Penang
Visiting Tanjong
An A B
C of Penang
|
Penang
Visiting Tanjong An A B
C of Penang |
George Town GEORGE TOWN is two words and not "Georgetown." Armenian Street YOUR BUS will probably dump you at the Beach Street end of Armenian Street for your tour of the Khoo Kongsi. Why Armenian? Because there were some Armenian traders from India who did business here. One of them was Dr Thaddeus Avertoom a medical practitioner who also established in the 1880's the George Town Dispensary, a wholesale and retail chemist and drugstore. After the  doctor's death in 1915 the business continued in Penang
(at Beach Street) and Ipoh (Belfield Street, now Jln Sultan Yussof)
until recently. When in
Armenian Street visit the Cheah Kongsi (Cheah surname Hall), founded
1820. For some unknown reason the Penang Heritage signboard is not on
the road but inside in the courtyard well past the gate. The Hall was
recently restored. Next to it is the Red Pinang Culture House at No 18.
A member of a Goh family whose dwelling it once was tells us that
Sun Yat Sen, the leader of the 1911 revolution that overthrew the
Manchu empire once sought refuge at No 18 after appearing at the
Cheah
Kongsi. |
| A
little further is the Swatow Lodging House, a rare
survivor of the
hotels of the 19th century where immigrants put up on first landing in
Penang. This one is "Swatow" meaning that it housed Teochew immigrants
from the China port of Swatow. Further on you will come across Penang's narrowest lane, the Soo Hong Lane. And you may want to visit the 162 year old Hock Teik Temple further down the road. It has recently been restored.  Armenian Street house Cross the road past the Yeap Kongsi building on the left. This section of Armenian Street, lined with old buildings ranging from dwarf size to those with impresssive ceilings rising to 19 ft high. Near the Galeri Seni Mutiara is an ancient large house hiding behind a deceptively tiny and modest front gate  Beaches ONCE UPON a time the beaches of Penang were ecstatically described as golden. But don't give a damn people have turned them brown and filthy. Be warned that horse riding is allowed. So don't encourage your children to build sand castles. As for swimming, water scooters - another menace - roam wildly against the rules; so be careful. A water scooter cut into swimmers at Port Dickson sending the two of them to hospital. A few years ago the diving instructor of a Penang swimming club had her shoulder badly cut by a water scooter while she was out at sea. It's safer to remain in the hotel swimming pool. |
You
will
also notice 44 storey towering blocks of flats along Tanjung
Bungah. Frightening sign posts that mark the progress of the 1985
Manhatten Project. Gradually, but slowly and surely, since the
siting of the Rasa Sayang Hotel on the sea side of the main road,
Penang is being shut out from the sea and enclosed in a
wall
of brick and steel. High rise hotels - more forbidding than the ramparts of any colonial fortress - wall us from our beaches (from Cecil Rajendra's 'Canto of Progress') Cheong Fatt Tse House THE Cheong Fatt Tse house at Leith Street (Lian Hua Ho (Pool of Lotus Flowers) ) was formerly known by its Hokkien name of Thio Tiaw Suat but someone made the change to the Cantonese pronunciation. Said to have been built in 1866 the building was restored a few years back but you will notice that the floor, relaid with tiles of the 1920s, has not been restored to the original large squares of terra cotta. One of the sources of Thio Tiaw Suat's wealth was his membership of an opium farm (an opium outlet through which the East India Company and the colonial government farmed out opium concessions). He was consul of the Chinese emperor in Penang then consul general in Singapore and then elevated to the rank of minister of the emperor. And don't swallow the yarn about the five two storeyed terrace houses opposite being the servants' quarters. Servants in 19th century Penang were lucky if they had raised platforms to sleep on. The terrace houses were only built about 1926 and were occupied by well to do people, among them a doctor. The historic road off Carnarvon Street called Hong Kong Street was renamed Cheong Fatt Tse Road when the latter road disappeared with the building of Komtar. |
| Leith
Street At the beginning of Leith Street stands the building which was once the house of Leong Fee, a wealthy tin miner . His son Ying Khean built the Italian style house at 32 Northam Road nearby. He loved Italy and even named his daughters Nice and Florence. He studied architecture at Cambridge in 1908. The bowling alley next door occupies the site of elder brother Eng Khean's bungalow. Leith Street was the street of Hakka millionaires. The bungalow which is now the Red Mansion was formerly the residence of Mrs Tye Keat Kwong, widow of the eldest son of Tye Kee Yoon, remembered for his 1920s drive up the jungle path to the top of Penang Hill. One of the Hakka bungalows opposite is now the Cathay Hotel whose owners generously permit viewing of the charming interior. Northam Road - Ranong House Ranong House, a heritage building along Northam Road, was destroyed by a developer in 1993. Today, the facade of the 1921 building has been restored from a photograph and is dwarfed by a high rise called Mayfair. Ranong House was the Penang residence of Sim Khim, son of the "Raja" or governor of Ranong, a rich Teochew named Khaw Soo Cheang, the donor of Renong Ground given to the people of George Town for football; next door was the Esplanade exclusively for White cricket. But Renong ground is no more because the short sighted authorities, I suspect in breach of trust, put up an ugly building called the Dewan Sri Penang. The house behind, facing the sea, was Chakrabong, the residence of another son Sim Bee, Siam's High Commissioner. A road, runnng parallel to Burma Road is named after him.  King Rama V appointed Khaw Soo Cheang Rajah of Ranong,
conferring upon him the title, Phraya Damrong Sucharit Mahisornphakdi
(Head of Palace Official). The king also decreed that his second son,
Khaw Sim Kong, who was given the title Phraya Ratanasethi, should
succeed him in due course.Following his death, his second son, Khaw Sim Kong assumed the title Phraya Damrong Sucharit Mahisornphakdi and became the second Raja of Ranong. His other |
| sons
were also
enobled by the King and appointed governors of three of
the southern provinces of the country. Khaw Sim Khim, his fourth son,
became Governor of Kraburi; Khaw Sim Teik, his fifth son, was appointed
Governor of Langsuan; while his youngest son, Khaw Sim Bee, was made
Governor of Trang. In 1892 Khaw Sim Bee was appointed High Commissioner
of South Siam, governor of Kraburi, of Trang and of Monthon
(Phuket). He
was
conferred with
Thailand's highest honour, the title Phraya
Ratsadanupradit Mahisornpakdi or The Grand Cross of the Most Exalted
Order of the White Elephant. In Trang is the Phraya
Ratsadanupradit Monument, the only public monument in
Thailand to be dedicated to a Chinese businessman. In 1916 when the Chinese in Siam were required to have Siamese names in order to be citizens of that country, Rama VI (King Vajiravudh) issued a Royal Decree on 1st July, 1916, giving the surname "Na Ranong" ("of Ranong") to all the descendants of Khaw Soo Cheang living in Siam. Thenceforth all the Khaws of Ranong in modern day Thailand are known by that name. It was a rich and powerful family in Thailand whose properties included estates in Trang and a house on Penang Hill  Next door, being restored, is Northam Lodge, the home of Heah Swee Lee, a rich sugar cane farmer. His was a remarkable family. A son, Seng Whatt, was captain of the polo team, a remarkable appointment, given that it was in the days of the colonial colour bar. He must have been exceptionally good at the game. The Heah Swee Lee Cup was one of the trophies to be won in Penang and continued to be a fought-for prize for many years after the war. He was also one of the first in Penang to take up flying when the Penang Flying Club was formed. He was also a founder of the Penang Wireless Society which had its broadcasting station at Perak Road in a building which was recently pulled down, a typical act of vandalism by a state which knows nothing of its history. The 5th son, Heah Seng Poh, was a wild game hunter and taxidermist and a member of the Flying Club. |
| Northam Road - Goh Chan Lau  You will see a building in ruins along the left side of Northam Road. This used to be the residence of Cheah Tek Thye (b. 1860) who was educated at the Penang Free School, the St Xavier's Institution and Doveton. He 
had interests in
insurance,
coconut and rubber estates and was a municipal commissioner as well a a
member
of the turf club. Popularly known as Goh
Chan Lau
(Five storeyed house),
it became a hotel and in the late twenties became the Government
English School where kids learnt to spell out D O G - dog and C
A T - cat before graduating to the Hutchings School (now the
State
Museum). Lim Cheng Kung  You will see two buildings opposite Goh Chan Lau. The one on the left was the house of Lim Cheng Kung and on the right was his garden house. His house, Donnybrook, with a garden overlooking the sea has been much altered by its present owners. It is probably the same house which served as the residence of an Armenian trader, Arratoon. Why the house was named after a subutb of Dublin remains unexplained. In the garden house, built later, lived Cheng Kung's good friend Grummit, an accountant, who came back after the Japamese surrender and shot himself in mysterious circumstances. Cheng Kung, a son of Phuah Hin Leong, was a younger brother of Cheng Ean, a legislative councillor who went to St Xaviers school and went on to do economics at |
| London. He was a
great
friend of
the pioneer journalist Saravanamuttu and spent most his time immersed
in his immense library. Like all rich people he married rich, his
wife was a daughter to the tycoon Tye Kee Yun, the owner of the
building opposite and other properties. Her sister-in-law, Mrs Tye Keat
Kwong lived in nearby Leith Street in the bungalow that she built,
which is now called the Red Mansion. Cheng Kung's
eldest daughter married C C Tan, a lawyer, and one of the leaders of
the
pro-British party, the People's Progressive Party. Northam Road - Lim Kia Joo  Further down the road you will come to the Maple Gold restaurant. This was Columbia Lodge, formerly the home of Lim Kia Joo, a well remembered house with sweet memories of its cakes and laksa. Mrs Kia Joo, a Nyonya, was typical of their traditions. Her rich counterparts in Malacca did not think it infra dig to sell chinchalok behind curtained windows for pocket money. She too made it a profitable hobby making laksa and nyonya koay which became so popular that she employed as many as three persons to hawk her cooking along Northam Road and the newly opened coast road (now called Gurney Drive) where the evening walkers were enthusiastic customers. Lim Kia Joo bought the house from Quah Beng Kee, OBE, municipal commissioner, one of the favoured millionaires of the Straits Chinese British Association who was the owner of a fleet of coastal steamers that called at ports of Rangoon and Amoy. He is listed in Julius S Fisher's "Who's Who in Malaya - 1925" as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Art and of the Royal Meteriological Society. He and Lim Cheng Kung were directors of the historic Criterion Press. Northam Road - Yeap Chor Ee  Opposite the Lim Kia Joo is the town house built by Lim Chin Guan in the late twenties; the country house - Lim Lodge - was at Western Road. Chin Guan was one of the sons of Lim Mah Chye, a millionaire of the opium and liquor "farm" monopoly. He studied at the Anglo-Chinese School and went on to become a a shipping magnate when he bought Quah Beng Kee's (who lived opposite) shares in the Eastern Shipping Company, owner of the largest shipping fleet in the Straits Settlements, its vessels carrying cargo to Hong Kong as well as to Calcultta. Lim Chin Guan was ruined by the 1929 slump. Among his properties which were auctioned off was this house at Northam Road which Yeap Chor Ee bought for $100,000. Lim Chin Guan's wife was a nyonya who, instead of a puff of opium, had a man read stories such as The Three Kingdoms in Malay to send her off to sleep. She loved animals and had kept a few in cages. Penang YOU will be told that the island of Penang is named after the pinang (areca nut) tree. However, the researches of Dr David Jones of Adelaide University show that the name Penang derives from the Tanjong Penaigre Cape, after the ironwood tree (Mesua ferea) growing on the land. Today, old people on the Butterworth side still refer to George Town as "Tanjong." Ironwood trees used to line both sides of the road into the Botanic Gardens and it was from here that the Straits Settlements counsellor, Lim Cheng Ean, obtained the plants which he planted along the Chung Ling School boundary when the new school building was opened before the second world war. The island, formerly the Prince of Wales Island, was run by Bengal and was governmed by the India Act IX of 1842 which was repealed in the Straits Settlements by the Statutes Law Revision Act of 1889. Logan Memorial  This memorial, near the Esplanade, is the Logan Memorial, transplanted from its original place in the grounds of the supreme court to a site between the old and new court buildings. According to Indonesia's 2007 blogger of the year, Andreas Harsono, it was Logan who gave Indonesia its name. Logan, a Scottish lawyer was born in Berwickshire, Scotland in 1819, came to Penang when he was just 20. He became editor of the Penang Gazette and the 27-volume Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia. The Memorial describes him as “an erudite and skillful lawyer, an eminent scientific ethnologist and he has founded a literature for these settlements…” He died of malaria in 1869. |
| Myths IF you are told that Baba and Nyonya are descended from Princess Hang Li Po who came sailing into Malacca on one of Ming Admiral Cheng Ho's ships to marry the Sultan, take it with a pinch of salt. Professor Wade's researches into Ming records failed to find evidence of such a princess though there was evidence of other gifts to the Sultan from the Chinese Emperor. NOTE: Going up Penang Hill. Tourists are now offered 4-wheel car rides up Penang Hill. We would advise that they ask whether they are covered by insurance before accepting Go to the top Acknowledgments: Respected Citizens by Dasia H Wright, Amassia, 2003 Photos: George Town Dispensary, Beach Street by Gryffindor; Goh Chan Lau today - TPF; Goh Chan Lau as residence of Cheah Tek Thye - Twentieth Impressions of Britsih Malaya. |
| Eurasian Association 1-7A Kelawei Road Pulau Tikus fax 04 898 2422 email esommerz@yahoo.com |
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| ____________________ The Penang File Issue 65 |