Minyak Tawon

Minyak Tawon is a rubbing oil from Makassar, an amber liquid in a small round-shouldered glass bottle with a red cap. The pink label is framed in blue and carries a blue bee between the words CAP and TAWON, with MINYAK GOSOK above it, the Chinese name 萬應莪朮油 across the top and PT Tawon Jaya Makassar beneath. Each bottle comes rolled in white paper printed with the same label and a size code, from CC (20ml) to GG (330ml). The oil is coconut oil blended with cajuput and citronella oils, ginger, turmeric, garlic, onion and other herbs, and is rubbed on aches, sprains, bites and a cold stomach.

Its maker was Lie A Liat, a Hakka herbalist from Huizhou in Guangdong, who opened a medicine shop called Boo Loeng on Makassar's Tempelstraat in 1912. Popular accounts date the oil itself to 6 December 1912. A history of Makassar's Chinese community, as summarised by IDN Times, puts the shop in 1912 and the oil some years later, known locally as 'Makassar-olie'. A brochure Lie printed in the 1930s said the oil had held a colonial licence since 1925, the date this catalogue uses.

Lie sold hard. His brochures were printed in Chinese, Malay and Bugis, he took a choir to the night markets, and in 1935 a Makassar newspaper reprinted a letter of recommendation from the head of the local Chinese chamber of commerce. The oil travelled inland across Sulawesi and by sea to Batavia and Surabaya.

The business stayed in the family. Lie's son Frans Bany Mattualy took it over, then his grandson Eddy Mattualy, and the name Minyak Gosok Cap Tawon was registered with the founding of PT Tawon Jaya Makassar in 1984. The oil is now made in a factory on the Makassar industrial estate, exported to Europe, America and Asia, and sold in London by Indonesian grocers. A stronger white-capped version is sold alongside it.