"Malaysia, Truly Asia"

Once again, the Asia Pacific Studies capstone seminar has secured generous funding of nearly $30 000 for an overseas field school. This year, eleven students will be travelling with Program Director and Professor of Geography Rachel Silvey to Bandung, Indonesia for two weeks to learn about urban planning and other issues.

Although I’m not enrolled in the seminar, I will be joining the field school as one of the additional students. I will be blogging about our discoveries in Bandung. Before the field school begins on April 25, I decided to stopover in Malaysia for a week to visit my paternal grandmother.

I’m currently in a suburb of Kuala Lumpur, the capital and largest city in Malaysia. “Malaysia, Truly Asia” is the slogan of Malaysia’s tourism campaign. I find it amusing the way that various Asian destinations market themselves as “Asian” -- as if they could be anything else. Seoul has the rather cheesy slogan, “Seoul – Soul of Asia”, Hong Kong is “Asia’s World City”, and the countries of ASEAN (the Association of South East Asian Nations) have collectively marketed themselves as “Asia’s Perfect 10 Paradise”.

I’m not sure how to determine whether a place is more “Asian” than another, but Malaysia does have an incredible historical experience of integration. Southeast Asia sits at the crossroads of South Asia, which is dominated by India, and Northeast Asia, historically influenced by China. (These broad sweeping statements are sure to offend some people, so I apologize in advance in the name of simplicity. And yes, there were other important empires like the Mongols and the Mughal.) Present day India and China also do share a border but the presence of the Himalayas and the Tibetan plateau make it a difficult route. The preferred route – in fact, the most important shipping route in the world - is through the Straits of Malacca which are off the coast of west Malaysia. Malaysia lies both in imperial China’s traditional sphere of tributary states and within India’s historical cultural and religious influence. British colonialism and the accompanying migration of Indian civil servants and Chinese labourers created an ethnic make-up of 45% Malay locals, 38% Chinese and 10% Indians at independence in 1957.

Even though the ethnic make up today is Malay 50.4%, Chinese 23.7%, indigenous groups 11%, Indian 7.1%, Malaysia is often upheld as a model of ethnic and religious tolerance. The country is dotted with the minarets of Muslim mosques, Christian churches, and Buddhist, Taoist, Hindu and Sikh temples. Many people are trilingual, in fact, Malaysians often combine three languages into a single sentence when speaking casually. (More about this later).

What I think is most enjoyable is the unbelievable cuisine. Centuries of fusion have created food with a medley of rich flavours like no other – the best of Malay, southern Chinese and southern Indian dishes. It’s like more commonly recognized Indian and Chinese food but refined over centuries and expanded into a diversity of tastes. The diverse and fertile land and the British have left their legacy as well.

My seven days here promise to be a completely delectable odyssey. The delicious food combined with my grandmother make me feel somewhat like Hansel from the fairy tale Hansel and Gretel. I eat whenever I’m told to, rather than when I’m hungry. I’m constantly being offered something unavailable in Toronto. It turns out that Toronto with its multiculturalism does not have everything. So far I’ve had hot crispy crepes covered in sugared peanuts, barbecued chicken satay with peanut sauce, soft buns stuffed with a coconut spread, tiny sweet bananas (the more familiar Caribbean strand are less sweet and more dry), soft serve frozen yogurt, sticky yellow curry rice, sweet and spicy chips, and much more. Hunger promises to be an alien phenomenon.

While the national language is Malay – a significant portion of the populations speaks English as their first language. In addition, the ethnic minorities can choose to attend schools which feature Mandarin or Tamil. Just to make things more diverse – even within the Chinese and Indian ethnic groups a variety of dialects are spoken: Mandarin as the formal language but Cantonese, Hokkien/Fujianhua, Hakka, Fuzhou for the former, and Tamil, Telugu and Punjabi for the latter. This multilingual population often combines the languages within a conversation or a single sentence – which is a good expression of the multicultural integration that has occurred. Malaysia isn’t a federation of different groups within a larger state, the integration goes down to the neighbourhood level – although due to religious and linguistic differences, distinctions necessarily remain. However, I should mention that all Malays are considered to be Muslims and it is forbidden for them to convert from Islam. It is also a crime to proselytize - or try to convert Muslims.

I’m sorry that this blog post is informative rather than interesting. Malaysia has transformed economically over the past 50 years to become one of the second tier Asian miracles (the first tier includes South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong). Walking in a mall today past Starbucks, Guess, Clinique and other stories made me wonder whether I was in Malaysia or in Toronto. In every sense, I’m reminded what a consumer society Malaysia has become. The middle class is enormous – and for the most part, their parents were poor and uneducated. Today they own houses in suburban neighbourhoods, drive their 2.95 children to school in their cars, and watch cable tv in hundreds of channels.

Speaking of malls, I do have one item of personal interest to add. One of the funniest things I find about Asia – and this competes with the plethora of skin whitening products – are the Playboy stores. No, not adult novelty stores. In regular malls between Esprit and Nike, there are stores that are called “Playboy”, with the bunny logo. The word “Playboy” and the bunny are featured on a series of otherwise normal clothing. And people of all ages and backgrounds WEAR this – I assume without an idea of what connotations are attached to Playboy. To them, I suppose there is no difference between a Playboy t-shirt and an American Eagle one, but it’s still mind boggling.

For more information on Malaysia:
The brief overview in the CIA worldfactbook: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/my.html
More detailed statistics from the United Nations Human Development Index where Malaysia ranks 66 out of 182: http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/countries/country_fact_sheets/cty_fs_MYS.html
To read about India and China's historic spheres of influence: Jonathan Holslag, China and India: Prospects for Peace, Columbia University Press, 2009.