Durians Are Not the Only Fruit

by Wong Yoon Wah

  When I first arrived at Yunnan Garden, I lived within the school compound, in Nanyang Valley. The faculty housing there was built on a slope. Not three feet from the back of the house was a hill with an almost vertical incline, tall as a three-storey building. And outside the front door, beyond the narrow road, was a rectangular valley, with Nantah Lake at one end and a basketball court at the other. On the far side of the valley was a steep climb up to the President’s Lodge. Water vapour was constantly produced here, or perhaps wandered in from somewhere else, and was trapped within the valley, unable to escape. As the noontime tropical sun blazed down on Nanyang Valley, the humidity, like those hateful ants, sneaked into every corner of the house, onto everything we owned, even entering our bodies. I’ve heard that moisture likes nothing more than to live in the gaps between our joints.

  On my fifth day in Nanyang Valley, I opened the box of mooncakes I’d brought from Hong Kong only to find that two of the pastries, even within their clear plastic wrapping, had grown a bloom of mould that resembled cotton wool. The little black ants, their sense of smell as acute as always, quickly detected the mooncakes and sent a team of workers to circle the box, but were unable to reach anything edible. Whereas the humidity had, without a sound, used its transformative abilities to penetrate the box and plastic packaging, enjoying the mooncake before the ants or I could. After its meal, it lounged on the surface of the cake, dreaming its mouldy dreams.

  Some time after that, humidity climbed into my wardrobe and slept on a belt I rarely wore. It had lain there for a couple of weeks, and when I pulled it out the furry fuzz on it reminded me of the frost that forms on car roofs in deep autumn or early winter. Later I understood that on a hot day, sweat from my body and the surrounding moisture must have kept the belt in a state of dampness that, when stored in a stuffy wardrobe, naturally became a fertile breeding ground. Around the same time, I discovered the same was true of leather shoes stored in their boxes. I immediately grabbed a cloth and wiped off the frost-like mould, then placed the shoes under strong sunlight. This is the best way to get rid of damp. Moisture fears the sun, and cannot withstand thirst. Although the original inhabitant of the tropics, moisture dies when faced with the equatorial sun. Just like frost, in fact, it is afraid of sunlight.

  My office in the Chinese Department had two big bookcases, glass-fronted to keep dust out. This did nothing against the humidity, however, and in fact worsened it by trapping water vapour, so moisture came to live amongst my books. It seemed to especially love the hardcover spines. The textbook I used, An Introduction to Comparative Literature, was frequently wet from my palms sweating during lectures, and again when I washed chalk dust off my fingers afterwards. It bloomed with powdery mould after a few days, sometimes covering the entire title. Only when I removed the glass doors, allowing the books to breathe fresh air, did humidity cease to live within their pages. Similarly, I left my wardrobe doors ajar, and stopped keeping shoes in their boxes even if I seldom wore them. This prevented mould from developing.

  In Yunnan Garden, moisture enjoyed climbing up the corner of the walls, like a creeping plant. Anything facing away from the sun, newly painted not six months ago, would become streaked and scarred. Anything made of metal quickly grew rusty. All of these were humidity’s tactics for getting noticed. But what I loved watching most, was its progress up the saga trees.

  The Malaysian saga trees were Yunnan Garden’s great symbol, growing on either side of the road all the way up the hill, shading every building, unable to produce the usual red seeds. Originally of the same genus as the mimosa, this species evolved into a vast tree; Darwin proved this, stopping by Southeast Asia en route to Australia in pursuit of his theory of evolution. All year round it shed little yellow flowers and crescent-shaped leaves, to the frustration of car owners. Any vehicle parked in the Nantah compound for half an hour would be covered with them.

  As for their age, you could tell when a saga tree reached its tenth year, because apart from its thick trunk and lustrous canopy, moisture would have infiltrated its body long enough to breed ferns along its torso. Only after living in Yunnan Garden did I know that humidity could also manifest itself as a beautiful plant.

  The most common, and most elegantly shaped, were the nest ferns, and then the staghorn ferns. The former looked like a clutch of phoenix tails rising high above a great bird’s nest, a basket that also trapped fallen leaves, which helped collect rain and dew as they decomposed. Below the nest were roots like a sponge, adept at taking in water as it trickled down the trunk. The nest, naturally, was also an ideal home for the damp. Many people have a superstitious belief in the power of the damp to transform itself into alluring phoenix-tail ferns.

  Staghorn ferns, with their conjoined leaves, resemble drooping antlers. From a distance, they look like an antelope’s lowered head. I love these ferns and wish I could scoop them up with a knife, roots and all, and move them to my living room as decorative plants. But transformed from humidity as they are, once removed from the host tree, they’d quickly wither and die. They require dew at dawn and dusk, and must lodge in a tree’s bark in order to survive.

  Singapore, near the equator, can see great changes to its climate in a single day. Most of the year, when it doesn’t rain, noon and afternoon are drenched in scorching sunshine. While I was at Nantah, I parked my car beneath the shade of a saga tree whenever I could, but tree-dwelling ants quickly found their way inside, and after a couple of years, my new car’s roof was spattered with black dots like freckles. I realised then that Yunnan Garden’s humidity, like the ants, would not forget my car.

  Moisture climbs trees, and also knows to take the lift up a tall building. I now live on the sixth floor of Parkview Apartments, and while it’s much less humid here than in Yunnan Garden, water vapour still enjoys lodging in the batteries of my doorbell, my radio, my cassette tapes. How do I know? Since its arrival, the doorbell has fallen mute, and the plaintive strains of popular tunes from my stereo are reduced to hoarse incoherence.

  Nowadays, my back begins to hurt in the afternoon. Looking from my window at the saga trees with their burden of parasitic plants, I can’t help feeling worried. When did humidity climb into my body, flowering within my joints? A hundred years’ worth of trees have been planted in Yunnan Garden, and I, a sapling once planted by my teachers, am now an old, middle-aged tree that the damp has found a home in.

  Return of the Humid Soul

  AS A CHILD, I was often taken to Taiping Lake Gardens in Northern Malaysia. This was where my ancestors first arrived from China, during the Qing Dynasty. My grand-uncle Wong Sui Yong opened a tin mine nearby—a venture known as prospecting for gold—and sure enough he made his fortune practically overnight, and became the local leader of the Chinese immigrants. The Malay-style bungalow he left behind was what attracted me most as a small child, but gradually I came to appreciate that Taiping’s charms lay in the sunlight, the humidity, the rain trees and the relief precipitation.

  Taiping Lake Gardens, all 62 hectares of it, is a furnace after noon, as the scorching sun rises overhead. As I stood beneath the hundreds of rain trees, taking refuge from the vicious heat under their lush green canopies, raised high like umbrellas, they seemed to whisper the story of the fecund, beautiful ferns creeping up their bodies and how these were the spirit of humidity.

  It’s rare for a landscape to possess both lakes and mountains, but the Gardens do indeed have both. The rain trees contribute to the unique landscape, because the 10 lakes that make up the park are close together, and each tree is simultaneously reflected in several different lakes. In the clear waters of the lakes, it can be momentarily difficult to distinguish reality from fantasy.

  Rain trees are natives of the tropical rainforest, abundant in both South America and Asia’s southern and southeastern regions. In British colonial territories such as the South of India, Singapore and Malaysia, they are the most commonly planted species in parks, around government buildings, and in the backyards
of luxury houses. A rain tree can reach a height of 10 metres, its branches spreading wide like an enormous umbrella with spokes extending in all directions, easily providing shade for 100 people. Because the colonial officials adored the landscape created by the rain tree, it still seems to carry a hint of Empire about it.

  • • •

  The high humidity of Taiping Lake Gardens is caused by the intense heat of the sun. Visitors from far away climb the mountain ridge’s south face, nearby Taiping Hill, and see lush forest, jade-green grasslands, and clear lake water—all a paradise for the creation of humidity. When the moisture of the natural world meets fierce sunlight, a large proportion of it evaporates, causing a strong updraft. And Taiping Hill, 1034 metres above sea level and a favoured holiday spot during the colonial period, happens to be a perfect windbreak. Breezes from the nearby West Coast encounter the rising water vapour. Neither can get across the mountain, and are forced to ascend. In the process, the airborne moisture condenses, and when there is enough to form a cloud, it rains; this is known as relief precipitation. This is why Taiping experiences brief, intense showers every day—messengers bringing more humidity, more greenery.

  I once sat by myself, observing rain form over the Taiping lakes, composing a poem I named ‘Relief Precipitation’. The more fortunate moisture climbed up rain trees, transformed into wondrous bird’s nest ferns or staghorn ferns. And the rest of it, under the merciless sun, escaped into the air. A daily cycle.

  The unrelenting sun

  Pursues herds of humidity

  Like a tsunami hounding fleeing animals

  Following the wind

  To the mountain ridge

  Only to find the steep cliffs and walls blocking the road ahead

  Howling in despair

  Moisture

  The essence of life

  Is forced to rise

  And stripped of its heat

  Coalescing into bean-shaped tears

  Shed one by one for the colonial age

  The ten lakes left behind

  Where the British once passed their holidays.

  • • •

  As a model of relief precipitation, Taiping is also known as the City of Rain. The level of rainfall here is twice that of any other area in Malaysia, and one of the highest in the world. The history of colonialism tells me that Taiping’s rain stands for tears shed by the wounded earth, because the beautiful landscape of Taiping’s lakes are actually the scars left behind by the depredations of the colonial period.

  When the earliest Chinese immigrants discovered valuable tin deposits in the region, the clan associations immediately began a bloody territorial struggle. When the colonial authorities managed to restore order, the original name of the place, Larut, was changed to the Chinese ‘Taiping’ (meaning ‘most peaceful’) to express the wish that there’d be no more fighting. Tin ore was, during the Industrial Revolution, the most important component of stainless steel, because it prevented rust. And so Taiping hosted the first tin mines in Malaya. Digging began in 1844, leading to the discovery by the colonial government that Malaysia held the largest tin deposits of any country in the world.

  The Taiping Lakes occupy 62 hectares. The method of tin extraction involved gouging huge holes in the ground, which afterwards filled naturally with water. In 1880, the resulting lakes were opened as a public water garden, the first in Malaysia. And so the slag pools left by the mining operations were transformed into a landscape known for combining natural and man-made beauty. Not far away was Maxwell Hill, known to the Chinese as Taiping Hill and to the Malays as Bukit Larut, a temperate 15 to 25 degrees all year round, and also a colonial tea and coffee plantation (the Chinese also call it ‘Mount Coffee’). In 1844, the British began using it as a holiday resort for high-ranking officials, and today many European-style villas and gardens remain from that era. It continues to be a popular destination for visitors seeking to escape the tropical heat.

  Many Malaysians today have forgotten that the splendours of Taiping Lake Gardens originate in the scars left by colonial-era tin-mining operations, while the relief rain that springs up every afternoon are the tears of the land weeping in pain. I’ve been meaning to find a chance to go back and sit under a rain tree by the lakes each afternoon, watching the moisture rise from the ground and fall from clouds, the soul of humidity returning to earth.

  Tembusu

  THE TEMBUSU IS my favourite tropical rainforest tree. It’s the sturdiest and tallest, and also the most attractive flowering tree amongst the Singapore Botanic Gardens’ 11 ‘National Heritage Trees’, two of which are 100-year-old tembusus. One of these appears on Singapore’s five-dollar note and one-dollar stamp, our country’s most beautiful green landmark.

  My favourite tropical tree leads a magical existence. It grows slowly to start with—for its first 10 years, its trunk is stubby with thickets of branches and thick, dull green leaves, elegant in the way of most flowering trees, gentle by temperament. But at the age of 20, a growth spurt transforms the tembusu into a colossus reaching for the sky. These giants can live for 200 years, reaching a height of 25 metres on average, some attaining a height of 30 or 40 metres, practically touching the clouds.

  The earliest big villas in Malaya had tembusu trees in their back courtyards. Being naturally resilient, they didn’t need much attention. In its initial stages of growth, the short tree’s first thick branches, growing horizontal to the ground, are beloved of children who can climb them safely and recline against the trunk singing songs or chatting amongst themselves. The tembusu also serves as a guardian spirit for the flower garden. It produces little yellow blossoms twice a year, in May and October, giving off a delicate fragrance in the evening that grows stronger throughout the night, attracting many flying insects and even moths—for these are the hours of pollen dispersal, of spreading new life in all directions. In January and September tiny fruits resembling cherries ripen, providing food for birds in the day and bats at night—a hive of activity.

  Wherever we live in Southeast Asia, the tembusu maintains a strong presence. This was especially true in the kampung era, before modern building materials, when nothing was better than tembusu wood for pillars, docks, roads, ships and houses, strong and resistant to wind and rain. Even seawater couldn’t damage it, nor termites invade it. Even today, the benches in seaside parks and jetty supports are made of tembusu wood. There is no better wood for chopping boards—whether sliced with a vegetable knife or hacked at with a meat cleaver; its wounds quickly knit together, leaving not a trace or scar. This is a wood that lasts. Many believe that bacteria won’t survive long on its surface. From when I was little, we’ve only used tembusu chopping boards at home for meat or fish.

  Full of the spirit of our native soil, the two century-old tembusu trees in the Singapore Botanic Gardens continue to withstand tropical rainstorms. They’ve seen the end of the colonial era, independence, urbanisation, global warming. And they will continue to watch as the land around them changes, because they have another hundred years to live.

  Our Green Heritage

  AT A TIME when other countries are competing to build the world’s tallest building—such as the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur or 101 in Taipei—Singapore has chosen the giant trees growing in our native soil as a landmark.

  In Singapore’s Botanic Gardens, 11 ‘National Heritage Trees’ have been designated. It is a source of pride for our country that this 52-hectare park can exist just five minutes from the most prosperous, busiest five-star hotels at the heart of our city; furthermore, it encompasses six hectares of virgin rainforest that are universally acknowledged to be the best-preserved in the world.

  The mighty hundred-year-old trees that spring from this land are part of our cultural heritage, the brightest landmarks of our tropical garden city. They help busy Singaporeans feel a sense of belonging, even permanence, in this place we inhabit. Through more than a century of growth, these trees have helped to construct Singapore’s elegant landsc
ape.

  With modernisation accelerating in Singapore, many old trees across the island were in danger of being cut down—a consideration which gave rise to the 2002 plan of designating ‘Heritage Trees’ with the objective of preservation, as well as educating people about their value. The public was able to nominate trees from anywhere in the country. Once identified as being of national importance, these trees received special care—for example, they were fitted with lightning rods, and had plaques erected explaining their significance.

  All these trees have an intimate relationship with local people’s lives. Of the 11 in the Gardens, I’m personally most familiar with the two tembusu trees, the rain tree and the saga tree. The tembusu can take a hundred years to reach its full height of 25 metres, while the rain tree grows swiftly, and can be seen lining our roads and expressways, providing shade in our carparks with its umbrella-like canopy. The colonial people loved planting rain trees, as well as saga trees, the latter especially in schoolyards and hospital gardens. Perhaps their bright red, heart-shaped seeds were thought to symbolise the compassion offered up by doctors and teachers, the care required by patients and students.

  A Shy Family

  THE TROPICAL RAINFOREST is a paradise for plants. Singapore’s and Malaysia’s jungles are no exception. Here, a dazzling variety of plant life flourishes in such close proximity that, even though the human body does not take up very much space, you wouldn’t be able to walk easily through one such rainforest without a machete to hack your way through—and a month after that, a green wave of vegetation would have engulfed this path again. The confusion of species in such density makes it easy for them to cross-fertilise, and new varieties constantly appear. Recently, while moving through Singapore’s crowded Chinatown and People’s Park Complex, or the hotel district in Orchard Road, I’ve had the sensation of standing amidst a rainforest. After modernisation, Singapore transformed itself into an important global centre for trade and tourism, attracting all varieties of people, like the many species of plants. Crammed together in forced intimacy, our thoughts, ethics and behaviour, susceptible to influence, have naturally bred new moral and value systems.