Nang Chong Stories : Grandma's Fans

My maternal grandma (ngie mah) was particularly fond of holding a fan. It was part of her signature look. Wherever she went, she would bring her fan, whether she was travelling to Sibu, or to Kuching or to Miri.

Her had a special one with the feathers. which she brought from China and that one lasted for a long long time. She had it during the Colonial times, and at the beginning of Malaysia. It seemed to be ever lasting.

It was later in school and when we were exposed to Chinese movies, that we learned that her fan was originally used by Zhuge Liang.

But to our dismay, the political divide between Malaysia and China caused the import of Chinese fans to stop. Her feather fan finally fell apart. So grandma had to resort to the using of locally made fans,  fans made from palm leaves, or fans made from woven bamboo. Most of them could not last long.

In fact, the palm leaf fan had to have a special cloth binder around the edges to make it last longer. My ngie mah was a good seamstress. In no time, all the neighbours would bring their fans to her and she would carefully use some bias material to create a cloth edge to make the palm leaf fan last longer.

It is interesting how palm leaf fans are called bu rien. Probably it comes from the name of the palm, pu kui (Latin name: Livistona chinensis (Jacq.) R. Br.).

The local Iban name for the palm is biru, which coincidentally is also the palm used by the natives to make hats, or tanggoi.

Zhuge Liang's fan.


Grandma also had fans made from palm leaves.

I remember that when we were young we were really naughty. We would play with her fan , and that would really annoy her. She was always very careful with her own belongings which never got damaged. All her belongings lasted for a long long time.

She lived up to more than 80 years of age. In her later life she was exposed to air conditioning in the homes of her sons and grand children. But when she lived in the Nang Chong home, she never even had a electrical fan because electricity had not reached our village. She had to use her palm leaf fan. In a way, she never stopped using a hand held fan till the day she died.

Special note : Now that China has opened its doors, most Chinese families, and especially our family, would have one Zhuge Liang fan at least.)