On weekend evenings, after a chat at Mr. Chwee's house, I used to stroll westwards if I wanted to avoid the crowd of tourists gathering at the night market in Jonker Street. The opposite side would never be the right option for an escape, because hordes of tourists converge there to take a trishaw, to reach the Hard Rock Café, or to watch kung fu Master Ho (a Guinness World Record holder) pierce a coconut with his finger. I then used to turn right before the Tamil Methodist Church, into what is today best known as Harmony Street, where I often parked my motorbike. The real names of the three portions of Harmony Street are Jalan Tukang Besi (‘Blacksmith Street’), Jalan Tukang Emas (‘Goldsmith Street’), and Jalan Tokong (‘Temple Street’). Here, three among the oldest functioning places of worship in Malaysia stand together: Kampung Kling Mosque, Cheng Hoon Teng Temple, and Sri Poyyatha Vinayagar Moorthi Temple. For this reason, guidebooks began presenting these three streets as ‘Harmony Street’ back in the 1980s (e.g., Tan 1984; Hoyt 1993). By referring to it as ‘Three Temples Street’, the World Heritage nomination dossier displayed this proximity as an example of the ‘harmony of multi-racial groups’ (Malaysia 2008: 25).

In Chapter 3 I described the influence international actors had in shaping a pluralistic narrative, in line with interests in cultural diversity and multiculturalism inspired by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).