The partnership with the state that anchors Serumpun Sarawak: state backing, alignment with UNESCO, 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 short sentence matters a great deal. In Malaysia, and in Sarawak especially, state backing means more than a name on a programme or a courtesy logo. It is a mandate. It puts the movement on the state government's formal cultural record, and with that comes accountability and the public standing of the state's own voice.
This partnership started 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 first to think my work deserved the Governor’s attention. Her introduction was generous, and I am still grateful for 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 get in touch. Every door that has opened since opened because of that recommendation.
Dato Dennis Ngau, Chairman of the Sarawak Tourism Board, acted on it and made the first call. Serumpun Sarawak began with that call, first as a private conversation and then as the cultural-diplomacy partnership described on this page.
Three people opened the door. I offer the work that followed with gratitude to each of them.
The 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 partnership works at three levels, 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. It speaks for the state on the formal cultural record, and its mandate is what gives Serumpun Sarawak its standing.
The Sarawak Tourism Board, the state’s main body for cultural and tourism programmes that reach beyond Sarawak. The board runs the operations and the programmes with me, including the work on the international stage.
UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy Kuching, the designation that places Kuching among the world’s Creative Cities of Gastronomy. It gives the conservation work its international footing.
Serumpun Sarawak needs all three. None of them could carry the movement alone at the scale it has now reached.
In practice, state backing is a contract with obligations on both sides. The state has put the movement on its formal cultural record, and I have kept the work to the standard that trust requires. Three obligations run beneath the partnership.
Cultural fidelity to the thirty-four indigenous communities of Sarawak. The Serumpun work draws on the Iban, Bidayuh, Orang Ulu, Penan, Berawan, Kelabit, Kenyah, Kayan, Tring and the other indigenous communities of Sarawak. When the state speaks on indigenous heritage it sets a high bar, and I have tried to meet it throughout. The cuisine is presented as living cultural practice and never as an ethnographic exhibit. Indigenous authorship is named wherever it is due. The conservation work (the UNESCO endorsement, edible medicinal flora and seeds, partnerships with indigenous communities) is done with the care the state’s cultural policy asks for.
Accountability on the international stage. When Serumpun went to Osaka in August 2025, it went as a Sarawak state cultural-diplomacy programme. It did not go as a chef’s project. The state’s standing came with me to every chapter, and I have tried to keep the work at the level that standing demands abroad.
Discipline that matches the state’s. The state speaks carefully, within the protocols that cultural-policy work requires. I have kept my own voice in step with that. Restraint comes before visibility, care before performance, and institutional standing before any personal celebrity.
The Sarawak Tourism Board in the founding year
The Sarawak Tourism Board has its own voice. Sarawak’s wider cultural-tourism inheritance, including Mulu World Heritage, the Rainforest World Music Festival and the state heritage programme, sits beside its gastronomic-tourism work, and the board carries both to its own standard.
Serumpun Sarawak worked with the board throughout the founding year:
The Launch (July 2025). The unveiling at the board’s Kuching home, led by the board within the state’s wider cultural policy.
Expo 2025 Osaka (August 2025). The international debut, carried by the board’s tourism-promotion programmes as part of 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 set the protected-area standard for the work.
The Kuching Finale (April 2026). The closing chapter, which brought the movement back to Kuching alongside the board’s UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy partnership.
Kuching's UNESCO designation
The partnership with the Sarawak State Government and the Sarawak Tourism Board cannot be separated from Kuching’s designation as a UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy. The designation puts Kuching on the global record with the other Creative Cities of Gastronomy. Serumpun Sarawak was conceived from the start to serve its purpose, the conservation and promotion of the city’s gastronomic heritage, and I have tried to keep the state’s trust in me consistent with it.
The UNESCO partnership is separate from the state partnership, though the two work closely together. I try to honour each on its own terms without merging them. The state works at sovereign level, UNESCO at the level of international culture, and the Serumpun partnership serves both.
State backing is a mandate, which is more than an endorsement. The Sarawak State Government and the Sarawak Tourism Board have put the movement on the state's record, and I carry the state's trust in return. Together we have built something none of us could have built alone.
