By Joachim Ng
Perak’s first green-certified building houses the nation’s most fascinating public-access display of family genealogical charts, and even a genographic map showing humanity’s journey across Asia after a celebrated migration out of Africa 60,000 years ago. On the 4th floor of Ipoh’s 1 Lasam building is the famed YLCO Museum featuring a dazzling number of well-known Malaysian personalities who are linked through descent and marriage, including members of Perak royalty.
The museum, which grants access by appointment, is a showcase of family history, heritage, and one person’s dedicated efforts to record for posterity the linkages that bind families in an ever-enlarging tree of human inter-connectedness.
The four twinkling star surnames that lend the museum its name are: Yeoh, Lim, Chew, and Oh. YLCO Museum’s founder and curator Ignatius Chew plans to enlarge the museum’s coverage to include all families whose ancestors get landmarks such as roads in Ipoh named after them. He invites families with such connections to contact him so that a Museum of Families can be developed.
A larger-scope museum could include personalities with autobiographies written in books. A wider display will be a source of detailed information on the fascinating history of Ipoh.
Many visitors would have wondered: How did Ignatius get started on the museum? Ipoh Echo interviewed Ignatius recently to probe his thoughts.
Ipoh Echo: “What made you think of starting a museum?”
Ignatius: “The idea first came to me in 1966 when I was a Form Four student at St Michael’s Institution. In November that year my mother told me that her brother Prof Yeoh Ghim Seng in Singapore had won election as a Member of Parliament. Ipoh-born Prof Yeoh had gone to England for medical studies and upon graduation had taken a job in Singapore as a consultant surgeon. He later became acting President of Singapore and was Speaker of Parliament for 18 years.
“That was the first trigger prompting me to collect information on family members who had gain prominence serving the public. The second trigger occurred in 1969 when I read a Malaysian teenage magazine Teen featuring Prof Yeoh’s third daughter Yeoh Saw Kheng who was head prefect of Methodist Girls School in Singapore.
“I picked up the magazine at a newsstand in Ipoh because a front-page photograph featured Saw Kheng with three of her fellow students in Form Six, under the headline Singapore Teenage Singing Sensation. They had formed a female quartet. I bought the magazine and kept it for years until I went off to college overseas.
“That was my first start in a collection of printed cuttings. As I had already developed the hobby of collecting stamps, beetles, butterflies, fishes, and birds since the age of 9 it was a natural jump to start collecting newspaper and magazine cuttings.
“The third trigger came in 1976 when newspapers started featuring my cousin Dr Lim Keng Yaik, also an ex-Michaelian, who had become deputy president of Gerakan party. In 1978 he won a State seat in Perak and was appointed a State exco member. Tun Dr Lim was later appointed a Cabinet Minister and retired from politics in 2008.
“Michelle Yeoh provided the fourth and biggest trigger. It happened in 1983 when I attended the Ms Malaysia World beauty pageant held in Ipoh Town Hall, now the headquarters of Dewan Bandaraya Ipoh. On that night, Michelle was crowned Miss Malaysia. She would rise to international fame as a terrific movie star, and at the 95th Academy Awards in 2023 she won her most glittering crown – the Oscar for Best Actress.
“Michelle is the granddaughter of my mother’s brother, and her triumph inspired me to research all the family connections of the Chew line.
“The fifth trigger came in 1984 when, as a director of Honda car and motorcycle dealer Ban Hoe Seng, I wanted to research all connections of the Chew, Lim, Oh, and Yeoh lineages. I learned that we have an autobiography of our family history written by the youngest brother of my grandfather Chew Boon Juan (a road is named after him). This younger brother, Chew Boon Hong, was a scholar who had sat for China’s Imperial Exam.
“From the autobiography titled Assorted Records of Beng Cheh, I learned that granddad migrated from China to Malaya in 1892, and in 1908 he founded Ban Hoe Seng. The autobiography disclosed that my grandfather’s grandfather lived from 1822 to 1882, and he was descended from Chew Yan Bin who was born in 1370. In 1404 Yan Bin moved from the north to Xinglincun village in the south to avoid the turmoil in North China.
“Although I was kept busy as a director and later as managing director of Ban Hoe Seng, I was slowly building up a collection on the Chew family. The sixth trigger came in 2005 when family doctor and historian Dr Ho Tak Ming started writing about my grandfather’s pioneering tin mining activities at Gunung Lanno in Simpang Pulai.
“Over the next seven years, there were many articles in books, journals, and newspapers about the public service achievements by Yeohs, Lims, Chews, and Ohs.
“The seventh and final trigger came in 2012 when the headquarters building of our Honda motorcycles dealership was left vacant after we had decided to stop selling m-bikes and focus on cars. The building was a mansion that I had grown up in. I converted the mansion into a Chew & Ban Hoe Seng Museum with connections to Yeoh, Lim, and Oh families.
“Following the opening in November that year, all families connected to YLCO gave copies of their precious old photographs to the museum and shared stories that were then recorded in writing. Some relatives already had their family histories written, and they donated these accounts to the museum.
“Ten years later, the museum was relocated to 1 Lasam building in Greentown when the mansion that housed it was rented out to become a fine dining restaurant (Morel Restaurant),” Ignatius concluded.
Another museum piece that should draw your attention is a genographic chart accompanied by a detailed analysis of the descent of Yeohs from an African who crossed the Red Sea 60,000 years ago. His lineage, the only one surviving out of a band of African migrants out of Africa, is known as M168 and comprises 90-95% of all non-Africans today. Then 35,000 years ago, from M168 sprang the Haplogroup 0. Known by the genetic marker M175, all East Asians and Southeast Asians belong to this lineage.
If someone in your family had gained prominence to be honoured with a landmark such as a street name in Kuala Lumpur, Penang, or Johor Baru, you should think of drawing up a family tree chart. Ignatius hopes that one day all families in Malaysia with road names or some other landmarks can jointly display their lineage inter-connections in YLCO Museum.
Here are some tips to launch you on this thrilling journey to discover your roots:
- Start with your grandparents. They should have 5 to 9 siblings each, as was common in their time. This gives you a minimum of 12 persons for your initial research.
- Next, go to your parents’ generation and their close relatives descended from the same grandparents. This line of descent should give you about 24 persons to track.
- Third, research your own generation. How many of you are there who are descended from the 24 above who were descended from 12 who came from one set of great-grandparents?
- Ask them for their collections of family pictures, any written accounts, and memorabilia. Catalogue them proficiently and display them, perhaps in a large room of your house.
These basic steps will keep you busy for a couple of years. A higher stage of collection that will get you to museum-level is to track the lineages of all the persons that your grandfather’s descendants married. You will need advice from Ignatius Chew to accomplish that.
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Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Ipoh Echo
