AS OF last week, Wikipedia, the free online encyclopaedia, described bak kut teh as a Chinese pork rib dish cooked in broth.

The same site now describes it as a Chinese rib dish cooked in broth.

A peek into its edit history showed that a flurry of revisions had been undertaken since 28 Feb 2024 and the latest being today, 8 Mar 2024, the change in the definition explains.

In entirety, it can be deduced that the revisions were intended to dilute the definition of bak kut teh being associated fully with pork, stating that other meat, halal to Muslims, are equally of essence.

All these activities occurred since it was announced that bak kut teh is a national heritage dish, much to the chagrin of certain segments of the Malay community and strongly opposed by Umno Youth chief Dr. Muhamad Akmal Saleh.

Akmal went on to demand the Prime Minister replace Tiong King Sing, the Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture for being the protagonist in getting the dish the national heritage status, which to the former is an insult to the status of Islam being the religion of the Federation.

Tiong had defended his position by arguing that “bak” means meat while Akmal insisted that bak in Hokkien means pork. 

Academic Prof Emeritus Teo Kok Seong, who is a regular target of Chinese chauvinists for his critical views on the community over their refusal to integrate and that they looked down on the Malays, said that bak specifically means pork in Hokkien.

The pre-revised Wikipedia definition last week had also stated as such but the latest version had transitioned to bak meaning meat.

Prof Teo had written that if the Malaysian Cultural Policy 2021, which had inherited the National Cultural Policy of 1971, was observed, the name of the dish which sowed confusion over it being halal or non-halal would not have been allowed to be nominated as the National heritage dish.

While the Wikipedia revisionists of bak kut teh tried quite hard to dilute the pork of the dish, it did not however erase the part that “tea of various kinds, for example the Tieguanyin variety which is popular in the Klang Valley area of Malaysia, is also usually served in the belief that it dilutes or dissolves the copious amount of fat consumed in this pork-laden dish.”

The revision also retains the literature that “on 22 November 2008, the Malaysian Klang Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCCI) collaborated with five bak kut teh sellers in Klang to cook the world’s biggest bowl of the Hokkien variant of bak kut teh.

“The bowl was 182.88 cm in diameter and 91.44 cm in height, and contained 500 kg of pork, 450 kg of soup and 50 kg of herbal medicine, and has been listed in the Malaysian Book of Record.”

So, it can be taken that the Hokkien variant is essentially a pork dish and that in so far as the Malaysian Book of Record is concerned, the bak kut teh that it gave recognition has all 500kg of pork.

While the debate continues to rage over the semantic and the appropriateness of it to be the National Heritage dish in a Malay-Muslim majority nation, some DAP leaders had come forward to show support for the listing.

No less than its strongman Lim Kit Siang and accompanied by three MPs and one state assemblymen converged at a restaurant in Klang reportedly as an effort to promote the dish as a national heritage.

And to emphasise that bak kut teh is not merely pork-based, they also asked for the chicken and vegetarian versions.

The bak kut teh Klang association representative Benjamin Tan who was also present was quoted as saying that the Government’s recognition of the dish as a national heritage would spur the tourism industry in Klang.

Simply put, Lim and his DAP stalwarts had dismissed the anger expressed by Umno Youth, its partner in the present administration, or that of other Malay Muslims over the listing of the dish as national heritage.

It is a done deal and what they need to do is to promote the dish and the unhappy Umno Youth and other Malay Muslims must learn to accept that fact.

The litmus test to the issue is simple – when Lim and his ilk ordered the bak kut teh, did they expect to get the chicken, vegetarian or pork version?

And when they ordered the chicken and vegetarian versions, did they simply asked for bak kut teh or they had to specify them with different terms?

The final test is to ask any of the DAP-supporting Malay leaders to join them to openly eat bak kut teh (chicken or vegetarian) in a bak kut teh restaurant in Klang where the dish is claimed to have originated.

It is doubtful any of them would dare.

In the final analysis, the term bak kut teh to the larger body of the Malay Muslims it is a pork-associated dish. 

If this can be established then the debate of whether it deserves to be made a national dish should then be benchmarked to the nation’s cultural creed.

But that creed too has been questioned and mocked rendering confusion to the debate, not out of ignorance but simply a rejection to the primacy of the nation.

And that makes bak kut teh an imposition.