The Harmony Silk Factory

· I tell a lie. There are a few schools, but they are reserved for the children of royalty and rich people like civil servants. These were founded by the British. “Commanding the best views of the countryside, these schools are handsome examples of the colonial experiment with architecture, marrying Edwardian and Malay architectural styles” (I quote directly from Mr. Unwin in this instance). When you come across one of these schools, you will see that they dominate the surrounding landscape. Their flat lawns and playing fields stretch before the white colonnaded verandahs like bright green oceans in the middle of the grey olive of the jungle around them. These bastions of education were built especially for ruling-class Malays. Only the sons of very rich Chinese can go there. Like Johnny’s son — he will go to one of these, to Clifford College in Kuala Lipis.

· There the pupils are taught to speak English — proper, I mean.

· They also read Dickens.

· For these boys, life is good, but not always. They have the best of times, they have the worst of times.

· Going back to the subject of toilets: actually, the platform lavatory continued to be used way into the 1960s. But not for me. In 1947, my father installed the first flush cistern and septic tank north of Kuala Lumpur at the Harmony Silk Factory. Before that, we had enamel chamber pots. My favourite one was hand-painted with red-and-black goldfish.

· So imagine a child like Johnny, growing up on the edge of a village on the fringes of a rubber plantation (say), tapping rubber and trapping animals for a few cents’ pocket money. Probably, he would have no idea of the world around him. He only knows the children of other rubber-tappers. They are the only people he would ever mix with. Sometimes he sees the plantation owner’s black motorcar drive through the village on the way to the Planter’s Club in town. The noise of the engine, a metallic rattle-roar, fills Johnny’s ears, and maybe he sees the Sir’s pink face and white jacket as the car speeds past. There is no way the two would ever speak. Johnny would never even speak to rich Chinese — the kind of people who live in big houses with their own servants and tablecloths and electricity generators.

· When a child like Johnny ends up being a textile merchant, it is an incredible story. Truly, it is. He is a freak of nature.

· Unsurprisingly, many of the poor Chinese become Communists. Not all, but many. And their children too.

Mr. Unwin’s excellent book paints a vivid picture indeed. However, it is a general study of all villages across the country and does not take into account specific regions or communities. This is not a criticism — I am in no position to criticise such scholarship — but there is one thing of some relevance to Johnny’s story which is missing from the aforementioned treatise: the shining, silvery tin buried deep in the rich soil of the Kinta Valley.

3. The Kinta Valley

THE KINTA VALLEY IS a narrow strip of land which isn’t really a valley at all. It is seventy-five miles long and twenty miles wide at its widest, and runs from Maxwell Hill in the north to Slim River in the south. To the east are the jungle-shrouded limestone massifs which you can see everywhere in the Valley: low mountains pockmarked with caves which appear to the eye as black teardrop scars on a roughened face. There are trails through the jungle leading up to these caves. They have been formed over many years by the careful tread of animals — sambar and fallow deer, the wild buffalo and boar, the giant seledang — which come down from the hills to forage where the forest meets the rich fruit plantations.

As a boy, I used to walk these trails. The jungle was wet and cool and sunless, but by then I had learnt where to put my feet, how to avoid the tree roots and burrows, which could easily twist an ankle. The first time I discovered a cave I wandered so deep into it that I could no longer see any light from the outside. I felt with my hands for somewhere to sit. The ground and the walls were damp and flaky with guano. The air was rich with an old smoky smell, like the embers of some strange sugar-sweet charcoal fire. There were no noises other than the gentle drip drip of water. The darkness swallowed up my movements. I couldn’t see my hands or my legs, I couldn’t hear myself breathing. It was as if I had ceased to exist. I sat there for many hours — I don’t know how long exactly. Nor do I know how I found my way out of the cave or what made me want to leave. Night had fallen by the time I emerged, but it did not seem dark to me. Even the light from the pale half-moon annoyed my eyes as I made my way home.