Akar Nusa
A riverside street in Sibu. A shop sign in Chinese characters, a rubber tree at the edge of town, a church tower, and a family at a kopitiam table speaking Foochow.
The story
In 1900 a Methodist scholar from Fuzhou, Wong Nai Siong, signed an agreement with the Brooke government. He would bring one thousand settlers to farm in the Rajang over the next eighteen months. In April that year he travelled 13 days up the Rajang and chose Sungai Merah near Sibu. It had a river close by for water and farming.
At home in Fujian, times were hard: drought, food was scarce, and there was tension around Christians. Wong found willing families through church networks. The first 72 settlers arrived on 21 January 1901 (some sources give a different date). On 16 March 1901 a second group of 535 landed, led by Wong himself. The Foochow still remember this day as "New Foochow Resettlement Day". A third group came in June. The total was 1,118. Sibu was soon called "New Foochow".
It was harsh. Farming skills from China did not suit the swampy tropical land. Floods, pests and malaria took a toll. The neighbouring Iban saw the newcomers as foreigners on their land. By 1905, between 100 and 200 of the settlers had died or left. Wong's own money ran short, and he went back to China in 1904.
A Methodist missionary, Rev. James Hoover, then led the community for 32 years. In 1904 he brought rubber seeds. By 1906 the settlers had planted more than 100,000 young rubber trees, and later pepper too. The settlement grew, and new Foochow communities followed along the river: Kanowit in 1910, Sarikei in 1912, Kapit in 1923 and later Mukah, Bintulu, Miri and Limbang.
The Foochow were not the only Chinese colony in Sarawak. Between 1898 and 1911 the government also sponsored a Hakka settlement near Kuching, a Cantonese one upriver of Sibu and a Henghua one near Sibu.
Where you can still see it today
- Sibu, once called "New Foochow", and river towns such as Sarikei, Kanowit and Kapit.
- The language: Foochow (also written Hokchew) is spoken in daily life in Sarawak.
- The church: it carried the settlers' network, and the Methodist mission stayed central to the settlement.
- 16 March: the Foochow still mark the pioneers' day.
What DNA can tell, and what it cannot
DNA can place most Foochow families in the broad East Asian picture, through mother lines and father lines. We found no study we could open that separates Foochow ancestry from other Chinese groups, so we do not claim one. Dialect, surname and memory of a family's home county are better guides than a test.
DNA cannot say that someone is Foochow, or decide religion, community or any legal status.
