It's been a while since my last heritage post, because we've just not been out and about a lot.

But as of midnight on Friday, the CMCO was lifted. So we've gone back to the status quo ante (which still involves plenty of restrictions, but at least allows us to leave the district, and -- hopefully -- allows a little more leeway on mask-wearing).

Today was our longest walk since the CMCO began. It was just our usual route over the right-hand bridge, through the kampungs, and back on the ferry, but on the way we stopped to photograph some graves we'd spotted on a previous trip.

This site commemorates Chua Lian, the first wife of prominent Kuching figure Chan Kho. It's a fascinating story:



Born in China in 1838, Chan Kho headed first for Singapore, and then for Sarawak. He started work in Kuching, and then moved to Bau, where he married Chua Lian, his boss's daughter. She seems a pretty astute kind of person, good at coming forward with the right advice at the apposite moment.

After gold was found on his land in Bau, Chan Kho became a very rich man.

He had two sons with Chua Lian, and seemed happily settled. But one of his close friends from China persuaded him that as a rich Chinese, he should also take a wife originating from China. This would enable his late father and mother to be worshipped in the customary ancestral rites.

So, when he was about 40, Chan Kho returned to Chao An in Fujian, and married Kho Jin Choo (the great-grandmother of the man who wrote the account I'm drawing on). He stayed there long enough to have three sons and two daughters, and to undertake the reburial ceremony for his parents.

But then someone arrived from Kuching with the news that his eldest son by Chun Lian was building dozens of shophouses... Chan Kho decided he needed to check this out personally.

On returning to Kuching, he found his treasury stripped, and started to lay about his son with the walking-stick that had been gifted to him by James Brooke. But the son explained that he had used the money to build no fewer than 112 shophouses, which were bringing in USD 1,000 per month in rent.

During this second sojourn in Kuching, Chan Kho had another three sons and several daughters.

Eventually, he returned to China, where he died. The two wives never met.

While I'm about it, I have just another couple of heritage stories to round up. On the first day of the CMCO, we noted the restoration that is going on at St Joseph's School:


The main building used to house the Kuching branch of the Institut des Freres des Ecoles Chretiennes, more generally known as the De La Salle Brothers. It was opened in 1894 by Rajah Charles Brooke, and according to the Sarawak Gazette, represented not only the largest private work carried out in that year, but also the largest building in Kuching.

Columba Gleeson, the last De La Salle brother to serve as principal of St Joseph's, died only four years ago in Ireland, at the age of 81. And there are some further interesting reminiscences of St Joseph's here.

And finally, there's the building we came across on Thursday on our way back from the hospital (where it was determined, yet again, that we have no covid antibodies...).


It's hard to find much information about this one. But I'm fairly confident it is the former Asrama Pelatih Jururawat (Trainee Nurses' Dormitory).

This source includes it in a list of "three mysterious places" in Kuching. The writer doesn't know why the dormitory was abandoned, but apparently it's a bit of a draw card for groups studying the paranormal. Not only do they believe that it is inhabited by spirits, but some also testify to having seen them or even been physically hit on the head by them.

I don't know... But I guess it is on Kuching's "spirit road"...

We've photographed many an abandoned house on our perambulations round Kuching. A lot of them are in the environs of Bukit Hantu (ghost hill).

Here's another one from the same day:


I love Kuching's never-ending fund of stories...