Number Sixteen Singapore Flyer

7 July 2013

Early in the new year we flew up to Penang (also spelled Pinang) to meet up with our friends Clay and Erika on their way back to Singapore. We stayed in the main town, Georgetown, in a hotel that was remodeled from 3 individual houses, one of them reportedly a brothel. One of the staff said that C & E's room had been where the ladies lounged in waiting, and the clients could peer in from screens above to make their selections. Penang gets its name from the Pinang tree, aka Areca Palm. Areca seeds are somewhat misleadingly called betel nuts, because they are wrapped in betel leaves to chew.

One of our first stops was to the Penang Peranakan Mansion, a restored 19th century house belonging to Chung Keng Quee, who was the Kapitan Cina or "China Captain" of Penang. The Kapitan system was instituted by the Portuguese in Southeast Asia, where each enclave had a local leader, who dealt with issues among his group. The Dutch and British adopted the system in some of their colonies. (Penang had Kapitans for the Chinese, Indians and Malays, but none for the Europeans.) The house was occupied by the Japanese in WWII, and may have been mostly unused by the family afterwards. (There was high reluctance to use any building where someone may have died during the war because of the ghosts.) The current owner (who also has a Peranakan Jewelery Museum in Malacca), put a lot of money into fixing it up. The "Peranakan" in the name is a bit misleading, as Chung Keng Quan wasn't Peranakan, though the house shared some features with Peranakan dwellings. The furniture inside is not original, but collected by the owner, who is an antiques dealer. Kaye later met someone who works at the Mansion, and it is not uncommon for pieces to come and go. We got to see opium chairs, which recline almost flat, and have feature a pull-out footrest. Another item that caught my eye was a beading sampler, done by a beginner, that featured large "practice" beads, as opposed to the tiny ones used on slippers and table covers.

On our walks from the hotel, I noticed a lot of jewelry stores in the neighborhood. There would always be a guard sitting on a chair in on the sidewalk in front, usually holding something like a sawed-off shotgun.

Later in the day, Kaye and I walked around the older parts of Georgetown. We saw St. George Church, built in 1816, which is the oldest Anglican congregation in SE Asia. From there we headed over by the Padang (Malay for "field") to Fort Cornwallis. Captain Francis Light, working for the British East India Company founded Penang in 1786 after leasing the land from the Sultan of Kedah. (There is much dispute about the terms of the lease and whether the British actually fulfilled the terms. The first version of the fort was make of palm trunks, but was turned into a stone, star-shaped fortress between 1804 and 1808. It was never attacked, and seems to have been used more for administrative purposes that military ones. It currently houses an amphitheater There are some exhibits about the history of Penang and the recent preservation of the fort in some rooms along one of the walls. You can walk along most of the ramparts. The most remarkable artifact is Sri Rimbai, The Magical Cannon. The cannon was gift in the early 1600s from the Dutch to the Sultan of Johor. It got moved to Java, then was sent to Selangor Selangor (down the coast from Penang, close to Kuala Lumpur). In 1871, on the way back to Penang, it was captured by pirates and thrown into the sea. Then, in 1880, it was either salvaged or levitated to the surface by itself. Since then it's been installed at Fort Cornwallis. Women can place flowers on the barrel to improve fertility.

Nearby is the Penang State Museum, located in a very fancy former school building that dates from the end of the 19th century. Lots of interesting tools and kitchen utensils, plus displays showing the historical dress, customs and lifestyles of the major ethnic groups -- Chinese, Malay and Indian. I learned a bit more about the history of Penang here. Both here and in the house museums we saw opium chairs, which recline way back and have a footrest that pulls out, usually carved and inlaid. One sore point is the dealings of the East India Company with the Sultan of Kedah (of which Penang was part). The Sultan offered Francis Light permission to set up a post there in in 1786 in exchange for military protection from Burma and Siam to the North. Light set up shop right away, without signing any agreement and without ascertaining if the Company would provide protection (they wouldn't). There were later agreements signed in 1791 and 1800. The former came after the Sultan tried to take back the island, and set up a yearly honorarium for the Sultan (which is still paid to the current Sultan by the state). The latter added the region of Seberang Perai on the main peninsula to Penang and increased the honorarium. There was also a section about Japanese occupation in WWII, which started less than two weeks after Pearl Harbor.

Lots of interesting food on this trip -- we had a list of suggestions from an NUS faculty member who grew up there (and is part of the Khoo Kongsi -- see below), plus Clay and Erika had done some research as well. We had a great seafood meal at a restaurant outside of town, right on the beach. Got to go into the kitchen to pick out fish, shrimp and crab. Another day, Kaye and I took a lonnnnnng walk for what was recommended as the best laksa in town (best I've had, still dream of another bowl). Penang-style laksa is different from the coconut-curry laksa in Singapore. The Penang dish is sour, and features asam (tamarind). The noodle, mackerel and chili are in common, but the Penang version has turmeric, lemongrass and belechan (shrimp paste), and comes garnished with cucumber, shallots, pineapple and mint. Another suggested restaurant was Nonya Breeze, featuring Peranakan food. Some of my favorite dishes were prawns with cashew nuts, a kind of dried-pork roll-up flavored with five-spice, and wing-bean salad. Wing beans have an X-shape in cross section. Also had a lunch of dim sum one day.

Other food tidbits:

-- Kaye had a drink made with umbra juice. It's a round, green, tart fruit, also called amra, kedondong and balonglong in the region.

-- We bought locally produced 5-spice powder, which actually contains many more than five ingredients: cinnamon, cardamom, fennel seeds, orange peel, cloves, star anise, coriander seeds, nutmeg and sichuan pepper. We also bought nutmeg oil and dried nutmeg fruit (which is the covering around the seed used for nutmeg powder and the lacy mace that surrounds it).

-- I bought some corn candy, which is flavored like sweet corn, and is totally unlike the candy corn that shows up in the US around Halloween. Hard candy isn't that easy to find in Singapore (they seem to prefer chewy sweets), so I stock up in Malaysia. Flavors I've found include tamarind, ice tea, cola, berries and cream, lychee, black current, nutmeg and durian.

-- Kaye took me to a 24 jam (24 hour) Indian restaurant for a sweet drink, served warm, with almonds and raisins, spiced with cardamom and maybe saffron.

-- On one of our walks, Kaye and I stopped for rojak, which might be viewed as a salad. It has chunks of cucumber, pineapple, jicama, jambu air (Malay apple or water apple), guava and puffy fried tofu, in a dressing of honey, lime juice, belachan and chili, garnished with chopped peanuts. You eat it by stabbing bits with a skewer.

We toured the Blue House, which was one of the mansions of Cheong Fatt Tze (he had others in China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Indonesia). However, he seemed to spend a lot of time at this one. His favorite wife (#7) lived here, and he ran most of commercial enterprises from it. It was started in the 1880s, and has heavy Chinese influence. (Cheong was Hakka Chinese.) There are European touches, though, such as cast-iron balusters from Scotland. We didn't see all of the rooms, because part of it is used as a boutique hotel. The part I liked best was the decoration on the facade, which is 3-D mosaic using pottery shards. Bowls to break into shards and the workmen who did the mosaic were imported from China. The mansion stayed in the family until 1989 (when Cheong's last son died) but was not well cared for. It was purchased by local conservationists and restored from 1991-1995.

On our last day there, Kaye and I went walking in the NW corner of town. It was Sunday morning as I recall, and fairly quiet. We saw the building that housed the first auto dealership in down, which was in Art Deco style. Near that was the Old Protestant Cemetery. The first burial was in 1789. The last interments were over a century ago, and it has suffered from neglect, though there have been recent efforts at conservation. There are frangipani trees throughout the cemetery, and so most of the graves are decorated daily by the white flowers that fall from them. We found the grave of Francis Light (see above), who died in 1794 of malaria.

Kongsi (clan halls) exist throughout Singapore, Malaysia and elsewhere in SE Asia. They are group welfare associations of overseas Chinese whose members come from the same area or even have the same surname. (An example in Singapore is the Ngee Ann Kongsi, which was founded by Teochew Chinese from the city of Chaozhou in Guangdong province. It is known for its charitable and business activities, such as Ngee Ann Polytechnic and Ngee Ann City.) Penang boasts many prominent Kongsi, most of which have ornate complexes around a temple. The most impressive is that of the Khoo Kongsi, whose members are named Khoo and trace their heritage to a village in Hokkien province. The entry way and the temple are heavily decorated with carving and ceramic figures, and the complex also has a meeting hall and housing where some of the members live. (We met a prof at NUS earlier in the year named Khoo whose grandfather had an apartment in the temple complex. This kongsi takes great pride in the higher education of its members, with plaques listing the year, university and degree of members adorning the side walls of the rooms in the temple. The ground floor beneath the temple is a museum with the history of the clan, stories of prominent members, and descriptions of former and current buildings. The original clan house, built in 1851, burnt down in 1894, and a replacement finished in 1906. There have been several restoration and expansion projects over the year.