A Journey in the Federal Capital

When George L. Peet arrived in Kuala Lumpur as the first correspondent for the Straits Times newspaper based in the city, the Federal capital was barely half a century old. Within living memory, it had been a Chinese mining village, but as the administrative headquarters of the Federated Malay States it had become a vibrant administrative and economic centre.

Peet travelled throughout the peninsula gathering material for his newspaper columns, some of which are presented in this volume. An astute observer, he came to know Malaysia well, but as a journalist he was detached not only from the societies and cultures of the Asian residents but also from the colonial establishment and expatriate society.

Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation building in Kuala Lumpur, Federated Malay States, c. 1925
Lim Kheng Chye Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore

The Author

George Lamb Peet was born in 1902 in Secunderabad, India, the son and grandson of Methodist ministers. Peet arrived in Malaya from Colchester, Essex in 1923, aged about 21 to join the staff of The Straits Times in Singapore as junior reporter. After The Straits Times opened its branch office in Kuala Lumpur, he was assigned as its first resident correspondent there. During his four-year sojourn in Kuala Lumpur (1930-34), Peet penned a number of broadly appealing articles on Malayan subjects which he – towards the end of his life – compiled for the MBRAS into the present volume, A Journal in the Federal Capital. Peet very quickly established himself as one of The Straits Times’ leading journalists, and in this way rose steadily through the ranks to become its assistant editor from 1934-39 before finally assuming the editorship in 1946-52. Upon retirement from The Straits Times in 1952, Peet settled in Perth where he continued to work for a West Australian newspaper until his final retirement in 1967. Apart from the present volume, Peet also wrote Rickshaw Reporter, his memoirs of pre-war Singapore; Within Changi’s Walls, an account of his internment in Singapore’s notorious Changi and Sime Road Prisoner of War camps during the Occupation years and Malayan Exile, a slim memoir of his days as The Straits Times’ correspondent in Kuala Lumpur. Peet’s private papers, currently kept at Murdoch University, represent a valuable resource on Malayan history. Peet, a former Council member of the MBRAS, was also a staunch Rotarian. Peet died in Perth on 18 August 1985, following a lung infection, aged 83.

CONTENTS

Introduction

Echoes of Bukit Betong
The Lights of Pudu UlU
Comparisons with Singapore
Jungle on Jugra Hill
A New Era on the East Coast
A Midnight River Rite
The Enchantment of Sri Menanti
A Girls’ Sports Meeting
Old and New Chiefs of Selangor
Morning on the Kelantan Plain
Mud, Mangroves and Malaria
The Multi-millionaire in a Rickshaw
Kampong Life in the City
The Kinta Valley in its Heyday
A Festival at Bandar
The Pawang
Reflections on Bukit Kutu
The Last Chinese Tin Smelter
New Light on Yap Ah Loy
A Red-Letter Day for Trengganu
The Malays, the Only Happy People
An Old Coffee Planter
The Ghost of a Waterway
Pigs in a Bungalow
Lessons Learnt at Pekan
Beyond the Main Range
Lukut in History
Selangor in the Melting Pot
Two Chinese Generations
The Oldest Town
A Handbook of Early Perak
The Eighth Moon in Petaling Street
Half a Century at Rembau

Notes
Index