Culture - Page 10

Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth II’s husband, has died Friday (April 9, 2021) at age 99, Buckingham Palace announced.

The death of the Duke of Edinburgh is a profound loss for the 94-year-old monarch, who once described him as her “strength and stay all these years”.

In a statement, the palace said: “His Royal Highness passed away peacefully this morning at Windsor Castle.”

Prince Philip’s visit to Sarawak

Did you know that in 1959 the duke actually had a short tour in Sarawak?

Prince Philip made a 41-hour visit to Sarawak when it was still part of the British colony. He arrived in Kuching on Feb 26, then visited Sibu and Miri before making his way to Brunei.

During his visit, he attended a private dinner at the Astana, tasted our Iban tuak and watched the multi-cultural performances by Sarawakians.

Prince Philip also attended a Council Negri meeting on Feb 27, 1959. Here is his full address to the council members back then:

“Mr President, Honourable Members:

I have always enjoyed travelling especially when it brings me to such a charming and friendly place as Sarawak. I have often heard of your hospitality but even so I was not prepared for the kind and generous welcome I have received from so many people.

It was particularly thoughtful of you to invite me to attend this meeting of the Council Negri to present these four Addresses of Welcome. As you have kindly provided me with translation of what has been said in Malay, Iban and Mandarin I can truthfully say that I greatly appreciate your expressions of loyalty and affection to the Queen. I will see to it that she receives a copy of what has been said I know it will give her very great pleasure.

The Queen takes a close and personal interest in the well being pf all the people of the Commonwealth and Empire but I know that she has a special place in her heart for all those who suffered loss and damage during the last war. We have been following the progress of your reconstruction with admiration and sympathy.

I hope and believe that this progress will be maintained in peace and growing prosperity but it would be idle to suppose that there are no problems. The four Addresses heard this morning illustrate the problems of a multi-racial society, the difficulties arising every day when people of different race and customs live side by side. Only common sense in deciding what is in the best practical interests of the State and tolerance of the cultural traditions of all will produce a happy and progressive community.

Take the Commonwealth for example, British Administration from the earliest times has fostered and encouraged local language and culture, but for practical purposes of administration, law, commerce, engineering and science and education is in English. The practical result is that the leaders in every sphere of human activity can understand each other. This ability to exchange ideas in a common tongue is both link binding the countries together as well as a very practical advantage in trade, commerce and science.

There is another characteristic of the Commonwealth which I would like to mention. There is an automatic sympathy and interest in the progress and problems of other Commonwealth countries. On the national level there is the Colombo plan and other similar cooperative schemes but this also applies to individuals. All the Universities of the Commonwealth are willing and anxious to be of service and I am delighted to hear that so many men and women from this country are taking advantage of this.

I am also interested to hear that there are several boys from British schools performing useful service here in the Government’s Community Development projects.

The Commonwealth exists to make this sort of exchange possible and I hope that they will be continued and expanded to the benefit of the countries concerned as well as an example to all the world that the Commonwealth is a brotherhood of nations and a brotherhood of people.

The Queen, as Head of the Commonwealth, sends you and all the people of Sarawak her best wishes for a happy and successful future.

Queen Elizabeth II also visited Sarawak, together with Prince Philip and their only daughter Princess Anne in 1972. Since then, Princess Anne made another visit to the Land of the Hornbills in 2016.

Have you every wondered what life was like in Sarawak over a hundred years ago?

Thanks to a contributing writer of The Sarawak Gazette in 1948 who wrote under the initials ‘O.F’, we had a glimpse of old Sarawak through his writing.

So here is the author’s account of what it was like living in Sarawak in 1912:

“Sarawak in 1912 was enjoying the end of its heydays. The last great war had been the affair in South Africa, and bar a Melanau policeman we all called Lord Kitchener on account of his moustache, and a gentleman who after a gin or two loved telling us about the joys of the Base at Cape Town, that campaign had left no visible mark on the country.

Cadets came out on a hundred dollars a month and the five years furlough was a thing recent memory. One of my first outstation acquaintances was just about to go home after a full ten years service. He looked extremely healthy and I am certain that he did not have an electrolux either.

The whole European Civil Service numbered less than fifty, of which about twenty one were in outstations, the same number in Kuching and the rest or knocking about somewhere. Except for the staff of the two Government collieries there were no Departmental officers outside Kuching.

There was no wireless, no electric light (except, I think, in Bau) but one motorcar, no buses, no cocktail parties and no slap-and-tickle dancing.

Those ladies who wore European dress would not have been seen dead in the street without a monster hat or topi; those who wore Malay dress covered their shy heads with gay sarongs and veils; only the older Chinese women were ever seen in public.

Lofty masted schooners lay in the creek off Sibu Maleng. The Second Division was served by sailing bandongs, propelled up the rivers by the crew sweating at the sweeps; steam vessels and launches laboriously pounded along with sparks sometimes flying from the funnel from the wood fuel.

In Kuching Lee Wai Heng made us good white suits for three dollars sixty and a khaki one was four dollars and a half. Hap Shin would make white canvas shoes for a dollar twenty. Syn Hin Leong, Chong Kim Eng and Ban Jui Long had good whisky at under a dollar a bottle for the same sum you could get nearly three tins of cigarettes. If you went the right way about it it was possible to charter a smart rickshaw to take you to and from the office every day, and a few odd extra trips thrown in, for fifteen dollars a month you could send all the washing you liked to a dhobie for a monthly payment of four dollars.

Sebah, known to everyone, brought round real kain tenun for a couple of dollars a piece, and she was a pleasant company too. Good gold, as pure as one could wish for, could be bought over the counter from Kong Chan for a bit over four and a half dollars an amas, real gold sovereigns about nine dollars, half a quid for four fifty and a real whopper of an American gold piece for about seventeen dollars. Belts made of silver dollars cost their face value plus an equal amount for labour. Every year the pawn farmers used to melt down the unredeemed gold, and I have handled lumps of the stuff.

In Singapore the police arrested Sarawak Dayaks for walking around Raffles Place in a chawat, cables were received from England and Singapore via Labuan, the festival of chap goh meh was the only time one saw Chinese girls, and the idea of ‘Women’s Day’ or processions of gaily clad members of Kaum Ibu was a thing which no man, brown, yellow or white, could dream of.

Once a year, hordes of little Malay boys went over to the Astana to eat the Rajah’s curry, and on New Year’s Day there was a monster regatta. Tuba fishing were always great occasions. In outstations everyone nearby took a holiday. Government servants included, and even if the catches were hot often great the fun was. Most of the tuba was secreted for private fishing up small streams the next day.

In Limbang they raced buffaloes, and in Sibu we spent half the landas roaming about in small boats. When the officers in Mukah and Oya got bored they went pukat fishing with the police and prisoners. In Bintulu they went to Kedurong (Kidurong) to catch rock cod and cast a jala.

Sarawak Rangers paraded with snider rifles and sword bayonets; at headquarters they still exercised in ‘form hollow square to receive cavalry!’ The Rajah’s yacht ‘Zalora’ lay off Kuching with a three-pounder hotchkiss mounted on the forecastle.

Up in the outstations administrators and people lived a feudal but by no means an uncolourful life. Now and again a headhunting foray lived up things, occasionally Chinese gang robbers threw pepper in travelers’ eyes and got away with the spoils. A sporting District Officer, out after snipe, was gored by an angry buffalo. In Limbang an unhappy Chinese tried to commit hara kiri and was saved and lived happily ever after by the efforts of the Resident and his assistant who pushed in his entrails, sewed him up and then gave him a good shaking to get them into place.

One or two small motor boats were introduced at this time and the Malays, ever quick to catch on to a good nickname, called them by a most expressive word. Rajah Brooke drove around Kuching in a wagonette, or sometimes a governess cart; the manager of the Borneo Company had a dashing dog cart. Silk-hatted gentlemen went to Church on Sunday evenings and bottle-green tails appeared at Astana functions.

No one seemed to have much money; in any cases few of the merchants seemed to use it. For raw sago the Kuching towkays sent up cargoes of tobacco, cloth, pots and pans, hurricane lamps, braces and sock suspenders and Dr Williams Pink Pills.

The State was not run on orthodox lines, and I suppose that some modern thinkers would say that it was sheer autocracy, oligarchy and despotic benevolence, and of course so it was. It was run very well. But it could not have gone on much longer. The first world war shook it a bit but left the foundations cracked but standing. The second world war finished it off.”

Curiosity for Sarawak in 1912

Obviously, there are huge changes between Sarawak in 1912 and the present.

Even though we still see ladies wearing ‘European dress’ today, they no longer pair their outfits with a ‘monster hat’.

Speaking of clothing, you will never find ‘good white suits for three dollars sixty and a khaki one for four dollars’ anywhere in this world, let alone in Kuching.

While we still have cobblers to repair our footwear, nobody would make white canvas shoes today.

Furthermore, it would be nice to have a bottle of whisky under a dollar right now.

Thanks to O.F, we now know the modus operandi of 1912 Sarawak robbers. Who knew Sarawak pepper had its criminal usage?

Plus, who knew Residents back then had the surgical skill to rescue someone who committed harakiri? Can you imagine the effort they took in 1912 to push someone’s entrails back into their abdomen and stitch them back together again?

For those who are curious, the medicine stated in the article is Dr Williams’ Pink Pills for Pale People.

It contained ferrous sulfate and magnesium sulfate and it was claimed to cure chorea.You will never find it today because it was withdrawn from the market in the 1970s.

Finally, it would be interesting to know if the descendants of those O.F. mentioned in his article are still alive today

About 100 years ago, an article was published in The National Geographic Magazine about Sarawak.

The article ‘Sarawak: Land of the White Rajahs’ was written by Harrison W. Smith and published in February 1919.

Smith basically described his experience in Sarawak mingling with the Iban, Bidayuh and Kayan peoples in the 58-page long article featuring a whopping 59 photographs taken by Smith himself.

It was written in a non-condescending and enlightening tone to introduce Sarawak to National Geographic readers.

The Sarawak Gazette even published a note on July 16, 1919 to comment about the article and the only problem they had about it was the use of an outdated map.

It stated, “The article gives an interesting account of Professor Smith’s experience in this country and is illustrated, as might be expected, by photographs, excellent in themselves and in their variety.

“The map for which Professor Smith denies all responsibility is another matter; in any paper it would be a matter for regret, but in a magazine whose professed object is ‘the increase and diffusion of geographic knowledge’ it calls for both criticism and correction. This map, taken apparently from a thirty year old school atlas, shows near the whole of Borneo, about which the Sarawak boundary wanders in pleasing uncertainty. The whole of state of Brunei is included therein and Labuan disappears entirely.”

Nonetheless, here are five interesting Sarawak stories that Smith experienced when he was in Sarawak:

1.A phonograph in Sarawak

“A phonograph that I carried for the purpose of recording native songs was a source of great amusement. Many natives who had traveled to the government stations had heard the ordinary records, but none had ever heard their own language.

It was at times difficult to persuade any one to sing into the rather formidable looking trumpet, but when a song had been reproduced from a record made at another village there was usually no further difficulty in bringing forward of the artists of the house.

When they finally they heard their own voices issuing from the little box, their wonder and amusement knew no bounds. It is a pity no photograph could have been obtained of the bank of faces surrounding our little party, with the phonograph in the center, when they first realised that a box was talking their own language in the voice of one of their own number.”

2.Counting using fingers and toes

One of Smith’s companions was an Iban man named Changkok. On one occasion, Smith had to ask Changkok about a longhouse they about to visit.

“Having occasion to ask Changkok the size of a particular house that I planned to visit, he began counting on the fingers of his right hand, calling off the name of the head of each family. He continued counting on the fingers of his left hand, then on the toes of his right foot, then, beginning on the big toe of his left foot, he paused in thought, holding the second toe.

But the effort had been too much; he lost hold of the toe and had to count all over again.

Probably if the problem had required a computation above 20 Changkok, like many other natives, would have had to call in another man with more fingers and toes to count on.”

3.Sarawakians have heard about the Titanic a hundred years ago

Smith spent a great deal of time at Mulu area. One time, he was spending a night at the house of a Malay trader near Melinau river.

“The trader had fastened some logs together and moored them to the shore, forming a small landing stage with a little shed, where one could bathe without danger from crocodiles.

As the launch swung in toward the landing, the current caught the bow, and for a moment it seemed that we should strike the log with considerable force; whereupon a Malay on the landing cried out, ‘Don’t run into the iceberg.’ Thus the story of the Titanic, incredible to the tropical people, spread far into Borneo.”

Titanic sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on Apr 15, 1912.

4.The female Kayan leader of Long Palei

While female presidents fascinate people nowadays because they are rare, female Kayan chieftains were not something unusual even back in Smith’s day.

Even back then, a Kayan woman could rule a longhouse as long as she came from an aristocratic family (maren).

Smith had the opportunity to meet a woman Kayan chief named Ulau when he was visiting Long Palei (Long Palai), Baram.

“The dignified presence and stateliness of the old lady gave me one of the greatest surprises I ever experienced. She maintains rigid discipline, which is characteristic of the Kayan household, from the chief of the house to the head of the family, and the fruits of discipline are apparent in the good manners and recognition of authority that, more than anything else, astonish the visitor, who is not prepared to find such culture among Bornean ‘savages’”.

5.Trying to teach geography to a Kayan

Ulau had a stepson named Kebing who later became one of Smith’s companions during his journey.

While learning about the local culture, Smith in return taught the natives some knowledge of geography and a taste of astronomy and the sun’s orbit.

“In an effort to give Kebing some idea of geography, I told him it was possible to go to America by travelling either in the direction in which the sun rises or the direction in which it sets, and to explain this incredible statement I scratched a map on the surface of a green orange, telling him that the sun stands still and the earth turns around.

‘Once every day?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I replied.

‘Well, why does it turn?’ A rather difficult question.”