MOST TOWNS WITH a story to tell tend to announce themselves prominently. Although there is a decorative wooden archway that welcomes you to Siniawan, a heritage town in Sarawak, this place is not trying hard to impress. Nor is anybody really expecting you to be here, especially during a hot afternoon. For anyone
who grew up in George Town before overdevelopment caught up with it, this old-town feeling is familiar. The difference is that Siniawan has no crowds, trishaw uncles or long coffee queues to disrupt your daily caffeine fix.
Two rows of unpainted timber shophouses flank its main street, while
a serpentine, milky brown river—Sungai Sarawak Kanan—flows behind the town. Several shops bear Hakka names and there are some local shrines, including one dedicated to a local man, Liu Shan Bang. Siniawan initially appears unassuming, being small enough to walk through in under an hour, but its frontier history
of sovereignty, resistance and eventual revitalisation goes back to the 1820s, intertwined with the rise and fall of the nearby settlement of “Maw San”.
