The Chinese of Sarawak

A Study of Social Structure

Ju-K'ang Tien

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781000323436
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Chinese History
• Index: History

Initially published in 1953, The Chinese of Sarawak, A Study of Social Structure, is the study of the social, economic and political organization of the Chinese Community during the author's visit of thirteen months in 1948 and 1949. Much of the material was obtained from personal interviews, as well as quotes from printed sources and from unpublished files of the Sarawak Government. The result is an enlightening and detailed analysis of a complex situation

VII
OCCUPATIONAL IDENTIFICATION AND BAZAAR ECONOMY

The urban bazaar centres, like Kuching, Sibu and Semanggang, present an essentially different problem from that posed by the rural districts. The very nature of the small-holding agricultural work which is characteristic of the latter tends to ensure the continued isolation of the rural families, which is further increased by the notoriously poor development of communications. Relations with the outside world are virtually confined to the necessities of getting daily nourishment, and contacts for purposes of marriage and so forth In these circumstances kinship bonds appear to be the most convenient framework for social relations, and individual families are linked together almost solely by the network of clan and affinal ties. Links with the outside world do exist, but only indirectly - through the bazaars. In the urban environment, however, the problem of communications does not arise. On the contrary, individuals from other families are easily accessible, while the nature of the bazaar economy forces contacts with others, not only within the bazaar itself, but in other divisions and even in the great world beyond the sea.

Moreover, in further contrast to the rural areas the population of which is, as we have seen, predominantly drawn from one single dialect group, the bazaars contain speakers of many different dialects living side by side. Thus, whereas in describing the rural economy we were dealing with the social relations between largely isolated families within one dialect group, in the towns we are dealing with relations between individuals of different dialect groups, and between one dialect group and another. It is therefore clear that in both economic and social terms the urban, bazaar economy presents a very different picture from that of the rural areas, and we must expect the the structure of social relations to be different too.

The bazaar areas are the most overcrowded parts of the towns.¹ The usual shop-house buildings which are characteristic of all this part of the Far East are tightly packed together along the streets - in Semanggang about 42 only in Sibu 132 and in Kuching more than 500. Kuching streets are thronged with shoppers at almost all times of day from dawn to dusk, and the back streets even later - wooden heels on the cement paving, bicycle bells, shouts, white shirts, bright sarongs, all the noise and colour of the East Indies. Most of the business is carried on in the shop-houses themselves, but there are a few street hawkers selling cigarettes and cooked foods from stalls. Almost every shop is Chinese owned; a few Malay shops are quite unimportant and the European firms deal in wholesale business only. There are, however, quite a number of Indian shops dealing mainly in materials and clothes,¹ There tends to be a concentration of types of shop: generally speaking the road parallel to the river, Old Bazaar Street, contains grocery stores; Indian Street, Carpenter Street and Yeau Hai Street contain general stores; hardware merchants and goldsmiths congregate in Upper Rock Street, tinsmiths in China Street and so forth. Coffee shops and bicycle stores are scattered everywhere amongst the others. As we shall see later this concentration of certain types of business, incomplete as it is, implies also a tendency towards the local concentration of members of the same dialect group.

1 Measured by H.M. Ministry of Health Standards (1937) more than 76 families in the bazaar area are living in overcrowded conditions. See my Report on Over-Crowding in Kuching (1949). Typescript, (on file in Secretariat, Kuching).

1 The power of “Indians” and “Arabs” in the textile trade seems general in the Moslem Indies. Perhaps the fact that they deal in sarongs, which are a style of dress peculiar to the Indies and still largely manufactured by traditional Indian methods may help to explain why in this field alone the Chinese do not predominate.

Each Chinese shop is an independent unit. An analysis of the nature of shop ownership makes this ouite clear. The total number of b...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Author’s Preface
• I The Problem
• II Emigration and Emigrants
• III The Warp and Woof of Chinese Associations
• IV The Nature of the Chinese Community
• V Clanship
• VI Rural Economy and Clan Relationships
• VII Occupational Identification and Bazaar Economy
• VIII Bazaar Economy and the Rubber Trade
• IX The Problem of Power
• X Relations with the Mother Country
• Appendix I The Early History of the Chinese in Sarawak
• Appendix II The Hakka Kongsi in Borneo