Something Old, Nothing New.

It is smooth and shiny and has figures clinging onto the surface: a dragon, two goats cavorting under a banana tree, a rooster as big as the banana tree. Around the knob at the centre of the  chipped lid runs a beautiful circular pattern. It’s a small green jar and is the oldest thing I remember from my childhood. My mother used it to store salt.

My mother's ginger jar

 It must be about 600 years old.

The jar had belonged to my maternal grandfather and it survived all the transfers and house-moving my parents had to face during Papa's mata-mata days. (My parents had lived in Kota Belud, Sandakan, Labuan, Jesselton, kepayan, Tuaran, Menggatal and Penampang.) Somehow it wasn't in the fire that had turned our entire house into ashes. Now it stays with me, the collector of odd family objects and chronicler of the family ‘history’.  

Beautiful pattern on the lid

I’m keeping it simply because it had belonged to my grandfather and maybe to his father before him. We don’t know how he came to own this ginger jar which had travelled, from a pottery in China, across the South China Sea to Borneo. 

(Read more about Chinese green glazed porcelain dragon ginger jar here.)

I don’t know about you, but I like to keep old objects such as this jar because they remind me of people who have gone before me; people who have lived, loved, died but we, their descendants, frequently know nothing about them. Often we don’t even know their names because the Dusuns used to regard saying the names of one’s elders disrespectful.

Old things—whether or not they have any monetary values—should be preserved. How else would we know of our past or our ancestors if we have no regard for our original language, our culture, old stuff?

The top of the bare hill, Nodo, was an old settlement. (Click to enlarge)

At the risk of being chastised, let me just say that the old settlement site (in Kampung Nodo—which I had mentioned in my book,) should be preserved for its historical value. No doubt the site is now part of somebody’s property and he can do whatever he wants with his land. No one can prevent him from cutting terraces on the slopes for the cultivation of crops. People are free to climb up the steep hill to see the place our ancestors had called home. They are free to take away shells and ancient, broken pottery as souvenirs of their visit. 

However, a hundred years from now, when our descendants want to study about their past, let's hope  they’ll discover another old site, another place, where the spirits of the long departed hover in peace and what used to be their homes lie undisturbed.