Stories from Deli

The angry coolie

Dixon, 1913 The assistant, who had been working at that enterprise for years and whom the coolies had awe of, had all but one of the beds sown, and had given the tandil order to ensure that the next morning also the not yet according to instructions. Finished beds would be ready. The next morning,…
Deforestation

Lulofs, 1920s At five o’clock, while it was still dark, the ton-tong roused the coolies from their deep sleep. They awakened moaning and yawning, stretched themselves and scratched. During the night they had been bitten by bugs and mosquitoes. Some of them washed, bending over tins of water in front of the huts. Others merely …
Deforestation

Szekely, 1920s When we had traversed the lalang grass we reached the new clearing. Hundreds of axe-blows echoed through these wilds uninhabited by humans. The coolies, working as industriously as ants, lost themselves m the creeper thickets, and looked like dwarfs beside the hundred-metre high trees. In a dense network of lianas and climbing palms…
Shifting cultivation

Szekely, 1920s The Malays will clear a piece of forest, but the wood as best they can, build cages of palm leaves on long piles, plant rice in the soil just as it is, without ploughing or digging it up, and leave the rest to Tuan Allah. When the rice grows and ripens, they harvest…
Chinese workers

Szekely, 1920s The Chinese plant the tobacco and get their wages according to the results obtained. The Javans receive only a daily wage, they are not fitted to do the finer work. They have no ambition, and do not know the value of money. At home in their Java villages they did not have to…
Preman

Szekely, 1920s There is a great difference between one worker and another. The contract coolie, the so-called orang kontrak, who is imported from China or Java, hires himself out for years at a stretch, receives an advance, draws a cross under a piece of paper and, from then on, ceases to be a free man.…
Lim Ah Yung

From Tropical Fever by Laszlo Szekely. Lim Ah-Yung was busying himself on the edge of the forest showing the places where further seedbeds were to be made. “Ah-Yung! … Ah-Yungaaaa!! … ” I cried. “Hoy ! ” replied his strident voice. And he came hurriedly trotting up. A red thread was woven into his long…
Prince of Deli

Prins, 1910 Apie Prins (1885-1958) is the author of Ik ga m’n eige Baan (I’m going to do my own job, publisher De Bezige Bij, Amsterdam, 1958), an autobiography, an eventful account of a ‘grand and compelling life’ of his life in Deli). Prins was a translator, journalist, casual workman, explorer, peace activist, bohemian and…
Ah Seng, The Cook

Ah Seng, The Cook from Onze bedienden in Indië (1948) by Madelon Székely-Lulofs The utmost sobriety for a planter was achieved in the relationship with the Chinese cook. Anyone who wanted to get rid of all responsibility for the food took on a Chinese cook. He was not a boy, only a cook. He minded…
The Career of Chaw A Hjong

The Career of Chaw A Hjong is a short story written by László Székely, a Hungarian planter working in Deli in the 1920s. This is one of the few stories written by European on the life of a Chinese Coolie in Deli. László mainly described the idiosyncrasy of a Chinese worker, who happened to be…