Glorious Melaka: Part One
To say that Melaka is amazing is to understate its impact. After nearly a week in Kuala Lumpur, with occasional excursions to Putrajaya, we were ready for an escape into an entirely different Malaysia. Not that Malaysia’s capital, or its ersatz capital, were unsatisfactory. Putrajaya is a marvel of a major planned city — a sort of Asian Brasilia, without Brasilia’s awful architecture and shoddy construction. Its glass and stone facades gleam in the tropical brilliance, and its clean, broad boulevards would be the pride of a latter-day Haussmann. Kuala Lumpur, for its part, is obviously older, but not old — its monumental architecture is a sort of mishmash of Brutalism with Islamic motifs, and the lovely Petronas Towers (far more lovely than the lamented World Trade Centers in New York City) are the magnificent exception to the aesthetic rule. Both cities are post-facto creations: meant for the seat of governance of a Malaysia, and before that a Malaya, already in being.
To see the Malaysia that came before, we traveled to Melaka.
The verdant landscape of southeast Asia in the rainy season rolled past us as we rode, passengers of a driver named Mior, for two hours from Kuala Lumpur to Melaka. Immediately outside the capital, the vegetation had the look of a plantation: thick trees in rows upon the hlls, ready for harvest — or perhaps, as this was Malaysia, tapping. Suburbs planted in the once-empty stretches between KL, Putrajaya, and the improbably named Cyberjaya dotted the roadside. But for the Malaysian flags and the odd architectural touches, they could have been faceless, nameless developments outside Miami. The middle classes, it seems, demand much the same of their living spaces the world over.
The changes as we approached the coast, and Melaka, were subtle. The vegetation changed from ordered to anarchic, till we were driving down a four-lane highway through what looked like deepest jungle. The infrastructure changed, too: the adequate drainage outside the government towns yielded to overflowing culverts, and as the rain hammered the landscape, we joined a line of vehicles careening through deep rushing torrents surging across the asphalt. Civilization began to reassert itself. The odd roadside shop appeared; a gas station; then a mall, seemingly stuck in the middle of nowhere, and advertising Islamic fashions. At once we were in a city — Melaka! — but there were the same concrete facades, and the same featureless shop fronts. From the window I watched in dismay, until –
– Mior swerved about a bend, and there we were at the foot of the hill that overlooked old Melaka. To our left, the 300-year old Christ Church. Upon the hill, the ruins of a 400-year old Dutch fort. To our right, across the river, the old city with its Chinese spires and temples. Before us, a full-scale replica of a Portuguese ship, just like the ones that cruised in to this harbor nearly 500 years ago. This was Melaka — or, should I say, Malacca — and this was what I came for.
Empire is an impolite word now, suggesting the subjugation of peoples and the crushing of liberties. Cities like Melaka and their historical memories are testament to empire’s beneficence, and indeed its glories. This old Malay sultanate was colonized by Chinese from Zheng He’s great fleet in the 15th century, who probably also brought Islam to the peninsula. Following the Chinese were the Portuguese, who lost the port to the Dutch in the following century — but not before planting there a community of Roman Catholics that survive today. They number in the thousands now, still call themselves Portuguese, look like Malays, and speak Kristang — Christian — a patois with Malay grammar and old Portuguese vocabulary. The Dutch presence was impermanent, and gave way to British rule as other Dutch outposts, among them Cape Town, were also falling under London’s protection from French revolutionary designs.
The result is Melaka now: a thriving, colorful, vivid city of many faiths. Within one square mile, one finds a Tamil Methodist parish, a Roman Catholic parish, an Anglican parish, multiple mosques, Hindu shrines, and more Buddhist temples than one can count. Quite nearly all races are there, and it’s a rare adult who is not trilingual. This is a fruit of empire — and it is to Malaysia’s credit that, in stark contrast to most other post-colonial states, it has seen fit to leave it undisturbed.
We parted ways with Mior and his cab, and vanished into the warren of streets, alleys, and byways of the old port….
To be continued in part two.
