Wild Fern Soup of Nan Chong during Japanese Occupation

The Japanese Occupation in Sarawak saw a lot of suffering among the people. Many did not have enough to eat in both the rural and urban areas. While many were forced into building of roads in Sibu like my father and his brothers, from sunrise to sunset, others were also tasked with planting of padi to feed the Japanese soldiers. There was fear in the air and the Chinese people especially were afraid of being punished by the Japanese soldiers. In that era, the Chinese were the sworn enemies of the Japanese.

When food ran out, many people had to look for different sources. My mother then only a teenager would paddle a small boat with her eldest sister in law along a small river called Sg. Assan in order to forage for jungle ferns. That was their secret place far away from the Japanese soldiers who were mainly stationed in Sibu town and in the surrounding areas where they could go on foot.

If and when the Japanese went outside Sibu, they would take a small motor launch and their presence could easily be heard. If they moved during the night, the light from the motor launch would search the river banks. Those were the days when safe places were hard to find from marauding enemies. Very often it was also a kind of hide and seek game, which sometimes ended up in shooting and subsequent deaths.

My mother was always happy to be able to pluck more than two pails of fern tops for her family. There were more than 10 mouths to feed including my elderly and very sick maternal grandfather.

The ferns from Sg Assan were made into soup with just a bit of ginger and some oil. Mum said that it would always be difficult for her to look at fern soup nowadays. Today we have many  extra ingredients to cook with the fern tops to make them very nice.

Sweet Potatoes

Through the 3 years and 8 months of Japanese Occupation many of the women also look for sago, snails, fish, prawns and jungle vegetables. These excursions for food could be very dangerous. If the women were caught by the soldiers they could be raped . So whenever they went out they would blacken their faces. Most of the Chinese women cut their hair so short that they looked like men.

Many would grow sweet potatoes in places thieves and soldiers could not easily find them. And whenever my mother found a patch of sweet potato leaves on the land owned by her father, she would be most happy. She would dig into the ground to find potatoes as fast as she could

Very often she said that she could not swallow the boiled sweet potatoes. It was hard for her and her siblings to eat rice mixed with sweet potatoes. After the Japanese Occupation they could not want to eat sweet potatoes as they were so tired of them.


Sweet potatoes can be fried in this way today AND THERE are many different ways of cooking sweet potatoes. This is a plate of fried potatoes, tufu, yam and yiu tiau, served with a rojak sauce.


The family ate a lot of sweet potatoes and ferns. Today my mother does not eat them because of her traumatic experiences. She is now 94 years old.