[BOOK SEMINAR] The Great Port Cities of Asia: A Writer’s Journey by Kennie Ting
Details
Date: Monday, 12th August 2024
Time: 8:00pm-9.30pm
Venue: Conference Hall, Penang Institute
Moderator: Bettina Chua Abdullah
Co-organized with Gerakbudaya and Hikayat bookstore. Don’t miss this epic journey through Asia’s vibrant port cities!
Registration link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-great-port-cities-of-asia-a-writers-journey-by-kennie-ting
Entrance to this event is FREE.
Synopsis
The history of Asia can be told through its great port cities: Guangzhou (Canton), Shanghai, Nagasaki, Basra, Aden, Jeddah, Kolkata (Calcutta), Mumbai (Bombay), Colombo, Batavia (Jakarta), Manila, Singapore and many others. For millennia, port cities have been centres of global trade and the exchange of goods, peoples, cultures and ideas. They developed into cosmopolitan, multicultural societies and evolved distinctive, hybrid styles of art, architecture, material culture and ways of living. They were also crucibles of innovation, and have played an enormous, though underappreciated, role in the spread of new technologies, new forms of creative expression and new ways of thinking throughout Asia. Join author and former museum director Kennie Ting as he takes an epic journey across maritime Asia and the Indian Ocean, and shares the journey of travel, research and writing behind his new book, The Great Port Cities of Asia: In History.
Bio-note
Kennie Ting, a passionate writer and former director of the Asian Civilisations Museum and Peranakan Museum in Singapore, has enriched these institutions with a global perspective on port cities. His work includes expanding their collections and curating contemporary art. He’s authored several books, including The Great Port Cities of Asia: In History (2024).
Event Highlights
Event Summary
Kennie Ting, former director of the Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM) and Peranakan Museum in Singapore, and prolific author on topics traversing time and myriad topics, spoke to a packed auditorium at Penang Institute on 12 August 2024 to talk about his latest publication, The Great Port Cities of Asia: In History (Talisman Publishing, 2024). Describing himself as a writer and storyteller at heart, Ting brought the audience on the journey he undertook as chronicler of times, lives, and worlds — past through the eyes of Asians “looking out”: from the great and ancient port cities of Guangzhou (Canton) and Shanghai in the East, through Basra, Aden, and Jeddah in the Middle East, to Kolkata (Calcutta), Mumbai (Bombay), and Colombo on the Indian sub-continent, to Batavia (Jakarta), Manila, Singapore, and Penang in Southeast Asia. In his talk, and the ensuing question-and-answer session ably moderated by Bettina Chua Abdullah of Hikayat, Ting conveyed his call for greater engagement with, and appreciation of, Asian ports and their roles in the global spread of art, architecture, culture, ways of living and thinking, technologies, and creative expression.