Stories from Deli

Ong Lie and Sherry

The tobacco harvest was in. The last bundles, after being dried in the drying barns on the plant ways, were taken to the fermentation shed, where the entire crop of millions of tobacco leaves, after undergoing the fermentation process, was to be sorted by color and length of the leaves. The field coolies, who had planted, cared…
Doctor Care

The central hospital at Tebing Tinggi was blazing in the morning sun, which at that early hour was already spreading heat as on a hot Dutch summer day. The extensive lawns surrounding the building complex were completely withered by the prolonged drought, and the crotons in the beds let their leathery, variegated leaves hang limply. The trees…
Toean Semoet

The ‘singkeh’, the youngest of the assistants at the company had now been in line for two years and it seemed that he could be made into a useful tobacco. In those years he had had to unlearn many of his European concepts and master many Delian customs, which was particularly difficult in the beginning. For he…
The Art

The Art offered to planters in old Deli was as strange as any other entertainment in their daily life. They generally had no need for it and no time for it. The one who had brought back from the motherland a spark of longing for artistic pleasure in the depths of his soul, soon saw it extinguished…
Boss of Boss

The tuans had once again had one of their own fads, but this time it was not the planters who caused quite a stir, but the tuan kareta-api, the Deli Spoor men. These had started by draining a swamp at the Poeloe Brayan kampong and made a major road through it. Not only was it a useful…
The Return

His leave was coming to an end. He had fully exploited the six months of vacation granted him after eight years of service in Deli, and had tasted all the pleasures that Europe could offer a single man who dared to live as he pleased. After those eight years of loneliness and tough work ‘in the tobacco’,…
Lim Ang Kau

It seldom happened that the chief tandil, Lim Ang Kau, spoke of how, as a young man of about twenty, he had been picked up in a drunken stupor at Swatow, brought on board with a load of fellow sufferers, and taken to Deli. Not that he was ashamed that he too had started as…
A Poh

Kleian, Deli Planter If we follow this road we automatically arrive at the house of A Poh, that is the Chinese head tandil. I’m glad we’re out of the woods for the time being, the worst is over. Here it is, let’s see if he’s home. A Poh! A Poh! Just a hasty shuffle of…
Rubber Tapping

Deli Planter by Kleian How many trees does each coolie now tap per day? Three hundred and fifty. Slightly less on the slopes. If they start here at half past five, they could be ready with the last tree by about half past nine. Then you give the signal for collection. The trees that were…
Salary

Kleian, Deli Planter Salary Mr. Van Berghe, twelve hundred guilders and forty cents. Rensema and Hartman still have to sign for receipt. And you, Mr. Reeder, how much do you need to pay out? Is your bill already at the office? Yes, Mr De Korte, please. Eighteen hundred guilders and fourteen cents. Seezoo. Now sit…