Pirates' Treasure

The new Asian Heritage Museum will be housed in the iconic Carcosa Seri Negara in Kuala Lumpur

- Samantha Cheh

When KK Tan began working with an American fortune hunter back in 2004, he likely didn’t expect to emerge two years later with four containers’ worth of valuable Chinese artefacts entangled in wild tales of piracy and international politics. “Everything happened by fate or accident,” he joked.

The socio-political analyst began working with an American “pirate” to set up an Asian museum with the backing of the Malaysian government and several investors. When the deal fell through, the fortune hunter abruptly fled the country without paying Tan, and the Malaysian High Court order granted him ownership of the abandoned treasure.

When I visited Tan in a nondescript fluorescent-lit office in central Kuala Lumpur, I wasn’t expecting to stumble upon a literal pirate’s treasure trove. Amidst mountains of paper, folders and multiple copies of Crazy Rich Asians, over 2,000 priceless objects await their day in the sun. According to Tan the provenances of many of the pieces are pretty uncertain. Likely, some part of the American’s haul has some of its origins in the hands of the notorious 16th century pirate, Li-ma-hong, whose legacy included terrorising sailors in the South China Sea, and aspirations of his own Filipino kingdom.