The Scottish Banker of Surabaya - By Ian Hamilton Page 0,54
was a family name.”
“What happened then?”
“Suharto passed a law that forced all the Indo-Chinese to change their names to Indonesian ones. My family’s name became Supomo. When Sukarno replaced Suharto, the law was revoked but the name stuck, except for my older sister, who reclaimed our original family name. She’s a doctor here, Vivian Ho. She tried to talk me into changing mine back as well, except I had met John, and I liked the idea of being Fay Masterson,” she said. “Ava, are you married?”
“No.”
“Boyfriend?”
“No.”
“And you’re such a pretty woman.”
“I’m fussy.”
Fay nodded. “Me too. I waited for John, and then I made John wait as well. He’d been spoiled by too many women too willing to sleep with him. I made him chase me.”
She stopped the car in front of what looked like a colonial mansion. “This is the House of Sampoerna. The building was originally an orphanage, built in the 1800s. It was bought in the 1930s by Liem Seeng Tee and he turned it into a cigarette factory.”
“Chinese?”
“Yes, that’s why I brought you here. Sampoerna is now the name the family uses, but I prefer to think of it as ‘the House of Tee.’ It’s a great story.”
The house was part museum, part art gallery, and still functioning as a cigarette factory. Ava’s initial interest was the amazing story of Liem Seeng Tee. After his mother died in China, his father took their three young children to Indonesia, only to die soon after their arrival. Tee was adopted, given a rudimentary education, and then sent out to work. With a bicycle as his only asset, he proceeded to parlay that into a cigarette empire that was now, having passed from the family’s hands to Philip Morris, the fifth largest in the world. Smarts, sacrifice, hard work, long-term vision, total commitment, maybe a bit of luck. Those were the reasons for his success, and the reasons why nearly every economy in Southeast Asia — Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand included — was controlled by the Chinese. The house was portrayed as a living, working monument to the company he had built, but to Ava’s mind it was all about Tee.
“Have you ever smoked?” Fay asked when they got to the factory and looked out on several hundred people, mainly women, hand-rolling cigarettes.
“No.”
“Me neither, but I find this interesting all the same. They make Dji Sam Soe cigarettes here. They’re the most expensive and prestigious of all the kretek cigarettes. As you can see, they’re handmade. We can actually make one here. Want to give it a go?”
“Sure, why not,” she said.
The woman who instructed them was more than just hands-on. She had an encyclopedic knowledge of the blends that Tee had developed decades ago and still existed. Ava found the information she imparted on cloves particularly interesting. Who would have known that Zanzibar had the world’s best?
Ava dropped her crudely rolled attempt into a garbage can as they left the building. “That was fun. I just can’t help feeling a bit sorry that he felt he had to change his family name.”
“Well, at least he chose a good one. Sampoerna is the Indonesian word for ‘perfect.’”
“The House of Perfect . . . the Perfect House. How clever.”
They walked to the car. It was just past noon and the sun bore down on them. It had to be close to thirty degrees. Fay rolled down the windows while they waited for the air conditioning to kick in. “Is it always this hot?” Ava asked.
“Every day. I don’t think the temperature varies more than three or four degrees all year round. And we’re on the coast — it’s even warmer inland. The only variety we get in weather is rain. We’re still in the dry season, at the tail end of it actually. In the next few weeks the rains will kick in and then we’ll have the monsoons to contend with. I have to tell you, when John and I got married in Toronto, it was also September, and evidently fine weather for that time of year, but I almost froze to death. I can’t imagine how thin my blood is.”
Fay pulled out of the parking lot. “We’ll go down to the harbour. There’s a seafood restaurant there I really like.” She turned onto a road that was flanked on the right by a river. “The Kalimas — it runs down to the harbour and feeds into the Madura Strait. We’re still a major seaport, as you’ll see.”