Akar Nusa
Pepper vines climb poles in a small farm near Kuching. The family grows it as their parents did. They speak Hakka at home, Mandarin at school and Sarawak Malay at the market.
The story
Chinese people came to Sarawak in several waves, each with its own trade.
The Hakka were among the first large group. Some Hakka had fled the Dutch in the gold districts of Kalimantan and set up a mining community, called a kongsi, at Bau, before the first Rajah arrived. Hakka also became famous for pepper. In the Kuching-Serian area, Hakka dominated pepper growing.
Soon after the first Rajah, the Hokkiens came, led by Ong Ewe Hai, and they focused mainly on trade. The Teochews came too. Law Kian Hunt arrived in the 1840s and persuaded the Rajah to let more Teochews follow. They grew gambier on a plantation along what is now Penrissen Road outside Kuching. A man named Chan Kho, of the Chao An group, arrived in 1850 or 1851 as a sailor on a salt boat. He later farmed vegetables at Bau, found traces of gold, opened a shop and became wealthy.
Three Chinese leaders advised Rajah Brooke on Chinese affairs: Ong Ewe Hai, Chan Kho and Lau Kien. Relations with the Bau kongsi were not always smooth. Controls on opium and taxes angered the kongsi. In 1852 it resisted the arrest of one of its officials, and Malay and Dayak forces were sent to Bau. A history of Sarawak also records that about 500 Hakka miners from Bau attacked the Brookes' house in 1857 and were defeated after about two months.
Later the Rajah encouraged more settlers for mining and farming. The Foochow reached Sibu in 1902 under an agreement with the Rajah. The 1906 census counted only about 500 survivors of roughly 1,000 who had landed, after disease, drowning and other losses. The survivors went on to build a commercial base.
Where you can still see it today
- Bau and Siniawan, towns of the old gold fields.
- Kuching's Chinese shophouses and temples.
- Pepper farms near Kuching and Serian.
- Sibu, where Foochow families built the town's trade.
- Dialect heard in the street: Hakka, Hokkien, Teochew and Foochow all live here.
What DNA can tell, and what it cannot
Chinese surnames are passed down the male line, like the Y chromosome. A study of Chinese surnames finds that surnames have passed down stably over centuries and that surname patterns follow the Y chromosome pattern. Our father-line report may help a Malaysian we have tested to think about the line from father to grandfather, and back to southern China.
This is a broad link, not proof. We found no father-line study of Sarawak's Chinese that we could open, and a dialect group is a matter of language and culture, not of DNA. DNA does not decide race, religion or any legal status.
