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Ancient seal of the Gambier & Pepper Society
that features Jawi and Chinese characters and
the pepper and gambier motif [Right]
|
If you are in Johor, you cannot miss
seeing the iconic motif of intertwined sprigs of pepper and gambier plants used
consistently throughout the state on royal regalia, official crests and as part
of the decor on public buildings and lamp-posts along the expressways.
Invitation cards and souvenir programmes for
official events and print material from the Johor royal household often carry a
similar motif.
This pepper and gambier motif is used
so consistently as a state icon that its significance may inadvertently be lost
and many do not know how the cultivation of these crops contributed to Johor’s
economic progress.
That is why the Johor
Baru Chinese Heritage Museum embarked on a project to present the historical
importance of these two crops in an exhibition on gambier and pepper entitled, Sharing of Hardships, now on till 18
Sept 2015.
 |
Archive photo of gambier cubes drying in the sun [Right] while a supervisor [wearing white top] oversees a worker at a gambier farm in Johor in the 1800s
|
Pepper and gambier have earned a place
of honour in Johor because their widespread cultivation played a vital role to
boost the state’s economy in the 1800’s.
With Europe as a major market, the peak of the gambier trade lasted from
the 1830s to 1850s when Johor was the world’s largest producer of gambier.
Before the invention of chemical dyes, the
juice from gambier leaves was widely used for leather tanning and cloth
dyeing. This industry put Johor on the
world map and brought wealth to the local community.
 |
Tan Chai Puan sharing his knowledge at the
Johor Baru Chinese Heritage Museum |
The introduction of pineapple canning
in 1888 resulted in the expansion of the pineapple industry in Johor and the
rapid development of the motorcar industry sparked off a very high demand for
rubber.
By the early 20th
century, gambier was replaced by pineapple and rubber as the most important plantation
crops in this region and with the development of chemical industries, the
demand for gambier ceased and the plants virtually disappeared.
While we still have pepper plantations here,
there are hardly any gambier plants and not many Johoreans know what gambier is
or have ever seen a gambier plant.
The History
At the museum I meet Johor cultural
activist, Tan Chai Puan, who declared, “This was probably the most beautiful
part of Johor’s history.”
He explained
the Chinese phrase for the exhibition title, Sharing of Hardships, and described how the pioneer planters in Johor shared bitter
and sweet experiences through their hardship in unity as they successfully
built the State’s economy, literally from the ground up.
From documents he had studied in the Johor Archives,
Tan suggested that Johor probably has the longest history of the 1Malaysia-concept
because the Chinese and Malay communities in Johor shared a strong relationship
since the 1800s.
 |
Old map of Johor showing rivers and
kangchu settlements marked in dots (1849) and
squares (1859) with shaded areas that indicate
holdings owned by Tan Hiok Nee in 1874 |
Back then, gambier plantations in
Singapore and the Riau Islands were successfully run by Chinese and Malay
farmers.
After being cultivated for 10
to 15 years the land around Kranji and Sembawang in Singapore was exhausted and
infertile.
So when Temenggong Daeng Ibrahim
invited the planters to move to Johor to open the land for new plantations, the Chinese
were ready to relocate.
Immigrant
Chinese with a strong pioneering spirit were attracted to the prospect of huge
tracts of land, just waiting for them to clear for cultivation of pepper and
gambier under the kangchu or River
Lord system.
Under this administration,
planters who arrived from Riau and Singapore obtained a permit known as, surat sungai, from the ruler.
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A list of kangchu locations in Johor
in the 1800s |
In the kangchu system, the River Lords could collect taxes and govern
Chinese communities in their areas along the rivers.
The permit holders were called kangchu’s or River Lords while kang means “river” in Teochew dialect,
and a kangkar is the disembarking
point, usually its middle or upper reaches along the river.
Not long after Iskandar Petrie, (former name of Johor Baru) was established in 1855, the Chinese accepted Temenggong Daeng
Ibrahim’s permits to establish plantations in Johor and they started to arrive
by cargo-carrying barges or tongkang
through Sungai Segget or the Segget River.
The Teochew clan was the dominant
Chinese clan who made Johor their new home and they settled in designated areas
to cultivate pepper and gambier plantations in the kangchu system.
At that time Iskandar Petrie was just a
frontier outpost with a few huts occupied by fishermen and charcoal-makers near
the river.
It was surrounded by jungle
and mangrove forests and a flagpole flying the Johor flag near a police post on
a hill represented the presence of a government.
Its capital, Tanjung Puteri, was situated at
a coastal site that had the most convenient boat access to Singapore – opposite
the end of Bukit Timah Road in Singapore.
I remember seeing some of the sultan’s
hunting trophies preserved in the Royal Abu Bakar Museum, in Istana
Gardens, and this gave me an idea of the types and sizes of wild animals that
once roamed the dense Johor jungles.
Besides being confronted by wild animals such as elephants and tigers,
immigrants lost lives to strange diseases and the harsh environment as they
braved physical challenges to clear the jungles and open up land through the
rivers into Johor’s interior.
The Exhibition
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| Black and White pepper exhibits |
I have never seen a gambier plant but dried
gambier cubes are displayed in the JB Chinese Heritage Museum along with a
gambier plant cutter and a hook that was used to grab sacks of processed gambier.
This was all I’ve seen but six months ago, the
museum initiated a project to find out more about gambier cultivation and
processing in order to set up an interesting and informative exhibition here.
The teams from the museum made two visits to
Indonesia where they discovered that farmers are still using traditional
methods with very little mechanization in the process to harvest, boil young gambier
leaves, press them to extract juice and dry the juice concentrate before it was
shaped into a block, cake or cube form.
Gambier is a tropical shrub that can
grow up to about two meters in height and has oval shaped leaves that can grow up
to eight or 14 cm in length. In plantations,
pepper and gambier plants were usually planted together as these plants share a
symbiotic relationship and tend to grow entwined around each other.
The remains of gambier leaves on the ground
act as nutrients or fertilizers for pepper plants while protecting the pepper
plant roots.
Plantations in Johor sold
their gambier to businessmen in Singapore, the main centre for trade in
collecting and exporting the gambier produce, until the dawn of the 20th
century.
When Temenggong Daeng Ibrahim
was succeeded by Sultan Abu Bakar, he continued his father’s legacy in developing
Johor into a thriving metropolis.
 |
Cubes of gambier laid out to dry
on trays, the traditional way |
Tan, who was also the Administrative Director
and Head of the Art Gallery in Southern University College, said that he read
archive documents on how Teochew leader, Tan Hiok Nee, was appointed Kapitan
Cina by the sultan to collect taxes from gambier planters.
As wealth poured into the state coffers,
Chinese planters gave gambier its nickname, gam
mi (Mandarin) or “golden honey.”
With
pepper and gambier as Johor’s main economy crops, traders formed a Gambier
& Pepper Society.
When I look closer
at the society’s ancient seal, I saw a design with Jawi and Chinese characters
and I believe the present day iconic pepper and gambier motif was probably
inspired by this original design.
 |
A gambier plant, growing at the museum
was a sample brought back from Indonesia
|
The legacy of the cultivation of pepper
and gambier and the economic development of Johor is carefully persevered in
the JB Chinese Heritage Museum.
The Sharing of Hardships exhibition provides
more insight into the history of Chinese-Malay relationships that undergirds
the strong support between the Johor sultanate and the Chinese community
today.
So the next time you pass a
lamp-post designed with the pepper and gambier motif or saw it on other Johor
emblems, you know how these humble plants earned its place of honour in this
state.
Fast Facts
The JB Chinese Heritage Museum at 42,
Jalan Ibrahim, Johor Baru, is accessible from two entrances at Jalan Ibrahim (front)
and Jalan Tan Hiok Nee (rear). It is
open daily from 9am to 5pm and closed on Monday. For group tours and enquiries, Tel: 607 –
2249 633, Fax: 607 – 2249 635 or email: heritage_museumjb@jb-tionghua.org.my
A version of this article was published in The New Straits Times, Life & Times on 13 November 2014
