The clan jetty is a popular stop for visitors in Penang. Some of its residents have become entrepreneurial and set up stalls selling trinkets, but most just quietly live there, ignoring the tourists. — Filepic
THE seller of Seremban siew bao and other traditional confectionery near the Pulau Tikus market in Penang had no more to sell to us when my group visited him one Sunday morning.
He said an Indonesian, on a healthcare visit here, bought everything he had.
The trader asked us to return on Thursday, when fresh stock would be arriving from Seremban, Negri Sembilan.
I personally prefer the baked meat buns, lotus paste cakes and other baked confectionery from Seremban that he sold.
They have more umami and taste different from the Penang versions, which lean on the sweeter side.
That seller’s total sell-out reveals a socio-economic reality in Pulau Tikus’ old town.
Surrounded by five renowned private hospitals and several more medical centres, healthcare tourists flood the suburb almost daily for shopping and dining in between medical treatments.
And yet, Pulau Tikus is different from Melaka’s Jonker Walk in Jalan Hang Jebat or Ipoh’s Concubine Lane.
Despite the booming business in Pulau Tikus, people continue living in the old houses, even raising families.
Something about Penang folk resists gentrification and long have I wondered why.
Walk along Jalan Hang Jebat in Melaka today and you will struggle to find a residential unit, as most of the buildings have become cafes and tourism shops.
Concubine Lane in Ipoh has gone the same way.
Tourism money made it more profitable to rent out the premises than to live there. Families that used to live there moved out.
This is what sociologists mean by “transience dilutes attachment”.
When a place no longer functions as a home but only as a backdrop for visitors, loyalty weakens.
Why run a sundry shop or patch the roof when the locale no longer feels like home?
Penang’s clan jetties could have gone the same way, but the residents resisted too.
When artists painted murals there in the mid-2000s, hordes of tourists visited and some began peering into the residents’ kitchens and living rooms.
The community responded by whitening out the murals.
Today, some of the clan jetty residents have become entrepreneurial and set up stalls selling trinkets, but most of them just quietly live there, ignoring the tourists.
Their unspoken message: this is home, not a tourist spectacle.
The state allows clan jetty residents to start businesses there and tap into the tourism money, but not all have chosen to embrace that opportunity.
The families here continue to prepare big feasts on Chinese New Year’s Eve and thankfully, tourists understand that those are the festivities of private homes.
So Penang folk, in their own stubborn way, have stayed put in the old streets even as condominiums rise around them, hospitals draw in international crowds and their old homes draw gawking tourists.
Heritage is only living heritage if people still live it. Once old streets are sold and emptied, no mural or festival can bring them back to life.
Town planners should resist blanket conversions of old homes into business premises. Allow commerce, but uphold residential rights so families can still stay.
And never forget that heritage areas need markets, sundry shops, schools and parking facilities – otherwise no family will tolerate living there.
In the Pulau Tikus suburb, you can still walk out to buy eggs and vegetables, and send children to a school within walking distance.
Local authorities must ensure public infrastructure and amenities serve residents first.
Events and public activities should prioritise residents.
If they draw tourists, let that be secondary.
Otherwise, you create attractions that drive out the very people you want to honour.
Old places must be nurtured as places of life, not only places of viewing.
That is the rule planners and politicians must hold on to.
Otherwise, the better option will be for residents to cash out and move out.
Development can come and tourists can visit, but if the old houses no longer house families and the shops no longer serve locals, heritage will soon disappear too.
