William Chong

I got to wander around the Kuching city streets on a wet afternoon. It’s nice to explore the city intimately, with a changed perspective from when you were a child. Of particular note is the Chinatown area, with its aged crumble-concrete shopfronts, the open-drainage smells mildly wafting amongst vendors selling sio-bi and bak kut teh, and the narrow potholed lanes, Chinese lanterns modestly strung across rooftops above.

Kuching’s demographics testify to one of Malaysia’s largest Chinese populations. In the centuries gone by, families from provinces like Hainan and Fujian would make the sometimes-treacherous seafaring journeys across the South China Sea to start new lives, new generations. Indeed, our grandparents made the same journey from China at the turn of the 20th century in search of employment, livelihood and perhaps a good bowl of kolo mee.

Here in Chinatown, men in singlets sit on plastic chairs, smoking and trailblazing through trays of Heineken. Opportunistic hawkers perch around the large 150-year-old Chinese temple that’s popular with tourists and worshippers alike. The quaint character of Chinatown is precariously balanced, however. The big luxury hotels, shopping centres and cineplexes are but a stone’s throw away. These tourist traps loom with high prices and snappier paint jobs – but for authenticity and history, Chinatown still captures the imagination.

This is my hometown.