Not a museum. Not a stage show. A heritage you can sweat, laugh, and flex in.
Somewhere in Sarawak tonight, a child is holding a phone. A grandmother is holding a memory. They may be on the same verandah, barely a metre apart, but the distance between them could be the widest our heritage has ever had to cross.
That memory might be of a spinning top humming across hard-packed earth after the paddy harvest. It might be of a bamboo cannon booming during the fasting month, or of tiny leaf-sailed boats racing down a river with only the wind to push them. Sarawak is home to more than two dozen ethnic groups, and every one of them holds thousands of such memories. Every single one is a game.
These games were never trivial. They taught courage, patience, teamwork and humility without a single lecture. Batak Lampung, the Iban one-on-one tug of war, is played in longhouses during Gawai, testing strength and strengthening ties between neighbours. Mintubow, the top-spinning game of the Bidayuh and Malay communities, is played after the padi harvest. The Melanau Tibow asks young people to leap from a bamboo scaffold towards a swinging rope while an entire beach holds its breath. Each is a small classroom in how to belong.
Knowing is not enough
It is wonderful that these games are documented. Reports catalogue dozens of them, from the widely loved to the nearly forgotten, across Iban, Bidayuh, Melanau, Orang Ulu, Malay and many smaller communities. Documentation matters. But a game written down is a recipe on a shelf. It feeds nobody until someone cooks it. A game that is only remembered is already half gone.
Games are living things. They exist only in the moment two people sit facing each other over a stick, or a top leaves a child’s hand. The most important question is not “Do we know our games?” but “Did our children play one today?”
The quiet numbers
The danger rarely arrives with a bang. Nobody bans a game. It simply goes unplayed.
Look at how young people move. The World Health Organization reports that 80% of adolescents globally do not meet recommended levels of physical activity, and roughly one in three adults worldwide falls short of the guidelines. A 2012 Lancet series estimated that physical inactivity kills about five million people every year, a risk factor comparable to smoking or obesity. WHO now says the world is off track to meet its 2030 reduction target, with adult inactivity projected to reach 35%.
Malaysia’s numbers are equally sobering. The National Health and Morbidity Survey 2022 found that four in five Malaysian teenagers aged 13 to 17 are physically inactive, and two in three lead sedentary lifestyles. A 2025 analysis of the same survey’s data, covering 33,407 adolescents, found that 78.6% were not physically active and 66.8% showed sedentary behaviour. Malaysia’s 2022 Report Card on children’s physical activity graded overall activity at D minus. Among adults, the 2023 survey put physical inactivity at 29.9%, with higher rates among urban residents.
These figures are about more than fitness. They describe a generation that is moving less, gathering less and inheriting less. The 2025 analysis also found that 26.9% of these adolescents screened positive for depression on a standard questionnaire. Among those with sedentary behaviour, 31.0% did, versus 18.7% of those without, and the rate rose from 22.6% at age 13 to 30.1% at age 17. The study was cross-sectional and tied depression to sedentary time and obesity, not to physical inactivity as such, so it shows an association, not proof that movement protects. It is still a warning worth heeding.
Now picture what a single afternoon of top-spinning, sikon (a Bidayuh game) or a village tug of war does. It puts the body in motion, the family in one place and the culture back in the hands of the young. One activity, three gifts.
A living heritage of real people
This is not the hobby of a tiny community. Sarawak’s indigenous peoples number around 1.2 million, almost half the state’s population. According to the Department of Statistics Malaysia, Sarawak Bumiputera comprise Iban (59.1%), Bidayuh (17.1%), Melanau (10.6%) and others (13.2%). That is a great many grandparents holding a great many stories, and a great many grandchildren waiting to be invited to play.
Consider what each game quietly builds. Menyumpit, the blowpipe, trains focus and steady breathing, and it has grown from a hunting skill into a sport enjoyed across communities. Payu wrestling teaches respect between rivals. Bidar Lukut teaches children to read the wind and to shape a toy from whatever the riverbank offers.
Festivals show our love. Daily life proves it.
There is real reason for joy. Pesta Kaul Mukah 2026 was expected to draw around 50,000 visitors, and its Salui Lukut competition recorded 268 entries. In 2025, the festival’s giant Melanau swing, the itut, earned a Malaysia Book of Records entry, with 2,288 people taking a turn. That same year, the state-level Gawai Dayak Traditions Carnival in Miri featured 13 traditional games from different communities.
These are treasures, and they deserve every cheer. A festival visits our traditions for a few days a year. A garden watered only when guests arrive may photograph beautifully, but it does not grow. If a game is played only on the festival stage, we have turned our children into an audience when we need them to be players. Let us not settle for applauding culture. Let us practise it.
What living it daily looks like
Living a tradition sounds grand, but it begins small.
At home: Keep a top or a set of Batu Seremban stones where the children can reach them, and play for fifteen minutes after dinner. Let grandparents be the referees, coaches and storytellers. Nothing replaces the sight of an elder’s weathered hand steadying a small one on the string of a top.
At school: Ask for traditional games in physical education and co-curricular hours, and in Gawai, Kaul and Hari Raya celebrations, not as a performance for guests but as ordinary lessons. The Saban community’s games at the 2025 Gawai Dayak Traditions Carnival, madiep dueng pew and nkai rak among them, show what a shared field and a few enthusiasts can start. The National Department for Culture and Arts (JKKN) has called for traditional games to be a required part of programmes, not confined to special festivals, noting that 25 traditional games are registered as National Heritage.
In the longhouse, the kampung and the housing estate: Choose one evening a month for play. Village against village, neighbour against neighbour, Iban beside Malay beside Chinese beside Bidayuh. Gasing, sepak raga and tug of war already belong to many communities at once, which makes them some of the friendliest bridges we have.
With technology: Use the phone as a servant rather than a rival. Film the elders, share the rules, and support the mobile apps and augmented reality ideas researchers are proposing, alongside digital preservation projects. But treat every recording as an invitation, never a substitute. A video of a game is a photograph of a fire. It will not warm anyone. The numbers show why these matters. A 2024 survey by the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC), cited in Parliament, found that 55.7% of children use the internet for one to four hours a day, and that 60.7% of those with access have their own device. A study of 5,290 adolescents across seven states, cited by Parliament’s special select committee, found that 3.5% met clinical criteria for internet gaming disorder.
Above all, led by example. A study of 489 parent–child pairs in Petaling District, Selangor, found that parental screen time above two hours a day was associated with excessive screen time in children under five. Children copy what we do far more than what we say. If they see us put the phone down and pick up a top, they will follow.
The joy is the point
It is easy to talk about preservation in the language of duty. These games survived for generations not because people felt obliged, but because they were fun.
Someone laughed when the top wobbled. Someone cheered when the smallest child finally pulled the biggest boy across the line. Someone learned the old song and, years later, taught it to a granddaughter.
That laughter is the real carrier of culture. It is how fairness, courage and community pass from one heart to another without ever being named. Lose the laughter, and we keep the rules but lose the game. Keep the laughter, and everything else follows.
An invitation
So let us be clear about what we are asking. Keep the documentation and support the festivals. Fund the clubs, honour the elders and record the songs. But measure our success by a simpler standard: how many children in our own families and neighbourhoods played a traditional game this week?
This weekend, find a top, a pair of bamboo stilts, a stretch of grass or simply a few friends and a rhyme. Invite a child. Invite a neighbour from another community. Invite a grandparent to lead. Then do it again next weekend.
A tradition is not safe in an archive, and it is not safe on a stage. It is safe only in the hands and hearts of the people who play it. Let us not hand our children a museum. Let us hand them a game, and then stay to play.
