This morning, N and I swung by the National Museum amidst all that drizzling to pass our time. This was my second time after fifteen years; my first foray being an interesting exhibition on old Malay superstitions and sorcery held here. I didn’t get to venture to the many galleries that the museum has since my attention was given solely on the exhibit itself. To make up for such loss, I browsed the whole museum in its entirety this time, drinking in the stories that each gallery has to tell. It was incredibly enriching for me to be able to do this. It reminded me of the history lessons I had back in school, except seeing those real artifacts was many times more interesting than your average history teacher droning on facts and figures.
The National Museum is separated into four main galleries based on different important periods of Malaysian history. You could start your journey by going through the Early History section— a room housing ancient Hindu-Buddhist relics from the temples of Lembah Bujang in Kedah— and make your way to the Malaysia Today gallery. If the traditional walk-through is not your cup of tea, you could always begin at the more present gallery and make your way to the past. That would be a more interesting, time machine-like take to the museum. But if you’re learning about Malaysia for the very first time, I’d suggest checking out the 11,000-year-old skeletons excavated in rural Perak and now placed in the room of Early History. These skeletons are shown buried in a fetal position, just like how they were found. This burial position is very poetic, considering that each and one of us come upon this earth and return to the soil in the same birth-like posture.
The next gallery brings you to the Malay Kingdoms, which traces the glorious history of Malacca in the 15th century before the invasion of foreign forces through the royalty heirlooms. I’d say one thing: the Malays have always been obsessed with gold. Every inch of the objects presented here was laced in precious gold, from the assortment of old keris (daggers) from Indonesia to pots of bunga emas (flowers made out of gold) acquired through the mutual exchange between the Malaccan sultanate and the kingdom of Siam. What I loved most about this room were the glass-fronted cabinets showcasing the ancestral fashion of yesteryears. The traditional Malay dress is intricate in its persistent gold details ranging from the headgear to the many hairpins. I was in love with these elaborate pair of slippers of Chinese-Peranakan origins. There’s no such things as simplicity or minimalist for these lot! There are remnants of other cultures too, like these strange-looking shadow puppets originating from Thailand and the old Koran brought forth by the Arab merchants.
The best gallery, in my opinion, is the Colonial Era. The room greets you with a grand archway that resembles the A’ Famosa fort in Malacca and mostly charts the collapse of the Malaccan government. The Portuguese landed on the shores of Malacca with only one in thing in mind: spices. Food, inherently, had driven the Europeans to capture the Malaccan port and bag the locally-cultivated spices to add zest to their otherwise bland meals. Star anise, clovers, cardamom and coriander seeds among many others could be found easily in this part of the earth. These were the gems that the foreign powers fought for in the beginning. I marveled looking at the Western weaponry in comparison to the ones used by the people of Malacca in defense. You know it’ll be a whole game of rocks beating scissors when you compare the guns and cannons with those razor-sharp keris. Once the Portuguese had seized power of Malacca, the Malay royalty retreated to the south of Johore and eventually set up an entirely new administration.
Malaysia Today, on the other hand, brings visitors to walk on the path trodden by those struggling for the independence of Malaya from the British. This tiny corner of the museum is what I could relate the most simply because the events documented match those stories passed down by my grandmother. She was born prior to World War II and had experienced the Japanese Occupation and communist invasion while growing up. During this period, her childhood home was burnt down to ashes by the communists and her family took shelter in the jungles instead. Most of what she had told me is well-documented in this space, covering the events of the Malayan Union formation and the Communist Insurgency War. Being an educator myself, what interested me most about this room was the charting of education regulation from the days of British Malaya to the present. Schoolchildren in the rural areas went to sekolah pondok (literally translated into 'hut schools'), an early form of schooling that emphasizes on Islamic teachings, way before secular education was set in place. My grandmother wasn’t among the lucky ones who had the opportunity to attend school but she did survive war and gave birth to my mom a week before independence. The displays include surviving copies of old Malay literature and newspapers which predate independence.
Before I made my visit, many had warned me of how incredibly sub-par our museum is compared to the stunning collections housed in the Smithsonian or the Louvre. My take on the National Museum is that it’s not all that bad, although it could’ve been better with more research stations and genuine display of curated pieces. Nonetheless, it was certainly fascinating to walk around and re-learn some local history from a nationalistic perspective. If you live in the city, it’s always a good idea to drop by one or two museums in the neighborhood for a quick cultural fix. There are always museums in many metropolitans for you to stroll into and have an uplifting, intellectual experience. Walking around huge and airy museums might also be a great dating idea, especially if either one of you happens to be a history buff. N and I are frugal down to the bones and we prefer paying a few ringgits to have a browse in a museum than say, shopping anytime over the weekend. Perhaps the next time we do so, we’ll actually take the time to slow down and look at only a small collection in depth.
