A TALE OF TWO CITIES:
Jane Warwick is enlightened in Malacca and Kuching.
IT WAS the giraffe that really threw me. I was panning my camera across the kampungs and suddenly there it was, moving blurrily in and out of focus as my viewfinder also tried to make sense of the unexpected sight. Then all became clear and I was indeed eyeball-to-lens with a giraffe, no matter that it was concrete and cartoon-like. In the decade since I was last in the coastal Malaysian city of Malacca I was expecting some changes, but this was bewildering.
But then, I suppose, why not? Those gnomes that peer out of the shrubbery in New Zealand gardens are hardly traditional, so it is not unreasonable for the owner of a customary kampung (Malay house) to liven up their own garden with something exotic.
Malacca is a lot like that – a combination of the old, the new and slightly askew. It was a gentle little fishing village until, in the Middle Ages, the Majapahit Empire turfed Iskandar Shah, the last King of Singapore, out of his kingdom and across the Malacca Strait. His Royal Refugee-ness soon discovered that the wee village was most favourably and strategically placed if one wanted to take control of the busy strait. So that was the end of the quiet delights of a bach on the beach in Malacca for the locals and the beginning of a history of takeovers.
Iskandar established an international port with a reputation for fairness and reliability, and because it was so successful everyone wanted a crack at it. Along came a succession of corporate raiders: The Vietnamese, Chinese, Portuguese, Dutch, British and, finally, the Japanese. Although some of these takeovers involved incidents of extraordinary barbarity, it was the brutal Japanese occupation in World War II that the people of Malacca cannot bear to remember or bear to forget.
And, yet, in Malacca’s main square, the grandchildren of the war seem oblivious to the bayonetting of babies within living memory and have welcomed the Japanese back, in a way. Hello Kitty, heroine of popular Japanese culture, simpers ‘‘konnichiwa’’ or flirts ‘‘saikin do’’ to entice customers into a trishaw. The three-wheeled vehicles are garishly decorated to attract custom, some so wonderfully ghastly they’re glorious. Those featuring Hello Kitty were being admired by some trilling young Japanese who were equally oblivious, it seemed, to the bloody rampage their very near ancestors may have taken through these same streets. The new Japanese invaders are armed only with yen and goodwill and it was hard to know what to think about it all. But then, like the giraffe, why not?
It was revolting and yet I couldn’t stop staring at it.
Malacca has long had a reputation for tolerance.
I strolled along Harmony St (Jalan Tokong) past Cheng Hoon Teng Temple, the oldest Chinese temple in Malaysia; Sri Payyatha Vinayagar Moorthi Temple, the oldest Hindu temple in Malaysia; and Kampung Keling Mosque, built in 1868 although Islam predates both the other faiths in Malacca by a couple of centuries. The trio sit almost shoulder to shoulder and as I stepped back into the street, standing in front of the newer Xianglin Buddhist temple to observe the first three, a posse of young men came laughing around the corner. They couldn’t have timed it better; I almost felt like I had been set up. As they passed by they peeled off into their respective places of worship and there it was in eight pairs of Levis and eight pairs of popularly-branded sneakers – the tolerance that appears to be the essence of Malacca.
It was hot, and down by the river I ate a bowl of chendal, sweetcorn milk mixed with coconut milk, poured over ice and