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 How nice is Penang and how nice can I be?

Why do I chose to remain here when the world had drifted on. Indeed, why? Why indeed!  One might wonder why I say this when nothing exciting ever seems to happen here. Yet, I insist, Penang is a strange and such a wonderful place. 

However, let me explain why I say this. Penang is known as a "sweet water base" by the British merchant fleet. Of all places, why Penang?
There was Hongkong, there was Ceylon and there was Singapore. It was the sweet water base because we have the Penang hills and the Waterfall where the water tumbles freely from pristine hills, full of bubbles and clear and free from human contamination who live timidly by the edge of the sea.

The British sailing ships took water from here and it tasted sweet after their sail through the Indian Ocean and so they called it "sweet water". But it was also free because the people here did not know how to charge for their water, the Americans were not here. The people were so sweet too, but that was not why they called the water sweet.

Before the war, even the sea was beautiful and clean and during the war, I remember picking the pacific herring called Ikan teruboh from the water's edge at Gurney Drive, then called North Coast, as they obliging beached themselves to be caught and sold at ten cents a piece.

The people were so nice that they did not mind the Japanese, or at least they did not see why they should risk life and limb for any part of the territory of Penang. This was because they were known as immigrants with the gift of the right of abode only through the blessing of Pax Britannica. 

It was a nice place with nice people. There was the hill, there still is; and life was nice and pretty, the beautiful people lived on top of the hill, the not so nice lived up to the level of the railway tunnel and when the Japanese took over the territory, they were respectful and left the hill alone and empty devoid of the hill population for the nice people as the white owners had decamped before the Japanese onslaught and so it remained derelict till after the war. By then, the British had lost their taste for our sweet water and the hill and it was opened up and sold to the not so nice who had the yearning of emulating them by buying over their houses to which they actually had no taste or yen to stay and so the houses remain in their old splendour till today.

Yes, Penang is a nice place for nice people to occupy who did not have much ambition. When I was a boy, all I thought I wanted to have was a nice motor bike. When I grew older I did think of a motorbike and a nice girl friend, that was all I thought of.

By then, of course, I was aware of fighting fish in the paddy fields at Bayan Lepas and the small aerodrome and the military base there. I did not mind the British or the airfield, they did not interfere with my dreams. When Wong Pow Nee thought to buy out the paddy fields to build a free trade zone there, I did not mind if I lost the fighting fish. At that time I had realised that the paddy fields there was a huge base for the wintering snipe and waders and curlews from North Asia and Siberia and the falcons and the sparrow hawks that followed them from Korea and, apparently, even from Japan.

We were so nice that we did not object to our losing our watering hole for the winter birds from Siberia. But then, we had our free port industrial site in place of the watering hole and the paddy fields. Then, we lost our free port status So why should we complain that Wong Pow Nee was wrong. 

Or course when I became even older and left school, my personal demands changed somewhat and from a motorbike, my eyes drifted to a car and my girl friend became a yearning for a wife and a house. 

By the time I arrived at that stage, the  houses of Penang, antique and old, had become dreams and I had to settle for a flat in a condominium and instead of joining clubs, I settled for a swimming pool and squash court in the condominium instead. Is the pool clean and properly maintained, I suppose so. 

And now we may be about to lose our international airport and Penang's isolation as an island by two links to the mainland without our consent and in our silence. How nice can we get?

Yes, we were so unambitious that I had forgotten how to even protest. How nice can nice be?

When I was young, I was brought up in a multiracial complicity. There was the Thaipusam festival, the Kite and the fighting fish seasons, the Chingay procession, the Bah Chang festival, the Autumn Eighth Moon Festival with its beautiful lanterns paraded through the streets by nicely dressed school children, all phased throughout the year. Then came our Pesta at the end of the year and everything that survived seemed to be crowded and compacted into a short season for about two weeks. Only remnants like the Chap Goh Meh and the orange season where young women were supposed to throw them into the sea in the hope of finding husbands remain, even at the cost of duty paid oranges and happy dreams remain.

And I often dream of the colonial days when I would think I was part British, part Chinese and part Penangite. Then I became a Malayan. That was nice too, for I was part British, part Chinese and part Malayan. But I was told, in the Fifties, that it was an insult to be part British so I became part Chinese and part Malayan. But it was not loyal to be Chinese, though by my passport I am Hokkien Chinese. So I became Malayan and then Malaysian. 

Now I am only a Malaysian but not bumiputra and I am no longer part British or part Chinese. But I am not complaining. How nice is the island and how nice I remain. I still have the sea, which is polluted, I still have the beaches, which are disappearing or taken over by crowds with no clean water to swim in and I still have the hill, which is difficult to stay in because of the overcrowded trains and I still have the hills which are fast becoming threatening with clearance and landslides - and I am still happy because I had thought of living in Penang because it was the only place with access to the world and east and west, with the hills and the sea within a period of minutes. 

Can you forgive us even if we do not take umbrage? Why, when a woman was looking for solace, having felt she had escaped from rape and death, she was comforted by the words that it was not a big matter that had befallen her that could not do with a tranquillizer  pill and a hot drink?

Indeed, it still is a nice place as long as I know the little that I need - am I not a nice person and is Penang not a beautiful place? 

Tan Beow Hong
Singapore
 

*I am impressed

Lim Lek Yan
Kuala Lumpur
 

*Honestly speaking, I must say that  the content is clearly nostalgic. Do keep up with the good work.

Jeffery Chew
Penang