Reflections | Was Chinese princess Hang Li Po, sent to marry a Malaysian sultan, a real person?
Hang Li Po’s 15th-century marriage allegedly sealed Malacca and China’s friendly relations. Proof of her existence is scant. Does it matter?
The New Year began on a convivial note for me, with friends visiting from afar. The Witzke family flew into Kuala Lumpur from Sydney for a week-long holiday, and our itinerary included sights in and around the Malaysian capital, as well as in Malacca, a Unesco World Heritage site known in Malaysia as Melaka.
Before becoming one of Malaysia’s 13 states, Malacca had been a British possession that, together with Singapore, Penang and other territories, formed the Straits Settlements. Prior to British rule, Malacca was under Dutch control (1641-1795 and 1815-1824), and before that, the Portuguese (1511-1641).
Yet Malacca’s story did not begin with European colonisation. At the heart of the Malacca Sultanate (around 1400-1511) was a thriving cosmopolitan port. Merchants from China, the Indian subcontinent, the Arab world and the Indonesian archipelago crowded its harbour, exchanging spices, textiles, ceramics and precious metals.
Backed by patronage from China’s Ming dynasty (1368-1644), Malacca enjoyed relative security and regional influence, functioning as an entrepôt where goods, languages and cultures met and mingled. From this Sino-Malay connection emerged one of Malacca’s most enduring stories: that of Princess Hang Li Po.
Her story, familiar to generations of Malaysians, is often presented as a textbook example of early diplomacy between China and the Malay world.
According to traditional Malay accounts, Hang Li Po was a Ming-dynasty princess sent to Malacca in the mid-15th century to marry Sultan Mansur Shah, who reigned from 1456 to 1477. The marriage supposedly sealed friendly relations between Malacca and its Chinese patron through matrimony.