Shedding light on history

Forty years before Captain Francis Light set foot on Penang, Tanjung Tokong was founded as a fishing village by a Chinese sailor named Zhang Li.

The village merged seamlessly with another Malay-Jawi Peranakan settlement nearby and while Light busily built George Town, the Tanjung Tokong settlement preserved its way of life as a fishermen’s community.

Suburban development began here only in the 1970s.

The black-and-white photo of the landscape, taken in 1988, shows that the tall UDA flats were already built to house the former villagers. — LAWRENCE SEOW and CHAN BOON KAI/The Star