Patrick Comerford
Last weekend, we spent an evening in Siniawan, a small town in the Bau district, about 20 km outside Kuching. It is known for the weathered, ageing wooden buildings lining the Main Street, its night markets selling street food, and its street music.
The Main Street is lined with old wooden townhouses, and Chinese lanterns light up the street making it a beautiful place to spend an evening dining out.
During the day, Siniawan is a serene place, reminiscent of a bygone age. Weathered, ageing wooden buildings are living artefacts, telling tales of a time when they provided shelter and space for commerce and for leisure.
As the sun sets, Siniawan undergoes a transformation, turning into a vibrant night market that draws locals and visitors alike. Red lanterns strung across the streets light up the town, casting a warm glow over the bustling market and creating a lively, festive atmosphere. The Siniawan Night Market every Friday, Saturday and Sunday adds to the atmosphere.
Siniawan is in the heart of the Bau district, just 40-minutes from Kuching. Visiting Siniawan, with its century-old charm and well-preserved traditional wooden shophouses, is a step back in time.
The main street is made up of two rows of double-storey rustic-looking shops, with vertical wooden panels and unpainted fronts. Because of its resemblance to the Old ‘Wild West’ in cowboy films, Siniawan has been nicknamed ‘Cowboy Town’.
Siniawan has a population of about 3,600 people: most are Bidayuh (750 families) or Chinese (700 families), and there are 100 Malay families. The Chinese people there are mostly descended from people who came from Guangdong Province, and the common dialect is Hopoh Hakka.
On the edge of town is the Shui Yue Gong temple, with a century-old statue of the deity Guanyin depicted in a cross-legged posture. Mount Serumbu is just 2.7 km away.
Siniawan grew up on the banks of the Sarawak River (Sungai Sarawak Kanan) 200 years ago, when a small group of Hakka Chinese settlers made their home along the side of the river in the early 1820s. It was a strategic location at the high point of the Sarawak River, as few boats could travel much further up, and a bustling trading settlement quickly grew up.
But nothing significant happened until James Brooke, arrived in Sarawak in 1839. As part of brokering a peace deal between the Sultan of Brunei, who then ruled Sarawak, and the rebel Malay and Bidayuh tribes, Brooke agreed to protect the local people from the Iban or ‘Sea Dayak’ people who raided their homes and killed their people.
Brooke became the White Rajah of Sarawak in 1841 and built his first fort in Sarawak at Fort Berlidah, just few hundred metres downriver from Siniawan. Fuelled by the gold rush in nearby Bau and with the protection offered by Brooke, Siniawan grew quickly. The population was boosted by Hakka Chinese traders and miners who came across from the Sambas district in Dutch Borneo, now West Kalimantan, and the community began to thrive.
After building Fort Berlidah, Brooke built a bungalow on the summit of Mount Serembu, naming it the ‘Peninjau’ or ‘lookout’. He was visited at the bungalow by the future British Consul in Brunei, Sir Spenser St John, in 1851. By then Siniawan had about 300 Chinese shopkeepers and traders. St John marvelled at the lively Siniawan market, and noticed both the inter-action between different ethnic groups and the influx of Chinese and Malay gold miners.
Brooke invited Alfred Russell Wallace, a prominent anthropologist, to stay at the bungalow in 1854. Wallace and worked alongside Charles Darwin in developing the theory of evolution by natural selection, and came to Borneo to research primates, especially the orangutan, and other animals.
However, this period of peace was short-lived. When Brooke introduced taxes on gold and opium, he was resisted by the Hakka Chinese of the Bau goldfields, led by Liu Shan Bang. On 18 February 1857, Liu Shan Bang led a force of 600 Chinese miners down the Sarawak River, through Siniawan, to attack the Brooke government in Kuching. They attacked the Astana, Brooke’s residence, and burned down many buildings in Kuching.
Brooke narrowly escaped the onslaught and survived, most Europeans found shelter in the grounds of Saint Thomas’s Anglican Church, but five Europeans and many local people were killed, properties were burnt and the town was left in disarray.
On 23 February 1857, Brooke’s nephew Charles Brooke, led a force of Ibans to join the local Bidayuh tribes in retaliation. They pursued the Chinese up the Sarawak River and a series of bloody battles were fought in the Siniawan area. Bodies lay scattered along the river and some of the places were given names such as Buso (‘stinking’) and Bau (‘smelly’). Liu Shan Bang finally fell at Jugan Hill outside Siniawan on 24 February 1857.
Many of the wooden houses lining the Main Street of Siniawan were built at the height of the town’s glory days in the 1910s. Unlike Sino-Portuguese buildings in West Malaysia, with their typically colourful façades and elaborate decorations, the architecture in Siniawan is Javanese, as it was easier to get carpenters from there through Singapore.
During the boom times of the 1920s, the single main street of Siniawan included an hotel, a Chinese theatre, a casino, a brothel and an opium den.
The town suffered during the Japanese occupation in 1941-1945, with economic decline, migration and environmental challenges. A period of stability but eventual decline followed the end of World War II.
The Brooke dynasty finally ceded Sarawak to Britain, and by the time Sarawak became part of the new Malaysia, the gold fields were spent and Siniawan had settled down to an ordinary and peaceful existence.
Two serious incidents of monsoon flooding on the river forced many residents to move from Siniawan for safety and to build new houses. In addition, a new road network and bridges at Batu Kitang and Batu Kawa reduced reliance on the Sarawak River for transportation and by-passed Siniawan, leaving the little town isolated and almost forgotten.
The timber-built shophouses still stand today, with their original façades. Local people started to name the rustic town ‘Cowboy Town’ because of its resemblance to the frontier towns of the Old Wild West.
The Siniawan Heritage Conservation Committee was formed in 2009 to rekindle local pride in the town’s heritage and history. The initiative led to the opening of the Night Market on weekend evenings, selling street food and drink and creating a lively atmosphere with karaoke and music.
The first Siniawan Fiesta was held in 2016, with local Country Music bands and crowds descending on the ‘Cowboy Town’. In the years that have followed, the crowds grew and the programmes included ethnic cultural music and a week-long Siniawan Heritage Country Music Fest was staged.
The festival has become a major event, with over a week of festivities and up to 30,000 people dancing their way up and down the High Street. Siniawan is no longer a sleepy town but has been turned into a vibrant street. Yet it can seem untouched by time and unspoiled by progress.
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