Kuala Lumpur

The city began around 1857, when Chinese tin miners working for a Selangor chief pushed up the Klang river and landed at the muddy confluence with the Gombak that gave Kuala Lumpur its name. The first camps were wooden, malarial and violent, and the settlement was fought over in the Selangor Civil War of the 1860s and 1870s. Under the Hakka leader Yap Ah Loy, appointed Kapitan Cina in 1868, it was rebuilt after fire and flood and grew into the trading centre of the tin fields.

After Britain installed a Resident in Selangor, the state capital was moved here in 1880, and the British Resident Frank Swettenham ordered the town rebuilt in brick. The railway arrived, and a run of public buildings in a Moorish style went up facing the padang: the Sultan Abdul Samad Building in 1897, the railway station in 1910, the Jamek Mosque in 1909. In 1896 Kuala Lumpur became the capital of the Federated Malay States, and rubber estates around it brought Tamil labourers to add to the Malay and Chinese population.

Japanese forces occupied the city from 1942 to 1945. On 31 August 1957 independence was proclaimed at Merdeka Stadium and the flag raised on the padang now called Merdeka Square. Communal riots broke out in the city on 13 May 1969 and reshaped national politics. In 1974 Kuala Lumpur was separated from Selangor as a federal territory; the Petronas Twin Towers were completed in 1998, and from the end of that decade the federal government moved its ministries out to the new city of Putrajaya, leaving the capital as the commercial and royal centre.

Kuala Lumpur is the most mixed place in Malaysia: Malay, Chinese and Indian Malaysians, Indigenous families from Sabah and Sarawak, migrant workers from Indonesia, Bangladesh and Nepal, and professionals from every state. Malay, English, Cantonese, Mandarin and Tamil are heard within a block of each other, and Malaysian English — Manglish, with its borrowed words and its sentence-ending "lah" — is the shared city idiom.

The festival calendar belongs to everyone at once. Thaipusam takes a procession from the Sri Mahamariamman Temple to the Batu Caves; Chinese New Year lights the Chinatown streets and the temples; Ramadan brings bazaars of festive food to every neighbourhood and Hari Raya the open house, where friends of any faith are fed; Deepavali does the same in Brickfields. Islam is the religion of the Malay majority and shapes public life, from the call to prayer to Friday afternoons, when offices empty for a time.

Away from the festivals, the city's culture runs on food, shopping and football. The mall is a social space as much as a shop, late-night mamak stalls show European league matches to full tables, and badminton is followed closely. Manners are gentle and indirect: greetings are soft, the right hand is used for giving and receiving, and open confrontation is avoided. Race and religion are handled carefully in public conversation, and modest dress is expected at mosques and temples.

About 2.1 million people live within the federal territory and about 8.8 million in Greater Kuala Lumpur, the conurbation that takes in the Klang Valley and spreads into Selangor through Petaling Jaya, Shah Alam, Subang Jaya, Klang and Kajang. Most live in condominium towers or suburban terraced houses well outside the centre, and commutes are long: the rail network keeps expanding, but the roads still fill twice a day.

The economy is built on finance and banking, oil and gas administration, professional services, retail, media and a growing technology and data-centre sector, with the federal civil service now largely at Putrajaya. The city draws workers from across the country and the region, and housing costs are a constant complaint, as are floods after the heaviest storms.

The day starts early, often with nasi lemak or roti canai at a stall on the way to work, and pauses in the heat of the afternoon. Lunch is a quick food-court meal; the evening belongs to the mall, the night market and the mamak table, where groups sit over teh tarik long after midnight. Weekends mean family meals, markets and, for many, the drive back to a home town elsewhere in the country.

Kuala Lumpur eats from every Malaysian kitchen at once, and mostly outside the home. The city's own dish is Hokkien mee, thick yellow noodles braised dark in soy sauce with pork, squid and crisp pork fat — different from the Penang version of the same name. Alongside it come wantan mee, curry laksa in a coconut gravy, claypot chicken rice cooked over charcoal and the chilli-and-anchovy plate of nasi lemak, the national breakfast.

The Indian-Muslim mamak shop is the city's great leveller, open at any hour for roti canai with dhal, mee goreng mamak, nasi kandar piled with curries and teh tarik, tea poured between two pots until it froths. Brickfields serves banana-leaf rice, thosai and sweets; Kampung Baru serves Malay cooking at its most traditional, from grilled fish to coconut curries; Chinatown's lanes keep the old noodle and porridge stalls; and Jalan Alor fills each evening with open-air seafood and barbecue tables.

Markets shape the routine. The pasar malam, a night market that moves from neighbourhood to neighbourhood on a fixed day of the week, sells cooked food and produce from the pavement; Chow Kit is the big wet market; and Ramadan bazaars appear for a month each year. Durian, sold from kerbside stalls in season, divides visitors sharply. Drinks are kopi from a kopitiam, fresh lime and sugarcane juice and the pink rose-milk air bandung, with beer and cocktails in the bar districts.