Laka Wood

15. LAKA-WOOD

Kiang-chon-hiang is also called tzi-tong-hiang or red vine incense.

It comes from:

• Sumatra: This is the best kind of the purity and strength of its fragrance.
• Java
• P’ong-fong
• all districts of:
  • Kuang-tung
  • Kuang-si.

Its aroma is strong and penetrating..

• It counteracts bad smells.

All Cantonese, rich or poor, burn this incense at the end of the year, as if they were making a sacrifice to Heaven.

Its price is very cheap.

16. MUSK-WOOD

Sho-hiang-mu comes from Guangzhou and Cambodia.

It is a tree which falls down from old age and sinks to the ground where it decays. This is the best variety.

Its fragrance slightly resembles musk.

The wood is called musk wood.

When fresh cut, it is of a strong and unpleasant odor. This is the inferior quality.

The Cantonese use this wood for making furniture resembling that made of rose-wood.

17. JACK-FRUIT

The po-lo-mi is of the size of a pumpkin. Its outer skin is covered with nodules like the hair on a Buddha’s head.

Its colour is green while growing, and turns yellow when ripe.

The pulp, when cut out of the fruit, is extremely sweet.

The tree resembles a banian, and the flowers grow in clusters.

When the flowers fall and theh fruit sets, only one develops. The rest shrivel up.

The po-lo-mi comes from Su-ki-tan. It is also found at Nam-hoi Temple in Canton.

18. ARECA-KUTS

Yu-yang-tsa-tsu, 18,8^ has the following on the jack-fruit= «The F’o-na-so tree grows ({jj) in also grows in Fu-lin, Po-ssii (Persia); it ^ where it is ^) ^[5 a-p’u-to (|J^ called °^ a-sa-to |J^ ^1 according to Pon-ts’au). The tree grows to 50 or 60 feet The bark is blueish-green. The leaves are very shiny, they do not wither in winter or 5 summer. The fruit does not come out of the flower, but proceeds from the stem of the tree, and nP ?lS high. is as large as a pumpkin. It has a husk enveloping pulp number of them. They have stems (;^)- Inside the yellow, which is excellent eating when roasted.)) See 10 P’ing-chou-k’o-t’an, 2,5* says: The ripe fruit call it like a is at the and on the husk are spines (^J)- The po-lo-mi. When pips there is a kernel like a chestnut and Hirth, J. A. 0. S., XXX, 24. «In front of the Nan-hai-miau (in Canton) there is a big also pumpkin, when opened its sections (J^) are properly prepared (lit. steeped) it is good to eat The Nan-hai (Nam-hoi • it, sweet and edible. The pips (inside the pulp) are as big as jujubes, and one fruit has a is Cantonese)-miau in Canton in is like bananas. (y^ ^ The tree. natives ‘pT ^^).» supposed to have been founded end of the sixth century A. D. The two jack-fruit trees in it were said to have been 15 planted during the Liang dynasty (A. D. 502—557), and are supposed to have been the ancestors of all the jack-fruit trees in the neighbourhood. See Kuang-tung-sin-yii (published in 1700), 6,7, At the present time the jack-fruit is found all over Kuang-tung, Hainan and southern Formosa. The image of the iirst propagator of the jack-fruit in China the native of the kingdom of Po-lo referred to previously is worshipped down to the present day in the Nam-hoi and 25,28, et seqq. — — 20 temple, where jack-fruit trees are 191, III, still grown. Notes and Queries on China and Japan, Concerning the origin of the Chinese name joo-Zo-mi for on the Chinese language, 437, phala II, 169, U. is inclined to think and mi may be the Chinese word fruit, it this fruit, Thos. Watters, Essays a mixed term, po-lo may be Sanskrit for for honey. This explanation appears to us a fairly 25 satisfactory one. The T’ang-shu, (A. D. 647) a mission Emperor with Populus alba, 30 possible that 2k po-lo

mentions that in the twenty-first year of the chong-Tcuan period

from Magadha (Central India) which came

Po-lo is, this particular viffi This tree, it is said, to the as noted previously, the Sanskrit one may have been Chinese court, presented the (y 7^ — but seems resembled a pai-yang tree word for «fruit)) a po-lo-mi or jack-fruit tree, if it not a pine-apple.

18. ARBCA-NUTS

The pin-lang comes from:

• North Vietnam
• the 4 districts of Hainan
• other countries

The tree resembles the coir-palm.

The fruit grows on the leaves, fastened to them in clusters, as on willow twigs. When gathered in the spring, it is called juan-pin-lang or «soft areca-nuts». They are commonly known as pin-lang-sien or fresh areca-nuts. It is then good to chew.

When gathered in the summer or the autumn and dried, it is called mi-pin-lang or rice areca-nuts.

Preserved in salt, it is called yen-pin-lang or «salted areca-nuts».

Small and pointed nuts are called ki-sin-pin-lang or «chicken heart areca-nuts», large and flat ones ta-fu-tzi or «big bellies».

When chewed, these nuts prevent eructation. In Sumatra, they make wine out of the juice.

The Customs at Canton and Guangzhou derive an annual revenue of several tens of thousands of strings of cash from the trade carried on in this product by foreign ships. But most of the product comes from Hai-nan. The fresh nuts and salted nuts come from there, whereas the ki-sin and the ta-fu-tzi varieties come mostly from thhe Philippines.

Notes. Pin-lang a transcription of the Malay is pinang. Nan-fang-ts’au-mu-chnang, China) and that comfit)). it is also De Candolle, caWei pin-mon-yau-tsim op. cit., 344 thinks author mentions betel-nuts in the first and of the Philippine islands He named says that (Ma-i). it name of the areca-palm (Areca catechu, L.) comes from Lin-i {mR &. Southern Indo- it {^S P^ ^S may be part of his “^g) <” «pin-mdn medicinal 15 indigenous to the Malay Peninsula. Our work as a product of Ooromandel, of calls (supra, p. 160) the betel-nuts He place yau-pin-lang or «medicinal areca-nutso. Hainan brought from the last mentions (supra, pp. 60, 78) wine made with areca-nuts as in use in Sumatra (San-fo-ts’i) and Java. 2) 20 This paragraph, as also that part of the last paragraph in quotation marks, are taken from Ling-wai-tai-ta, 8,3. The Pon-ts’au, 31,14—19, says the ta-fu-tzi is also called chu-pin-lang, apig betel-nut)).