I came from Bau & my village tucked away somewhere in the journey to Lundu; near the infamous Bung Bratak.
Bau is actually the name of small growing town a few miles from Kuching City. In Malay the words 'Bau' means 'smell'. Most visitors would relate that names to maybe a certain scents. Like the forest. Or rivers. That 'obviously' reflects the tranquility of the quite town.
However, the story behind the name is far than tranquil. Its a story of real horror, of violence and death. A lot of death.
In the 1940's the Japanese occupied the land surrounded a very famous gold mine owned by a wealthy Chinese. I think there should be a small striving town during that time . A town that support the immigrants Chinese who came to work at the gold mine and also to start a new life. There should be a community during that time but I couldn't find any reference to that.
So, when the Japs arrived, the slaughter begins. Thats all I manage to find out. The Japs came and killed all the Chinese immigrants. The bodies were dumped into nearby caves. Uncovered & unburied.
The stench of rotten bodies spread all over the surrounding area.
I'm not sure about what happened next. Only that the natives and Malays that survived the invasions started to says that the places 'smells'. Thus the name Bau cropped up out of the once striving gold mine area. The gold mine was soon filled up with water, became a lake known today as 'The Blue Lake' or 'Tasik Biru'.
And somehow the name Bau stuck.
An exotic name with a bloody story.
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I have researched that the name Bau, meaning bad or rotten smell, came from the stench of dead bodies of gold miners and their families during the Chinese Rebellion of 1857 against the White Rajah, James Brooke's men and his supporters, almost a century before the Japanese landed in Sarawak. The miners rebelled against the Brooke regime because their freedom and privileges were curtailed by the White Rajah. They marched onto Kuching, the capital. But their rebellion failed. They retreated to Bau, Sinaiwan, and Buso, nearby bazaars, where they were slaughtered. The widows and orphans of the dead miners hid in Ghost Cave (now within a still functioning gold mine) and Brooke's men burned fires outside the cave, and the women and children died in the cave from smoke. It was horrible. All this is from my research. I recently went to Bau and Buso. Any added information you can offer will be of great interest to me.
ReplyDeleteYup. I heard it is rebellion story. And, also heard that when Japaneses invaded Kuching, local actually immediately surrendered as there was no strong army battalion. Thus, didnt have much casualties.
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