When my grandfather decided to retire from active business at age 60, he built himself as large wooden house on top of a hill, which was part of the original land, 5 acres with title, given to him by the Rajah Brooke, when he came as a Foochow pioneer in 1903. That land was where he first planted his first rubber trees. Probably he had a very strong emotional attachment to that property and never wanted to sell it. In fact this piece of property was sold only aboutg half a century after he passed away by a surviving daughter in law and a daughter.
According to a grand uncle, he was also wise in acquiring a little more land from one or two more pioneers who wanted to move elsewhere.
My Chong Grand Uncle's land was fairly near this property as some of my aunts remembered visiting Great Grandfather Chong's house "in the rubber garden".
The road named after my grand uncle, Chong Jin Bok Road actually runs behind my grandfather's property.
My grandfather was very fond of star fruits or Yong Toh 楊桃 and he had two special trees behind the house on the hill.
As children, we would watch him wrap up the fruits carefully and he would personally pluck the fruits when he found them to be slightly yellow. He was a big man, and he was very careful in carrying the wooden ladder he made for himself.
He would also climb up the ladder and carefully trimmed the branches from time to time.
And none of us would go and pluck to eat HIS star fruit. He was a very careful farmer who burnt the soil for his plants and applied natural fertilizers, which he collected from his chickens which he kept very carefully in coops he made.
There was the unstated rule in his household. Without his permission, none of us grand children could eat any of the fruits grown in the garden. We were all very disciplined and even neighbours' children knew about this. For some reasons, no outsiders even dared to steal his fruits. We all said that it was because people respected him and therefore they even respected his fruits.
We were quite sure that Grandmother Siew even counted how many star fruits grandpa wrapped up
during the week.
Whenever a fruit was beginning to ripen Grandma would announce it and Grandpa would wait a day or two to personally pluck the fruit. Sometimes two would ripe at the same time and that meant that the children would have a share too. Or sometimes, Grandma Siew would pluck one and waited for another one to ripen. She had a metal basket which hanged from the kitchen latch. That was for special fruits. Sometimes when many fruits ripened at the same time, Grandmother Siew would send a few to Reverend Ho and his family down at the parsonage at Kwong Ang or Sing Ang Tong.
And for all of us grandchildren, we looked forward to having a few slices of star fruits with our lunch.
It is still a luxury fruit for my family and I today. One of the best ways of eating star fruit is to juice it.
At the moment of writing, Malaysia is a global leader in the production of star fruits.
(Caution : people with kidney problems must be careful when eating star fruits. There have been cases of kidney damage due to toxicity.)
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