Malaysia is a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society, with settlers from various regions mixing to create its unique cultural form. The early settlers bring about their own cultures and languages, and after centuries of interaction with each other, created a rich historical and cultural heritage unique to every settlement. However, due to many reasons, most of these settling histories were not in record, and as memories of these early settler stories faded away, they will be lost forever. Therefore, there is an urgent need for the documentation of oral histories to preserve our own local and regional histories.

Sungai Udang is such an example. It is a century old fishing settlement, in northern Perak, made up of mainly Teochew dialect group, surrounded by Malay kampungs, with connections to other Teochew fishing settlements nearby. It is one fishing settlements along the west coast of Malay Peninsula that still largely preserve its natural form of livelihood from the early settlers. However, due to developments in recent years, especially the decline in fishing industry, things are starting to take a change. Especially with the Mandarin language spread within the Chinese communities nation-wide, its Teochew dialect is also losing ground.

Due to the fast changing pace of society in recent decades, we are losing our historical and cultural heritage at an increasing rate. New lifestyles have emerged, creating ever new generations with completely different social experiences. Lifestyles of our early settlers are mostly drowned in the tide of social developments. However, memories of early livelihood and settler stories still remain among the older generations, mostly aged 70 and above, whom were widely recognized as the last generation preserving some of our historical and cultural heritage of our early settlers. Therefore, with the passing of this generation within the next 10-20 years, this heritage will be lost to us forever.

“Guardian 1.0·Sungai Udang” project aims to rediscover and document the local history, culture and dialect of Sungai Udang. We hope that this project will create awareness and understanding of the local historical and cultural heritage passed down from our fore-fathers, and appreciate this land that we inherit.

1. To document the historical and cultural heritage of Sungai Udang.
2. To preserve the historical and cultural heritage of Sungai Udang.
3. To discover the unique form of interaction of different ethnic groups in Sungai Udang.
4. To create awareness the importance of understanding and appreciating the heritage that we inherit from our fore-fathers.
5. To enhance the love of our society through understanding and appreciation of the historical and cultural heritage that we inherit.
6. To spread the importance of understanding and appreciating ones historical and cultural heritage through our project.

Exhibits from our findings that reconstruct the history and culture of Sungai Udang, that includes written and pictorial histories, and also hopefully with artefacts that rebuild the livelihood of early settlers in Sungai Udang.

Report of our analysis from the data collected, including contents pertaining to local history, the interactions of different ethnic groups, the fishing industry, local culture such as language, food, folk stories. Hopefully the report is ready for publication.