The early name of this street was ‘Attap Street’ (亚答街), generally believed to have been derived from the common use of Attap roofing (palm thatch) by most of the shops there. However, among the locals other names also existed such as ‘Bak Kow Street’ (木扣街) or “Bak...
This section of road used to be called Rock Road (大石路) as it led past a large rock named Batu Kinyang (峇都吉央) located one and a half miles away. The rock, which juts out of the ground, was believed to be sacred. This stretch of road was the main route used towards the...
【Soon Hong Kongsi】 Soon Hong Kongsi of Soon Hong Street (the current Main Bazaar), Bak Kow Kongsi of Bak Kow Street (Carpenter Street) and Chiang Heng Kongsi of Chiang Heng Street (Gambier Street) were the three major Teochew organisations of early Kuching. The three...
Ng Bak Choon was born in the Chao’an district of Guandong, China in 1869. As a young man, he made his way to Pontianak in West Kalimantan, where he worked at a sundry shop. Later he turned his sights to Kuching and founded his shop Siang Hak Huat (上合发) at No. 10 Main...
Tan Boon Siew was a Hokkien merchant who came to prominence in the early 20th century. He served as a magistrate of the Chinese Court and as a board director of Hokkien School, and was also an active figure in the Chinese Chamber of Commerce and the Hockien...
Stephen Yong Kuet Tze was born in 1921 in the Simunjan district in Samarahan and educated at Tai Tung School (the current Chung Hua Simunjan school). He received his Higher School Certificate from St Thomas’s Secondary School in Kuching and worked as a teacher there...
Founded by Cantonese brothers Lam Tee Chew (林子昭) and Lam Song Khee (林崧祺), Kwong Lee Bank was one of the earliest Chinese-funded banks in Sarawak. It started out as the Kwong Lee Mortgage and Remittance Company (广利钱庄), a private bank (qianzhuang) established by Lam Tee...
In the early 20th century, a Hokkien merchant by the name of Song Kheng Hai had his moment in the sun in Old Kuching. Born into a poor family in the Nan’an county in Fujian, China in 1876, he went to Singapore as a youth of 15 or 16 and took up work in a local...
