Nang Chong Stories : Logs as Bridges

 In Nang Chong Village, the hills at the back were criss crossed by streams. It was memorable visiting other relatives in the near by villages. We went walking in the woods so to speak. The areas at the back of the villages were called Au Sang or Behind the Hills and were considered rather backwards and poor. Houses were isolated as they belonged to later Foochow arrivals and rubber tappers who would tap rubber and appear only once in a while when they had enough rubber sheets for smoking. 

My grandmother and uncles owned a rubber smoke house by the Rajang riverside (easier to load to the smoked rubber sheets to the motor launches). So we knew a lot of people from the "back". Those rubber garden paths even led all the way to Tulai. (Today roads have been developed and we can drive all the way to Tulai and beyond.)

The rubber garden paths were shady, all mud roads, and often the rubber tree roots would protrude from the earth making it hard for us to really run well. This was the training grounds for my cousins who were good athletes. When they came to our secondary schools in Sibu, sports teachers would choose them for initial heats in which they ran barefooted. On sports day, they would stun a lot of naysayers and easily won medals. They were quite natural running stars of our Methodist School in particular. Besides they were well toned because they had to run for the last boat for the village in the afternoons. If they missed the motor launch, they had to stay overnight with relatives to be in time for school the next day. Those were the days before the daily ferry to Paradom Jetty.

One of the students, who was a really good runner, still meets up with me and tells me about those days, how he missed the last boat and would come home with my older brother Hsiung (may he RIP). Staying over night with relatives was never a big issue. He was not only a good athlete but a bright boy who became a very prominent lawyer,speaking perfect English.

One remarkable memory I have of my visits to relatives downriver is the innovative way my uncles dragged huge logs found in the Rajang when the river over flowed its banks to place the logs over streams to make natural bridges. Thus from our grandmother's house to Chung Cheng Primary School where my cousins were studying then, were several log bridges over small streams. The larger tributaries of the Rajang like Sg. Maaw had a proper wooden bridge of course.

As we have no photos of the log bridges then I found a nice photo from Google to give you an idea of what I am writing about.

Most streams separating various rubber gardens had log bridges and they were really slippery during the rainy season but they were very significant in our younger days and they connected one village with another too. most rubber gardens in Nang Chong were inundated when the end of the year rainy season arrived and most families would moan because of lack of income.

The logs dragged from the river were more long lasting than the smaller rubber trees which were easily felled to make bridges.

Interestingly while today many Sarawak rivers and streams were connected by bamboo bridges, rope bridges etc, the Foochow villages were then mainly crossed by log bridges.