The purpose of this article is to discuss how heterosexual masculinity (hereafter only masculinity) is constructed in the balance between essentialized ideas of what makes out masculine “nature” and virtues of achieved or performed manhood among working-class Malaysian Chinese men in Penang, Malaysia. This group of men (and a few women), descendants of Nanyang migrants from the southern provinces of China who once sojourned the South China Sea in massive numbers, fleeing from starvation, famines, and political repression in search of viable conditions for making a decent living, is now living as an ethnic minority in the Muslim-dominated Malaysia. In the following, this group of Malaysian Chinese working class men will make out the narrative focus in trying to understand how a particular form of Malaysian Chinese masculinity is constructed in the intersection of gender, race, religion, and class.