Chinese Heritage Museum

Johor Chinese Heritage Museum is dedicated to preserving the cultural heritage of the Johor Bahru Chinese. The museum displays various collections of documents, porcelain ware, photos, old coins, musical instruments and other artifacts relating to the Chinese community.

The Museum is housed in a four-storey building along Jalan Ibrahim. At the ground floor, there is a general timeline and the chronology of historical events that took place in Chinese community. This level is free to visit. However, in order to take a look at the collections in the other levels, the visitors need to purchase the entrance ticket.

For ticket holders, the first, second and third floors display artifacts related to the history of Chinese immigrants in Johor during the 1800s and 1900s such as documents, music instruments, old money, photos, porcelain

The fourth floor of the museum displays the history of gambir in Johor. There is even a mock shed where the visitors can see how the gambir was processed and produced.

The Chinese migrants first came to Johor in the 14th century to trade. They moved to Johor from different places. There are five dialect groups settled in JB: Hainanese, Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien and Teochew.

At 1844, they were encouraged by the then Johor ruler Temenggung Ibrahim to plant gambir and pepper. Decades later, they ventured into pineapple cultivation resulting to Johor becoming one of Malaysia’s top fruit producer.

Besides fruit plantation, each of the chines group settling in Johor also have other specialities under their sleeves. For example, the Cantonese brought their carpentry skills, the Hakkas traded in Chinese medicines and the Hainanese kick-started a trend in coffee shops.

Image by: JB Tionghua Association official site