The institutional partnership that anchors the Serumpun Sarawak movement — state backing, UNESCO alignment, and cultural diplomacy at its institutional source.
Sarawak State Government·Sarawak Tourism Board·UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy — Kuching·Sovereign-cultural
The Serumpun Sarawak movement was unveiled in July 2025 with state backing. That sentence carries more weight than its brevity suggests. State backing is not patronage in the decorative sense — a name on a programme, a courtesy logo, a ceremonial endorsement. In the Malaysian and Sarawak political-cultural setting, state backing is mandate. It places a movement on the formal cultural record of the state government, with all the institutional weight, accountability, and public standing that the state's own voice carries.
This partnership did not begin in a boardroom. It began with a quiet introduction.
Tan Sri Rafidah Aziz — Malaysia’s Minister of International Trade and Industry from 1987 to 2008, and Chairman of MATRADE from 1991 — was the figure who first thought my work was worth the Governor’s attention. The introduction she made was generous, and I remain indebted to it.
Tun Pehin Sri Dr. Haji Wan Junaidi bin Tuanku Jaafar, the Yang di-Pertua Negeri of Sarawak, received the introduction and recommended that the Chairman of the Sarawak Tourism Board reach out. The Governor’s recommendation has carried every door that has since opened.
Dato Dennis Ngau, Chairman of the Sarawak Tourism Board, took up the recommendation and made the first call. From that call, Serumpun Sarawak began — first as a private conversation, then as the cultural-diplomacy partnership this page holds.
Three figures opened the door. The work that has followed is offered with the gratitude their generosity asks for.
Yang di-Pertua Negeri of Sarawak, Tun Pehin Sri Dr. Haji Wan Junaidi bin Tuanku Jaafar, with James Won. Photograph by the State of Sarawak official photographer.
The institutional partnership runs at three layers, each with its own role.
The Sarawak State Government, represented at portfolio level by YB Dato Sri Haji Abdul Karim Rahman Hamzah, Minister of Tourism, Creative Industry and Performing Arts. The state’s voice on the formal cultural record. The mandate that places Serumpun Sarawak on the institutional standing the work asks for.
The Sarawak Tourism Board, the state’s principal institutional vehicle for cultural and tourism programmes that reach beyond the state’s borders. The board carries the operational, programmatic, and international-stage work alongside me.
UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy — Kuching, the international-cultural designation that places Kuching on the global record alongside the world’s other Creative Cities of Gastronomy. The institutional alignment that gives the conservation work its international standing.
The three together are the architecture that makes Serumpun Sarawak possible. None alone would carry the movement at the standing it now sits on.
State backing is, in operational terms, a contract of mutual obligation. The state has placed the movement on its formal cultural record, with the institutional weight that placement carries. I have held the work at the standard the state’s confidence requires. Three obligations have run beneath the partnership.
Cultural fidelity to the thirty-four indigenous communities of Sarawak. The Serumpun work draws from Iban, Bidayuh, Orang Ulu, Penan, Berawan, Kelabit, Kenyah, Kayan, Tring, and the wider taxonomy of Sarawak’s indigenous communities. The state’s institutional voice on indigenous heritage is held to a standard I have tried to honour throughout — that the cuisine is presented as living cultural practice, not as ethnographic exhibition; that indigenous authorship is named where it earns naming; and that the conservation discipline (UNESCO endorsement, edible medicinal flora and seeds, indigenous-community partnerships) is held with the care the state’s cultural-policy framework asks for.
Institutional accountability on the international stage. When Serumpun travelled to Osaka in August 2025, it travelled as a Sarawak-state cultural-diplomacy programme, not as a chef’s project. The state’s institutional standing accompanied me at every chapter, and I have held the work at the standard that the state’s standing on the international stage requires.
Discipline, institutionally. The state’s voice is institutional, considered, and bound by the protocols that state cultural-policy work demands. I have held my own voice in continuity with that discipline — restraint over surfacing, considered over performative, institutional standing over personal celebrity.
The Sarawak Tourism Board, in the founding year
The Sarawak Tourism Board has a distinctive voice. Sarawak’s wider cultural-tourism inheritance — Mulu World Heritage, the Rainforest World Music Festival, the wider state heritage programme — sits alongside the gastronomic-tourism work, with the board carrying both at its own institutional standard.
The Serumpun Sarawak movement worked alongside the board across the founding year:
The Launch (July 2025) — the unveiling at the board’s Kuching home, with the board’s institutional voice carrying the launch alongside the wider state cultural-policy framework.
Expo 2025 Osaka (August 2025) — the international debut, with the board’s tourism-promotion programmes carrying the chapter alongside the wider Malaysian and Sarawak presence at the Expo.
Mulu (October 2025) — the rainforest chapter sited within Gunung Mulu National Park, where the board’s UNESCO World Heritage stewardship carries the work at the protected-area standard.
The Kuching Finale (April 2026) — the closing chapter, returning the movement to Kuching alongside the board’s UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy partnership.
The UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy — Kuching alignment
The Sarawak State Government and Sarawak Tourism Board partnership is inseparable from Kuching’s UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy designation. The designation is institutional cultural infrastructure that places Kuching on the formal global record alongside other Creative Cities of Gastronomy worldwide. Serumpun Sarawak was conceived from the outset as a programme that honours the designation’s purpose — the conservation and promotion of the city’s gastronomic heritage — and the state’s confidence in me has been held in continuity with that institutional alignment.
The UNESCO partnership is distinct from the Sarawak State Government partnership but operationally entwined. The discipline is to honour each on its own terms without merging them — the state at sovereign level, UNESCO at international-cultural level, and the partnership work that carries both at the joint standing the Serumpun movement now holds.
*State backing is mandate, not endorsement. The Sarawak State Government and Sarawak Tourism Board carry the movement on the institutional record. I carry the state's confidence in turn. Both have built something neither could have built alone.*
