Penang Day 3 and 4

We are very handily placed in Chinatown in what is a traditional shophouse that has been converted.The Malaysian Chinese population were the immigrants from the southern provinces of China. They were divided into several different clans including the Hakkas, Foochows, Hainanese, Teochius and Cantonese. during the British period in the early 19th Century, 

The traditional Chinese shophouses and terrace houses are the two most popular residential buildings found in many urban areas in the country.

(i)  Shophouse

A shophouse, normally has two or more storeys, is a commercial and private structure. The tenants usually use the first floor for commercial purposes such as sundry shop, light industry or warehouse, and reside in the upper floors. The building is not free standing, rather, it is connected to several other shophouses, which create a shophouse block. This shophouse is repeated to form streets and town squares.Building materials such as brick, plaster, concrete and timber are commonly found in shophouses.Ours even had its own indoor fish pond with koi carp in it

(ii) Terrace House

A typical traditional terrace house has one-storey with a street-level porch in front. Usually, this type of building has big entrance doors with timber bars locked into the door head, metal-bar and louvered-panel windows; and a few openings. The building is often designed in a symmetrical organisation in which the entrance door is located in the middle with windows on both sides. Depending on the tenant's wealth, the terrace house sometimes has glazed tiles at the base of the front walls. Like the shophouse, the terrace house uses brick, plaster, concrete and timber as major materials.

(iii) Religious Building (Buddhist Temple)

Although there are a great number of Chinese embracing Christianity and Islam, the majority are still Buddhists. Like the mosques, the Buddhist temples can be found in villages as well as in small towns and cities. These temples possess significant characteristics which contribute to the Southern Chinese architecture. A typical Buddhist temple will have overhanging eaves made of clay tiles jointed by mortar, ornamented figures of people, angels, flowers or animals located on roof ridges; a big entrance door in the middle, windows of simple geometrical shape; and colourful mosaic tiles.

(iv) Clan or Association Building

Layout of Khoo Kongsi from Penang online

Since the Chinese are divided into several different clans and communities, there are many kinds of Chinese association buildings. These association buildings are intended for social gatherings, ethnic festivals and ceremonial functions. Architecturally, a typical Chinese association building has a one or two storeys, an ornamented clay-tile roof similar to the ones on the Buddhist temples, a big entrance door, a front porch typically large metal bars cover the windows which have both louvered panels and canopies.

The Khoo Kongsi is one of the finest examples of a clan house and was used for shooting some scenes from the recently reworked film Anna & The King which starred Jodie Foster because the Thai government had refused permission for filming in Thailand.

Both these examples are in Canon Street so named because of the barricades and artillery that were drawn up here during the Penang Riots of 1867 when rival clans or secret societies held nine days of street fighting over rival commercial interests.

We spent the morning of New Year's eve within these and all within 100 yards of where we were staying in Armenian Street.

120 Armenian Street was the base that Dr Sun Yat Sen used in the planning of the Cantonese  Spring Uprising of 1911 and is generally regarded as the father of modern China.We didn't get to explore this and would probably be worth a visit for that alone.