【城市印象】之——「蜜月之旅」· 马来西亚City Impressions: Malaysia, a Honeymoon Trip

I've long been a devoted fan of Gao Xiaosong: a man who knows the heavens above and the earth below, holds forth on the ancient and the modern, and overflows with talent. Set aside his knowledge and life experience — make his face and physique a touch more perfect — and "life's winner" would no longer do him justice. His writing is full of candor and a scholarly air. As one of his little fanboys, I'll now presumptuously try to do a bit of what he does: after each trip, drawing on what I understood beforehand, the prep and reading I did before setting out, and the sights and conversations after arriving, I'll share with you some shallow reflections on a place — its impressions, history, culture, and food. This time the star of the show is Malaysia. Call it a record of a honeymoon trip.

Malaysia, "Big Malaysia" for short, is split into two parts by the South China Sea. West Malaysia, on the Malay Peninsula, borders Thailand to the north; to the south, across the Straits of Johor, it connects to Singapore via the Johor–Singapore Causeway and the Second Link. East Malaysia sits in the northern part of Borneo (Kalimantan), bordering Indonesia to the south.

On August 31, 1957, Alliance chairman Tunku Abdul Rahman declared the independence of Malaya. In 1963, Malaya joined with Singapore, Sabah, and Sarawak to form the Federation of Malaysia. The capital is Kuala Lumpur, with the federal government seated in Putrajaya. In August 1965, Singapore withdrew from the federation.

Malaysia is a multicultural, multiethnic country. It's made up primarily of three major groups — Malays (50.4%), Chinese (23.7%), and Indians (7.1%) — plus indigenous peoples (11%). Islam is the constitutionally established state religion, with freedom of belief protected. The head of state is the King; the head of government is the Prime Minister. Under the constitution, a Malay is a Muslim who follows Malay custom (adat) and culture, and Malays hold the dominant position politically. Bumiputera status is also granted to certain non-Malay indigenous peoples, including the Thai, Khmer, Cham, and the natives of Sabah and Sarawak.

(Figure in original: Sin Chew Daily's 2016 chart of Malaysia's total population, 31.7 million.)

The Journey

Flights to Southeast Asia are basically AirAsia's world. AirAsia's regular seats are a bit of a squeeze for tall Chinese travelers. And since it's a budget carrier, red-eye flights can be rough. That said, red-eyes carry a decent chance of a lightly booked flight, where one person can stretch out across a whole row to sleep. The in-flight meals are on the pricey side. Now for the important part — our big screwup.

If you're flying AirAsia, be absolutely sure of your check-in cutoff time! We hadn't looked into it properly. Flying from Kuala Lumpur to Kota Kinabalu, we were turned away at check-in — the cutoff was one hour before departure, and we'd arrived just a few minutes past it. Expired, no check-in, and not a shred of flexibility. With no choice, we had to buy another ticket for the same day. Later, chatting with other travelers on the way to Mermaid Island (Pulau Mantanani), we heard they'd run into the same thing. So a reminder to anyone who hasn't flown AirAsia before: ask and be sure, so you don't derail your trip.

Lodging

Malaysia's currency is a bit stronger than the yuan, but prices overall are cheap, especially for hotels.

Anywhere from 300 to 500 yuan gets you a room at a three-star or even five-star hotel, many with an open-air pool. The rooms are plenty spacious too, fully equipped with a kitchen, fridge, microwave, safe, and so on — for a price that's simply unimaginable back home.

Food

Malaysian food is incredibly varied, at prices roughly on par with China's, some things even cheaper. The main cuisines are Malay, Indian, and Cantonese-Fujianese. There's cheap seafood, though most of it is curry-flavored.

Apart from seafood, my personal favorites were curry noodles, coconut ice cream, and nyonya kuih. Snack-wise there's a ton of durian products, like durian ice cream and durian pastry.

You generally eat here with a fork and spoon.

Impressions and Observations

Few People

I'd looked up Malaysia's area and population beforehand: 330,000 square kilometers and just over 30 million people — an area roughly the size of Yunnan Province, with a population a bit larger than Beijing's or Shanghai's. The day we landed in Kuala Lumpur, we went to a shopping mall near our place for lunch, and you could count the customers inside on your fingers. The overwhelming majority of the units were empty. The hotel we'd booked was quite nice, well located too, and at the time it really did feel like there were almost no people around.

The capital, Kuala Lumpur, has a population of about 1.674 million (so, really very few people). The landmark Petronas Twin Towers serve a dual sightseeing and communications function; at 466 meters they were once the tallest buildings in the world and remain among the tallest towers in Asia, like two silver blades thrust into the clouds. Kuala Lumpur is a microcosm of this multiethnic, multireligious country. Mosques and Buddhist and Hindu temples are everywhere in the city, and there are more than 20 Christian churches too.

Economy

Malaysia is an emerging, diversified economy. It surged ahead in the 1990s as one of the "Four Asian Tiger Cubs," a capitalist country. Unfortunately, hit by the 1997 Asian financial crisis, these tiger cubs failed to lay the solid economic foundations the "Four Asian Dragons" did. Malaysia imposed a raft of hard currency controls to protect its national financial system and pursued unequal policies on ethnic issues, and so it began to stagnate and turn inward. Forty years ago Malaysia was actually richer than South Korea and Taiwan; today South Korea's per capita income is more than three times Malaysia's, and its average annual GDP growth is higher too.

But Malaysia is still a notable diversified emerging industrial nation and emerging-market economy in Asia. Tourism is its third-largest source of foreign exchange.

Malaysia's full-year GDP grew 4.2% in 2016, down from 5.0% in 2015. Per capita GDP in 2016 was US$9,366, down 1.4% year on year. What does US$9,366 per capita mean? It's higher than China's. China had nine provinces with per capita GDP above US$10,000, the highest being Tianjin at over 17,000 and the lowest Shandong at over 12,000. So this is a genuinely respectable showing.

Look a little closer and you'll see that Malaysia's ability to top China on per capita GDP owes to its own particular advantages:

1: Resources — it has oil, palm oil, timber, and tin.

2: Trade — convenient transport, a clear geographic edge, and early integration into global trade.

3: Political stability, protection of private property rights, and accumulated wealth. Over the past century-plus, many Chinese arrived in Nanyang penniless and built up wealth generation by generation. China, by contrast, spent the last hundred years in turmoil; after 1949, much of the property overseas Chinese had acquired at home was even confiscated.

Malaysia's level of economic development and urban construction doesn't match China's first-tier or even near-first-tier cities, but in terms of living comfort it truly leaves a lot of Chinese cities in the dust.

Housing is especially cheap. A fully equipped apartment runs roughly 1 to 2 million. In Kuala Lumpur, a property with six pools, a gym, tennis courts, an indoor badminton court, at least three specialty pour-over coffee shops nearby, and a five-minute trip to malls like IKEA — that's around 1.3 million yuan. To live in a place like that in Beijing costs ten times as much. A decent cup of coffee costs three times as much. Malaysia's per capita GDP is higher than China's, but its growth prospects and pace of development lag China's by a wide margin. Of the car brands I saw on Malaysian streets, more than 95% were ones I didn't recognize, and only 5% I did. The one I recognized most often was Toyota; a Mercedes-BMW-Audi or anything fancier was a rare bird.

HDI

Life in Malaysia is leisurely, competition is relatively light, and the happiness index is fairly high.

The Human Development Index (HDI) was introduced by the United Nations Development Programme. Life in Malaysia is leisurely, competition relatively light, the happiness index fairly high. The HDI is used to measure the level of economic and social development of UN member states — the fruit of a challenge to the traditional GNP metric. Based on three fundamental variables — "life expectancy, education level, and quality of life" — a composite figure is derived by a set method and published each year in the Human Development Report. Malaysia's HDI was 0.773 (2014), a relatively high level.

Culture

For Chinese people (mainlanders especially), identification with ancestry, bloodline, and culture usually comes first. In most Chinese minds, whether Singaporean Chinese, Malaysian Chinese, or even Vietnamese or Thai Chinese, because they share "Chinese" blood, they're not much different from Chinese in the true sense, and are therefore compatriots.

Here you can very clearly sense that Malaysian Chinese identify fairly strongly with their Chinese identity — some quite proudly — stressing that Chinese in China and Malaysian Chinese differ only by nationality, with a strong sense of mutual psychological closeness. Many, though they've taken Malaysian citizenship, still keep the Lunar New Year (Spring Festival) they've observed for thousands of years. The Malaysian government respects this Chinese custom and holiday too, and it's a statutory public holiday.

Malaysian Chinese generally embrace foreign foods like curry, nasi lemak, and Western fare, and can also take to Chinese dishes beyond the Fujian-Cantonese repertoire — whereas Chinese in China seem to like only Chinese food.

Language

Before coming, I'd heard that Mandarin is widespread in Malaysia, roughly on par with English, but once there I found that isn't so — or maybe we just didn't meet enough of the right people. Those who could speak Mandarin were few and far between; most of the time the main language was still English.

The most obvious difference, meanwhile, shows up in speech. The Malaysian accent is roughly Cantonese plus Fujianese — few retroflex sounds, few neutral tones, no erhua, and a flattened intonation. Then there's the vocabulary: a Chinese base layered with words from various dialects, Malay, and English, with a constant stream of particles like "la," "lor," and "hong." Think of Yan Rujing and Hu Jianbiao on the debate show U Can U BiBi. Or search "Malaysia vs. China" online and you'll find plenty of concrete examples.

The Status of the Chinese

Politically, in Malaysia power rests in Malay hands. To keep the Chinese from taking political power, and to make sure that clever Chinese don't threaten Malays' own position and interests worldwide, Chinese can't hold key government posts.

In education, Chinese face unfairness and unequal allocation of resources. For Chinese to attend government schools — primary, secondary, university — the bar is far higher than for Malays. Malaysian Chinese have to put in far more study time than Malays to face far stiffer competition. Unless you give up Chinese and use Malay to sit exams and advance.

And those who insist on a Chinese-language education must enter Chinese-education institutions that receive no policy tilt from the government and rely instead on heavy support from Chinese businessmen. Over five million Chinese share a disproportionately small slice of educational resources — you can imagine how fierce the competition gets.

On top of that, university students aren't allowed to discuss political topics.

On Business

(Figure in original: a list of Malaysia's ten largest companies.)

The above are Malaysia's ten largest companies. Of them, (3) Public Bank, (4) CIMB, and (10) the Genting Group were all founded by Chinese and are still Chinese-owned today; (8) Maxis Communications belongs to Indians; the rest are all state-owned. This makes clear that Chinese-founded businesses are still very successful in Malaysia and hold a high standing.

(Figure in original: the Malaysia rich list published by Forbes Malaysia.)

The figure above is the Malaysia rich list published by Forbes Malaysia. Of the country's ten richest, Chinese take eight, with one Indian (Ananda Krishnan) and one Malay (Syed Mokhtar AlBukhary). Malaysia's richest man, Robert Kuok, is himself Chinese. That says plenty about the economic standing of the Chinese in Malaysia.

Sense of Identity

Malaysian Chinese see their identification with their own country versus China like this: identifying with Malaysia is an identity matter, while identifying with China is a matter of bloodline and culture. Most Malaysian Chinese will distance themselves from being "Chinese," holding that the word "Chinese" is defined by nationality; they are ethnic Chinese, Malaysian citizens, sharing roots with the Chinese only by blood.

They love Malaysia's climate, its people, its food, and dislike its government. They have a cultural attachment to China — blood runs thicker than water — but in the end it's still a foreign country, a familiar and longed-for land. In any match, China vs. Malaysia, they'll back Malaysia. China vs. any other country, they'll back China.

To sum up: life in Malaysia is leisurely; it sits in the tropics and the weather is blazing hot. The people's happiness index is fairly high; within Southeast Asia it's relatively friendly toward China; the status of the Chinese is limited; prices and housing are pretty affordable; the food is a matter of personal taste; and it's a fine choice for diving, with gorgeous sunsets and fireflies.