On the West Coast of the Rubber Kingdom在橡膠王國的西岸（散文）
On the West Coast of the Rubber Kingdom在橡膠王國的西岸（散文）1. In Yunnan Garden, all my beloved rubber trees have died
Lately, the rubber tree has been frequently in my thoughts.
Of all the trees in the tropics, the rubber tree is the most familiar to me and the closest to my heart. I was born in the Rubber Kingdom, and spent my childhood under the foliage of rubber trees. My family used to own a few hectares of rubber plantation. When I was in middle school, I would return to the plantation during my holidays to help with the work of tapping rubber. Therefore, whenever I think of the days before I entered university, my memories are forever set against a background of rubber trees.
The rubber tree is the incarnation of the hardworking Chinese who journeyed to Nanyang many years ago and opened up the wilderness. Only after the verdant rubber tree was transplanted here from Brazil, and relying upon the perseverance and diligence of the Chinese immigrants, were the desolate wilderness, primitive forests, poisonous snakes and ferocious beasts driven back to the most precipitous parts of the main mountain range in the Malay Peninsula. Therefore the rubber tree symbolized the pioneers of Singapore and Malaysia and, at the same time, was the lifeblood of the economy. Right up until 1970, the rubber plantation workers in Malaysia still constituted seventy per cent of the country’s overall employment force.
Following the industrialisation and urbanisation of Singapore, the rubber plantations here have almost vanished. The Yunnan Garden on Nanyang University’s campus, where I am presently teaching, used to be a vast rubber plantation; “Yunnan Garden” was the old name of this plantation. However, after residing here for five years, I have been to every part of the campus and closely examined each towering tree, but have found none to be a rubber tree.
On quiet afternoons, how I wish the saga seed tree outside my window were a rubber tree, so that I could hear its ripe fruit burst open with a bang, scattering three hard seeds onto the ground outside my window. I can never hear this kind of natural echo again, for there is only wave after wave of irritating noise penetrating in from outside the window.
2. Like the Chinese, rubber trees are foreign immigrants
Partly because I missed the rubber plantations, but mainly for the sake of searching for the earliest rubber trees planted in the history of the Rubber Kingdom, in March this year, my wife Dan Ying and I embarked on a trip from Singapore. Under the intense tropical heat, we drove up north along the main highway of the West Coast of Malaysia towards Kuala Kangsar, in the northern part of Malaysia.
Kuala Kangsar is a royal town, because it houses the palace of the Sultan of Perak. According to historical records, in 1887, when the British first experimented with planting rubber trees in Singapore and Malaya, twenty-two Brazilian rubber tree saplings were transplanted from Ceylon, of which nine were planted in Kuala Kangsar. It is said that at present, at least a few of these rubber trees are still flourishing.
The distance from Singapore to Kuala Kangsar, in the north of Malaysia, is about 650 kilometres. The North-South Highway, which links up the West Coast of the Peninsula, is flanked on both sides by extensive rubber plantations, making it the most important area of the world’s top rubber-producing country, Malaysia. The East Coast also has rubber plantations, but in both scope and density, it falls greatly behind the West Coast, and that is the main reason why the West Coast is more economically developed and has a higher population. From the nineteenth century onwards, many prosperous cities and towns of various sizes have evolved out of the rubber plantations. After crossing the Singapore-Johor Causeway, cities and towns from south to north, such as Johor Bahru, Ayer Hitam, Segamat, Skudai, Tampin, Muar, Malacca, Seremban, Kuala Lumpur, Selim River, Tanjung Malim, Kampar, Ipoh, Sungai Siput, Kangsar and Taiping, are all in the midst of rubber plantations.
The rubber trees on both sides of the highway stand neatly, separated from each other by a distance of eight feet. Like the Chinese in Singapore and Malaysia, rubber trees are foreign immigrants and they, too, feel a deep love for this land, relying closely on it for survival. Their move here hastened the opening up of the primitive forests in Singapore and Malaysia, and led to the rapid progress of the economy.
Rubber trees were originally a species found in the tropical rainforests of Brazil. Native Americans first discovered them in the Amazon River basin area. At that time, they only knew how to break the bark of the rubber tree to obtain the milky-white latex and make rubber balls. The British began to collect seeds of the rubber trees and tried planting them at the famous Kew Gardens in London, and then transplanted them to Singapore and Malaysia. Of the twenty-two saplings transplanted in 1887, besides the nine planted at Kuala Kangsar and one planted at Malacca, the rest were planted at the Singapore Botanic Gardens. Only nine of the twelve planted in Singapore survived to maturity.
Rubber trees grow well on tropical flatlands and hilly grounds that have humid and rainy weather throughout the year. Primitive rainforests that have been logged and the rotting trees set ablaze are suitable places for growth, as long as the slopes are not too steep and the drainage is good. Rubber trees are as highly adaptable as the Chinese and Indian immigrants of those days and they thrive in such tropical surroundings.
In six to seven years’ time, a rubber tree can grow to a height of sixteen feet and a circumference of about twenty inches. It will then start to produce a great quantity of milky white latex. A common method of tapping rubber is to use a gouge knife to cut two V-shaped grooves or a downward sloping groove in the bark. When the latex oozes out from the tree trunk, it will flow along the groove, which is not unlike a small drain, and finally drip into a cup placed at the lower part of the trunk via a small V-shaped iron spout. Each tree can only be tapped once a day and a cupful of latex can be obtained each time. An experienced rubber tapper can tap four to six hundred trees a day. After the rubber tapper has finished his job of tapping and rested for about half an hour, all the latex will have stopped dripping. The tapper will then pour the latex in the cups attached to every tree into a large pail.
It is best to finish the work of tapping rubber while the weather is still cool, hence the working hours usually stretch from five to eleven o’clock in the morning. Malaysia is hot all year round and, after midday, the dry weather will make the milky white latex coagulate and clog the latex flowing out of the tree. Therefore no one ever taps rubber in the afternoon. I remember when I was young the price of rubber soared during the Korean War. In order to lengthen their working hours, the rubber tappers would enter the rubber plantation at one or two o’clock in the wee hours of the morning bearing gas lamps on their heads and start tapping rubber in the dark under that dim light of theirs.
The monsoon season is a cause of great worry for rubber tappers. Even though each tree is separated by a distance of eight or nine feet, the leaves of the rubber trees are abundant and dense, their luxuriant crowns joining together when the trees have matured. After a heavy downpour, the drenched tree trunks can only dry fully after one whole day of being in the sun. When the trunk is damp, rubber tapping cannot be carried out. The groove created by the tapping knife is only one centimetre deep and, if the bark is damp, the latex will behave like floodwaters that have burst their banks, flowing haphazardly in all directions. Besides the latex not being able to flow into the cup via the designated grooves, the most serious consequence of tapping rubber when the trunk is damp is that the life-span of the tree will be much shortened.
Rubber trees cannot be tapped if there has been heavy rain the day before. Naturally, the rubber tappers are at their idlest during the monsoon season and, consequently, also at their poorest. There is no lack of rainfall in Singapore and Malaysia throughout the year. During the rainy season brought about by the seasonal Southeast winds, there is bound to be a huge downpour every day. Even now, I can still remember clearly the worried look of the rubber tappers during that period, their faces as grey as the colour of the sky. They liked to face the open spaces outside the plantation and gaze at the sky. If the sky was clear, their spirits would be high. If it was filled with dark clouds, they would be in a bad mood.
3. Suddenly the rubber trees seem strange and terrifying to me
When our car came to the area around Malacca at about eleven a.m., we saw many rubber tappers cycling on the road, returning to the factories that manufacture sheet rubber. The large pails at the back of their bicycles were full of rubber latex. We drove to the beach for a brief look at the site where Admiral Cheng Ho had once landed. We also went to have a sip at the Hang Li Poh Well dug by Cheng Ho, before carrying on our journey. Malacca was the first place in Singapore and Malaysia to begin producing rubber on a large scale. Having seen for himself the successful transplant of the twenty-two rubber tree saplings brought to Singapore and Malaysia in 1877, local Chinese Tan Chay Yan believed rubber held great economic promise. Hence in 1898, he began planting rubber trees on a historically unprecedented scale. He planted a total of three thousand hectares of rubber trees. At that time, economic botanists all over the world were watching his rubber plantation at Bukit Lintang, on the outskirts of Malacca. As expected, this plantation began producing a great quantity of rubber, laying down the first chapter in the history of the local rubber industry and providing an important raw material for the Industrial Revolution.
With the afternoon sun beating on it, the asphalt road looked like it was going to melt. Under the grinding of the wheels, the highway stretching in front and behind our car resembled a big greyish-black python that had overeaten, slowly wriggling along.
All of a sudden, the rubber trees, which I had found familiar and endearing, made me feel strange and even a little terrified. Each rubber tree was straight as a pencil and they stood neatly along both sides of the highway with their umbrella-shaped crowns and abundant leaves. The strong sun could hardly penetrate into their midst. The greyish-white branches seemed as though they were many pairs of eyes, staring at us quietly and mysteriously.
Weather in the tropics is unpredictable. When we were passing by Seremban, a thunderstorm came out of the blue, transforming the rubber forests on both sides of the highway into a sea of green. The road beneath our car seemed to be like a path seceded by the treacherous waves. Sometimes, when the road in front had yet to appear and the waves had not retreated to the sides, looking in the rear-view mirror, the road behind us seemed to have vanished into the sea of the green. I may possess the courage of Moses parting the Red Sea, but deep down in my heart, I still worried about the sea on both sides converging and submerging us together with our car to the bottom of the green sea.
When we arrived the next day at Ipoh, the capital of Perak, it was already afternoon. Because our friend insisted on treating us to Ipoh’s most renowned fried hor fun before letting us continue our trip north to our destination, Kuala Kangsar, it was close to seven p.m. when we left downtown Ipoh, the most bustling place in Northern Malaysia. Only then did we discover that the highway in the midst of the rubber forest could be so dark. The distance from Ipoh to Kuala Kangsar is about ten kilometres, but when the car is winding round hill after hill of rubber trees of differing heights, the pitch dark rubber forest on both sides seemed to extend its dark arms to block the way. Turning on the headlights was useless in banishing them away from the road. I could neither see nor judge where the road five to six feet in front led to. In my panic, the car crawled along slowly like an injured tortoise. Because their drivers were familiar with the road, big trucks making long-distance deliveries sped past me one after the other, dragging their bright red tail lights after them and disappearing into the dark.
Suddenly, an idea struck me. Before the big truck in front dragging its bright red tail light disappeared from view, I hurriedly stepped on the accelerator, quickly caught up with it, and then kept tailing it closely. The truck driver had acquired a good sense of direction through his familiarity with the route. As his truck crushed the darkness to pieces, it left behind a trail of light the colour of fresh blood. I knew the road was surely where I could see specks of “blood”; this was how we were able to reach our destination in the dark.
4. Standing beneath the first rubber tree in the history of Nanyang
Kuala Kangsar is a small town on the bank half-way down the Perak River. This big river originates in the yet undeveloped virgin tropical forest further up in Gerik and is boosted by the converging of other smaller rivers along the way. During the rainy season, Kuala Kangsar frequently experiences severe floods when the water level surges and the river overflows its banks. The palace of the Sultan of Perak is situated on a hillside next to the river. We searched in the vicinity for some time and made many inquiries, but no one could tell us the location of the earliest rubber tree planted there.
On the palace grounds, we toured the earliest sultan’s palace to be built there. It was a structure formed by joining together several traditional Malay houses constructed on stilts. The whole palace was built entirely of wood and bamboo with not a single iron nail. Everything was put in place by using the notches sawed by carpenters to link up each piece of wood. But a few centuries of weathering has taken its toll on the building, and it has since been fitted with iron nails. As I climbed the stairs and carefully examined every wooden plank and column head, I found the silvery iron nails to be gleaming; I deduced that they had been driven in not too long ago.
After several attempts, we finally managed to locate the first rubber tree in front of the Kuala Kangsar district court. In terms of height, size of leaves and shape of crown, this tree with a history of a hundred and one years was different from normal rubber trees. It had a very thick trunk and rose to a height of sixty feet, but it had very fine leaves. Compared with the rubber trees being tapped currently, it had the appearance and bearing of a great king, whereas the rest could only be deemed mere commoners.
I paced under the tree for a long time, hoping to pick up a few rubber seeds with patterns like those on a quail egg, but I was unable to find any. Probably at such a grand old age, the tree had stopped flowering and bearing fruit. It was said that the first batch of rubber trees began to bloom and bear fruit in 1881. At that time, every seed was precious, and they were collected and sold to the owners of rubber plantations.
When I was in primary school, I had to walk through two or three miles of rubber trees to get to school. The plantation grounds were full of rubber seeds. Many a time I was hit on the head or body by thumb-sized rubber seeds when the rubber fruit on the trees split open. During the period from year-end to the first two months of the following year, the leaves of the rubber trees will turn from green to yellow, and then from yellow to red, finally falling off one by one. Even though the weather is still very hot at that time of the year, one will have the feeling of it being autumn. It is only when I stroll through grounds full of fallen leaves that I am able to take in the sights of the rubber plantation fully, because only during that season of falling leaves does the sun shine brightly onto the shrubs and wildflowers that are few and far between in the plantation.
Standing beneath this rubber tree of immense historical value, the feeling I had of attachment and longing for rubber trees returned once again. It saddened me to think of Yunnan Garden, where all the rubber trees have died out. The rubber tree brought us civilization and economic prosperity, but its place in the modern world is slowly vanishing.
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