A walk through Chinatown, Kuala Lumpur

Colourful and bustling Chinatown is one of my favourite areas in Kuala Lumpur. The streets and alleys are bursting at the seams with things to discover. I love wandering aimlessly around here. It's amazing how many new things I discover each time, even on the same day a walk down the same street will turn up something that I just hadn't spotted before.

Happy Year of the Dog!

This recent walk took place during the days of celebration for Chinese New Year. Stores were filled with decorations marking the Year of the Dog. Red is an extremely auspicious colour in Chinese tradition, signifying a welcome to good fortune, and you’ll see it everywhere during this period, including on many people who gravitate towards red clothes.

The New Year festival is also known as the spring festival, hence all the fake pink blossoms that suddenly appear in abundance on every street corner and mall. Of course here in Malaysia spring doesn’t exist as a season, it’s just hot and humid the entire year. So it’s actually quite nice to see the fake blossoms; they do make this spring-loving European feel something of that spring buzz ☺

On many of the buildings you’ll see small shrines set into the walls. I noticed this time that many of them had peacock feathers displayed.

I was intrigued, as I hadn’t spotted these feathers in a Chinese shrine before. It turns out that they are used at the turn of the Chinese year. The peacock feather is supposed to blow away the bad fortune of the year before and enhance positive energy for the coming year.

This piece of street art on the side of one of the old shophouse style buildings points to the traditional crafts of the area:

This piece is by Julia Volchkova, a Russian artist who has many murals throughout Malaysia. This particular one depicts a goldsmith, reflecting the importance of gold in Chinese tradition. Chinese New Year marks the peak gold buying season. I read that if people born in the year of the dog wear gold it makes them principled and charitable. In addition it's supposed to make them attractive to people of the opposite sex. Well, I was born in the year of the horse, so I couldn't test that particular one out 😬

The birds of Chinatown

Rounding a corner I heard the sounds of birds chirping. Following the noise down a street lined with old shops I came across this sight:

I’ve heard of the bird markets in China, and the tradition of keeping caged birds as pets. I guess this pet shop is a reflection of that tradition. It’s quite sad though to see these birds cooped up here, though they look well cared for. In China there is tradition of taking the birds out every morning, in their cages, for a ‘walk’. As the owners walk they swing the cages in their hands, believing that the effort needed for the bird to stay upright during this process is good exercise for them.

I imagine the sound of the birds singing in their cages every morning must be quite beautiful, but also rather sad, as they sing yearningly to the sky while remaining grounded in their cages.

Just around the corner from the pet shop I spotted this rather sweet image of a lovesick guy with a dove perched on his hat. In feng shui pictures of doves are sometimes placed in houses as a love cure, as they are said to bring a long and peaceful marriage. I like how the padlock has been incorporated into the artwork.

Later on yet more street art continued the bird theme, as this colourful pair confronted me on turning into an alleyway. I love the colours here.

Behind the walls

One of the things I love about Chinatown is that each building seems to be bursting at the seams with things to discover. Passing by a nondescript staircase, you'll get no clue as to what's contained inside. Signs advertising the businesses are small or non-existent, and even where they exist they give little away as to what the business actually is. It's a lot of fun to poke around and see what you turn up.

On this visit, just the clouds were looking threatening and I was starting to feel drops of rain, this sign caught my attention:

Seemed like too good a deal to resist! I climbed up the concrete staircase and at at the top found ‘Moontree Café’, the most tranquil café I’ve yet come across in Kuala Lumpur. It’s also a feminist bookstore, though unfortunately the books were in Mandarin (which I am learning, but I don’t think the 11 characters that I’ve mastered to date will get me far…). It was a lovely discovery, and ample evidence of the need to peek into every nook and cranny here in Chinatown. You never know what you’ll find.

It was dark by the time I stepped outside again, so time to discover Chinatown’s nightlife. Just around the corner from Moontree I met my husband for a drink in a bar called Attic. Tucked away at the top of a guesthouse, this is another place that is really easy to miss. Even though we knew what we were looking for we still managed to walk past it.

The guesthouse itself has been really lovingly restored with many original details. I loved the spiral staircase wending its way up to the bar.

And once upstairs the space opened out up to an expansive beam ridged ceiling, and there on the roof more reference to the Chinese pet bird tradition with those beautiful bamboo birdcages cleverly turned into lamps. I would have had no idea this place was here if I hadn't heard about it before. It's like discovering Aladdin's cave!

Just a few doors down is the charming and atmospheric Old China Café. This is one of the best-preserved places in Chinatown, right down to the wooden latches on the doors. Stepping inside through the wooden saloon style doors you immediately feel immersed in another time, a way of life that is sadly dying out.

The mirrors that you see reflecting the image of the café back on itself are feng shui mirrors, the belief being that placing them opposite each other in this way ensures the perpetual reflection of good luck. There’s so much detail preserved here. I love that bamboo high chair you see against the back wall by the mirror! To the left of the frame you see red ang pao envelopes hanging from some tree branches. These are the red envelopes containing money that are given out at Chinese new year.

Street life

Back outside the streets were still pulsing with life, with sidewalk cafes and foodstalls packed with customers. This is such a contrast to many other parts of Kuala Lumpur where life is fast retreating inside air-conditioned malls. It's a great place to sit and people watch, one of my favourite activities 😊 The smell of the food was delicious, too bad we'd already eaten!

Here you see the red lanterns that fill the streets during Chinese New Year, the colour red welcoming good fortune. You'll also hear bunches of firecrackers being set off in the streets and people's houses - and not just one firecracker at a time either, oh no. We're talking piles of them, and then just when you think the explosions have finally come to an end the spark manages to reach an untouched part of the pile and off they go again, the sounds ricocheting off the buildings. The streets are filled with piles of the red paper shreds left behind.

I'm glad that this area of Kuala Lumpur has so far managed to hold back the skyscrapers and shopping malls that surround it, but you have to wonder if it will be able to do so forever as construction in this city continues rapidly. It would be a sad loss if it were to disappear.

^{All photos by @freewheel}