A Tour of 60 Asian Port Cities with Ex–ACM Director Kennie Ting

Kennie
The book begins with the Bujang Valley, because I wanted it to begin with one of my favourite pieces in the museum, which is the Bujang Valley Buddha. It is often overlooked, but I think it’s just exquisite. And the story it tells is of the sort of ancient links between India and Southeast Asia, the transfer of the Hindu Buddhist faith here in the midst of antiquity with, you know, traders and Brahmins possibly. And then another piece that is one of my favourites is the ivory Virgin Mary that was also in our Manila gallery and exhibition.

And it tells the tale of another kind of trade between Asia and the rest of the world, because this time it’s the Pacific Ocean. The piece was made in Manila, but the gilding was done in Mexico. And again, it tells of this particular trade that most people don’t know about.

[Music playing]

Jimmy
You’re listening to BiblioAsia+, a podcast produced by the National Library of Singapore. At BiblioAsia, we tell stories about Singapore’s past, some familiar, others forgotten, all fascinating.

Cities tend to be interesting places, and port cities especially so. Because of the focus on trade and commerce, port cities are, in the words of one writer, cosmopolitan sites of cultural contact and mixing that are crucibles of innovation and creativity. That writer is Kennie Ting, who decided to pen a history of not 30, not 40, or even 50 port cities in Asia.

Instead, Kennie wrote about 60 cities in a 300-page book. Remarkably, he managed to do this while juggling his day job hitting the Asian Civilisations Museum [ACM]. My name is Jimmy Yap, and I’m the Editor in Chief of BiblioAsia, a publication of the National Library of Singapore. And with me in the studio is the great man himself.

Welcome to BiblioAsia+, Kennie. How have you been?

Kennie
I’ve been very well, Jimmy. Thank you so much for having me this afternoon.

Jimmy
It’s my pleasure. You don’t look insane, but you must be. How does one write a 300-page book, 60 port cities, and you’re now the former, but at that point you were the director of the Asian Civilisations Museum and the Peranakan Museum, and you were part-timing as a group director of Museums and Development at the National Heritage Board.

So, how on earth did you find the time to write this book?

Kennie
I would have to agree with you. First of all, that I’m definitely some parts insane to want to do a book like that in the first place. The one thing that I’d have to say is that I’ve always been working on one book or another. When I started work at the Asian Civilisations Museum, I was working on the previous book, which is the Singapore 1819 book.

So I’m accustomed to writing while I was working, and a lot of it comes from discipline. I know I have very little time, so if I’m setting aside time to write, I really write. I really try to make sure that I put words down on the page. It could be rubbish words, but at least they’re on the page, and I come back to edit them later.

So that’s one. The other thing is delegation. I’ve had an excellent team at the museum. I love them to bits. They’re so good. You see the smooth succession at the museum because they run the museum so well already. I’m not a micromanager. I make decisions and I go with them because I know that I don’t have time, but I just want to get back to the writing.

Jimmy
It’s very important. Writing is very important. For the casual reader picking up this book and wondering if they should read it, you know, maybe you could tell them, you know, who is this book aimed at? And why should someone read this book?

Kennie
I really wanted the book to be aimed at a general audience. That was also my publisher’s nagging reminder all the time. And I think what I tried to do was to provide another kind of history of Asia. Because there are two kinds of history that we’re very familiar with, right? There’s the empire, like empire after empire type of history of Asia, where it was like Ming and the Qing Dynasty and you have the Mughals. That’s what you learn in school.

And then there’s the colonial history of Asia, where you learn about how the British and the Portuguese, et cetera came in here. And I really wanted to find something that was in between. And what’s a different kind of history, a different way of looking at Asia and ourselves by using these port cities, which are set at the periphery, but also, in my view, at the centre of great change.

Jimmy
There are 60 cities in this book. That’s quite a lot of cities. Some of these are, of course, are in the past, but of all these 60 cities, how many of them did you visit? Tell us a funny story or two based on your research into these cities.

Kennie
Of all these cities, I would say that I’ve been to 38 of them, but the ones where I’ve actually gone to do my quote unquote “grand tour”, where I go and I research and I photograph the buildings and so on, there’s 29 of them.

Jimmy
Still a lot, I mean, I would have said if you had done 10, I would have said well done, but you know, 30.

Kennie
I have an obsessive personality. So, I think most of this almost all of these grand tours, so to speak, I go on my own and that’s the fun of it. I would wander on my own.

In India the first city I went to was Kolkata. I wandered the streets on my own. I made a mistake of accepting help for directions. Somebody came up to me and said, “Oh, can I help you? You look like” – I had a map – “you’re searching for something.” And I said, “Yes, where do I find this and that?” And that individual basically followed me for an hour and a half. From that on, I learned a lesson that I need to be independent.

I shouldn’t really accept help from people on the streets. I look very strange to the locals in each city because they probably think I’m some strange Japanese in my hat, wandering about in these cities.

Jimmy
You write in your acknowledgements that your port city journey started in Penang. How did your fascination with port cities begin?

Kennie
It actually began quite by accident. In 2010, I went away to do my master’s. And I knew I was very interested in cities, so I did a master’s in world cities and urban life at Goldsmiths College.

And then I took a year off just travelling. I realised I didn’t know very much about Southeast Asia. I realised that growing up, you know, when you go to school in Singapore, unless you took Southeast Asian history, you really had no idea about what’s going on in Southeast Asia, and I wanted to change that.

By chance, my friend was getting married in Penang, and that kickstarted this process of curiosity where I felt that it was important for me to find out more about my immediate region. And I thought the port cities were a good starting point because we are a port city. And Singapore is a port city there must be something in common between all these port cities.

And it really came from that point of view of trying to understand better and our region. And of course I got bored. I set myself a target once every month, I would go and visit one port city. And after the first year, when I’m done with Southeast Asia, I thought, “Ah, let’s just go on to China.”

And so it just kept going. But it’s a search for you know, a better understanding of the South and our immediate region.

Jimmy
Okay, it makes a lot of sense. Earlier you mentioned that you were trying to take a different approach, not the empire’s approach or the colonial approach, but a sort of network approach, right? How does the network approach sort of differ?

Kennie
I think what I tried to do was to demonstrate what was happening in tandem. Because, you know, there’s one narrative we’re very familiar with, which are the colonial port cities, for example.

Right, your Manila, and then like Jakarta, which is Batavia, and Singapore, and there was that particular narrative.

But I also tried very hard, in the spirit of it all being networked, to look at, you know, was there something else going on? A lot of scholars have done this work. And, you know, we know, of course, that the Asian trade was still going on.

So there were still these networks of ports, like Ayutthaya and Hoi An, and Aceh and Makassar and all that. That was actually taking place alongside the colonial ports. And often times we get this very simplistic idea of, you know, again, this idea that the Europeans come and there was a fishing village that they then transformed into a colonial sort of like bustling port settlement, and that wasn’t necessarily the only narrative.

When you approach this from a network approach, looking at the bigger picture, and what else was going on, how everything was connected, you then see that, you know, it was a far richer and far more interesting time, and there was still a lot of agency held in the hands of Asian merchants. Asians sort of like, ruled port cities.

Most of the motivation was to try to counter this one specific sort of trade narrative, which was that the Europeans came here. And I also wanted to explore the sense of how we were interconnected a long time ago, even before the Europeans came.

And how that interconnectedness is still very reminiscent of what’s happening today. So you see certain kinds of themes, there’s a kind of, in its own way, the rise and fall of specific kind of entrepôt ports in each of the regions.

Jimmy
Give me one or two of these themes that you think, you know, run through the book.

Kennie
So one of the things that I felt was very interesting to explore was this importance of an entrepôt port in the Straits of Malacca.

And so you see that coming through from right at the beginning. There was Kedah, and then you go on, you have Kedah Falls, there’s Palembang. And then, you know, there’s Melaka and there’s Aceh, and then it goes down to Singapore. And if you, I mean it’s not very explicit, but if you look through the entire book, you will see that there is a kind of thread.

And I’m suggesting that at any point there was always this very important function of an entrepôt port in Southeast Asia.

Jimmy
Partly, no doubt, because like trade winds and all that, and distances.

Kennie
Yes, you’re right, the Southeast Asia is kind of the in-between place, you know, when everything had to go through.

I’ve always been very interested, in the book or at the museum, to look at Southeast Asia as central. So it’s not like a peripheral place, right? You often think of Southeast Asia as peripheral, but to me, because all of these civilisations came here, etc. Somehow it represents a kind of central place and a microcosm of the world in some ways. So Southeast Asia, to me, is paramount. And I tried very much to sort of tease out these ideas of how Southeast Asia is absolutely paramount in the history of the trade of Asia. Again, not explicitly, but I think if you read through everything, you’ll see that Southeast Asia has quite a prominent role in the book.

Jimmy
That’s interesting. Okay. I like how you’ve titled the six sections of the book. You know, the chronological and the section titles have also very cleverly captured the historical impetus of that era. But all these divisions are also, you know, artificial, right? So was it hard for you to group port cities in different categories?

Kennie
Almost all of the cities are in the place that I wanted them to be. Except for two. There was one city that was hard for me and that was Guangzhou, Canton. I was very torn because Guangzhou features in the history of trade very prominently twice. The first, you know, in the era of the Tang shipwreck. In the end, I decided that it would work better in the section where we dealt with the Opium War and the treaty ports.

The other port that was really a challenge was Mumbai. If you read the chapter now, it would feel like it belongs in the section earlier, you know, in the colonial section, because a lot of it is about architecture. Eventually I settled on Mumbai being in the final section because I wanted to explore the topic of Bollywood, film and popular culture.

Unfortunately, a whole part of that chapter related to Bollywood film and popular culture had to be cut out, not just because of the length, but because I just couldn’t use any images from, you know, from any of these like films or so on.

Jimmy
Okay, but I have to ask you then, why is Singapore where it is under, you know, “Containers and Connectivity”, which is, you know, is a good place for it. But you know, why not earlier?

Kennie
I wanted Singapore to represent a kind of turning point. So every section ends with a kind of cliffhanger and then there’s a turning point. And so it’s important for me that Singapore opens the last chapter, which is about looking towards the future, about how the entire landscape of trade has changed due to technology and I wanted to situate Singapore in the Singapore of today. We know the 1890s, I wrote a whole book on it!

Jimmy
Okay. I’m quite sure you do know about the history of Singapore. When you’re writing about 60 cities in 48 chapters, you know, there might be a tendency to fall into a template, right? But you managed to resist that impulse, and kudos to you, because every chapter reads very differently. The chapter on Mokhan and Surat, for example, start with coffee, and chapter on Tokyo starts with that scene at the Tokyo station. Obviously it’s important not to be boring, but you managed to do that really well.

Kennie
Thank you so much, you’re so kind to say that. There was actually a precedence to this. When I was writing the Singapore 1819 book, already I made it a point to look at heritage in its different forms. So whether it’s architecture, or intangible aspects, or popular culture, nature, etc. So I basically took that model and went further with it. Part of this is also my training at the museum. I give a lot of tours, and you know, I’ve sort of honed my skills in telling stories from the point of view of a particular object.

And to me, whether it’s an object in the museum, or a building, or, you know, a particular dish, it’s all objects in my mind. And the ability to sort of tell a story or to lead into a larger historical narrative was something that I’m very familiar with in the museum. And I wanted to use that in this book as well.

Jimmy
Well, very successfully, but in addition to, you know, how it’s structured, it’s also very well written. You wear your scholarship very lightly and every chapter is interesting. In terms of the actual writing process, you know, what was the hardest thing about the writing?

Kennie
I did not approach it as a history book. I really wanted it to be a sort of travel journal. So in the book a very important figure is Ibn Battuta and the rihla, which is a travel journal. So to me, I structured the book like a rihla.

Basically, it is me, like Frodo Baggins, you know, kind of wandering the world, looking at all these different things with wide open eyes. And so, therefore, these you know, each of these chapters had to have these interesting nuggets that my wide-open eyes could be intrigued by.

The hardest part of writing the book actually was dealing with the earlier sections, because in the later sections of the book, where I’ve travelled to these cities, it was easier. You know I was more familiar, there were tangible things actual buildings that I could refer to, objects, etc.

But for the first two sections, it was really challenging. A lot of what I was writing about may not exist anymore. So I figured I had to turn to literature, so, literature appears quite a bit there. And use museum objects, for example.

Jimmy
You do use a museum artefact as an entry into the chapter, which is of course, you know, quite apt for port cities. What were some of the items that show trade across the Indian Ocean and, you know, among port cities?

Kennie
I mean, I obviously, I love the ACM, so I wanted the ACM to feature...

Jimmy
My favourite museum!

Kennie
...in the book. You know, we have a collection of trade as well as religious objects that look at the span of the Indian Ocean trade and the exchange of cultures across millennia.

The book begins with the Bujang Valley, because I wanted it to begin with one of my favourite pieces in the museum, which is the Bujang Valley Buddha. It is often overlooked, but I think it’s just exquisite. And the story it tells is of the sort of ancient links between India and Southeast Asia, the transfer of the Hindu Buddhist faith here in the midst of antiquity with, you know, traders and Brahmins possibly. And then another piece that is one of my favourites is the ivory Virgin Mary that was also in our Manila gallery and exhibition.

And it tells the tale of another kind of trade between Asia and the rest of the world, because this time it’s the Pacific Ocean. The piece was made in Manila, but the gilding was done in Mexico. And again, it tells of this particular trade that most people don’t know about.

So these two were, I think, the two most important pieces to me partly because they speak of these trades that are, are kind of forgotten. You don’t know them as much.

Jimmy
Okay, so the book ends with a chapter on Shenzhen and Wuhan. And of course, we know Shenzhen is like China’s economic miracle. Unfortunately, Wuhan now is known as the supposedly the place of the origin of the COVID 19 virus. I did not know it was an historic port city. Why is Wuhan important historically? And why do you think it’s largely been forgotten compared to the other treaty ports?

Kennie
Wuhan is an interesting example of a port city, because it’s nowhere near the sea. It’s hundreds of kilometres inland on the banks of the Yangtze River. And I mean, it has had different importance in different times in China’s history. So Wuhan is actually made of three sort of sub-cities. There’s Wuchang, Hankou and Hanyang.

And Hankou was the treaty port, the colonial treaty port. It was a very important city because it allowed the Europeans, the great powers, to access China’s inland markets for the shipping of tea and other sorts of materials. What is surprising about Wuhan and the Hankou area is that it has a bund that is twice the length of the Shanghai Bund.

And the Shanghai Bund has two concessions, right? There’s the French concession, there’s the international kind of settlement. The Wuhan Bund has six. As you walk along the Bund, you have six different sort of architectural styles. There’re the usual suspects of the French and the British. There were the, the Russians, the Germans, the Japanese, and one more. I forget, probably the Belgians. I can’t remember. But there’s this quick kind of turnaround in the kinds of styles on the bund and in the concession areas. And this is something that most people don’t realise because you don’t think of going to Wuhan so much for cultural reasons.

Kennie
You go for other things. You would go to Shanghai, you would go to one of the coastal cities, but Wuhan is kind of not part of the popular imagination. It’s a pity as so because if you go to the other bank of the city, Wuchang, it’s also historically so significant on multiple levels.

The Chinese Revolution, for example, it began there. There was the Wuchang Uprising that began that process of the Qing Dynasty being overthrown and Republican China coming into being. So that’s huanghelou, the Yellow Crane Tower, which is one of the most famous kinds of towers in Chinese literature and history.

Jimmy
I don’t think Wuhan is going to be on anyone’s travel to-do list for a while.

Kennie
It sounds very industrial. But there’s so much history and culture.

Jimmy
Okay, okay. We will have to take your word for it. Maybe I’ll google Wuhan and look for exciting places to visit. Tell us a little bit about your research process. I mean, obviously involved going to these places, and of course, you know, the exhibits in the ACM, but what was the research process like for this book?

Kennie
The specific, I guess, process of structuring and researching and writing the book took just over three years. Ten years of going to these various port cities and being at the ACM, because a lot of our narrative at the museum was also about trade in port cities.

So where there was a museum object, it was a lot easier. I would just go along with it. But I would still do a copious amount of reading. I’d come to the library to borrow lots of books.

Jimmy
Oh, what a nice thing to say! It’s a tremendous book. I want to recommend that everybody, you know, picks up a copy. Buy it if you can. And it’s also available in the library. But at this point, you know, we want to turn the interview to lighter topics. You’ve travelled very widely, obviously. You mentioned the great Elizabeth Gilbert [in your book]. So what are your Eat, Pray, Love port cities?

Kennie
So, you know, if there was one port city I went where I felt like it was just amazing food wise, like I really found so much to love, it was Xiamen.

And it was very surprising. A lot of it was because there was, there was a lot of familiarity to the food, but it was not exactly the same. It’s very sad because I wanted to begin the chapter of Xiamen with oyster omelette, which they call, you know, o luah or o-chien. But I had to cut out that beginning because of length.

But it’s these small things, you know, like the, the oyster omelette there, and the fishball soup there, and the seafood there, etc., that is kind of very similar to things here, but it’s not the same. And they also had the chai poh neng, and you know – what is that even in English? Like, radish, preserved radish omelette, all these sorts of things. So it felt like a home away from home, and the seafood is so fresh. You know, it was just an amazing place to go for food.

And then I think with regards to the, the pray bit, right? Sorry, I can’t avoid it. Of course, Bali.

Jimmy
Ah, okay. Of course, Bali. Of course, Bali. Why not?

Kennie
You realise that it’s not actually a port city. I had to put it in. It’s an island, but I thought it was very important to have it in there. Bali is one of those places that it’s so near to Singapore that I go to hide away and to sort of, you know, if you think of prayer as just reflecting, so not like a literal...

Jimmy
Yeah, something spiritual.

Kennie
Yes. That is where I go to recharge, but also there was a point in time before COVID and before I started writing this book where I was a bit down, and I remember I paid a particular visit to Bali to go to the Besakih temple. for the first time. I thought it was one of the most beautiful places on earth. It’s in the book. And I went to sort of kind of pay my respects. So there was the one point, I think, in the entire journey that I went to kind of pray, so to speak.

And then love, again, if I think of it as like, you know, there are these sort of amazingly romantic experiences without any sort of person necessarily. It was Goa.

Jimmy
Ah.

Kennie
Goa was one of the few places I went to on my grand tour where I had a friend there. Generally, I travel on my own. Partly also because I try to minimise time with people so I can spend more time looking at the buildings. It’s terrible. But it so happened I had a friend, a friend of a friend in Goa, and he took me around some of these amazing places. One of the most amazing experiences I had was we went up in pitch darkness on his motorbike to see this, you know, flamenco guitar performance in the middle of this old church, or this cathedral, I can’t remember the name of it, that’s on the top of a hill in Panjim. And it was one of the most amazing experiences ever. The flamenco performer in this, like, church in almost pitch darkness.

And then going up, holding on for dear life to him on this motorbike, up and down. I thought that was, like, really romantic. Even, I mean, it was just that whole experience was amazing.

Jimmy
Okay. I’ve always wanted to go to Goa. Of all the 60 port cities that you’ve covered in this book, if you had to pick one to live in each era, right, I think there were six eras. Other than Singapore, you know, which for each era would you pick for each city?

Kennie
The first section would be Yangzhou. Fascinated by it, you know, the idea that it was kind of like, I said the New York of the time, everyone was very fabulous and there was this sense of style, you know, it’s lost from the city of Yangzhou. So, I really want to go back to Yangzhou at that time.

The second section is Aden. Again, I was fascinated by this idea of this amazing epic city sort of tucked in this caldera, right, this amazing, epic caldera. And I want to go on top, like I write my book, I want to go up onto the hills to see the passing of the ships into the harbour.

What’s happening in Aden right now – it’s kind of war torn. Again, the idea that it was actually this very sophisticated highly urban, very important port city is fascinating, and I want to see it for real at the time.

The third section, Manila. I mean, I love Manila. I want to do a whole exhibition at the museum on it. I think Manila, I feel, is often misunderstood. It represents the entrepôt port that is like, Singapore’s direct, like, ancestor. Singapore succeeded Manila. In its time, Manila was this amazing entrepôt port. It was really the centre of the world. The idea of a very cosmopolitan material culture, the style, the food, the coming together of cultures, the idea of the galleons carrying treasures across the oceans.

Of course, it wasn’t just all good things, there was a lot of other things as well. Slavery and all that, you know, that we cannot ignore. But just the idea of living in Manila at the time and seeing its splendour - that really appeals.

And then, fourth section, Kolkata. Because I feel that it’s very misunderstood. I went to Kolkata. It was my first stop on my sort of Indian port city grand tour. And I found it surprisingly just familiar. I mean, you will know that at one point the Straits Settlements were actually ruled from Kolkata, and a lot of our early architecture in Singapore is Anglo Indian and it’s just basically Kolkatan architecture.

So, going to Kolkata and seeing, you know, many aspects of the city, kind of very familiar. You know, they also have this sort of segregated town plans. There was the kind of colonial quarter, and then there’s the kind of local quarters, et cetera, like we have here. They had all of that there. And the food was also really good. Surprisingly, the Bengali food, I think it’s the best in India. The Bengali food – it’s very light. It’s not as heavy as elsewhere. And just the tremendous variety is great. So Kolkata, I love it. I would go back in a jiffy.

And fifth section, Shanghai!

Jimmy
Shanghai is always a wonderful place to visit.

Kennie
I love Shanghai because it has a personal connection. My brother was living and working in Shanghai for more than a decade and my dad also at some point had some business in Shanghai, so I was in Shanghai every year, basically. And I spent a lot of time sort of wandering the leafy avenues and some of the lilong. My brother actually stayed in a lilong at one point, and I went to stay with him and my sister-in-law in this sort of, you know in the middle of this neighbourhood. And they were very brave because I think they were the few foreigners who were living in this kind of lilong area. So Shanghai to me is, you know, although it has these sort of towering skyscrapers of glass and steel, there’s a side to Shanghai that is very, very intimate. It’s very, very quaint. And that hasn’t gone away as well. So definitely Shanghai.

And then the sixth section I can’t say Singapore, right?

Jimmy
No, you can’t say Singapore because that’s such a boring answer.

Kennie
Bombay. Mumbai!

Jimmy
So much energy in Mumbai.

Kennie
It’s because there’s so much of the historic architecture that remains. I found it endless. I walked and walked and walked around the city for hours and hours and hours. It’s never ending, the historic architecture that’s there. The food is also good, though Kolkata is better. And the links to popular culture, I really enjoyed it in Mumbai.

Jimmy
Okay. You know, you stepped down as the director of the Asian Civilisations Museum and the Peranakan Museum, probably because you’re exhausted from writing the book. So what do you miss about museums?

Kennie
I think I stepped down because I was exhausted running the museum. I miss the collection, of course. I think that the stories that relate around the collection, and some of the most beautiful objects there. But I also miss the people, not just my team, but there’s a community of folks who are really fond of the museum. And actually, being with them, you know, this group of the docents and the volunteers, and some of our stakeholders and patrons, that gives me the energy, because you’re surrounded by people who are so passionate about the same thing. But, you know, I don’t miss all the management bit.

Jimmy
Nobody does, nobody does. You’re living off the fat of the land based on the royalties of this amazing book. You know, jetting off to international cities and all that. So what’s next for you? Another book, more travelling, going off to exciting new places?

Kennie
First of all, I hate to put a downer on anyone who is considering a future in, in writing and publishing, but there’s barely any royalties from this book. I think you write because you want to write. And then I’m very thankful that a publisher picked it up. I don’t really have any plans beyond that. I told myself that I wanted to take a professional sabbatical and take six months off to wander before I start work again. So I’m going to go back to my kind of grand touring where I go with my camera and wander the streets on my own for hours and hours and hours. I haven’t done this since 2016 when I took over at the museum.

Jimmy
Oh! Really?

Kennie
So I really miss it.

Jimmy
So, you did all your footwork...

Kennie
Yeah, before I got to the museum. I mean, if we’re talking about the actual kind of grand tour types, I’ve been to some of the cities even for work, but I didn’t do the whole, you know, go and photograph everything. I’m going to try to go to Muscat, Zanzibar and Mombasa. So, I want to do all of these before I get like, bogged down by another job.

Jimmy
But okay, is there another book inside you? And of course there is.

Kennie
There is, but I don’t know what it might be just yet. Yeah, I think, you know, the book just came out right now, so I haven’t quite figured out anything specifically yet. I am very fascinated, however, by the second section of the book, which is of monsoons and merchants. And, if anything, I was challenged once before to think if there would be an exhibition that looks at that period, what would it be? So in my mind, I’m like, you know, piecing together, maybe bringing together these objects from different museums and collections that would provide a fuller picture of the pre-colonial period of trade when the Indian Ocean was the kind of like, Muslim led and then in comes Zheng He on one side and the Portuguese on the other side. So I’m very fascinated by that period.

Jimmy
That is a fascinating period. And I really look forward to, if that next book comes out, I look forward to reading it and I’m sure you’ll somehow manage to do it while juggling 20 other jobs.

Kennie, thank you so much for coming on the show. To learn more about great port cities in Asia, you have to read Kennie’s book, The Great Port Cities of Asia in History. And of course, to learn more about interesting things about port cities in general and about Singapore history, do check out the BiblioAsia website at BiblioAsia.nlb.gov.sg.

Kennie, thank you once again for being on the show. It’s been wonderful having you and happy travelling.

Kennie
Thank you so much, Jimmy. It was such a joy.

Jimmy
If you’ve enjoyed this episode, subscribe to this podcast and the BiblioAsia newsletter. Thanks for joining us on BiblioAsia+.

Kennie Ting, The Romance of the Grand Tour: 100 Years of Travel in South East Asia (Singapore: Talisman, 2015).

Kennie Ting, Singapore 1819: A Living Legacy (Singapore: Talisman, 2019).

Kennie Ting, The Great Port Cities of Asia in History (Singapore: Talisman, 2024).

John Darwin, Unlocking the World: Port Cities and Globalization in the Age of Steam, 1830–1930 (London: Penguin Books, 2021).

Derek Heng, “Continuities and Changes: Singapore as a Port City Over 700 Years,” BiblioAsia 1, no. 1 (November 2005).

This episode of BiblioAsia+ was hosted by Jimmy Yap and produced by Soh Gek Han. Sound engineering was done by Doppler Soundlab. The background music "Di Tanjong Katong" was composed by Ahmad Patek and performed by  Chords Haven . Special thanks to Kennie for coming on the show.

The BiblioAsia Podcast by the National Library Singapore tells stories about Singapore history.