Medan

Medan began as a village at the meeting of the Deli and Babura rivers, part of the Malay Sultanate of Deli, which had broken away from Aceh's orbit in the 17th century. Its transformation came with tobacco. In the 1860s the Dutch tobacco merchant Jacob Nienhuys was persuaded to move his business from Java to Deli, and found that Deli leaf made outstanding cigar wrappers; within two decades the plantation belt around the town was one of the most profitable agricultural districts in the world, and rubber, oil palm and tea followed.

The money built the city. Labourers were brought in by the tens of thousands from Java, China and southern India, Chinese merchants such as Tjong A Fie became immensely wealthy and acted as intermediaries between the Dutch, the sultan and the workers, and in 1869 the Deli Company moved its head office from Labuhan to Medan. The sultan spent his share on the Maimun Palace, built between 1887 and 1891, and the Great Mosque, finished in 1909.

The plantation system was brutal, governed by a penal labour law that bound workers to their estates, leaving a resentment that erupted after the Second World War. Independence, the social revolution of 1946 against the Malay aristocracy, and the nationalisation of Dutch estates ended the old order, though the sultan's family still occupies part of the palace. Medan grew quickly after the 1970s into the largest city in Sumatra, spreading over its plantation belt, and its old airport at Polonia closed in 2013 when flights moved out to Kualanamu.

Medan's character comes from its mixture. The plantation economy drew Javanese labourers, Chinese traders and Tamil workers to a Malay sultanate on the edge of Batak country, and all of them stayed. The result is a city where a Hindu temple gateway, a Chinese clan house, a Batak Protestant church and a sultan's mosque can be within a few streets of each other, and where people commonly speak Malay or Indonesian at work, another language at home and a third with their neighbours.

The Chinese community is one of the largest and most established in Indonesia, with Hokkien still spoken by older families, temples and clan associations across the centre and a dominant place in commerce. The Tamil community around Kampung Madras dates from plantation recruitment in the 19th century and keeps its temples, festivals and food. Batak migration from the highlands has made the city a centre of Batak life as well, with churches, choirs and lapo taverns in ordinary residential streets.

Medan people have a reputation across Indonesia for speaking loudly and bluntly, driving aggressively and bargaining hard, and they tend to enjoy the reputation. Eating out is the main social activity, with long evenings at street tables, and hospitality is generous. Formality is lighter here than in Java, but respect for elders and for religion is taken seriously.

About 2.5 million people live within the city limits, and close to five million in the metropolitan area that takes in Binjai, Deli Serdang and part of Karo — the largest such area in Indonesia outside Java. The economy rests on trade and distribution for the whole of northern Sumatra, on processing and shipping plantation products through Belawan, on banking and services, and on hospitals and universities that draw patients and students from across the province and from Malaysia.

Most people live in low-rise neighbourhoods of shophouses and small concrete homes, with newer gated estates spreading south. The day begins early and the city works through the heat until mid-afternoon; the streets come alive again at dusk, when food stalls are set up and families go out. Motorcycles carry most of the traffic, and journeys that look short on a map take a long time.

The constant frustrations are congestion, drainage and flooding, since the city sits on flat, low ground crossed by rivers that overflow in heavy rain. Waste management and air quality are recurring complaints, and the gap between the gated estates and older crowded quarters is wide. Medan also functions as a gateway for labour migration to Malaysia, and money sent home from there supports many households in the wider region.

Medan is regarded by many Indonesians as the best eating city in Sumatra, because it serves several cuisines at once. Its own dish is soto Medan, a coconut-milk soup of mixed meats served with rice and fried potato cakes; duck with rice vermicelli in a clear broth is another thing to look for, and lontong, rice cakes under a vegetable curry, is a standard breakfast.

Chinese-Indonesian cooking is everywhere and, in a majority-Muslim country, Medan is unusual in how openly pork is sold in its Chinese quarters: kwetiau, wide noodles fried hard over a hot flame, char siu rice, and seafood at night stalls. Kampung Madras adds roti canai, curries, biryani and sweet milky tea, and Batak lapo serve saksang and grilled pork with andaliman pepper. Nasi Padang from West Sumatra is on every main road.

The city is famous for fruit and cake. Durian is a Medan obsession, eaten at roadside stalls late into the night, and the small dried anchovies called teri Medan are a standard gift. Bika ambon, a yellow cake of tapioca and coconut milk with a honeycomb crumb, despite its name belongs to Medan and is bought by the boxful at the bakeries clustered on one street. Layer cakes, pancakes filled with peanut and chocolate, and strong local coffee round out a city that eats constantly.