Serenity. Taman Budaya - Reservoir Park, Kuching, Sarawak (Borneo), Malaysia
After imbibing some ethnography and natural history at the pleasant Sarawak Museum we walked in the Serene Gardens of the Old Reservoir. Here's a pretty Chinese bridge there.
This Reservoir and the Chinese of Kuching are closely connected in a perhaps surprising way.
'Common Knowledge' has it that the name Kuching by which the second White Rajah, Sir Charles Anthoni Johnson Brooke (1829-1917), named his capital on August 12, 1872, means "Cat City". The story is told that name is due to a misunderstanding between Brooke and a local Malay: Brooke with a sweep of his hand asking what this place was called, and our Malay thinking he was pointing to a cat uttering the Malay word for that creature: kuching. It has been pointed out by Francis Chan that the local, Sarawakan Malay for cat is not 'kuching'. 'Ku-ching', he says, is a Mandarin word for 'Old Well'. It refers to the old well on Upper China Street that was used for good drinking water before the (now old) reservoir for good piped water was completed in 1895. So 'Kuching' means something like 'Good Drinking Water City'.
No doubt this story leaves room for discussion as well... possibly as you're ambling over this pretty bridge.
Serenity. Taman Budaya - Reservoir Park, Kuching, Sarawak (Borneo), Malaysia
After imbibing some ethnography and natural history at the pleasant Sarawak Museum we walked in the Serene Gardens of the Old Reservoir. Here's a pretty Chinese bridge there.
This Reservoir and the Chinese of Kuching are closely connected in a perhaps surprising way.
'Common Knowledge' has it that the name Kuching by which the second White Rajah, Sir Charles Anthoni Johnson Brooke (1829-1917), named his capital on August 12, 1872, means "Cat City". The story is told that name is due to a misunderstanding between Brooke and a local Malay: Brooke with a sweep of his hand asking what this place was called, and our Malay thinking he was pointing to a cat uttering the Malay word for that creature: kuching. It has been pointed out by Francis Chan that the local, Sarawakan Malay for cat is not 'kuching'. 'Ku-ching', he says, is a Mandarin word for 'Old Well'. It refers to the old well on Upper China Street that was used for good drinking water before the (now old) reservoir for good piped water was completed in 1895. So 'Kuching' means something like 'Good Drinking Water City'.
No doubt this story leaves room for discussion as well... possibly as you're ambling over this pretty bridge.