Chapter 28: Sanggubal Part 1

  As I flew over Sanba Island, I immediately felt that thousands of branches of flowers were swaying in front of me, and the fragrance was rushing towards my nose.

  Zanzibar is famous for its cloves.

  Zanzibar, Pemba and the surrounding islands have a total area of less than 2,700 square kilometers, but there are 80,000 acres of land planted with cloves, with over 4.5 million clove trees.

  Clove trees bloom twice a year, and the oil extracted from their flower buds is fragrant and intoxicating. It's a precious spice. I've long been fascinated by this land known as the Spice Island. Now that my dream has finally come true, how can I not be enchanted?

  Unexpectedly, as soon as I got off the plane, Qu Hongxin, the company's representative who came to pick me up, said: "Ah, you've arrived a bit early, the lilac blossoms haven't bloomed yet!" He was probably afraid of disappointing me, so he quickly added: "There are countless trees, and flowers bloom at different times. Don't worry, you'll still be able to see the lilacs."

  I put down my luggage and went with Qu Hongxin to look for cloves.

  The car drove out of the city of Sanguibar, and soon saw a sea of trees on the side of the road that was endless, lush and misty.

  Is this really lilac? I can hardly believe it. In my memory, lilac wasn't like that.

  When the warm spring breeze arrives, in some parks and courtyards in Beijing, clusters of slender branches first produce light yellow-green buds, then burst forth with clusters of white-as-snow or purple-as-cloud flowers, elegant and fragrant.

  But before my eyes were tall and straight trees, with short branches bearing rows of elliptical leaves that shone with a glossy green color. They somewhat resembled the red date trees commonly found in northern China, sturdy and majestic.

  It turns out that the cloves in Zanzibar are evergreen trees of the Myrtaceae family, while the cloves in northern China are deciduous shrubs of the Oleaceae family.

  Same is cloves, different producing areas, varieties are vastly different, and naturally the style is also worlds apart.

  It's still early in the season, and the branches are hard to find. We walked back and forth in the vast forest for almost half a day before finding a few on the edge of the sunny area.

  I recall that our country's Song Dynasty poet Wei Xian once described the lilac flower as - cold, elegant, and strangely fragrant, with petals like pink gold cut from snow. But what I see here are small, pale purple or flesh-pink buds, resembling upside-down golden bells waiting to bloom.

  Three to five flowers cluster together, hiding among the dense branches and leaves, as if shy to be seen, with a subtle charm. When you get close and take a sniff, you can't smell any fragrance, but when you open the petals, you suddenly feel a faint scent floating out, gently and refreshingly filling your nostrils.

  There are many types of flowers in the world, some fragrant on the surface and others fragrant at heart. Although it is difficult to distinguish between high and low based on this, those that are fragrant but not showy seem to be more profound and distant.

  In our country, cloves are ornamental flowers and trees, while in Zanzibar, cloves are an economic crop. Clove seedlings are planted, and they bloom five or six years later, with two flowering seasons every year.

  When the flowers bloom, the tree is covered with red and purple dots, like a faint rainbow descending from the sky, presenting a hazy poetic beauty, drifting out a intoxicating and serene fragrance.

  Unfortunately, the affair of flowers is short-lived, beautiful scenery can't stay for long, fragrance can't linger.

  The clever and hardworking people of Sanggau pick the flower buds before they bloom to prevent them from scattering. A mature clove tree can produce 30-40 kilograms of dried flower buds per year after harvesting.

  The flower buds are green when immature, gradually turning bright red or golden yellow as they mature. After being picked and dried, they turn brown.

  The dried flower buds can be processed to extract essential oils. Essential oils are high-grade raw materials for making perfumes, candies, seasonings and cosmetics, and can also be used as medicines, used as local anesthetics, treating chest and abdominal distension and toothache.

  The unique economic value makes the clove tree called the money tree by locals, and the port of Zanzibar, which exports clove buds and clove oil, is also known as Hong Kong.

  Clove trees were originally planted in the Maluku Islands of northeastern Indonesia.

  According to records, as early as 200 BC, Javanese envoys visiting the Han Dynasty emperor in China carried cloves in their mouths, exhaling fragrant breath.

  In the early 17th century, the Dutch, who colonized Indonesia, monopolized the world's clove production.

  In the second half of the 18th century, the French smuggled clove trees to islands in the Indian Ocean such as Mauritius and Réunion for cultivation.

  In 1818, the Sultan of Oman, Seyyid Said, who ruled over Zanzibar, saw the great economic value of cloves and noticed that the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba had suitable climate and soil conditions, decided to introduce clove trees.

  At that time, most of the fertile land in Zanzibar was owned by Arab immigrants from Oman. The Sultan decreed that all landowners had to plant clove trees or face confiscation of their land.

  In less than thirty years, large-scale clove plantations were established on Zanzibar and Pemba islands.

  Sultan Said himself had 45 plantations and many of his princes, concubines and even some eunuchs also owned their own clove plantations.

  Cultivation, management and harvesting of lilacs require a lot of labor.

  At this time, Sultan Sayyid ignored the opposition from outside and continued to open slave markets in Zanzibar. If previous slave markets were mainly for selling black slaves to the Arabian Peninsula, India and European colonies on the Indian Ocean, then the current slave market sold a large number of slaves to local clove plantation owners.

  Every year, large numbers of black slaves were transported from Tanganyika on the African mainland, and even from Congo, Malawi, Uganda, etc., with a maximum of over 40,000 people per year.

  The Maruhubi Harbour in Zanzibar City, the capital of Zanzibar, is said to have transported over 100,000 slaves.

  After landing, the slaves were locked in a slave castle built with coral stones and chained to large iron rings fixed on the wall with iron chains to prevent escape.

  After visiting the Ding Xianglin, I visited this slave castle next to the dock. Several sections of broken walls are as thick as two feet. The iron rings are rusty and hang upside down on the wall.

  These bitter historical relics have become a powerful testament to the sinful slave trade of that year.

  Not far from this slave fort is an ancient Catholic church.

  The site of this sacred temple was once Zanzibar's largest slave market.

  At that time, there were rows of wooden stakes here, with high platforms built on them. Soldiers holding torches drove the slaves to this place, tied them tightly to the stakes, and then brutally flogged them with whips.

  Those who struggle hard show they are strong and healthy, making them good laborers who can be sold at a high price.

  The slave owner tied up the slaves he bought with iron chains and drove them to the clove plantation to do hard labor.

  Tens of thousands of slaves, regardless of wind and rain, toil in the plantation all year round. With their own sweat and blood, they watered the clove trees, making them lush and fragrant, year after year, their oil was squeezed dry.

  The slaves working in the cinnamon plantations experienced two liberations.

  Once in the late 19th century, slavery was forcibly abolished in Zanzibar, and most slaves became free men, no longer belonging to their slave owners. This was actually only a nominal liberation, because although the slaves gained the status of freemen, they still had to work on plantations due to lack of land, continuing to be economically exploited.

  Another liberation was in 1959. In January of that year, Zanzibar erupted into revolution and the Sultanate, representing Arab feudal lords, was overthrown.

  The new government then carried out land reform, and the vast number of landless or land-poor Africans received their due share of land. From then on, they grew cloves on their own land and sold the products to the state as required.

  In the early 1960s, Zanzibar's clove production reached a record high, with annual production rising from 12,000 tons to 20,000 tons, accounting for more than eighty percent of the national income.

  Zanzibar became the world's largest exporter of cloves at that time, and thus the Zanzibari people who were liberated politically and economically created a historical miracle.

  One afternoon, I strolled alone through the streets of Sanggau. Passing through narrow alleys paved with stone slabs, I came to a vacant lot.

  Under the scorching sun, a patch of bright red stuff was spread on the ground. A bare-chested old man stood beside it, stirring with a wooden stick.

  As I drew closer, I found that the bright red things were actually freshly picked jasmine buds, and the old man was drying them in the sun.

  The old man told me that his ancestors were slaves who planted cloves and he himself had worked as a helper in someone else's clove plantation.

  After the revolution succeeded, he had his own cinnamon tree, ending the long-term humiliation of being enslaved by others and becoming the master of cinnamon.

  He now has over 200 clove trees and can harvest nearly 10,000 kilograms of flower buds every year, earning a considerable income.

  I congratulated the old man after hearing, his face full of wrinkles from experiencing wind and rain relaxed, a pleased smile emerged. Was it pride? Was it happiness? I couldn't tell for a moment.

  I only feel that the bloody history of clove planting in Zanzibar has turned a new page. On this new page, the cloves are blooming like brocade, with branches and flowers being extremely beautiful and fragrant.

  Arrived in Zanzibar, as if entering a Muslim country.

  Women are all wrapped up while men, no matter how hot it is, will not wear shorts outside. This is in stark contrast to mainland Tanzania.

  The capital of Zanzibar is called Stone Town, which is simply an Arab world, with all the buildings in Arabic style.

  The most interesting thing is the winding alleys, crisscrossing each other, no different from a maze.

  In the narrowest alley, people in buildings on both sides can shake hands with each other, it's really intimate.

  "Chronicle" - "African Odyssey", author Xiao-Ming Shao.

  "Ying Mei, look, the young man has written quite well."

  "That's easy, one day when you meet the author, she can be considered your first fan."

  "You're confusing me, I don't seem to know this person, am I really getting old?"

  "It's really not, I don't see you as old at all." This is what Jingjing said, don't deny it.