|
     
A Quick
Walk Through History In Kuala Lumpur
On
31 August, Malaysia will celebrate Independence Day. In the 48 years
since the young nation gained its freedom from British rule, it has seen
tremendous changes, and on the eve of the country's greatest national
celebrations, there is no better way of
understanding the recent history of the nation than to walk around Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia's capital city and visit three places: Masjid Jamek, the Merdeka
Square, and the Petronas Twin Towers.
The Beginning
of a City
To start from the beginning, there is no better place to go in Kuala Lumpur than
Masjid Jamek, the city's oldest mosque, built in 1909 on a little jut of
land where the rivers Gombak
and Kelang meet. On Fridays, when the call to prayer sounds out, the mosque
becomes packed with worshippers, who often overflow into the street and to the
buildings nearly. A short walk around to the back of the mosque however, and a visitor will find
a grassy field running beside the river, overlooked by towering skyscrapers and
startling quiet after the roars of the street. Though it seems wildly
improbable, it was here on the banks of the river that the story of Kuala
Lumpur, and the Malaysian nation, began.
If visitors has seen the site barely a century and a half ago, they would have
seen a hugely different scene. The site on which the Masjid Jamek now sits was
once was the heart of a shantytown, muddy, sprawling and haphazard. The town had
been founded by a group 87 Chinese prospectors. It was that first group who
first built a collection of huts on the site, and who named the area Kuala
Lumpur, or muddy estuary in Malay. Unfortunately, all but 17 of the
prospectors died of malaria before a month was out, but other men soon arrived,
all of them Chinese peasants, who had risked the journey from China hoping to
make their fortunes in the newly opened tin mines. The miners kept the name
bequeathed by those first explorers and added to that first collection of huts,
building it first into a village, then a shantytown.
It might never have
been anything more it the British had not decided to chose Kuala Lumpur
as the site for their new administrative capital. In so doing, they began a long
period of colonial rule, which would alter the face of the country. Long after
the British had left, the consequences of their rule are still felt today.
Though most Malaysians are now two generations away from having known personally
what British rule was like, memories of that time are still strong, and there is
no more concrete reminder of that time than can be found in the area now known
as Merdeka Square.
The Heart of Colonial Rule
The most famous building in Merdeka Square is the graceful Moorish-style
structure now known as the Sultan Abdul Samad building. At the time of
its founding, it was known as the Colonial Secretariat, and was home to the
governing body which oversaw the administration of the British colony. The
building’s most famous feature is the clock tower in the middle, the designer’s
tribute to London’s Big Ben. Until the construction of the Petronas Twin Towers,
the Colonial Secretariat (which was renamed after Independence) was the most
famous landmark of Malaysia. Despite the building’s prominence and strategic
importance however, in most people’s minds today there is no greater symbol of
the British colonial period than the Royal Selangor Club directly across the
road.
If the Sultan Abdul Samad building represented the British administration, then
the Royal Selangor Club stood for imperialism itself, for colonial
society and its stratification of peoples into white and coloured, ruler and
ruled. The Club is a white-and-black Tudor style hall, and looks authentic
almost enough to make you say, ‘What ho, straight out of merry old England, old
chap!’. This was a whites-only club where, less than fifty years ago, gentlemen
whiled away the long afternoons playing cricket on the lawn, and ladies sat on
the veranda complaining about the heat, while local boys in tattered shorts
looked on from beyond the boundaries. Little wonder then that when the
increasing calls for independence were finally answered, it was on the lawn of
the Selangor Club that the populace gathered.
On 31 August 1957, as the clock tower in the Sultan Abdul Samad building struck
12:01 am, the Union Jack was lowered and a new flag was hoisted to take its
place, to mark the birth of the new Malaysian nation. The ceremony underscored
the most peaceful transition of power ever to take place in the British realm
and today, the tallest flagpole in the world commemorates the very spot
where that first national flag was raised. The area surrounding the Sultan Abdul
Samad building and the Royal Selangor Club was given the name Dataran Merdeka,
which means Independence Square, and since that time has been the site of the
annual National Day celebrations.
The Modern Nation
 Of course, since then Malaysia has moved on tremendously. In less than 40 years,
the nation has made a breathtaking transformation from a sleepy colonial
backwater into one of the most modern, forward-looking nations in the region.
Today, a visitor wanting to explore the modern face of the country need only go
to the Golden Triangle Area, K.L.'s leading business and commerce district.
There, surrounded by all the frenzied hustle and bustle of a city on the go, a
visitor can find the modern symbol of Malaysia, the Petronas Twin Towers.
Rising like sentinels above the surrounding buildings, the steel-and-glass Twin
Towers stand a colossal 451.9 metres high and is. With its striking
eight-pointed star floor plan, futuristic looks and prominent place in the city
skyline, the Towers are now the most famous landmark in the country, and serve
not only as the headquarters for one of the biggest companies in Malaysia, the
petroleum giant Petronas, but also as a statement of Malaysia’s sky high
ambitions for the coming years.
Today, the Twin Towers mark the unofficial
heart of the city, where its residents gather for any major event. The biggest
event of all is the annual Merdeka Day and New Year's Eve fireworks, when
huge crowds converge on the park adjacent to the Towers and wait for the
spectacle to begin. The Tower itself also plays a part in the celebrations: one
year, paragliders jumped off the towers as part of the show; another year,
parachutists.
The gleaming Twin Towers, with its modern steel and glass design, couldn’t be
more different from the studied classical grace of Merdeka Square. For all their
differences however, they are both significant for being essentially snapshots
of the country, each separated by the span of 48 years and marking the dramatic
changes that have taken over the country in the intervening years. Malaysia past
and Malaysia present; who knows what Malaysia future will look like?
Book Kuala Lumpur Hotels here
|