Sin Chew Daily, Asian Heritage Museum, 18 October 2015

ENGLISH TRANSLATION:

SIN CHEW’S ARTICLE (18 OCT 2015) ABOUT ASIAN HERITAGE MUSEUM

Main Title: Promote Peaceful Development of Heritage

Sub-title: Asian Heritage Museum’s (AHM) plan

Since the MH370 incident, many of the Chinese tourists were unwilling to come to Malaysia for holidays.

AHM CEO KK Tan said they would also like to use this project to promote tourism and to secure more economic leverage form China as a big economic power.

He said that to set up the museum as part of the Asian heritage project, in the last 3 years, the group has spent a lot of time, money and energy on it.

The museum was ready to commence, only things needed are some funds and a suitable venue.

A Heritage and Peace Council would be set up after the commencement of museum, for our country and eminent leaders from overseas to promote peace and cultural heritage and to reduce conflict in the region. AHM is therefore, a CSR-driven project.

Besides displaying a good variety of relics, the plan was to also develop a cultural village theme park to promote other heritage items that Asia was famous for such as food, architecture and arts and to be the world largest project of this nature, hopefully with the participation of China.

The AHM Group had about 2,000 pieces of artefacts, many of them were precious. These artefacts had been left behind by a US explorer who absconded after owing large sums of money to the AHM group.

The explorer had a big collection of artefacts equivalent to 8 containers which he brought to Malaysia which included 6,000 years old Hongshan jades, Ming Dynasty ceramics, old Malay artefacts and others.

Most of the jades had been authenticated last year by a Beijing museum expert Master Wang Zhongxin.

In 2010, the group donated 28 pieces of artefacts here to the government here (for Museum Negara) and with a certificate of appreciation from the government. This act legitimized the collection and showed that the artefacts were legal and authentic.

There was a sense of burden and heavy responsibility in the beginning but after some time, the CEO learnt to appreciate and even respect the artefacts and to recognize many of them as priceless and precious.

Negri Sembilan’s prince Tunku Zain Al-‘Abidin Muhriz was also a partner involved in this AHM project and served as Executive Advisor. He said that more people were supporting and appreciating this project and he was pleased with the response so far. Other Advisors included then Deputy Home Minister Datuk Seri Dr Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar (now Minister of National Resources and Environment), Tan Sri Michael Chen and Tan Sri Ramon Navaratnam.

Azmi Anshar, Media Advisor said that about 10 years ago, the US explorer was planning to sell his collection to the government of Malaysia for a huge profit. He became a fugitive and went into hiding as many people were also looking for him.

Azmi said that it was speculated that many of the artefacts had been left behind by the pirate Limahong (Lim Fong) about 500 years ago in the Philippines. On the run from the Ming Emperor, Limahong decided to invade the Philippines to make himself the new emperor there. But Spain had just colonized the Philippines and fought a one-year war. Knowing that he could not win, Limahong finally hid the treasures in the forests and caves. The US explorer then found them and shipped them to Malaysia. The US explorer then absconded and 4 container had already left Port Klang leaving behind another 4 containers which were what the AHM group had today.

The US explorer owed the group a large debt from the financing and services provided to him. In 2010, the collection of artefacts were acquired legally from the Kuala Lumpur High Court.

Instead of selling off the artefacts for a huge gain, the group decided to set up a museum. The artefacts were kept in non-descript locations.

Technical Advisor, Dr PH Tan said that every piece of artefact in the collection is special and had its own value, which must be appreciated as a work of art.

Readers who would like to know more about AHM to go to the artefacts’ website.