. Whether they compose traditional or contemporary poems, this day is special to them as a day of poetry. The name of Singapore’s May Poetry Society hints at this festival, in the fifth month of the lunar calendar. In its eleventh issue, the organisation’s May Journal had as its editorial ‘Pandan-Wrapped Dumplings’, a piece calling on Singapore’s modern poetry to combine Chinese literary traditions with local ones. But to most people in Singapore, with its four major races, the festival’s original purpose of remembering Qu Yuan has faded, and it’s become no more than what the English names, Dragon Boat Festival or Dumpling Festival, suggest. On this occasion, shops all over the island become laden with dumplings, while boat races take place with the participation of all ethnicities, so the originally Chinese event has become international.
Traditional Chinese practices continue to flourish in Southeast Asia, but have inevitably changed as the result of the human environment. Dumplings are an excellent example, retaining their savoury meat and alkaline sweetness, but accommodating the sensitivities and complicated customs of the cultures and communities around them, acquiring new contents and packaging to become a brand-new Nanyang creation. Nyonya dumplings, first created by the Straits Chinese of Malacca, show that a culture’s celebratory rituals can endure whilst being transformed.
Feed at the Raffles
SINGAPORE’S RAFFLES HOTEL has never needed to advertise itself in newspapers or on television. Instead, it carves its advertisements on writers’ bodies, sending them out into the world to spread the word for free.
A letter posted from Raffles Hotel arrives with three marks on its envelope: the first two are the postmark and the date, the third is a quote from Somerset Maugham: “Raffles stands for all the fables of the exotic East.” And the bill at the end of a stay also comes adorned with an English author’s words, this time Rudyard Kipling’s: “Feed at the Raffles where the food is excellent.”
When writers step through the great doors of Raffles Hotel, they are reminded of the presence and importance of those who came before them. On the wall between the grand reception hall’s tall pillars are carved the names of every writer to have passed through, and many of their books which mention the hotel are displayed in a glass-fronted cabinet. The hotel’s Writers Bar is so named in honour of all the authors—past, present and future—who’ve stayed or drank here. And those who created important work while living there receive a further honour: both Somerset Maugham and Noël Coward have suites named after them.
Raffles Hotel’s current general manager is Italian, and his blood is thick with his country’s literature. Members of the parent organisation, the Raffles Group, frequently read literary work. I once wrote to the hotel asking for some information, but didn’t expect the warmth of the response: they immediately sent me a promotional booklet and some passages written about the hotel that they’d kindly photocopied for me. The manager also personally replied to my letter with a long discussion about authors who’d been there, mentioning an occasion when Sun Yat Sen had eaten breakfast at the hotel, having arranged to meet some of his supporters there.
The Raffles has never gone in for bright decorations, refusing to tart itself up with neon signboards, relying on nothing but the two words of its name, carved on the third floor wall just below the roof in 1896, resolutely understated. The hotel is legendary enough, and believes its name shouldn’t be written in big letters on its facade, but in the books of authors who’ve passed through its doors.
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Like many Singaporeans, I’d never paid particular attention to the existence of the Raffles. It became buried beneath the noisy city, even though it remained on the same street corner for a hundred years, its façade remaining pure white.
The 126 rooms of the Raffles are at the junction of Bras Basah Road and Beach Road in the city centre. Both roads are busy, so I always feel frazzled passing by, able only to glance briefly at the building as I have to keep an eye on the traffic lights ahead, working out if I need to turn and if so, in which direction. Usually I only see a row of white windows, perpetually closed. Driving past the main entrance on Beach Road, the vast traveller’s palms wave a trifle too enthusiastically, blocking most of the actual hotel from view, making its existence easier to forget.
Many years ago, by complete chance, I first walked into this French Renaissance-style white building. That evening, the former president of Taiwan’s Tunghai University, Wu Deyao, treated me and Dan Ying to Hainan porridge at Middle Road, which was a centre of early Hainan immigration. Afterwards, Professor Wu brought us to the nearby Raffles Hotel for coffee. At this time, most of the hotel’s chefs and waiters were from Hainan, and the coffee they produced was acknowledged to be the best in the region.
When I brought friends to the Raffles after that, they’d inevitably not have seen the inside before. To most Chinese people in Singapore, it was a familiar but distant name, having long lost any association with the British or colonialism, but mostly we never have the opportunity to go and don’t particularly feel the need to. And so, for me at least, the place became more and more mysterious. I’d glance at it whenever I drove past, but never went in for so much as a cup of tea. Maugham was right, though, it really did turn out to stand for all the fables of the exotic East.
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Time has completely altered the appearance, identity and value of the tiny island of Singapore, but through all that, Raffles Hotel has remained the same, like an extremely beautiful woman who stays unsullied by time, because time can only bring out more womanliness in her. The hotel, like that woman, accumulates time as a form of capital, and grows more alluring. Visitors flock to the Raffles today not because it has modern facilities, but the opposite—the draw is its hundred years of history, a century of legends.
The name of the hotel comes, of course, from the founder of modern Singapore, who arrived in February 1819 and landed at the mouth of the Singapore River wit
h a small troop. On the sixth of February, Raffles and the Sultan of Johor signed a treaty with the local ruler of Singapore, the Temenggong, permitting a trading post to be set up here in the name of the East India Company. In 1823, Raffles declared Singapore a free port, and personally designed the plans for its future. He wanted Singapore to become a centre of learning in the East. Although Raffles was a political visionary, he faced opposition on every side within the colonial office.
Raffles also knew that to open up Singapore, he’d require the labour of the hardworking Chinese, and began encouraging mass immigration from China. By his own reckoning, when Raffles arrived there were only 30 Chinese immigrants in Singapore (though many historians have pointed out that this figure probably only referred to the Chinese living in the vicinity of the Singapore River; there were certainly several hundred Chinese farmers toiling within the jungle). Four months after this, he wrote a letter to a friend at home, in which he said, “My new colony thrives most rapidly…We have not been established four months and it has received an accession of population exceeding 5,000, principally Chinese, and their number is daily increasing.” The following year, in August 1820, he wrote that the population had increased further to between ten and twenty thousand, the majority being Chinese immigrants.
Raffles understood that Singapore’s future would be built off the backs of the Chinese, so he took their increasing numbers as a signifier of progress, bragging proudly of how quickly the numbers were growing.
The history of the hotel that commemorates this great man can be traced back to before 1886, when it was just a small restaurant set up in a private home, providing simple lunches. 1886 is when the Armenian Sarkies brothers bought the place and turned it into a hotel, expanding the bungalow structure in 1896, when an increase in both trade and tourism led to more demand for rooms. By 1900, the Raffles Hotel had become the premier social centre for the British in Malaya.
Durians Are Not the Only Fruit Page 9
