Kuala Lumpur, Wilayah Persekutuan Kuala Lumpur
Ruang Rakyat occupies Level 2 of Ka Yin Building on Jalan Sultan in Kuala Lumpur's Chinatown, a clan-association hall that predates the arts space by well over a century. In 1898, Hakka pioneers including Yao Desheng (also romanised Yau Tet Shin), Pan Ah Yoeh and Zhang Yunxi bought the land at Lot 74, Section 56, Sultan Street, to found the Selangor Jiaying Huiguan, a mutual-aid hall for migrants from the five counties of Jiaying Prefecture in Guangdong, China, whose name is rendered locally as "Ka Yin". A temple-style main hall was built between 1902 and 1907, with side wings added from 1910. Renamed Selangor and Kuala Lumpur Jiaying Huiguan (Ka Yin Association) in 1984, the association still keeps administrative offices in the building. In 2026, its ground and upper floors opened commercially for the first time as "The Ka Yin 1898", bringing in tenants such as Liberica MY Hub and, on Level 2, the Ruang Rakyat community arts space.
Selangor Jiaying Huiguan (雪兰莪嘉应会馆)
1898 to 1984
Selangor and Kuala Lumpur Jiaying Huiguan, also known as the Ka Yin Association (雪隆嘉应会馆)
1984 to present, formal clan name
Ka Yin Building / Bangunan Ka Yin (also called Ka Yin Fui Kon, Hakka for "Ka Yin assembly hall")
colloquial name for the building throughout
The Ka Yin 1898
2026 to present, name used for the building's heritage retail concept
1898
Hakka pioneers Yao Desheng, Pan Ah Yoeh, Zhang Yunxi, Li Tongsheng and Zheng Anbang buy government land at Lot 74, Section 56, Sultan Street, Kuala Lumpur, to found the Selangor Jiaying Huiguan, representing migrants from Meixian, Jiaoling, Wuhua, Xingning and Pingyuan, the five counties of historic Jiaying Prefecture in Guangdong.
1902 to 1907
A temple-style main assembly hall is constructed on the site, taking five years to complete.
1910
Left and right wing structures are added, completing the traditional clan-hall layout.
1917
The association establishes a Chinese school, first proposed the year before, extending its role beyond the clan hall into education.
1984
The association is renamed Selangor and Kuala Lumpur Jiaying Huiguan (Ka Yin Association) to reflect Kuala Lumpur's status as a separate Federal Territory from Selangor.
16 October 2022
Sin Chew Daily reports the association's plans to refurbish the Jiaying building, restore its ancestral cemetery and improve the interior of its Guan Yu temple.
16 June 2024
The association marks its 126th anniversary with an 80-table banquet, alongside milestones for its Women's Department (62 years) and Youth Division (47 years), and donates RM37,302 to Lu Zhou Road Chinese Primary School.
April 2026
The ground floor reopens commercially under the heritage concept name "The Ka Yin 1898", with Liberica MY Hub's meat-free cafe among the first tenants alongside Yew Yew Coffee.
2026
Level 2 of the building opens as Ruang Rakyat, a community arts and crafts space, while the Ka Yin Association continues to run its administrative offices upstairs.
The "Ka Yin" name
Ka Yin is the Hakka rendering of Jiaying (嘉应), the Qing-era prefecture in Guangdong that was home to the five counties, Meixian, Jiaoling, Wuhua, Xingning and Pingyuan, whose migrants founded the association. The name has nothing to do with Malay or English words despite sounding like one.
Temple-style assembly hall
The original 1902 to 1907 main hall and 1910 wings followed the layout of a Hakka clan temple, with a central hall flanked by side chambers, a design still legible in the building's floor plan even after later commercial conversion.
Guan Yu shrine
The building has long housed a shrine to Guan Yu, the deified general venerated by many Chinese clan associations as a guardian of loyalty and fraternity, maintained by the association as part of its ongoing religious practice rather than as a museum display.
A working clan hall, not a converted relic
Unlike many heritage adaptive-reuse projects that empty a building of its original occupants, the Ka Yin Association still runs its offices from the building; Ruang Rakyat and the ground-floor cafes share the address with an active 19th-century community organisation.
Level 2 location
Ruang Rakyat sits on the upper floor of the building at 63 Jalan Sultan, above the ground-floor cafes, reached by the same staircase that has served the association's members for decades.
The land at Lot 74, Section 56, Sultan Street was bought in 1898, and the temple-style main hall was built between 1902 and 1907, with side wings added from 1910. The building has stood on the same Jalan Sultan site for over a century before Ruang Rakyat opened there.
It was built by Hakka pioneers, including the tin-mining businessman Yao Desheng (also romanised Yau Tet Shin), Pan Ah Yoeh and Zhang Yunxi, who founded the Selangor Jiaying Huiguan clan association in 1898. The building served as the association's headquarters, not a private residence or commercial shophouse.
Ka Yin is the Hakka pronunciation of Jiaying (嘉应), the historic prefecture in Guangdong, China, that was the ancestral home of the association's founders. The name identifies the building as a hometown association hall rather than referring to any person or Malaysian place.
For most of the 20th century the building functioned solely as the Ka Yin Association's clan hall, with a Guan Yu temple and administrative offices; it was not open to the public as a retail or cultural venue. It only began operating commercially on its ground and upper floors in 2026.
Yes. The Selangor and Kuala Lumpur Jiaying Huiguan, renamed from the Selangor Jiaying Huiguan in 1984, continues to run its administrative offices from the building even after Ruang Rakyat and cafes such as Liberica MY Hub opened on other floors in 2026.
Liberica MY Hub, a cafe serving Malaysian-grown Liberica coffee, and Yew Yew Coffee both opened on the ground floor of the building, branded as "The Ka Yin 1898", around the same period in 2026 that Ruang Rakyat opened on Level 2.
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