The Success Story of My Primary Schoolmate On 23 February,2011, we drove up Cameron Highlands, in a “Black Maria”, for a scenic tour of the highlands vegetable farm. Our drive up the highlands was one laced with mixed feelings of excitement and anxiousness as we trod gingerly along the bumpy and narrow winding road up the mountain. Helen, Leon’s wife, lamented regretfully that she should have stayed behind at a coffee shop, instead of coming along with us in a Land Rover and suffer the torment of the intense heat under the blazing sun and not to mention the bumpy ride.

True enough, Leon and I were thrown off our seats several times as the vehicle swayed from side to side as it made its way up the mountain. Our backs and buttocks ached. Kim Boon remarked jokingly that we should go for “alignment and tuning” at a massage parlour at the Brinchang town.

Our driver,Deng Zhang Quan[邓长权], was used to driving along the narrow stretch of the mountain trail as he had to go up the mountain daily to attend to his chores in his farm. He had little time to entertain our anxieties over our safety on the road. As an experienced driver, he could maneuver the blind corners and avoid oncoming vehicles with utmost skill and precision. The breathtaking journey to the vegetable farm took more than an hour. The farm was as vast as the eye could see. Cash crops liked tomatoes, spring onions and cabbage were grown in the farm. A number of Bangladeshi farmhands were seen working there. According to Deng, he had invested more than a million dollars over the years on this farming project. The expenditure includes: license to clear certain acreage of the virgin jungle, piping and generators for irrigation purposes, infrastructure for the green house and storeroom, immigrant labour cost and vehicles for transportation of the agricultural produce.

Deng’s success did not come easily. It took him over thirty years of blood, sweat and tears, to build up his agricultural business to what it is today.

Deng was born to a big family of fourteen siblings. His parents had to slog in a sugar cane plantation to feed all of them. They worked a hired plot of land just behind the Pai Teik Chinese Primary School of Nibong Tebal.

Deng did not pursue his secondary school education as he had to help his parents in the plantation. Later, he went to Pulau Pangkor to seek his fortune as an apprentice on a fishing boat. In the end he decided to settle down as a vegetable farmer in Cameron Highlands.

During the seventies and eighties, there were no such thing as immigrant workers to be hired to help at the farms. Well-to-do farmers could employ local Indians but not so for Deng. He had to toil the field all by himself with the help of his immediate family members.

Life as a vegetable farmer in Cameron Highlands in those days was not pleasant at all. The farmers had to toil from dawn to dusk,to clear the virgin jungles for farming. All their daily meals had to be taken in the farm on the mountain range. They only went home after sunset; it was a mundane lifestyle.

Entertainment for the inhabitants in Cameron Highlands at that time was rare and far in between. The number of Indians in Cameron Highlands who committed suicide was the highest in the country every year during that period. Although it was not proven, it could be attributed to boredom. The cheapest and most common form of entertainment for the Chinese farmers at that time was watching video tapes from Hong Kong production.

But Deng was no ordinary person like his counterparts in the neighbourhood. He did not waste his time watching video tapes. He wisely utilised much of his spare time reading Chinese literature to his command of the Chinese language. He wrote many short essays over the years and they were frequently featured in local Chinese newspapers. A collection of 100 poetry written by him for the Children were compiled and published in a book entitled ‘Paper Bird’ [纸鸟: 邓长权童诗100首]. Through sheer hard work and perseverance Deng has overcome his financial and academic shortcomings to become a successful entrepreneur in the agricultural industry as well as a renowned writer for the local Chinese media. Everyone especially the young can take a leaf out of Deng's book.