By Marlynda Meraw
SIMANGGANG, Feb 26: At the Tze Yin Khor Temple in Simanggang, there is one rule that surprises many visitors. Mediums are welcome in the streets. They are welcomed by crowds. But they are not allowed to step inside the temple grounds.
That rule has a story behind it. And like most good stories in Sarawak, it begins with something going terribly wrong.
To understand why the temple banned its mediums, one first needs to understand what a Jong Tai is, and how the name came to mean what it does today.
According to Simanggang Soon Heng Society secretary Goh Kaw Sze, the term originated from a famous Hakka medium active between the 1950s and 1960s. His name was Jong Tai, and his reputation travelled far beyond the town.
During Chap Goh Mei processions, crowds gathered not only for prayer but for spectacle. The medium displayed feats that blurred devotion and performance.
“The medium, he was strong. The parang (machete) couldn’t cut him, and he can jump from the shop to the temple. It was that far,” Goh shared with the D’Drift team.
Jong Tai became so celebrated that his name became synonymous to the role, and mediums across the region began to be called Jong Tai, regardless of who they were or where they came from. The title outlived the individual and took on a life of its own.
Goh shared that the temple’s ban traces back to an incident in 1975, when a drunken individual threw three small statues into the river. The statues represented Guanyin (Goddess of Mercy) and the attendants: Shancai (Child of Wealth) and Longnu (Dragon Girl).
In their desperation to find the statues, the temple committee did what was customary in those times: they consulted a medium. The Jong Tai they turned to delivered a firm and specific answer: the statues had been taken by someone to Sarikei.
The temple prepared itself for the journey. Arrangements were being made and plans were set in motion, when word arrived that an Iban man had found the statues upriver. Right there. Not in Sarikei and not taken by anyone. Simply lying by the riverbank, returned by the current, after they had been thrown in.
The medium’s prophecy had been entirely wrong and hisconfidence had sent them chasing in the wrong direction while the truth was considerably closer to home.
“This meant that the medium cannot be trusted,” Goh said, “so we banned them. Since then, our temple doesn’t allow mediums.”
Return of the Jong Tai
The ban held for years, with Chap Goh Mei processions continuing without a medium; dignified perhaps but noticeably quieter. Crowds still came, but something was missing.
It was around 1998, after Goh returned to Simanggang, that a committee member finally said what many had been thinking. The words were blunt and unapologetic: “Nadai Jong Tai, nadai rami.”—without a Jong Tai, there is no crowd.
People wanted to see the mediums. They always had. And so a compromise was reached: mediums could return to the procession, could walk the streets and draw their crowds, but they remained barred from entering the temple itself. The mistrust of mediums had not dissolved; it had simply found a more practical shape.
The Chap Goh Mei procession in Simanggang now is a vivid and diverse affair. The Jong Tai who participate are no longer exclusively Chinese.
“Now there’s so many Jong Tai, and the interesting thing is that some of the mediums aren’t even Chinese and some of the Jong Tai are not even Chinese. Our procession group is very diverse,” said Goh.
A dictionary written in secret
The story of Simanggang’s mediums is not the only remarkable thing to have come out of this town. Datuk Tan Chong Meng, now 84, carries a different kind of history. He produced what is believed to be the first Iban-to-Chinese dictionary, and he did it while in prison.
“I wrote this dictionary when I was in prison. I was imprisoned for a decade,” Tan told the D’Drift team.
Tan was arrested in 1961 for his involvement in a movement that sought Sarawak’s independence outside the formation of Malaysia.
During what would become a decade of incarceration, his brother-in-law managed to pass him an Iban-English dictionary. Tan used it as the foundation for something more ambitious: a conversion into Iban-Chinese, driven not by academic interest but by a genuine desire to communicate with and engage with the Iban communities around him.
The manuscript was completed inside those walls and secretly sent out. It was published in 1966. Decades later, in 2017, the dictionary was reprinted as a gesture of gratitude to Tan for his 38 years of service as president of the Simanggang Soon Heng Society.
It is a small, extraordinary book born out of confinement, and it says something profound about the need to connect with others even when surrounded by walls.
A river or a family’s quarrel?
Then there is the question of Simanggang’s name itself. Goh is generous with these kinds of stories, the ones that explain why a place is called what it is called.
One version he shares is a funny one. The name Simanggang, in this telling, is a fusion of two words from two different languages. Sǐ means “die” in Teochew, and maggang means “everyone” in Iban. Together: “everyone died.”
The story goes that two Chinese families lived beside the Simanggang River and quarrelled. A relative came looking for one family, asked the other where they had gone, and received the exasperated reply: sǐ maggang! (They all died!)
Whether the relative believed this is unclear. What is clear is that the name, in this version, is essentially a dramatic overstatement from a family feud.
The more grounded explanation is simpler: like Rajang, like Samarahan, Simanggang takes its name from the small river beside it. Most towns in Sarawak were named this way, after the water that shaped them.
“The method of naming things is based on what is around. For example, there is one place in Lubok Antu called Sibau Rebah because that is where the Sibau tree fell,” said Goh.
Goh also noted how some place names carry evidence of older migrations. Belawai, for instance, appears in more than one location in Sarawak. There is a Melaban in Lubok Antu and another in Samarahan. A Temudok exists in Saratok and another in Simanggang. The repeated names are traces of people who moved, brought their home names with them and set them down in new ground.
The road back
After the previous days of rain and dark skies, the sky over Simanggang broke open into something fierce and bright. Our D’Drift team made its way through the humid afternoon richer for having found Tan and Goh, two men who gave their time and their stories without hesitation.
There is something telling about the Chinese communities towards the central reaches of Sarawak, where it is entirely commonplace to hear someone switch from Chinese dialects into Iban mid-sentence.
Languages here have spent generations borrowing from one another, and the first Iban-Chinese dictionary was perhaps an early, deliberate expression of something that was already happening naturally.
This was the ninth day of our D’Drift journey and the end was drawing close, bringing with it the particular ache of a trip that has not yet finished telling you things. The day arrives without announcement. Nothing feels final yet, but there is a growing awareness that the time here is finite, making ordinary moments feel unexpectedly significant. – DayakDaily
