at Laboehan, a decision was made to build a modern planned town at a site called Medan, some 10 kilometers inland, which was connected by rail to the port at Laboehan. By 1917 Medan was described as the “queen city of the island of Sumatra,” “a charming city, brisk and bustling in its business quarters, surrounded by pretty suburbs, with a sanitary system equal to that of any English town. It has two fine hotels, a railway station of handsome architecture, a racecourse, a palatial club, sports ground for football and land tennis, a cinema theatre, and all the modern attributes of an up-to-date centre” (quoted in Buiskool, 2004: 6). Even the Sultan of Deli built an imposing istana or palace, which was designed by a European architect, in Medan.
While Penang began to lose some of its prominence after Raffles founded Singapore in 1819, its role as a regional center continued to expand, especially after it was joined with Malacca and Singapore in 1826 to form the Straits Settlements. Initially, Penang was the capital of this far-flung network governed by the East India Company, but in 1832 the rapidly developing Singapore eclipsed Penang as the seat of government. In 1867 the tripartite Straits Settlements commercial entity became a Crown Colony under direct British colonial administration. Through strategic alliances, which were often based on Chinese dialect relationships, business increasingly was transnational, going beyond the British Straits Settlements to the Netherlands Indies, Siam, Burma, as well as ports in eastern India and southern China. Interestingly, not all of the linkages were by sea. Transpeninsular overland trade routes from Pattani, Nakhon, and Songkhla on the east coast of southern Siam linked Penang on the west coast to Bangkok’s thriving commerce. Merchandise was carried by caravans of elephants in five days along easy pathways that formed a kind of land bridge, a “vein of commerce” of enormous utility, the length of which came to be known as the “Kedah Road” (King, 2002: 96–7).
By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, there were as many as 200 Chinese merchants “plying the seas and accumulating wealth” in the region straddling the Strait of Malacca and beyond, with Penang as the hub (Wong, 2007: 107). The so-called “Penang’s Five Major Hokkien Clans,” Bincheng Fujian wu da xing—Tan, Yeoh, Lim, Cheah, and Khoo—especially, were major players in developing the regional, indeed even transnational enterprises involving tin mining, revenue farming, coolie recruitment, and shipping. Diversifying into the wholesaling and retailing of staple foodstuffs, daily needs, and furnishings made in China and Europe not only met but also stimulated demand by consumers and brought wealth to merchant families. The prosperity generated from these economic activities altered expectations about housing, hygiene, comfort, and education, among other aspects of modernization, in areas where immigrants from Europe, China, India, and elsewhere mixed.
This rambling mansion on Krabi Road in Phuket was built in the middle of the twentieth century by Phra Phitak Chyn Pracha, a Sino-Thai who made his fortune from tin.
As the population swelled in Penang, Phuket, and Medan, shophouses of various types were built and rebuilt to meet the evolving commercial and service needs of residents along newly planned streets that spread beyond the town core. Sumptuous residences and government buildings, some of which were quite grand, as well as Christian churches, also increased in number. As affluent merchants gained wealth from plantation agriculture, mining, and shipping in the mid-to late nineteenth century, bungalows and mansions of substantial proportions and eclectic styles were also built in each of these regions. In addition to the broad range of residential structures, Chinese settlers also continued to renovate existing or build new Daoist and Buddhist temples, which universally were modeled after those in their hometowns in China. Buildings to meet the needs of their thriving clan associations, usually called kongsi, also increased in number. Bricklayers and carpenters from China arrived to erect many of these structures, some of which were constructed using fired bricks and roof tiles carried as ballast on trading ships outbound from China. Because of the richness of the hardwood forests in Southeast Asia, timber was usually sourced locally.
In the sections that follow, examples of each of these housing types are presented. In Penang, a late nineteenth-century shophouse associated with the peripatetic efforts of the revered Chinese leader Sun Yat-sen, is presented as typical of a building typology of great significance (pages 114–19). Chung Keng Quee, one of the principal tin magnates of the Straits Settlements (pages 102–13), and Cheong Fatt Tze, an extraordinary multinational entrepreneur who amassed fortunes from mining, plantation agriculture, banking and shipping (pages 128–39), built in Penang a contrasting pair of mansions that share many underlying themes. One special feature of Chung Keng Quee’s home, as will be discussed later, is that he had a spacious private ancestral hall built adjacent to his home. Constructed as the nineteenth century came to a close, these grand residences evoke the styles of the late Victorian era during a period of increasing global interdependence when eclectic decorative arts styles were in fashion throughout the world. Significantly, in the case of homes discussed in this book, there was a concomitant resurgence of pride by well-to-do Chinese in the culture of their ancestors. For many, it was essential that craftsmen from China were “imported” to design and fabricate multifarious forms of applied ornamentation and furnishings in order to assure authenticity, even as they sought fixtures and art works from Europe to express modernity.
This rundown shophouse along Thalang Road in Phuket was restored recently as China Inn Café & Restaurant.
Deteriorating and restored buildings, each of which remains imposing and said to be in Sino-Portuguese style, are found throughout Phuket.
In spite of material success, international fame in his adopted home-land, and the building of an opulent Chinese-style residence in Penang, Cheong Fatt Tze also constructed a grand manor in his hometown in Dabu, Guangdong province (pages 274–7), but sadly died before he could retire there. Chung Keng Quee did not follow that route, leaving behind children in Malaya who were more comfortable with life in a British colony. Kee Lai Huat, a pioneering planter of sugarcane and manufacturer of brown sugar, founded Sungai Bakap, a town in Province Wellesley. Here, in a rambling compound of residences and an ancestral hall, which he hoped would become the permanent abode of his descendants who would live together harmoniously, he declared his Chineseness (pages 120–7).
Sumptuous eclectic residences were built as well in Phuket and Medan during this period, which reveal clearly their economic and social linkages with Penang. With wealth acquired first from tin mining and smelting and later from rubber plantations, Tan Ma Hsiang, whose Thai name was Prapitak Chyn Pracha, built in 1904 what is called in Thailand a Sino-Portuguese villa with obvious elements blending generic Western architectural forms and Chinese elements (pages 140–5). Between 1895 and 1900, Tjong A Fie constructed an opulent mansion in the thriving town of Medan on Sumatra in the Netherlands Indies (pages 146–55). A fine example of architectural eclecticism, Tjong’s mansion mixes fashionable European-style furnishings and fine arts with centuries-old styles of Chinese furniture, altars, and ornamentation in a striking brew of material modernity.
Selangor
While Malacca and Penang trace their roots to early Chinese seaborne trading, the prosperity of areas in between, today’s Perak, Selangor, and Negeri Sembilan, came only in the mid-nineteenth century with the boom in tin mining that was spurred by global demand. Up to that time, fluctuating economic conditions in the
