www.nst.com Modernisation is a sword that cuts both ways – often, its wielder is not spared either. With the dawn of 2000, buildings in streets like Penang’s Lebuh Chulia saw rental shoot from RM300 to RM4,000 overnight, pulling the rug out from under the tenants’ feet. They moved out by the thousands, leaving old buildings and shophouses untenanted till today.
Unfortunately, countless classic houses – fondly termed as Straits Houses, a legacy from the early 19th Century – felt the backlash too.
Nearly five years have passed since and places like Penang, Ipoh, Malacca and Johor are still feeling the brunt.
Under the blanket of the Control of Rent Act 1966 were buildings completed before February 1, 1948. The Act loosely classified some 38,000 structures as “pre-war buildings”; about 12,600 or one third of them are located in Penang. Johor comes in next with 5,659, Perak 5,531, Malacca 4,135 and Sabah with the lowest number at only 181.
The Act was born of noble intentions, aimed at preventing unscrupulous landlords from charging overly-high rental and it protected tenants when housing was in great
demand after World War II. Ironically, because of the Act, landlords who initially victimised tenants, found themselves at the losing end as tenants profited by sub-letting the premises at higher rates. Low rentals also did not allow for proper maintenance and buildings eventually deteriorated.
Nonetheless, with the passage of time, it was felt that the Act had lost its usefulness and that the market’s supply-demand forces should be allowed to determine rental rates in the 21st Century.
For one to better appreciate these baroque homes, the history of the Peranakan (or better known as Baba-Nyonya) must be delved into deeper as they were the ones who perfected the Straits Houses.
When Admiral Zheng He arrived in the 15th Century with Princess Hang Li Po, they weren’t the first Chinese to land here. There is historical evidence that the southern Chinese had landed in the Malay Archipelago more than 500 years earlier and they referred to these scattered islands as “nan yang” or south east.
As a business community which spoke impeccable Malay and a smattering of Hokkien dialect, the mostly English educated Peranakan families naturally populated town areas and adopted the latest building trends – European neo-classic was most fashionable at that time.
They also added a touch of local characteristics with wooden window and door frames carved with tropical floral, fauna and sometimes, mystical motifs such as dragon and phoenix.
Straits Houses were built to incorporate a main hall for guests, a smaller secondary family hall for close friends and relatives, a dining hall, washroom and kitchen.
The secondary hall was separated from the main hall by a wooden partition with small openings formed by ornate carvings that allowed unmarried girls to take a peep at the guests; like Malays of olden days, Peranakan damsels were forbidden to mingle with guests.
But most Peranakan Cina preferred to live in shophouses – business was carried out on the ground floor and the family lived upstairs on the first floor.
Louvred wooden windows became the hallmark of these shophouses. While the frontage may be as narrow as six metres across, it was not uncommon for a shophouse to have a length of up to 35 metres. For proper ventilation, there would be a thim cheanh or open courtyard in the mid section (like an air well) – a distinct feature of a Baba-Nyonya home.
Sadly, many such beautiful homes have been left to rot by the tides of change. Today, if you take a slow drive through the old streets of Georgetown, you’d see shophouses with frameless windows and doors – removed by drug addicts who sell them to rogue antique collectors. The ‘sword’ employed to protect dwellers in 1966 had unwittingly protected the Straits Houses from such vandalism for half a century.
“I have been staying at Gat Lebuh Ceylon since the 60s; I don’t know where to go after this,” says Sagar Mahendran, 62, who makes a living hawking kuih and bread in neighbouring streets.
Fortunately for him, selling the old house he is currently occupying has proved to be an uphill task for his landlord as property buyers prefer more swanky areas like Bayan Baru or Pulau Tikus. Sagar can only hope Lady Luck won’t run out on him.
Upkeep of these old colonial houses can prove overbearing and to designate them as heritage sites would be unfair to landowners.
Nonetheless, a glimmer of hope is seen in places like Penang’s Lebuh Pantai and Ipoh’s old town where the buildings have been taken over and spruced up by banks, law offices and hospitality businesses. Malacca’s Jonker Street is an excellent example of legacy being sustained by tourism, though there has been some damage inflicted by modernism.
Taiping is also doing a great job with the refurbishing of kopitiam shophouses at Jalan Panggung Wayang and one should really take some time to visit an exceptionally well-maintained Straits House near the St George’s School. From an anthropological standpoint, the Peranakan’s highly stylistic houses are an evolutionary masterpiece that best portrays ethnic intermesh not found anywhere else in the world.
For a traveller, these Straits Houses are an enchanting way to experience nostalgia and to touch the past before they bow out forever. |