History The Significance of China Street Tan Yeow Wooi Examines the Ancient       Pitt Street - China Street Area

WHILE THE BRITISH COLONISERS laid out the city of George Town the Chinese settlors had their own ideas.  According to Tan Yeow Wooi, the model of ancient Chinese city planning is a square or rectangle plan demarcated by perimeter walls. Within the walled city, roads and blocks are in the form of grid or Chinese chess box-like layout.  There is a primary axis running along north south direction  while a perpendicular secondary axis is running in east west direction. The whole city is orientated  towards south of open plan with the north backed by a protective  mountain.  Government administration buildings are located in the north central quarter of the city. At the four ends of the main roads where they meet city wall at least four gates of the city are erected. Among the four gates of east, west, north and south, the south gate or Nan Men stand as the main gate of the city.

Here, in George Town, the ancient Chinese city copies the grid of its Cantonese/Hokkien ancestors. The Kuan Im - Goddess of Mercy - Temple, the most important of buildings as well as the Town Hall next door, were built on slightly higher land, as shown in a 1798 map. At its back were the distance hills, and it faced the sea, with a hill seen across the channel. Tan Yeow Wooi says that the temple can be compared to the Kuan Fu government administration centre of an old Chinese city.  It is strategically located at the upper centre of the city grid along Pitt Street, dominating the city in an East-West direction,  rather than the North-South orientation of the colonial layout. Leading directly to it was Main Street or China Street. In front and across was Pitt Street   Had there been a wall and city gates, China Street Ghaut would be the main gate to the Chinese City. The secondary axis which runs North-South (actually in Northeast-Northwest) is set on King Street  where institutions or temples of a lower hierarchy were laid mostly in the same direction as the temple. It coincides with the main road of the colonial town layout. The two temples on the secondary axis are Tua Peh Kong Temple (God of Prosperity or Land Guardian) and Wu Ti temple - God of War and Loyalty temple). During the 19th  century there were at least eight associations or kongsis along King Street, one on Bishop Street and two on Church Street, reflecting the composition of the population, made up of immigrants from Kwangtung and Fuchian.  Tan Yeow Wooi notes that most of the institutions are located on the north left (viewed from the Kuan Im temple) of China Street, which is considered to be superior to the right in Chinese cosmos order. #

Tan Yeow Wooi , an architectural graduate of the National Cheng Kung University,Taiwan, explained his views at the Coloquium on the History of the Chinese Communities in Penang Organised by the Penang Heritage Trust in January 2002

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