The Institute of Asian Studies at Universiti Brunei Darussalam is pleased to announce the publication of IAS Working Paper No 86: Ong Sum Ping and the Early History of Borneo in Chinese Sources by Lee Cheuk Yin.
Please see below for details.
Abstract: Many years ago, I went to Nanjing regularly to do fieldwork on Muslim communities and mosques in Nanjing. I had the opportunity to visit the tombs of Zheng He and the King of Borneo. At that time, I believed that the person lying in the tomb was the King of Borneo. It was recorded on Chinese sources that two kings died in China following the voyages of Zheng He to China. One was the King of Sulu, buried in Shandong province. The other one was the King of Borneo, buried in Nanjing. When I came to work in Brunei, I noticed that there was a street named Jalan Ong Sum Ping. I asked my students who was Ong Sum Ping. They all said that they had no idea, and he was probably a legendary figure. As a historian, it aroused my curiosity and interest. There are few local sources on the person. However, there are many Chinese sources on the person, especially on the Chinese websites, even though many are problematic and unreliable. As a result, I was motivated to write this paper and to rectify the Chinese sources. In the course of investigation, I discovered that Ong Sum Ping and the King of Borneo buried in Nanjing are related, and that the Ming government had made a mistake.
Author: Lee Cheuk Yin was previously head of the Department of Chinese Studies and founding director of the Wan Boo Saw Research Centre for Chinese Culture at the National University of Singapore. He is Guest Professor of the Nanjing University, Hubei University and Wuhan University, and Academic Advisor of the National Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies at Fudan University, China. He has served as External Examiner of the School of Chinese of the University of Hong Kong, and the History Department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is currently Senior Professor at the Institute of Asian Studies (IAS), Universiti Brunei Darussalam. Prof. Lee’s interest is Chinese intellectual history, Muslim activities in China and traditional medicine. He has written 8 books and edited more than 30 books. He is editor of the book series Overseas Chinese Studies (Guangxi Normal University Press) and Emotion and the State of Mind in East Asia (Leiden: Brill).
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