The Chinese are nothing if not shrewd. In former times, when diplomatic relations were established through strategic marriages, they established the convenient institution of sending lovely but otherwise undistinguished maidens to distant lands as designated 'princesses' while the real princesses - and the ancient lineages - remained intact at home. This appears to have been the case when Imperial China sought to create diplomatic bonds with the Sultanate of Malacca: a fair maiden, Hang Li Po, dubbed 'Princess', along with an entourage of over five hundred attendants, was sent to Malacca to marry the Sultan Mansur Shah. According to the Malay Chronicles this followed a famous bragging contest between the two leaders of the respective lands. The Chinese Emperor, it is said, heard of the greatness of the Malaccan Sultanate and sent the Sultan a ship laden with gold needles and the boast, "If you can count the needles, you will know how many are my subjects and learn the greatness of my power." The Sultan responded by sending a ship laden with sago to China and the boast, "If you can count the grains of sago, you will know how many are my subjects and learn the greatness of my power." In the event, they called it a draw and decided to establish relations through marriage.
It seems, though, that the Chinese had the last laugh. The Ming Chronicles nowhere record a "Princess Hang Li Po" or anyone identifiable as her and it is now believed she was not a princess at all, or not in the proper sense. Rather, she was likely to have been one of these "diplomacy princesses" - a lower ranked (but nubile) young lady elevated to the status of 'princess' for the sake of the marriage. Not knowing this, Mansur Shah was duly flattered, but it was customary for the Chinese not to record such fake 'princesses' in their official records lest their true lineages be befouled. This is why the Malay records speak of a wondrous Chinese princess,while the Chinese records are silent.
This scenario would lend credence to the Malay claim that Hang Li Po, at her husband's insistence, converted to Mohammedanism; had she been a real princess of the true Imperial line this would have been strictly forbidden and quite unthinkable. It is, to this day, a matter of some historical controversy and, like everything in Malaya, remains a bone of contention between the ethnic Malays and the Peranakans or Straits Chinese. The versions of history promoted by both communities agree that the Ming bride married by the Sultan was beautiful, but exactly who she was, and of what line, and of what status and social class, is a matter of dispute. Some people try to find a compromise position, suggesting she was, if not the daughter of the Emperor himself, at least the daughter of a high Ming official. Perhaps. Or perhaps she was a courtesan - a courtesan Queen? She is a mysterious figure.
In any case, it is well established in local Malaccan history that the Ming bride is the personage behind one of the city's most famous landmarks, the vast Chinese burial ground known as Bukit Cina (China Hill). The usual account is that the Sultan provided Hang Li Po and her retinue with an area of three hills which together were consolidated as Chinese land and have been Chinese land ever since. Hang Li Po lived there, along with her court, and it was the place where visiting Chinese officials resided. Once the marriage of the Sultan and the princess was secured, great numbers of Chinese arrived and Malacca became an entrepot for Chinese trading interests in South East Asia. Today, Bukit Cina is an extensive parkland surrounded on all sides by the modern city and is said to be the largest Chinese graveyard outside of the Chinese mainland. The exact history of the site, though, is spotty. The hills must have been originally covered in jungle and no one knows quite where the earliest buildings were. Seven wells were dug to supply water to the residents, but all except three of these have been lost in subsequent developments. During the Portuguese occupation of the city a Franciscan monastery was built on the tallest hilltop, but was destroyed in the seventeenth century. The earliest tomb is that of Tin Kap, the first of the Chinese Kapitans, a representative position created by the Dutch East India Company. There are now over 12,000 graves in the area, most of them of unidentified Chinese merchants.
The notable thing about Bukit Cina is that it is situated - as every observant visitor to Malacca will soon realise - on the best real estate in the city. For this reason it has often been a sensitive location subject to controversy and dispute. During their tenure the British could see no good reason why such an advantageous group of hills should be wasted as a Chinese burial ground and proposed putting parts of it to other purposes. This was, of course, resisted by the Chinese community. After the independence of Malaya in 1957, however, when British mediation between the Malays and Chinese ended and Malay chauvinism - and a culture of corruption - took hold, Chinese interests were over-ridden and sections of the original space were bulldozed to make way for roads in the 1960s-70s. The Chinese hold on the land was steadily undermined and eroded until matters came to a head in the 1980s. The authorities - in classical style - suddenly announced that the tax exemption of the cemetery's trustees had been a "clerical error" all along and since the trustees now owed over two million dollars in rental arrears the government would appropriate the land for a housing development and sports centre. (That's just how things are done in post-colonial Malaya.)
Anyone familiar with the dynamics of Malayan society will know that Malay-Chinese relations are uneasy at best, and often volatile. This is why the marriage of Sultan Mansur Shah and Princess Hang Li Po is not just an historical curiosity but an on-going issue with symbolic importance. Was the Sultan duped by a bogus princess and Chinese sleight of hand? Was the Malay-Chinese marriage forged in bad faith from the beginning? Did the princess really convert to the Mohammadean faith, a gesture of submission, since there's no requirement under Mohammadean law for a wife to convert, only that offspring be raise as Musselmen? The temples and monuments associated with Hang Li Po - including the well named after her - are resoundingly Chinese and remain, to this day, the focus of Chinese religious veneration.
The well of Hang Li Po
So the fate of Bukit Cina became a flash-point in Malay-Chinese relations. The Chinese flatly refused to pay a single cent of the alleged arrears and were determined to defend the burial ground from corrupt developers to the bitter end. The 'Save Bukit Cina' campaign, which ran throughout the mid 1980s, was a turning point in heritage activism in Malacca, in Malaya and even in the wider environment of South East Asia. When the government called for public submissions, it received over 300,000 for the defence of the burial ground and only seventy-three for the housing development. Finally, the authorities reneged after the intervention of the influential Dr Mahatir Mohamad and fears of inter-racial strife.
These days, China Hill is a tidy parkland - a large island of green in a busy city - primarily used as a tourist attraction and for its walking and jogging tracks. The temple at its entrance, along with the remaining well attributed to Hang Li Po, are frequented by busy bus loads of Chinese visitors. A cenotaph remembering the Malaccan Chinese who were treated so brutally by the Japanese during World War II stands next to the temple. (The Malays cooperated with the Japanese. The Chinese were treated savagely because of their opposition to the Japanese occupation of China.)
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Some of the present author's fondest moments in Malacca have been in China Hill - the euphoria of being caught in a tropical rain storm on top of the hill where the Portuguese monastery once stood, or chatting to the Bangladeshi garden workers armed with brush-cutters who keep the grass in trim, or watching Chinese families honouring the dead with gifts and joss, or mingling with the Chinese at the fruit stalls beside the temple, or just escaping the noisy traffic and humid air and strolling among the old tortoise-shaped graves in the cool leafy shade.
Bukit Cina is the ancestral and spiritual heart of the Straits Chinese.
Some pictures below:
Harper Mc Alpine Black
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