Reassembling a Journey from Faded Pages
從泛黃日記與翻拍照片中，重新拼回1992年的旅程
In 1992, during my tenth year at Yanping High School（延平中學）, I joined another staff journey organised by the school. Following our earlier travels through the Three Gorges of the Yangtze River（長江三峽） and Guilin（桂林）, this became another rare opportunity for teachers and colleagues to leave behind classrooms, lesson plans and examination papers and discover a wider world together.
Our route carried us through Malaysia and Singapore:
Kuala Lumpur（吉隆坡） → Penang（檳城） → Teluk Intan（安順） → Kuala Lumpur（吉隆坡） → Singapore（新加坡） → Kuala Lumpur（吉隆坡）
At the time, we could not have known how precious those ordinary travelling days would eventually become.
The original photographs from the journey were later lost or damaged. Some disappeared through the passing years; others faded, became damp or could no longer be clearly recognised. For a long time, I thought the visible record of that journey had vanished forever.
Fortunately, in 2015, Teacher Chang Kai-hui（張凱輝老師） carefully rephotographed the surviving pictures. Through those rescued images, together with the notes preserved in my old diary, I was finally able to glimpse the journey’s original appearance once more—and slowly piece together the memories of 1992.
Setting Out from Yanping
從延平出發
It was only my 10th year at Yanping, and many of us were still young. Our daily lives revolved around bells, classrooms, students and stacks of exercise books. A staff tour therefore felt like the opening of a window.
On ordinary school days, we met in corridors carrying textbooks. On this journey, we appeared in casual clothes, carrying suitcases, cameras and an unfamiliar lightness of spirit. Colleagues who usually discussed examinations now compared maps, exchanged snacks and reminded one another not to leave passports behind.
In 1992, international travel still retained a ceremonial quality. Air tickets were printed on paper; photographs were captured on film; and families at home could not follow our progress through instant messages. Once we departed, we entered a different rhythm, guided by the itinerary and by handwritten notes in a diary.
Kuala Lumpur: A Capital before the Towers
吉隆坡：雙塔出現以前的首都
Our first destination was Kuala Lumpur（吉隆坡）, the capital of Malaysia.
The Kuala Lumpur we saw in 1992 was very different from the city known today. The Petronas Twin Towers（國油雙峰塔） had not yet risen above the skyline. Without those future silver spires, the city appeared lower, greener and less hurried.
We encountered a multicultural capital shaped by Malay（馬來族）, Chinese（華人） and Indian（印度族） communities. Mosques, Chinese temples, Hindu shrines and colonial buildings stood within the same urban landscape. Malay, Mandarin, Cantonese, Tamil and English mingled in markets and restaurants, each language carrying the history of a different community.
At Merdeka Square（獨立廣場）, the broad lawn and surrounding colonial buildings recalled the end of British rule and the birth of independent Malaya. The elegant Sultan Abdul Samad Building（蘇丹阿都沙末大廈）, with its arches, copper domes and clock tower, stood like a memory from another age.
Nearby, the old railway station displayed a curious blend of Eastern and Western architecture. Its white façades, domes and arches made it resemble a palace conceived somewhere between British imagination and the Islamic world.
Kuala Lumpur was already modernising rapidly, yet pockets of the older city remained. Street vendors prepared noodles beneath simple awnings; shops displayed Chinese characters above their entrances; and the fragrance of satay, curry and tropical fruit drifted through the humid air.
At night, the city lights shimmered upon wet streets after the afternoon rain. We walked together as colleagues, yet without the usual formality of school. Travel had quietly changed the relationship between us.
Northward to Penang
北上檳城
From Kuala Lumpur, we travelled north toward Penang（檳城）, watching the city gradually give way to plantations, small towns and tropical countryside.
Penang was an island of sea winds, old streets and accumulated history. Its principal city, George Town（喬治市）, had grown from a British trading settlement into a meeting place of cultures from across Asia.
Rows of narrow shophouses lined the streets. Their façades bore Chinese family names, carved wooden shutters and traces of faded paint. Clan associations, temples, churches and mosques stood within walking distance of one another, as though history had assembled many worlds within a few streets.
At the waterfront, the Clan Jetties（姓氏橋） extended over the sea. Wooden houses stood upon stilts, connected by narrow walkways. The tide moved quietly beneath the floorboards, reminding us that the lives of Penang’s early Chinese communities had always been closely bound to the water.
The city’s Peranakan culture（峇峇娘惹文化） revealed another layer of identity—a graceful blending of Chinese traditions with Malay customs and colonial influences. Decorative tiles, carved furniture, embroidered clothing and fragrant cuisine all spoke of cultures meeting and creating something new.
Penang also introduced us to its famous food. We tasted char kway teow（炒粿條）, Penang laksa（檳城叻沙）, Hokkien mee（福建蝦麵） and refreshing cendol（煎蕊） beneath the tropical sun.
A teacher’s memory is often linked to words, but travel is remembered just as powerfully through taste. Even after names and dates grow indistinct, the sour fragrance of laksa or the smoky heat of freshly fried noodles can suddenly bring an entire street back to life.
From the heights of Penang Hill（升旗山）, the island spread below us in shades of green and blue. The city, the channel and the distant mainland seemed momentarily gathered into a single quiet panorama.
At Kek Lok Si Temple（極樂寺）, roofs, courtyards and statues climbed the hillside. Incense drifted upward in the warm air, while visitors moved between halls of prayer. The temple embodied the spiritual world carried overseas by generations of Chinese migrants.
Teluk Intan: The Leaning Tower beside the River
安順：河畔的斜塔小城
We then travelled to Teluk Intan（安順）, a quieter town in the state of Perak. In those days, many overseas Chinese still commonly called it Anson（安順）, preserving the town’s former colonial name, Teluk Anson.
Its best-known landmark was the Leaning Tower of Teluk Intan（安順斜塔）. From a distance, it resembled a Chinese pagoda, yet it had originally been built as a water tower and clock tower.
The structure leaned gently to one side, not with the dramatic angle of Pisa, but with the quiet eccentricity of a building shaped by soft ground, time and tropical weather.
Around it lay the unhurried life of a Malaysian river town: traditional shops, food stalls, bicycles, trees and residents who seemed in no great hurry. Compared with Kuala Lumpur, Teluk Intan felt intimate and almost timeless.
The Perak River（霹靂河） had once carried goods, boats and people through this region. Standing near the river, we could imagine the days when waterways served as the true roads of the country.
Not every memorable place must be grand. Sometimes a leaning tower, an old shop and a quiet afternoon remain more tenderly in memory than the most celebrated monument.
Returning to Kuala Lumpur
再返吉隆坡
After Teluk Intan, we returned to Kuala Lumpur. A city always appears different upon the second arrival. Streets that had initially seemed unfamiliar now carried the faint comfort of recognition.
We recognised certain buildings and intersections. We knew a little better how to order food, exchange money and find our way back to the hotel. The capital was no longer merely a point on the itinerary; it had become part of our journey’s rhythm.
Then we prepared to continue south toward Singapore.
Singapore in 1992
1992年的新加坡
Crossing into Singapore（新加坡）, we immediately sensed a change in atmosphere. The streets appeared strikingly orderly and clean. Traffic moved with discipline; trees and flowers had been carefully incorporated into the urban landscape; and rules seemed to govern even the smallest details of public life.
Singapore in 1992 was already a highly organised and rapidly developing city-state, though its skyline was not yet as dense or spectacular as it is today.
At the mouth of the Singapore River stood the Merlion（魚尾獅）, its stream of water symbolising the city’s maritime identity. Behind it rose the financial district, announcing Singapore’s transformation from colonial port to modern Asian economic centre.
Along the Singapore River（新加坡河）, old warehouses and trading houses recalled the era when boats crowded the waterway with rice, spices, textiles and passengers. The restored quays revealed how successfully Singapore had begun turning its commercial past into part of its modern identity.
We encountered different cultural worlds in Chinatown（牛車水）, Little India（小印度） and the Malay neighbourhood around Kampong Glam（甘榜格南）. Temples, mosques, sari shops, Chinese medicine stores and food stalls demonstrated that Singapore’s orderliness did not erase its diversity.
At Orchard Road（烏節路）, department stores and hotels represented the city’s modern prosperity. The air-conditioning offered welcome relief from the tropical heat, while shop windows displayed imported goods that still seemed particularly desirable in the early 1990s.
We may also have visited Sentosa Island（聖淘沙島）, then a very different resort island from the one visitors see today. There were no integrated resorts or Universal Studios. Its attractions were simpler: beaches, gardens, museums, cable cars and views across the harbour.
Singapore impressed us with its efficiency, cleanliness and ambition. Yet beneath the modern surfaces, we could still feel the older port city—the meeting place of Chinese migrants, Malay communities, Indian labourers, British administrators and travellers from across the seas.
The Final Return to Kuala Lumpur
最後回到吉隆坡
After Singapore, we returned once more to Kuala Lumpur, completing the final circle of our route.
By then, our suitcases contained souvenirs, receipts, brochures and rolls of exposed film. My diary had accumulated place names, impressions, small incidents and hurried sentences written at the end of tiring days.
At the time, those notes did not seem particularly important. They were merely an attempt to remember where we had gone and what we had seen. I did not realise that, decades later, they would become some of the few remaining threads connecting me to the journey.
We eventually flew home and returned to Yanping. Suitcases were unpacked, photographs developed, and souvenirs distributed. Soon, the school bells rang again. We resumed our places in classrooms and offices, and the journey gradually retreated into the background of ordinary life.
When the Photographs Disappeared
當照片逐漸消失
As the years passed, the original photographs were lost or damaged. Some faded until faces became indistinct. Some suffered from moisture and deterioration; others disappeared during moves and changes of storage.
For a long time, I believed that the visible record of our 1992 journey had vanished. Memory alone had to preserve the young faces of my colleagues, the old streets of Penang, the leaning tower at Teluk Intan and the skyline of Kuala Lumpur before the Petronas Towers.
The disappearance of photographs carries a special sadness. A photograph does not merely record a place; it preserves the person we once were—the clothes we wore, the companions beside us and the expression on a face before the passing of decades.
When such a photograph is lost, it feels as though a small window into the past has been closed.
Teacher Chang Kai-hui’s Gift
張凱輝老師留下的珍貴影像
Fortunately, in 2015, Teacher Chang Kai-hui（張凱輝老師） rephotographed the surviving images.
Those reproductions could not completely restore the original prints. Some colours had faded, details had softened, and the marks of time remained visible. Yet precisely because of those imperfections, the pictures seemed even more precious.
Through Teacher Chang’s careful work, the faces of 1992 emerged once again from the shadows. Colleagues appeared as they had been more than two decades earlier—standing together before monuments, smiling beside buses, or looking toward a camera whose original film might no longer exist.
The rephotographed images gave the journey a second life.
Together with the written record in my old travel diary（旅行日記）, they enabled me to reconstruct the route:
Kuala Lumpur（吉隆坡） → Penang（檳城） → Teluk Intan（安順） → Kuala Lumpur（吉隆坡） → Singapore（新加坡） → Kuala Lumpur（吉隆坡）
A blurred photograph might reveal the outline of a building. A short diary entry might restore its name. A colleague’s face could bring back a conversation, and one remembered joke could revive an entire afternoon.
In this way, words and pictures illuminated one another, slowly piecing the journey back together.
Returning to 1992 through Memory
藉著記憶，重返1992年
Looking at those photographs today, I do not see only Malaysia and Singapore. I see myself in my fourth year at Yanping, still near the beginning of a long life in education.
I see colleagues when we were younger, temporarily freed from lesson plans, examinations and school responsibilities. I remember the conversations on the bus, the meals shared around large tables, the laughter when someone arrived late, and the familiar ritual of counting everyone before departure.
After the Three Gorges（長江三峽） and Guilin（桂林）, this journey opened yet another window onto the wider world. It allowed us to experience the multicultural life of Malaysia, the historical streets of Penang, the quiet charm of Teluk Intan and the extraordinary order and ambition of Singapore.
Cities have changed greatly since then. Kuala Lumpur’s skyline is now dominated by towers that did not yet exist. Penang has become internationally celebrated for its heritage. Singapore has built an entirely new waterfront, and the simple Sentosa of the early 1990s has been transformed beyond recognition.
We, too, have changed.
Yet within the diary and the rephotographed images, the journey remains suspended in 1992. The bus is still waiting outside the hotel. The teachers are still gathering for a group photograph. Kuala Lumpur has not yet acquired its twin silver towers, and the road south still leads toward a Singapore we are about to discover for the first time.
The original photographs may have been lost or damaged, but memory found another path home.
Thanks to Teacher Chang Kai-hui’s 2015 reproductions（張凱輝老師2015年的翻拍） and the faded writing in my old diary, the scattered fragments came together once more. They restored not only the appearance of that journey, but also the warmth of companionship and the image of our younger selves.
Some journeys end when the travellers return home. Others continue quietly through photographs, diaries and the people who remember them.
Our 1992 journey belongs to the latter. It survives like an old photograph held up to the light—its colours softened by time, its edges worn, but its human warmth still clear.
