Renee Yeap (Singapore)
My grandmother is dead.
That was the first thing my father told me when I woke up on Sunday.
Singapore is about an eight-hour drive away from Sitiawan, Malaysia, where my grandmother had lived her whole life, so we never really knew each other well. To be honest, when I heard she had passed, I did not really grieve her death as much as I grieved for my father’s loss.
About a week later, my mother passed me a book. It was my grandmother’s diary, back from when she was my age, in 1970s Sitiawan.
***
Dear Diary,
Today after school I went out to play in the jungle. Ah Hui from next door came along with me. I heard she’s the first one in our village to go to university. Her mother, her Ah Ma, was really proud of her.
In the jungle, we have to be careful, stepping over the twisting roots of plant life, some large and thick like little fences, forcing you to step over them to get past, some small and inconspicuous, until they catch your foot and trip you. The leaves in the jungle look as if Mother Nature uses cookie cutters, tenderly cutting out leaves round and jagged, tiny like green beetles or large as umbrellas.
I breathed in the damp, cool air.
Suddenly, I felt Ah Hui nudge me. She was pointing to the ground a few metres away. At first, I didn’t see anything aside from plants, but then I discerned a little brown mass camouflaged against the muddy ground. It looked a bit like an anteater, but instead of fur, it had large, pointed scales all over its body. It reminded me of a tiled roof. It was no larger than a small dog, but was rather stocky, with a thick tail as long as the rest of its body.
“What’s that?” I whispered.
“It’s a Lah Lee. They're usually nocturnal, so we got lucky today.”
I scrutinised the creature, which seemed to be taking a peaceful amble, clumsily making its way through the foliage. I giggled. Its body and tail seemed too large for its little pointed face and petite clawed feet.
Then I noticed a little lump at the base of its tail. The lump moved and poked out its nose. It was a baby! It was clinging to its mother’s tail. How adorable!
Then I heard my Ah Ma calling me home for dinner. I could picture her at the front door, letting the wind carry her words to me through the trees.
I hope I’ll get to see the Lah Lee again.
***
I remember last year when my parents took me to the Singapore Zoo, I spotted a sculpture of the same curious little creature my grandmother had seen. I did not have a clever Ah Hui next to me, so I took out my phone.
Pangolins, sometimes called scaly anteaters, have a diet consisting of ants and termites. When threatened, a pangolin rolls up into a ball, its armour protecting it from the strongest bites. Despite their scales, pangolins are mammals, and their females usually give birth to one pup at a time. Their pups stay in burrows until they are ready to hitch a ride on their mothers.
My grandmother had seen a Sunda pangolin, Manis javanica, called a Lah Lee in the Kutien dialect, meaning ‘the hill-dwelling creature with carp scales’. It is native to Southeast Asia and calls Singapore its home too, in our remaining shreds of rainforest.
***
Dear Diary,
I pray to God for help.
I spent the whole morning in the jungle, trying to spot the Lah Lee again. Ah Hui told me that it was natural that I didn’t see the Lah Lee and her baby. She had probably climbed up a tree or gone back into her burrow.
I thought of the road nearby and the way people sped past on their bicycles… Would her scales be enough protection?
For dinner, my older brother, my Goa, cooked soup. Usually, he’s too tired from tapping rubber to cook, but today he said he wanted to make something special for us.
I ladled a bowl of soup for myself and gulped it down. I chewed the meat in it as well. It tasted like chicken.
“Muay, it tastes good, right?”
“Yes, Goa,” I said.
“It’s good for you too, especially when you have kids.”
Something was wrong. What was Goa talking about?
He continued, “It’s hard to find them, but today one walked right in front of me as I was coming home, so I picked it up.”
“Huh?”
“The Lah Lee had a baby, too bad it was too small to have good meat.”
“How did you prepare it?” Ah Ma asked enthusiastically.
“I just threw it into boiling water. Afterwards, the scales came off easily.”
Please help her spirit, God.
***
The pangolin sculpture at the zoo had a little slot for people to donate money. “Save The Pangolins” was written next to it.
I knew climate change was affecting many species, but why this one in particular? Such that it needed its own fundraising sculpture?
It turns out climate change is only one of the pots of boiling water the pangolins are being thrown into.
Pangolins are contenders for the world's most trafficked mammals. They are highly prized as a delicacy and their scales are touted as having medicinal value, believed to cure everything from low breast milk supply to cancer. Their instinct to curl up to protect themselves is effective even against lions but makes them easy targets for poachers, who can simply pick them up. The hunting of pangolins for its questionable medicinal uses has been documented in China as far back as 500 CE and the business flourishes today on the black market, particularly in Vietnam and China. In 2019, 11.9 tonnes of pangolin scales, priced at $48.6 million, were seized in Singapore. It was the result of the deaths of roughly 2000 pangolins.
***
Dear Diary,
I couldn’t sleep last night. I can’t believe Goa killed her! It’s sickening. I hope she and her baby know that I would rather have gone hungry than to…
As soon as I heard the rooster crow, I stumbled and crashed into the kitchen where Goa was eating breakfast.
“You shouldn’t have killed the Lah Lee. It was cruel,” I said as politely and respectfully as my seething self could.
Nearly choking on the rice in his mouth, Goa replied, “Hang on, are you trying to lecture your own Goa?”
He raised his eyebrows, daring me to defy traditional wisdom on respecting one’s elders. I was about to accept his challenge, but Ah Ma seemed to have some sixth sense telling her about her daughter’s insolence. She came into the kitchen and glared at us, asking what all the fuss was about.
But is it really making a fuss to stand up for what you believe is right?
When I told Ah Ma about the Lah Lee and her child, I could tell from her expression that it was a lost cause.
“You’re just a little kid, so you don’t understand. We feed and raise animals for killing. Don’t you love eating chicken?”
Goa chimed in, “That’s right. I killed the Lah Lee and its child so you and Ah Ma could have a good meal,” He could not stop himself from adding, “I guess my good intentions were wasted on you.”
That was what set me off. I protested, “It’s different! The Lah Lee is wild and rare. They’re peacocks, not chickens! Plus, Goa threw her into boiling water!”
Goa argued, “You can slit chickens’ necks, but Lah Lees have those scales, so you need to boil—”
“Shut up!” I cried, “Goa, promise me you’ll never kill one ever again. Please!”
Then Ah Ma grabbed my collar and dragged me out of the kitchen. There’s a Chinese saying that “beating is affection and scolding is love”, but all I could think about was how the Lah Lee Ah Ma trudged through the forest, letting her innocent little one ride on her tail.
***
Many poachers come from low-income families, poaching to make a living. The real profit only appears higher up in the black-market chain. An ideal solution is providing alternative job opportunities and educating poachers on pangolins’ ecological value. (Pangolins control the termite and ant populations, which also prevents pest damage to agriculture like rubber trees.) However, this requires a lot more financial support for the relatively unknown creature.
My father says he never knew his uncle. I wonder, what would I have done in my grandmother’s shoes? I wonder, if they had listened to each other, could my grandmother and her brother have reconciled?
Perhaps in another lifetime, born into a first-world country like Singapore and away from the pangolins’ rainforests, they would be in agreement. After all, they would simply need to slot their coins into a pangolin sculpture.
Renee Yeap is a Singaporean student who loves Literature and Biology in equal but different ways. She hopes to pursue both Life Sciences and Literature in university. Her secret ambition is to major in Chinese Studies but she is content with watching Chinese dramas in her spare time.