Kuala Lumpur Chinatown China Town

Malay, Chinese, Indian, Indonesian, Italian and other food is waiting for you in Kuala Lumpur China Town. When it comes to food and restaurant diversity K L Chinatown is hard to beat.

Aside of dozens of food stalls, food courts and hawkers at Petaling Street at KL China Town are other excellent full scale restaurants. If you are for restaurants on the upper price level have

a look at Bangsar or around Bukit Bintang’ Imbi Plaza area.

Actually the shopping centers at Bukit Bintang have great restaurants and they are
real cheap, e.g. you can get a full Japanese beef Teppanyaki, there are also seafood and chicken variants, meal prepared in front of you for about $ 6,- including drinks, pic left.

It's no question that Kuala Lumpur's Chinat Town is a excellent travel destination, in particular because of its exotic

ethnic diversity which produce such a interesting mixture of food and habits. Also the diversity of the people around.

Kuala Lumpur China Town is a real heaven for exotic food lover. Throughout the city are markets and food courts with excellent and exotic food for just a few dollars. They are also called hawker centers offering fish curries and traditional chicken skewers (Satays), fried rice and chili crabs plus plus, all freshly prepared.

If you look for something special at Kuala Lumpur China Town try Nasi Lemak, that’s steamed rice with coconut milk, fried fish and chili, but be careful with the chili, tell them to bring the chili separate so that you can add as much as you like since usually this is extremely hot food, just as in Thailand.

Other KL delicacies are shrimp soup, Satay's with peanut sauce and all kind of grilled sea food. Fresh fruit juice, coconut milk, coke, Chinese tea and other drinks are available.

Taxis are cheap and the monorail and subway quite ok, you can travel easily on a Kuala Lumpur tour from Chinatown's

Some Kuala Lumpur China Town History

When British officials moved from Klang at the seaside to Kuala Lumpur in March 1880, KL Chinatown was already set up because this was the center of tin mining. Kuala Lumpur China Town was constantly the target of thousands of Chinese immigrants who try to find work in the tin mines and over time in the rubber industries and at the coffee plantation.

The Klang Valley is rich in tin bearing granites, this is the area along the Klang river from Klang town at the sea eastwards to today Kuala Lumpur, mined was from open cast tin mines.

In the 18xx the Chinese immigrant worker at Kuala Lumpur Chinatown were seen as follows:

The Chinese can do everything; they are actors, acrobats, artists, musicians, chemists and druggists, clerks, cashiers, engineers, architects, surveyors, missionaries, priests, doctors, schoolmasters, lodging-house keepers, butchers, pepper grower, gambler, cake-sellers, carriage owners, cloth hawkers, distillers of spirits, eating-house keepers, fishmongers, fruit sellers, ferrymen, grass-seller, hawkers, merchants and agents, oil-sellers, opium-shop keepers, pawnbrokers, pig dealers, chicken farmer, paper-lantern makers, pea-grinders, tomb-builders, water carriers, beggars, idle vagabonds and thieves.

The problem with the area of today Kuala Lumpur China Town was the malaria, hundreds of people died every couple of month, but some made it through and got immense wealthy

In the 188X the China Town area was ruled by the so called “Captain China” Mr. Yap Ah Loy and his Chinese friends.

In the 1890-ties most of the Chinese immigrant workers were men and they called themselves 'free laborers' who could change their employer as they like. The so called -pig business- to import workers before without having a chance to change the employer had been stopped. But a newcomer from China with his travel paid by a recruiting agent was still likely to be locked up in a lodging house at Kuala Lumpur Chinatown while the recruiter went off to arrange for his disposal to an employer.

The Kuala Lumpur China Town dweller of 189X lived where he could find space to lie down. He either lived on the job or shared a room with dozens of other Chinese workers. The Chinese working population was of men usually between twenty and fifty with a ratio of ten guys to one woman. This resulted to forty registered brothels at Kuala Lumpur Chinatown in the 189X where about 500 women, mainly Chinese did their job.

The Chinese worker lived where his job was, some also on a covered pavement or in a crowded guesthouse. There the Chinese men at Kuala Lumpur slept in wooden beds fixed to the walls in tiers, on canvas or straw mats. In many cases the man had no more than the shared use of a bed for twelve or even eight hours, it was rented by another person during his working shift. Here he kept his box with his few possessions, including an opium pipe.

There are not many remains left from that time in Kuala Lumpur China Town. The only city in Malaysia still having a Chinatown very similar to this old days is Penang Georgetown. Kuala Lumpur China Town today is mainly directed to tourism, shopping and some nightlife. It is one of the most interesting places in Malaysia's capital and the right place when you want to have some fun in the evening. There are also a couple of relatively cheap Kuala Lumpur hotels around, the Hotel Malaya is one of them.

Chinatown Penang Georgetown