The Sun Yat-sen Museum in George Town, Penang has reopened after Covid closures to preserve the memory of the father of modern China.
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00:00This is Georgetown Penang, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Malaysia, known for its vibrant mix of different cultures.
00:07Georgetown was established in 1786 under King George III as a British settlement, and it marked the beginning of the British
00:14colonization of Southeast Asia. Now, Malaysia didn't gain independence until
00:191957, but Georgetown also has a special connection to an important figure in Chinese history and Taiwanese history.
00:26That's the revolutionary Sun Yat-sen.
00:30Sun Yat-sen used to conduct meetings in this building, now a museum dedicated to his memory.
00:35And this is also where he founded the Guangpao Ruobao, a newspaper that he used to gather support for his revolutions in China against the Manchu Qing dynasty.
00:44Nowadays, Sun is a well-respected figure across most of the Chinese-speaking world, and this museum attracts hundreds of visitors per year from both China and
00:52Taiwan. The museum's curator has spent the past 30 years
00:56restoring this historic building on Armenian Street.
00:58Dr. Sun Yat-sen was the first
01:02global revolutionary and definitely the first global Chinese revolutionary. So he was able to
01:09understand
01:10ideas about Western politics, and he was able to integrate it and to translate it.
01:16So he was actually at the cusp of sort of modernity that he could help the Chinese to modernize.
01:23Sun chose the area around Armenian Street for its narrow alleys like these, easy to get lost in and escape should his
01:30revolutionary party be sniffed out.
01:32But now the museum proudly welcomes visitors in and stands as a reminder of Sun Yat-sen's influence on communities
01:38not just here in Penang, but in both China and Taiwan, adding one more layer to the heritage site's hundreds of years of history and migration.
01:46Patrick Chen and Tiffany Wong in Georgetown, Malaysia for Taiwan Plus.
01:52You