SUMMARY:
- Melaka’s historic core extends well beyond Jonker Walk. A walk down Jalan Temenggong reveals a much more local side of the city, with traditional shops, markets, restaurants, religious communities and layers of surviving heritage architecture.
- Heritage preservation is more complicated than simply “fixing old buildings.” The same rules that protect historic buildings can also make their restoration extraordinarily expensive and difficult.
- One street can lead through centuries of history. The walk connects British colonial Melaka, the city’s Malay, Chinese, Indian and Sikh communities, the Japanese occupation, the Melaka Sultanate, and the enormous Chinese cemetery of Bukit China.
- The real discovery is Poh San Teng Temple and its tiny museum. Hidden behind the temple is an unusually informative exhibition about Bukit China, its tombs, Zheng He, the Chinese community and the efforts to preserve the hill as both a cemetery and a green space.
Looking Beyond Jonker Walk
Jonker Walk is famous for good reason. It is probably the first place most visitors associate with historic Melaka, and on Friday and Saturday nights the famous market turns it into one of the busiest parts of the city.
But there’s an interesting trap in visiting a historic city: once you’ve found the famous streets, it’s easy to assume you’ve found the historic city.
Jalan Temenggong is a good reminder that you haven’t.
Just a short walk from the main tourist area, the character changes noticeably. The streets become more local, the businesses less tourist-oriented, and the layers of everyday life become easier to see. There are banana-leaf restaurants, traditional shops, a wet market, small cafés, old shophouses and neighbourhood businesses that have little reason to exist specifically for tourists.
And that’s exactly what makes the street interesting.
The history isn’t confined to monuments. It’s still mixed into ordinary life.
A Street Where Different Melakas Overlap
One of the things I found most interesting about Jalan Temenggong was the mixture of cultures and time periods.
Malay, Chinese, Indian and Sikh influences are all visible along the route. Traditional five-foot ways and narrow shophouses sit alongside modern cafés. A wet market can be followed by a contemporary cheesecake shop. An old family business might be next door to a modern hotel.
You don’t have to visit a museum to see history here. You can simply walk down the street and look around.
Even the street’s names tell part of the story. Under British rule, different sections were known as Mill Road and Egerton Road. Today the road is Jalan Temenggong, a name connected not to a particular person but to a traditional Malay governmental title.
It’s a small detail, but that’s the kind of thing that makes walking through a city interesting to me. A street name that seems completely ordinary today can contain another layer of the city’s past.
What Happens When Heritage Becomes a Liability?
The old buildings along the street also raised a question that I hadn’t really thought about before.
Why do some supposedly important heritage buildings look as though nobody is maintaining them?
At first glance, it seems like an obvious problem. There’s an old building with peeling paint, damaged walls or a collapsing roof. Why not simply repair it?
But heritage preservation isn’t necessarily that simple.
Historic buildings were often constructed using materials and techniques that behave differently from modern construction. Using inappropriate modern materials can actually cause damage by trapping moisture or preventing the building from breathing properly.
And once a building is protected as heritage, the owner may not simply be able to replace everything with whatever modern materials happen to be cheapest and easiest to obtain.
So preservation creates a strange dilemma.
The rules exist to prevent historic buildings from being destroyed or modernized beyond recognition. But following those rules can make repairs substantially more expensive. At the same time, older family businesses may be disappearing as younger generations move elsewhere and have no interest in maintaining the property.
Tourism can help by bringing money into historic districts. But tourism can also change the very neighbourhood character that made those districts interesting in the first place.
There’s no simple solution here, which is probably why so many of these buildings sit somewhere between preservation and decay.
The Sikh History I Didn’t Know About
One of the unexpected discoveries along the way was the Sikh presence in Melaka.
Near the end of Jalan Temenggong is Gurdwara Sahib Melaka, and it turns out that the Sikh community has an interesting connection to the British colonial period.
The British brought Sikhs from Punjab into the region and incorporated many of them into the police and security forces. Over time, this helped establish a Sikh community in Melaka.
It’s another example of how the colonial period wasn’t simply a matter of British buildings and British administrators. Colonial Melaka also reshaped the city’s population, communities and institutions.
And this is exactly the sort of historical detail that can disappear when we reduce a city to its major tourist attractions.
A Forgotten Part of the War
Near the gurdwara is another unexpected reminder of Melaka’s history: a memorial to Chinese victims who died resisting the Japanese occupation during the Second World War.
It stands out immediately because it looks so different from many of the better-known monuments around Melaka.
That’s appropriate in a way.
When people talk about Melaka’s history, the usual sequence tends to be the Sultanate, the Portuguese, the Dutch and the British. The Japanese occupation can almost become an afterthought.
But it was a significant part of the city’s history, and this monument is a physical reminder of that period and of the people who died during it.
History doesn’t always survive in the form of grand buildings and famous names. Sometimes it’s a monument sitting quietly beside a busy road.
The Unexpected Museum Behind a Temple
For me, the biggest discovery of the whole walk came at Poh San Teng Temple.
From the outside, it isn’t necessarily the most spectacular Chinese temple in Melaka. It doesn’t need to be.
What makes it special is what is hidden behind the main temple building.
There’s a small museum devoted to the history of Bukit China and the surrounding area—and this was exactly the sort of thing I’ve often wished existed elsewhere in Melaka.
The exhibition explains the relationship between the temple and Bukit China, the history of the Chinese cemetery, the role of Kapitan Chua Su Cheong, the visits of Admiral Zheng He, the different styles of Chinese tombs and even specific historic graves.
Suddenly, the cemetery isn’t just a huge collection of unfamiliar tombstones.
You have some context.
You can see photographs and maps. You can learn what different tomb designs are called. You can identify some of the older graves. You can understand why the temple was established at the foot of the hill.
For someone like me who had already walked through Bukit China without really understanding what I was looking at, this was a revelation.
Bukit China: A Cemetery, a Park and a Green Lung
Bukit China itself is another example of how complicated the idea of heritage can become.
The hill contains an enormous number of Chinese graves, including very old tombs, and it has also become a substantial green space in the middle of modern Melaka.
The museum explains some of the history behind efforts to preserve the area, including the pressure created by the enormous potential value of the land.
That makes the present-day landscape particularly interesting.
What looks like a natural, heavily forested hill in the middle of the city wasn’t simply inevitable. The museum describes efforts to plant trees and beautify the area, helping transform it into the green space that exists today.
So Bukit China isn’t just a cemetery.
It’s simultaneously a historical site, a place of religious and cultural significance, a nature area and a piece of valuable urban real estate.
Those different values don’t always point in the same direction, which makes the story of preserving the hill considerably more interesting.
A Final Thought
One of the things I find most appealing about Melaka is that the history doesn’t seem to exist in neat, separate chapters.
The Sultanate overlaps with the Chinese community. The Chinese community overlaps with Zheng He’s voyages. The British period brought new communities into the city. The Japanese occupation left another layer behind. Historic buildings became modern businesses. Ancient tombs now sit inside a green urban park.
And you can encounter all of those layers in the course of one afternoon.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Good morning and welcome back to Planet Doug and welcome back to the historic city of Melaka, Malaysia. And of course, I’m joking with the title. I don’t seriously mean skip Jonker Walk and come here instead, but the basic idea is that if you’re a visitor to Melaka, of course, you’re going to go to Jonker Walk. You’ll probably go there during the day. Think about the history and then the buildings. You get a nice clear visual of them in daylight. And then if you’re lucky enough to be here Friday or Saturday night, you’re going to go to Jonker Walk and experience the night market. But there’s a lot more to Melaka than just those streets. And today I’m going to go for a walk down a street that I find really, really interesting.
Of course, I’m standing on a bridge over the river right now. There’s the Melaka River. Jonker Walk is right there. You can actually see the main bridge, the one where it says Melaka 2026. That is Jonker Walk right there. So, it isn’t very far to get from there to where I’m going to go today. You just have to basically walk down the street, come to this little India park. And the street I’m going to walk down today is this one. And in modern times, it’s called Jalan Temenggong. I have a heck of a time with the rhythm of even the simplest Malay names, but I think it’s something like that. Jalan Temenggong. And of course, it had other names under the British that I’ll talk about in a minute. And I was going to toss in a Google Maps street view for you or Google Maps satellite view just to get you oriented, but we’ve got a tourism map right here. So maybe I will use this instead.
So basically what I’ve been talking about is that over here is the main zone of Melaka for tourists today. This is Jonker Walk right there. Harmony Street with all the temples and mosques on it. The historic Heeren Street which is called Jalan Tun Tan Cheng Lock today. So this is the main tourist area and then the fortress of Melaka was here basically going around in a circle coming back to this point right here. But there’s this whole other area essentially north of the fortress which has in my mind has some historic significance. So these streets here going sort of parallel to the river were sort of main arteries from the countryside leading into the historic city of Melaka going in. And the street I want to walk along today is this one, Jalan Temenggong. And it has its own history and it ends somewhere very interesting, but I will keep that as a surprise.
All right, let’s head off on this walk. Beautiful day here in Melaka. And to be honest, I almost picked this street at random. It’s just that this is the street at Jalan Bunga Raya where my hostel is located. It is equally as interesting. If you wanted to choose a more local street to walk down, you go down Jonker Walk, get the tourist sort of flavor and you want something a little bit more local, yeah, you could pick Jalan Bunga Raya. That would be just as interesting as where I’m going today. But I’ve already walked up and down that street a lot. And right beside it is the main street of Little India. That would also be fascinating to walk along a lot of history. But I’ve already gone up and down that street quite a few times. And this street, which I’d kind of ignored until quite recently, came as a very interesting, a very pleasant surprise. So this is where I am going.
And it had two different names under the British as far as I can remember. By the way, I should put in a disclaimer here. I’m not making this video like a fully informed historian. Don’t expect a video that’s going to give you exact facts and figures and a curated tour of all of the main sites of interest. Basically, I did a little bit of reading online, just a little bit of scanning the internet, and I have a general idea of a few things. So, I’ll bring those up as I walk along. But if you want to know more than that, you’re going to have to do your own research, then be your own Melaka historian. Don’t take what I’m saying as fact or even complete. These are just the ramblings here on Planet Doug based on some casual reading.
But I was going to say that I read that this street used to have two names under the British. And this first section was called Mill Road. And you can see there’s even a hotel there. Hotel Mill Road. So there is evidence that I’m not completely wrong about that. That the old name under the British was Mill Road. And I read that that name came about because there was a rice mill here, a big rice mill. I don’t know whether the building exists anymore. I don’t think it does, but that’s where the name came from. Again, disclaimer, according to what I read, and I think by walking down Temenggong, you can get a real sense of the mix of local cultures, the Malay, Indian, Chinese, and Sikh, which is a very interesting part of this street. And it stands out for me distinct from Jonker Walk because you will get all kinds of little restaurants and cafes along this street as well. But I think they have a little bit more of a local flavor. Places that are used by local people and not so much by tourists. So one of the very first places you walk by here is like this little banana leaf restaurant. That would be a great place to stop for a meal. Again, very local.
And you can see the historic the traditional five-foot way, you know, the covered sidewalk.
I did read that there were 82 heritage buildings here. So, as you walk along and if you got a sharp eye and you’re a bit of a photographer, videographer, yeah, you’re going to find all kinds of incredible scenes that you could photograph down this street as well. I love buildings like this with the, you know, the roof structure. That would be an amazing photograph if you know what you’re doing with your camera.
Something that struck me when I was walking down this street the first time and looking at all of this and all the heritage buildings. I mean, you do notice that so many of them and they seem like such a valuable and such an important part of history are falling apart, right? Like this one right here. Obviously, the entire you can see through the window the roof has been torn all to pieces. It’s almost like an abandoned building, which seems like something of a shame. But yeah, you can leave from the main street as well and then come back into these back streets and find all kinds of interesting things. There’s a whole neighborhood back here that I’ve explored earlier, which is quite interesting. But yeah, so you can see this building here. And I started thinking about these heritage buildings and like are they going to be lost to history? Like this is still standing, but what is going to happen to it in the future? Like are all of these old buildings that look abandoned, are they going to be torn down? Are they going to be lost to history? Cuz it would cost a fortune to restore this to whatever it was originally, right?
So I did a little bit of research into that topic in general and again I have no idea what I’m talking about but I was reading up on these concepts that I never thought about before that if you have 82 heritage buildings like designated by UNESCO as a heritage building well that means there are certain rules about what you can and can’t do. So, even if you wanted to repair or restore one of these, like here’s a wall that you know the brick has been exposed and if you wanted to repair that, you can’t, as far as I understand it, you can’t just go down to the local hardware store, pick up the cheapest modern plaster you can find, and slap it on there. For one thing, it won’t work. I was reading that the old style of construction has certain characteristics in terms of moisture and air and water going through it. And if you really want to repair it, you have to use the original material. I think I read something like if you slap on modern materials, it would be like completely waterproof. They don’t breathe at all and then whatever’s on the inside will stay damp and start to rot. So you have to use original material because it works better. It fits the environment. But this original material is much more expensive, much more difficult to get. So that is why you might have a lot of these very important heritage buildings that look like nobody’s taking care of them. And to an extent that is true because they’ll leave the outside without repairing it because it is so expensive and so difficult to maintain it and repair it following the guidelines of it being a heritage site. If that makes any sense.
A fascinating mix of the new and the old, the different cultures. You know, you’ve got a place there. Get yourself a haircut. A mutton stall restaurant right there. That looks like a great place to have a meal. And then as a tourist, yeah, I mean, you get this incredible visual here. An older building again falling apart. And I read that heritage buildings are difficult these days because of yeah, financial pressures where young people are leaving. So these might be family-owned houses and businesses and the older generation is aging out. They’re not maintaining it and running the business anymore, but their children don’t want to stay and keep the old family business running. They’re all moving to the big city and getting different jobs. So that is I guess where tourism like on Jonker Walk comes to the rescue because suddenly there’s money coming in and you can use the money from tourism to maintain the building.
And there are places to stay out here. This is the Sterling and as far as I know yeah it’s still open. I think the main entrance to the Sterling is back there. A bit more of a higher-end, upper class, more expensive place to stay. And then I noticed right here there was a sign for a little boutiquey kind of place. There’s a hotel right here. Stay at it says on the front door. The Taylor shop.
Madras Cafe here on the corner. Another local restaurant worth checking out. Yeah. And if you slow down and look around, I mean, look at that architecture right there. The history on display. The Upper. It says on that sign there. I don’t know anything about it, but it’s Oh, it’s called The Upper. That’s the modern name of the business running there. And over here, I remember looking into this place, A&H House Hotel. Again, you’re in a heritage building that would have a lot of interesting atmosphere as a place to stay. Another side street, very interesting architecture.
I mentioned that this road under the British had two names. And Mill Road was starting at the bridge. Well, not really at the bridge, but at Little India Park to here was Mill Road. And I think here I think this is Jalan Bukit Cina and or Lorong Bukit Cina. This street here. And after this street, it changes or did change to Edgerton Road. And we can see the history of that name here. My filming it isn’t all that easy with the traffic pressures of Melaka very busy all the time. I’m just trying to keep an eye on cars so I don’t get hit here. But right here you can see the new name Jalan Temenggong and the old name Edgerton Road right there. So there’s a little piece of the history.
And not surprisingly Edgerton was the name of a British colonial administrator. It was named after him and I believe the modern the Malay name Temenggong. It’s not the name of a person but it’s actually the title of a government administrator. So like if you work for the government and you have a certain rank Temenggong is a type of office that a person might hold, not the name of a specific person. I love the look of these local shops. Of course, we got the Melaka monster on the sign, but Melaka doesn’t have anything to do with this place other than helping pay for the sign. But yeah, it’s just got a local flavor to the shop. You can imagine the kids grabbing some candy here on their way home from school. Locals grabbing their newspaper. I find that kind of interesting. A lot of these local shops in this neighborhood still sell newspapers out on the street like this. And they’re basically drive-through convenience stores. I think that’s how they’re still managing to compete with 7-Eleven. I’ve noticed that they’re set up specifically so that someone driving doesn’t even have to get out of their car. They just pull over, roll down their window, and they buy the paper, bread, whatever it is they want to get. And that’s how they’re competing with 7-Eleven. And then local men can grab their newspaper here and then walk across to that little shop there, have their morning breakfast, coffee, whatever they want.
And if you found yourself staying at a little hotel in this neighborhood, yeah, you’d probably quickly adapt to the rhythms of this neighborhood and realize when these places open, when they close. I mean, you could spend a long time here just checking out all the local restaurants. And we’ve got this market building right here. The other times that I’ve walked down this street, the market was closed, so I didn’t get a chance to go inside. So, let’s do that now. Just take a quick look.
It’s probably yeah, traditional older market. You’ve always got the wet market, which is usually open earlier in the morning. Fish and meat cut up and for sale there and then produce. But yeah, check this place out. You do not get any more local than this, do you?
You always have to watch where you’re walking in a market like this. There’s a lot of puddles.
Yeah.
Yeah. Smells very much like a fish market. It’s got that fish odor.
Time to head out of the market building. The heat in here defeated both me and my GoPro. Sweating from just a couple of minutes in here and my GoPro quickly shut down from the heat. I had to sit there for a while and waiting until it recovered, cool down enough until I can turn it back on.
And this little shop is connected to the market just on the outside. But yeah, just has such a local traditional feeling to it. Very distinct from bustling Jonker Walk. As you can see.
Something I found quite interesting about this street and quite appealing is the combination. I mentioned all the different cultures mixed together, but also time periods because I’m talking about all of the older traditional things, but mixed in is some more modern places. So you could come here as a tourist in Melaka and you can get both. What I mean by that is we just walked through the fish market and right across the road got a place here called Treats Basque Burnt Cheesecake. So you can get your taste of a cheesecake and probably good coffee here.
The rooftop here like that second floor that really caught my eye when I’ve walked down this street. You can see very, very reminiscent of the shophouses on Heeren Street. Heerenstraat, the big wooden shutters, a long sort of narrow tunnel house as I called them, and following the shape of the house here. Yeah, it looks like they have the classic open courtyard with air wells here in the middle. You can see where the rooftop goes up and then down again. There’s probably air well, open courtyard.
And this is kind of what I was talking about. You look at one of these windows and the shutters, the fact that, you know, it’s not painted at all and you’d think, well, what would be so hard about, you know, fixing up those shutters, putting on a new coat of paint, something like that. But there could be a restriction there that you can’t just repair the shutters any way you want. Slap on some modern shutters that you bought at Walmart, put some paint on it, that you bought across the road at Jotun Nippon Paint or something, you may have to use period wood and a certain type of paint. I don’t know. I’m just sort of speculating about that. But I think maintaining one of these heritage buildings, it’s not as easy as just doing whatever you want to do to your, you know, suburban home.
And when I came across the information that Mill Road got that name because of a rice mill, I also saw some speculation online that the name came from not just the rice mill, but that there were also spice mills up and down this street as well. And I don’t know how true that is, but I just spotted I heard a grinding sound and I looked across the road and look at that. The Melaka electric flour mill.
Looks like it has some history and looks like they grind up fresh corn maybe. I don’t know what that Yeah, maybe it’s for wheat. Wheat and corn, spices, all different things.
I love the handwritten sign listing all the different products and then they have a English translation over here. Well, not well, kind of. No, Malay, right? So, this is all Malay. At first I thought it was English because I saw things like chili, like sabok chili.
If you want your spices really, really fresh, very local, very traditional, looks like this is the place to come.
Very interesting. Across the road. I just noticed this building here, Pharmacy Straits down on the bottom and then the upper floor, newly painted, a bit brighter colors, but again, yeah, it looks like a traditional shophouse. Very similar to what you would see on Heeren Street. Still, I’m having such a struggle going back and forth across the road, paying attention to my GoPro, and nearly getting run over. But yeah, you can see how long and thin this house is. And it looks like it has the classic air wells and open courtyards. And the surprise that I mentioned is actually not a surprise at all that at the end of the street, I mean, if you wanted to come down here and walk down this street, as I recommend, you get at the very end of it all kinds of interesting things to check out, such as Bukit China, the big Chinese cemetery, which according to everything I’ve read, the largest in the world outside of China itself. It’s fascinating place to visit. And in this part of the street, you’re in a Sikh community as well. And right up ahead here on the right is a Gurdwara, a Sikh house of worship. And that came as quite a surprise to me as well. And I noticed that a lot of the men up and down this street were Sikh. So I did a little bit of reading about that and it turns out the origins of this Gurdwara I think I have the name correct and the Sikh community is that under the British they brought in a lot of Sikhs I believe from Punjab and they were incorporated into the British police force. So they were brought in as police and security and that was the origin of the Sikh community here in Melaka. And right here on the right is the Gurdwara that I mentioned a Sikh house of worship. And I’m not really well I’m hardly familiar at all with these. I’ve been aware of them in my lifetime of course and I you know I know that they’re Sikh and I know the basics about Sikhism but I don’t have a lot of detailed information. There’s the name of it Gurdwara Sahib Melaka.
And of course there are rules for visitors. You have to cover your head when you go in. No smoking, no liquor, no meat, that sort of thing. But yeah, you can see it’s a large community, big open area, big parking area. And there’s the Gurdwara Sahib Melaka, a unique part of Melaka. Another reason to come explore this street after you explore Jonker Walk.
And as a reward for walking all this way in the hot sun, if you haven’t already rewarded yourself with a cheesecake and things like that, you get to visit a nice cluster of interesting historical places right here. So, since I’m here, I’m going to take you across with my GoPro, and we’ll check this place out as well. Of course, it’s not going to be easy getting across the street. I think I’m going to head this way. This looks like the easiest place to do it. Just to keep you oriented. That’s just where we came from, the end of the street that we just walked along. And there’s the Gurdwara right there. You got to fight your way over this traffic circle. And then you come to this very unusual and very interesting memorial.
So, it’s worth coming here because it gives you a glimpse into another side of Melaka and Malaysian history that you might not have been aware of. And if you’re looking at that memorial, you might be wondering, well, what is that all about? Because it definitely looks unusual. It’s unlike anything you’ll see in Melaka. And the reason for that is because here’s the story of this place. It is a monument to the Chinese victims of anti-Japanese occupation. And what I like is they don’t just say Chinese victims of Japanese occupation. It’s these are this is a memorial to the people who were fighting against the Japanese occupation. So in memory of the Chinese victims of anti-Japanese occupation in Melaka during the Second World War, this monument was constructed in 1948 and remains as a historical relic for over 40 years. And I guess it underwent major repairs in 1972. So I think you can tell yourself that just at a glance this is quite unusual. Very different in style, coloring, and look to any other monument that you might see in Melaka, which is fitting for a monument to sort of a forgotten piece of history perhaps in Malaysia as you talk about the Melaka Sultanate and the Portuguese, the Dutch, the British, and you go through all of that history and then almost as an afterthought, it’s like, oh yeah, the Japanese occupied Melaka for a good chunk of World War II. And that’s another part of history to be aware of. And this monument can help you do that.
And speaking of all that history I just mentioned, there is another very important part of it right beside this memorial that is definitely worth checking out. And it’s just on the other side of this wall. And that is the Hang Li Poh Well, I think it is called. So, let’s walk over there and check out the well. Like everything else in Melaka, it has like three different names. So, every time I try to call something by its name, I get confused. I don’t know which name to pick and I always come up with the I end up mixing them all together or something like that. But, yeah, very interesting. Well, goes all the way back in history to the Melaka Sultanate. I believe they’ve turned this into quite a nice park right beside the temple that we’re going to visit next. And you can see the well has this wall around it. Very large well as befitting one with such a long history. And before my GoPro overheats and shuts down again, it’s almost impossible to keep the GoPro running right now because of such a hot day. But anyway, the King’s Well, also known as the Hang Li Poh Well, was built a long time ago, ordered to be built by Sultan Mansur Shah 1458 to 1477. So this well dates all the way back to the height of the Melaka Sultanate. And according to this story, it was dug for the exclusive use of his wife Hang Li Poh who came from China. And the legend is that the well never dries up even during a drought. And then there’s all these stories over history of say the Johor warriors poisoning the well in 1511, killing many Portuguese and the Dutch also poisoned the well. The Acehnese did the same. And when the Dutch realized how important the well was, they built this wall around it, kind of like a small fort complete with cannons and a guard house. And the sign goes on to say that over time the guard house, the fort, the walls, and the well were abandoned. So everything kind of became dilapidated. So you don’t really see the full guarding walls and the cannon anymore. But you can see Yeah. Very important well and very well protected inside these walls. And the legend is if you drink the water from this well, it means that you will definitely come back to Melaka. I read that as well.
A big part of the surprise at the end of that street, your reward for walking all the way here in the hot sun is this temple, which I think I can safely say is one of the one of the hidden gems of Melaka. And I say that for one particular reason that I’ll show you in a minute. So this is the name of the temple you’ll find on Google Maps. If you want to come out here. Poh San Teng Temple. And I think it’s safe to say it’s not one of the most elaborate Chinese temples you’ll see. It’s not one of the oldest. It doesn’t have any of those credits. But what I find fascinating about this place is its history. And the basic idea again as far as I read is that this temple is tightly connected to Bukit China the Chinese cemetery on the hill because and we’ll read about it more on the inside. So moving inside the temple. So this is the main temple out here. Very familiar to anyone who has visited similar temples in the past. But what makes this a hidden gem for me and a very special place is through this door in the back, you find a place that very few people know about. And it’s like it was built specifically for me on Planet Doug because it is essentially a museum. And this museum back here very well done gives the full history of Bukit China, the cemetery and the temple. So check this out. I mean, how many places have I visited in Malaysia, in Melaka where I wish there was more information? In fact, I just shot an entire video only about that. But check this out. A temple at the base of the largest Chinese cemetery in the world outside of China. And there’s all this information about it, all beautifully laid out in Malay, probably Chinese and English. It’s just amazing. It’s very rare to find something like this. So you can start right here at this really nice poster that gives the history basically as I was trying to tell it to you. Bukit China the cemetery is the final resting place for many mainland Chinese who braved the seas to seek their fortune in Melaka. As many of the dead did not have relatives in Melaka, Kapitan Chua Su Cheong decided to build Poh San Teng Temple in 1795 at the foot of Bukit China to pray for the dead. That I mean that is just such a fascinating story. And this man, he was the Kapitan of the Chinese community back in 1795. And that was part of the Dutch system of Kapitans. Each of the big communities in Melaka had a Kapitan that was in charge of that community. And here is a very familiar figure if you’ve watched my videos or spent time in Melaka. That is a statue of Zheng He. And we get his story here. And why is he here in the museum here at this temple? Well, Admiral Zheng He 1371 to 1433. He was the admiral of the huge Ming Dynasty fleet with all of its treasure ships. And he went out on seven major expeditions. And he stopped in Melaka five times between 1405 to 1433 and they would have to come here all the ships to wait out the monsoons and wait for favorable weather to continue their journey and then it’s generally believed that Admiral Zheng He stationed his army here at Bukit China and his troops dug several wells at the foothill for a fresh water supply. So since then this hill and the surrounding settlement became known as Bukit China hill. Local Chinese community however referred to the hill as Sam Po Hill. That confused me for a long time but of course Sam Po is the other name of Admiral Zheng He. So that that’s why this temple is connected so strongly with the story of Zheng He. So you get all of that amazing information, but then you also get much more about the cemetery itself. So there’s a beautiful view of the whole cemetery. And I came up here before understanding very little of the place, but I ended up walking around the entire thing in a big loop and then coming all the way back to the beginning. Yeah, it’s a beautiful walk. Really interesting to do if you can take the heat. And there are even more connections than I was aware of. It turns out that this temple and Bukit China are technically owned by the Cheng Hoon Teng Temple which is on Harmony Street in you know downtown Melaka. And of course Cheng Hoon Teng is the oldest Chinese temple in Malaysia.
And I remember when I walked through the cemetery myself, I was kind of sad that I didn’t know anything about it. Like I saw all of these tombstones and I had no idea what any of them were about, who was buried there, how old they were. Had I known, I didn’t even know about it back then. Had I known this museum existed, I could have gotten some information. So here is a sign all about specific tombs dating from the Ming Dynasty period. So these would have been very very old tombs.
And then it looks like they were restored recently. And you can also read more about the Melaka Warrior Monument. There’s additional information here that I wasn’t aware of. And it says that the monument was built to honor 1,000 people who died fighting against the Japanese who occupied Melaka. And it says that their remains are like many of the remains of these people is buried at this site of that monument that we just looked at. I wasn’t aware of that either. And you get some great photographs here of the opening ceremonies for the monument. Really interesting look into history.
And a last part of the history that I didn’t know is detailed over here. So there’s another really great map of the cemetery, Bukit China. So if you’re going to go walking around the cemetery, definitely come here first. And then they have a list of a lot more of the tombs. So you can make note of all of these and then you’ll see them in the cemetery and you’ll understand them a bit better. But the story that it tells here is quite a fascinating one. And when you think about it, it makes sense that there would be pressure to develop this land. I mean, if we go back to this map over here, can you imagine from a real estate development point of view, just how valuable is all of that land if they allowed it to be developed for, you know, residential commercial properties. So, there was pressure to pay for that land to make it worth noting it. And I don’t really know anything about this story. I only heard about it today looking at this exhibit. I guess there was a big fight with the state government and the government decided to impose substantial quit rent. I don’t know what that is but basically saying okay you have to pay rent a lot of money to keep this as a cemetery. And then they eventually came to an agreement. So when I walked around up on Bukit China, my response was, “Wow, it’s a beautiful park. It’s very rough around the edges. It’s not perfectly manicured or anything like that, but it’s got a lot of trees up there. It’s very beautiful to walk around.” And it turns out that was a deliberate beautification that it used to be a much more of a desolate barren hill. They committed to planting trees and that’s what this is all about that they planted many many trees on the park to beautify it and yeah they talk about that here and I guess this can kind of show how it looked originally basically open barren land and then when they were done it looks as it does today as right down here. Beautiful green park with lots and lots of trees.
I was just taking a closer look at the exhibits just before leaving and I realized there’s a lot more information here. Really interesting. So that the tombs that they have photographs of there’s one to nine are ancient tombs but A to G are showing the different styles. And I have been so curious about that for a long time because I know nothing about these Chinese temples. So it says here that’s a turtle back style of tomb. And then beside it enclosure style tomb like I don’t have the like I never had the vocabulary to describe any of these and what they look like. And that one they call a pavilion style tomb.
And that is a gable style tomb cuz I’ve noticed all of these distinct styles, but I had no idea if they had any meaning. And that one they’re calling a metal and water elements style. And the final two palms shaped tomb. And then simply the grave of an Acehnese warrior Hang Lima Pidi.
To my amazement, some of these actually have names. So that one is the tomb of Chinese Kapitan Chan Yu Leang, 1822.
And it goes all the way back through the 1700s and all the way to the 1600s. This is the earliest one. And they have a photograph of the Ming Dynasty tomb 1622,
Ming Dynasty 1614, 1674 and a few more where they actually know the names Tay Hong Yong from 1677 etc. So yeah, very very cool. As a visitor to Melaka, I can only dream if every temple I visited, every building I went into had a museum like this tucked away at the back just for me to give me all the information that I wanted. Yeah, this is very much a hidden gem of Melaka, I think. So unusual. Oh, look at that. They even have a lot more information about the flora and fauna of Bukit China. But I guess that is a big part of preserving it. They have to prove its value to the city and part of its value is it operates as a nature preserve. I guess kind of a green lung. Yeah, there they’re talking about it there. The green lung of Melaka. It helps preserve it as a park in the middle of Melaka.
And they list all the birds, insects and other animals that find a home on Bukit China. So yeah, an ongoing effort to protect it and preserve it, prove its value and its worth.
By the way, if you’re like me and you’re a little bit hesitant to be the boorish tourist blundering into a temple with your camera and your smartphone, things like that, don’t don’t sweat it here. Of course, behave properly and be respectful and keep your voice down and all that kind of thing. Just normal etiquette and polite behavior. But I’ve noticed that tour groups come here all the time. One just arrived and one was here when I first arrived. And it’s like a full-on bus tour, like a whole bunch of people following a guide, waving the flag, you know, giving a tour. Very, very popular with tour groups from China in particular. So, this temple in particular is very welcoming to visitors. And of course, they have that museum in the back, which yeah, it’s an amazing thing to have. So, since I’m here, made the trek all the way out here, I had better take you up at least give you a glimpse into Bukit China itself. And look at that. I mean, in terms of beautification, I don’t know how many or how much of that vegetation, how many those trees is a result of that deliberate beautification program, but man, they did a nice job. It looks like a jungle up there. You wouldn’t even know there was anything there. It just looks like a impenetrable wall of greenery really. But yeah, here is the temple. The temple’s here and then the monument is right on the other side. The well over there. And then you just come out this side of the temple and here are the stairs. I figured all this out on my other visits to this place. I never knew about the museum before this visit though. I wish I had place to grab some food and a cold drink. And then to go into the cemetery itself, Bukit China, you just go up these stairs right here.
And I’ve already done the full walk. As I said, it was quite funny when I came here to explore the cemetery itself. My idea was to enter here, walk in a straight line to the other end, and then exit the far end. But I got so turned around, I ended up doing a complete circle, I didn’t even know I was going in a circle. So I thought the entire time I was walking in a straight line, and I thought, man, this cemetery is way longer than I thought it was. And it turned out I was just going around and around in circles. But yeah, what I was just talking about, you have these fascinating grave sites and to my mind, I always think, wow, there must be a ton of symbolism here in the design. And of course, right now, I don’t remember all the different types that I saw in the photographs, but each one of these has a distinct shape, distinct style. And I guess if you keep track and look at the photos down below, they haven’t marked them up here, I don’t think. Like there’s no tourism information up here. So, you’re not going to find any tombs that have the name of the person who’s buried there. There’s no information about the significance of any of these tombs. There is some writing on some of them of course, but that is all in Chinese, so you wouldn’t be able to figure it out on your own. But yeah, when I was here before, I was wondering like, do they know anything at all about these tombs and the people that are buried here? Because to a large extent, they do seem somewhat neglected. And that is kind of part of that story that I read on that sign. That these people came from China intending perhaps to make their fortune and return to China and they ended up calling Melaka their eternal home because they died here and were buried here and that sign said down below that well they don’t have family living here some of them so there’s no one to come here every year to honor them and then that was part of the idea of building this temple right down there at the base of the hill so that just everyone can pray and honor the people that are buried up here. Even if they don’t have a family of their own, remembering them and coming up here to visit them and clean up their tomb, things like that. In my original video about coming out to Bukit China, I highly recommended just coming here for the experience of walking through it because this park has a special atmosphere. It really does. There’s something about it. I remember talking about it like it was a fairy tale land. It just feels like with these trees in particular, the shape of them and the look of this hill, it just feels like you stepped into the pages of a fairy tale. Just has a special feeling to it. So, it’s worth coming up here just to walk the park. And then you can set off in that direction, go as far as you want, and turn around and come back. In fact, let’s go all the way to the main trail. This trail right here is more or less the driveway. This is the entrance. So, you walk up this pathway and that will lead you to the main, as I now know, circular trail and then you can turn left or right and then go in a clockwise or counterclockwise circle. I don’t recommend doing the whole circle unless you really want to and you have a lot of energy and a lot of time because it’s in my case anyway. It was a lot. I ended up walking a lot farther than I expected. But yeah, this must be I think I recognize this as one of the Ming Dynasty tombs. Very small, somewhat plain. I think it is one of the Ming Dynasty tombs. I’ll take a picture of it and then I’ll compare it to the museum down below. You may not care about such things, but I just realized a little bit of a behind-the-scenes tech story here that I probably was blowing out a lot of that GoPro video way way overexposed because for in a previous situation, I was filming in a dark room and I raised the exposure really really high to brighten it and then I forgot that I did that. And since my GoPro was just overheating constantly, I couldn’t use the HDR setting anymore. I think HDR produces a better looking video. You’re looking at HDR right now. I turned off HDR back to standard, not realizing that on standard I had blown out the exposure to really, really high levels. So, all of that GoPro video was probably way, way too bright. Now, I’m sort of back to normal again because I’m in the shade. Hopefully the GoPro won’t overheat quite as quickly. So, with that behind-the-scenes story out of the way, back to the cemetery. So, I’ve climbed up the main pathway up here. And if you are a person who really, really, really needs to hydrate, definitely bring your own water because you’re not going to find any here. And this trail leads here and stops here. And this is where I got confused. I didn’t realize I was at the beginning of a giant circle, but you can see the trail goes off in that direction. So, you can go that way and go around the whole cemetery counterclockwise, or you can go this way and do a clockwise route. And a number of people come here to jog. It’s a great place to get exercise. And a lot of the online guides will tell you you need mosquito repellent. And I guess if you’re going to be standing still a lot, wouldn’t be a bad idea. I just don’t tend to worry that much. As long as I’m walking. I haven’t seen very many mosquitoes up here myself. A couple, but nothing really to worry about. So yeah, look at these tombstones.
Really something. And I remember on my first visit remarking that so many of them seemed uncared for. And that always struck me as odd considering how important I’m told your ancestors are in Chinese culture. Honoring your family, honoring your elders, paying homage to your ancestors, visiting the grave sites. So, I was sort of expecting all of these to be like utterly pristine, manicured and covered in flowers and things like that. But I guess perhaps there’s other forces at play here, such as the one that I read in the sign down below, that a lot of these people don’t have families. And who knows, tombstone like this, there’s probably no record of who was buried here. Maybe there is. Maybe there’s a lot more recorded history than I realize, but there’s certainly nothing up here. This one looks more modern and the writing on the stone is pretty clear, but again, not in English. So, it’s a real cemetery is what I’m saying. It’s not necessarily a tourist attraction. Like when you go up to St. Paul’s Church on the hill, you have all of those tombstones, but they’ve put out plaques with English translations for visitors. But here, of course, they haven’t done that. There are a lot of tombs out here, and I don’t know how much information is even available about them.
And I think this is as good a place as you can get for ending this video. I’ll repeat what I said at the beginning that I didn’t intend this video to be some sort of authoritative guide to Jalan Temenggong. No. Think of it more as a suggestion. Like if you wanted to go out walking along an interesting street outside of the main historic district, yeah, I suggest Jalan Temenggong. Walk up and down that street. Lot of interesting local restaurants and cafes. Couple of modern cafes for yeah, tourists to get their cheesecake, things like that. A lot of interesting things along the street. And then you get to end your walk here at the temple, the monument, the well and Bukit China itself. So you get so many layers of the history of Melaka by walking up that one street and of course the Sikh presence as well. And that little bit of interest, that little bit of history I find really fascinating that I don’t think is well known about the British bringing in Sikhs from the Punjab acting as a part of the local police force. It’s interesting. So yeah, there’s a lot of history in layers when you walk down the street and come here. So think of it as a Planet Doug suggestion. If you’re looking for somewhere to walk, head for Jalan Temenggong.
End of the video. Shout out to the Crunch Club. Put CC in the comments to let me know you’re a member. A member in good standing. And shout out to everyone supporting Planet Doug Video Productions through Malaysia’s Touch ‘n Go e-wallet. Yeah, that’s amazing. Gets me through my daily expenses. I love that. And yeah, all of my supporters on Planet Doug Patreon and on the buy me a coffee platform. Links to all of that in the QR codes, but also in the video description along with a link to the Planet Doug PayPal account. Any support you send my way I will put to very good use. All right, that’s it. Shutting down. See you in the next video.