R. Loheswar, Malay MailKUALA LUMPUR, Feb 20 — Just a short walk from three of Chinatown’s best-known places of worship — the Guang Di Temple, Sri Maha Mariamman Temple and Szin Sze Si Ya Temple — a narrow lane is being quietly reintroduced to the city.

Jalan Sang Guna, formerly called Drury Lane and for the longest time referred to as Madras Lane, sits tucked behind the busy Jalan Tun H.S. Lee corridor, near the Petaling Street tourist belt.

For decades, it survived as a service lane and later as a fading strip of sundry shops, its ageing shophouses standing as reminders of a much larger role it played in Kuala Lumpur’s urban life.

Once known for Chinese theatre performances, a cinema and later a bustling hawker street centred around a wet market, the lane gradually declined as businesses closed and buildings deteriorated.

Traders who remained recall a time when the lane was lively with vegetable sellers and poultry traders, before an ageing workforce and the lack of younger successors led to its slow hollowing out.

That decline, coupled with long-standing infrastructure problems, prompted a heritage-led revival effort that began in 2019 through a collaboration between Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL), Think City, the Bukit Bintang parliamentary office, local communities and partners including the Ministry of Finance (MOF) under the Warisan Kuala Lumpur framework.