Flowers of the Sweet Cangkok Manis

The Cangkok Manis is a vegetable eaten by the native people of Sarawak. It was discovered to be very edible by the Foochows in 1902 when they first arrived in Sibu under the leadership of Wong Nai Siong.

In fact, my grandfather, who was among one of the first Foochow pioneers, told us stories of how they secretly observed the local people : where they went to look for food, how they cooked food etc.

My grandfather learned how to tap jelutong from the Ibans and followed them to Ulu Sg Merah to look for jelutong trees. And as his relationship with his new found friends grew, he found that the cangkok manis was really a very sweet vegetable. He laos learned that he did not have to wait for the flowers to form seeds to grow the vegetable.

All he did was to stick the stalks into the fertile soil and soon he would have vegetables to eat. For the rest of his life he would always have a few plots of cangkok manis in his backyard.

the flowers of the cangkok manis are beautiful.

A few of my relatives did take seeds overseas to grow cangkok manis in their new land. But many did not find success in growing them even in West Malaysia. However, a cousin and his sons have grown cangkok manis in Fujian and they are now supplying the vegetables to mainland restaurants.

In fact my