Kennie Ting undertakes a rich exploration of Asian history and heritage with his latest book, ‘The Great Port Cities of Asia’

What drives the fascination with the history and culture of port cities, and what’s behind the motivation for writing this book?
Oftentimes in my work, I come across people saying [Singapore] doesn’t have any cultural heritage. My take on this is that of course, if we look at places like Imperial China and India it might seem like we don’t. But if you look at port cities in Asia, we have a heritage that goes back hundreds and hundreds of years, if not thousands. So I think I was really motivated from that point of view, trying to understand why we’re so strange as Singaporeans. And that has a lot to do with port cities.

It’s also fun to uncover a different perspective of Asia that most people don’t really focus on, we tend to focus on the big empires because they seem very glamorous. But what I find interesting when you dive deep into port cities is that it’s all very messy. But it's equally fascinating because the things encountered in these places might seem very strange to some, but it’s not strange to us [as Singaporeans].

This book covers a larger period of history compared to your previous works, was there something specific you wanted to focus on or spotlight in this book?
Most of my past works have been about port cities, so this was approached in a very similar vein. Since I began my career in museums, I’ve always thought that it was important to try to move time backwards. I found it very important for me to highlight that this interconnectedness [of port cities] didn’t just happen when the Portuguese appeared, there was also a lot of that happening within Asia, between Asia and the rest of the world before the Europeans came. So I felt it was very important to make that point and the only way I could do that was to kind of extend the scope and timeline. You will also see port cities from my earlier work reappear in this book but in a different way.

Although I did include cities that were important to the colonial trade, I made it a point to also find and spotlight these port cities that were still keeping the Asian trade open. So even though the Europeans were there it didn’t mean that the trade say by Chinese or Muslim traders ended, there was still Asian trade going on—and I was trying to decolonise myself [as an author]!

In what ways have port cities shaped modern societies and cultures?
I make this opening argument in the introduction—port cities are open, right? So they don’t just face inland, they also face outwards.  So they are often the first point of contact for the interior or the incumbent cultural civilisation, or the “Other”. I argue that port cities have played a very important role in importing new ways of thinking, dressing, artistic and creative expression and new technologies into Asia.

Asia’s big empires have always been a bit immovable. And the port cities are seen as existing in the periphery. Inland empires have often tried to keep out these new ideas or foreigners. But inevitably, these are transmitted by way of the port cities, and that is a very important role they play in change and development. I would also add progress, but that’s a contentious word in terms of how societies have evolved.

How have your experiences at the Asian Civilisation Museum and the Peranakan Museum shaped your writing style and the way you craft narratives?
Previously, I would say [my writing] was quite straightforward—I looked at history as all as architecture. But in this book, I look at the stories of each city through multiple aspects of culture or popular culture. So I could start with an artefact that’s clearly because of my time at the museum, many museum objects feature in the book. Or I could include observations of food or dress or literature, which features very strongly here where it didn’t in my previous books. I find a multidimensional and multifaceted way to tell the story of one port city.

In most chapters, I could start a story by using an object at the museum and then connect it with a quote or a story that comes from an eyewitness account or a travel journal from that city. From there it could go on to explore classic cuisine from that city. So it makes the narrative, I think, a lot richer. And that comes from the tours I give at the museum. I was forced to learn how to be a storyteller, using these objects to tell stories about places and I brought up quite a bit of that into this book.

Did that also influence your decision to incorporate fictional characters in your historical text?
I tried to write it as though it wasn’t just a history book. I wanted it to be more like a novel or better yet, a book of travel writing, with protagonists or characters that pop up here and there. So the fictional characters are characters from books that have been written in or about the city in each chapter.

The inclusion of people just makes it a lot more dynamic in nature, presenting the fullest aspect of the city and its multiple dimensions. This way the reader can follow great explorers, like Marco Polo or Admiral Zheng He who serve as protagonists and play a role in linking these chapters together across time.

‘The Great Port Cities of Asia’ has been described as an evocative travel guide. What has been the most memorable or complex city to write about?
I think it’s very difficult to pinpoint a specific city but it did get more complex the further we went back in time. The cities towards the end of the book are easier because I’ve been to those places.

Mumbai is one of my favourite chapters in the last section, it’s so vivid in my mind. I walked through it for hours and photographed so much of it. It was also easier to find lots of content related to the city.

Yangzhou in the first section is a surprising city because you don’t think of it as a port city—it sits so far inland on the Yangtze River. I had the most fun writing that chapter in the early parts of the of the book. It’s difficult to fully evoke what the city looks like because there aren't enough of the tangible parts of the city that remain today.

What are some key takeaways you hope audiences will have from ‘The Great Port Cities of Asia’? Any advice on tackling the book?
I think the one thing I would say is I hope the readers you know, spend a lot more time travelling in Asia, specifically Southeast Asia, explore the region more.

I think the way to read the book is not to read it all at once, because every chapter is its own thing. So I would just pick whichever city interests you the most and just start from there. But I do have teasers in there that make it worthwhile to read it from start to finish because then I wrote it like a novel or a symphony. So there are certain things like, for example, every chapter in the last section maps back to a chapter in the first section. Some themes and people recur along the way so you see that everything is intricately enmeshed.

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