New Year's in Malaysia: Cultures Pleasantly Mixing

Happy, happy new years! I love that phrase, it is one of those that I can only say in my head with a classic and hearty intention. Hope everyone had a wonderful night and an outstanding holiday season in general. Mu and I spent New Years in Georgetown on the Penang island in Malaysia, a city I had not heard of until a few weeks ago.

Despite its lack of infamy to us, the city proved to be a gem of a place. It is the site of the British landing into this part of the world. The landing, as many in the British colonial period, was via the sprawling East Indian Company. The East Indian Company took possession of Penang in 1786.

The East India Company and colonialism, in general, created a very problematic past and even a problematic present. As the legacy of colonialism's economic and political dominance (including a multitude of human rights abuses) trace forward to the present. And yet, one the threads through our travels is my love of faded colonial cities and architecture -- a shabby chic that excites me pretty much every time. Something about the dilapidated nature of these built environments hit my travel sweet spot.

We have gotten an up close and personal look at many regions and colonial approaches in the last 17 months. The French history in sub-Saharan Africa was pretty different than the Spanish in the Southern Cone in Chile and Argentina, for example. And yet there is an undeniable thread that ties together these old cities, even if they are thousands of miles apart. The city that most reminded me of Georgetown was Cartagena in Colombia. Both are tropical, sit on placid bodies of water, are very photogenic with narrow streets, have delicious street food, and let you pretend you have been transported back a few decades or centuries in time.

Pivoting from colonial times to modern Malaysia -- we had the unexpected pleasure of exploring Georgetown last night and today. It has been quite enjoyable being in Malaysia for a few days. It took a bit of thinking and speculating on our part before we hit on why we have enjoyed the being here so much. Our hypothesis? The diversity and harmony of the many cultures actively mixing in Malaysia.

Malaysia is a place that had much more diversity than I knew about. I guess there is a bit of an embarrassingly trend in this blog post that I did not know too much about the country until a few weeks ago.

The diversity is multi-dimensional, across ethnicity, language, food and religion. The most common groups are Malays (50% of the population on the peninsula where we are traveling), Chinese (28%) and North Indians (10%). This melting pot leads to religious iconography that draws from Islam, Hindu, Buddhism and Confucianism. Earlier today, we walked though a temple that was being used by both of the latter, with a throng of people celebrating the new year by paying homage to their beliefs. A similar mixing has taken place with the food as well, with a delicious mixing on display at the street food stands that serve up dinners at a ferocious clip.

Apparently, there are also some indigenous tribes in this part of Malaysia that are believed to have been in this part of the world for as long as 50k years. We have nor seen any noticeable signs of the "original people" or "orang asli" in Malay, but I will keep my eyes peeled.

It is refreshing to see this highly mixed and tolerant society in person. So many of the problems around the world can be traced to divisions along the same ethnic and religious differences found here. Yet here, the culture is better for the diversity, perhaps a model for those places in conflict.

 

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