{"id":27594,"date":"2006-09-06T03:49:00","date_gmt":"2006-09-06T03:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/?p=27594"},"modified":"2024-03-14T13:40:07","modified_gmt":"2024-03-14T05:40:07","slug":"street-smart-heritage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/artikel\/2006\/09\/street-smart-heritage\/","title":{"rendered":"Street Smart Heritage"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n

The entrance to Khoo Kongsi, perhaps\none of Penang’s most iconic locations, is a porte coch\u00e8re<\/em> that precedes facing rows of empty\nshophouses; buntings line this street tonight, announcing ‘DiGi’s “Amazing\nMalaysians” and “Madame Heritage Heboh”. Up ahead, a banner\nsaying Anak-anak Kota<\/em> spans the wall\nthat is the back-end of an ornate opera stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Janet Pillai is seated on some steps\nnearby, trying to hold court with children roughly her size, saying: “Yes,\nthat run, your run now is very good,” and cheers briefly overwhelm the\nsound of her voice, “But you’ve to watch your reactions to what he’s\nsaying onstage, don’t say your lines all at once. You cannot overshadow him\nwhen he sings.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The kids’ rehearsals are over,\nthough, because it is soon ten-thirty, and time for them to go home. But\nJanet’s work isn’t over: there are still night-before-the-show headaches to\noversee and she comes up to me, saying: “Sorry, sorry, I completely forgot\nabout you, did you wait long? Just give me a moment, I need to see Yudi’s\nrun.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We sit down and watch Shanghai-style\nsongstress Yudi sing Dayung Sampan<\/em>\nand Ayoh Mama<\/em>. There’s a mirrorball hanging\nfrom the opera stage’s rafters, and a spotlight trails her. The flyers for the\nHeritage Heboh Street Festival include an old-fashioned Konset announcement,\ninviting audiences to:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“experience the memories of Great World Park Pulau Pinang’s golden\nage … Young or old, we all have nostalgia for the songs of the 1920s … 30s\n… 40s … “<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Great World Park, I discover,\nwas an art deco edifice, built in Georgetown in the 1920s: perhaps the region’s\nfirst entertainment mall, housing Bangsawan stages, clubs, joget halls, and a\ncinema — the physical manifestation of Penang’s infamous secret societies\ngoing legit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then Yudi pauses to confer with her\nmusicians and the lights operator, and Janet says: “It looks like I can\nfinally leave. I need a drink.” We are just passing the Digi buntings when\nher phone rings. They want her to go over the cues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Madame Heboh<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Janet Pillai chose the Madame\nHeritage Heboh moniker herself; Georgetown’s Heritage Heboh Street Festival\nlast July 15th<\/sup> was the result of her appointment as one of\ntelecommunications conglomerate DiGi’s “Amazing Malaysians”: a\ncorporate social responsibility programme that recognises and supports\nindividuals who are outstanding leaders in the field of heritage and\nconservation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Amazing Malaysians” is\nnotable because it deviates from the publicity-driven and ultimately\nineffective Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) norm; the programme works by\ncreating itineraries, often months-long, that introduce children and youth to\nheritage issues of its appointed organisations in an in-depth and systematic\nway. “They were very good,” Janet told me. “They offered to plan\nthe whole thing out for us.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They didn’t need to. As chairperson\nof Arts Education, a USM Penang and Penang State Educational Consultative\nCouncil joint initiative, Janet is behind Arts Ed’s largest project, Anak-anak Kota<\/em>. Begun in 2000, Anak-anak Kota<\/em> has been behind annual\nresearch-based programmes tasked with educating kids about Georgetown heritage\nand cultural identity through the arts. The mechanisms were there, but\ncorporate support would mean they would work at an unprecedented level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In March the project dispatched\nsixty young Penangites, aged 11 to 18, into inner Georgetown: loose, they\ncollected oral history, recorded practices, and learned to observe the human\nmovements and soundscapes of these locales. In June, they workshopped under the\ntutelage of visual artists, dancers and musicians, turning the accumulated\nmaterial into artistry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The object: a night-long\nperformance, expressing the traditions of the inner city through visual arts,\ndance and music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“This is more for the people of\nthe inner city. It’s our way of giving back to the community. We felt that,\nafter all the oral history they had to share, all the interviews — we’ve taken\nso much and we want to give back to them.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Heritage Heboh Street Festival\nwas huge. That Saturday night, there were banners everywhere along Kapitan\nKeling Street. Pitt Street and Armenian Street were cordoned off, there were a\ngaggle of state dignitaries at the VIP reception, and there was the promise of\nlights and spectacle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Development 101<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had arrived in Penang two days\nbefore Saturday, the first time in conscious memory, with a group of Australian\narchitects-in-training; my brother-in-law is a lecturer at Curtin University,\nand I had insinuated myself into his study tour. On Friday morning we attended\na presentation by the Penang Development Corporation (PDC) about its purposes\nand practices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Founded in the 1960s, the PDC was a\nstopgap measure during Penang’s economic slump: Penang had lost its free port\nstatus, Bayan Lepas was a dead town, and Georgetown was frozen in time.\nSomething had to be done, and that something, it was decided, would be\nurbanisation. And urbanisation with a socially-aware streak, too: one of the\nPDC’s point-form aims is to “Restructure society by integrating peoples of\ndifferent ethnic and income groups through a policy of mixed allocation of\nresidential\/commercial facilities built.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An aim that was quite obviously,\neven to my Australian companions, a manifestation of the New Economic Policy’s ‘membasmi kemiskinan’ mission statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are similar development\ncorporations in every state of the federation and it is these bodies that are\nresponsible for the construction — in the name of Wawasan 2020 Progress — of\ntownships wholesale. Personally, I am most familiar with Nilai, one such\nprojected boomtown on the Selangor-Negeri Sembilan border that banked on the\neconomic draw of KLIA for its success. The place looks haunted now: rows and\nrows of empty shop-lots and industrial spaces with shutters advertising dozens\nof realtor stickers, pasted and torn off and pasted again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The PDC town planner giving us the\npresentation that morning projected a map of Bayan Baru, built over existing\nvillages and communities, and we saw areas designated low-cost, medium-cost,\nhigh-cost, huddled together and mismatched. We were also told there was an\nethnicity-based quota for prospective home-seekers. “The neighbours would\nalways be of a different race, and their kids would go to the same schools, so\nthey would be forced to react.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The architecture undergraduates\nscoffed, and I asked perhaps the most obvious question myself: “Does the\nPDC have control of, or statistics on, resale of these properties?” He\ndidn’t answer my question. The response to another question about possible\nsocial unease was: “You can put up fences.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where Great World Park was, Kompleks\nTun Abdul Razak now stands. The PDC’s most recent project is the revitalisation\nof the city blocks around KOMTAR, that currently-derelict 65-storey,\nonce-tallest-in-Asia phallus that most people in Georgetown hate. One of my\nfriends asked the town planner whether he agreed that KOMTAR was perhaps\nincongruous with the cityscape, and better left to be discarded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“This is true,” our\npresenter said, “Maybe the solution,” he continued, smiling,\nhalf-joking, but probably not, “Is to build high-rises all around\nit.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr Lovelane<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A character known as Mr. Lovelane,\nwith his pith helmet, thick glasses and a fake moustache, is the face of Anak-anak Kota<\/em>. “He’s our bridge to\nthe inner city,” Janet says. “Everyone from the area knows this\nfestival as a Lovelane thing more than a DiGi thing.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Lovelane was designed in 2000 by\nboth Janet and Goh Hun Meng, the project’s graphic designer. He appears in flyers,\nbanners and press kit, but Mr. Lovelane’s popularity is mainly due to the fact\nthat Hun Meng actually channels him as a verbally reticent but physically\nanimated man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I started playing him because\nI was interested in drama,” Hun Meng tells me. “But it’s a very\nstrange feeling. I go through a lot of emotions. It’s a kind of consolation,\nputting myself into this character, a self-recognition. Because I personally\nwent through the issues.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hun Meng first worked with Janet on\nthe Penang Arts Festival in 1999, but joined in earnest a year later. 2000 was\nthe year rent controls were repealed nation-wide, and this hit Georgetown\nparticularly hard: the British-instituted laws that kept leases at affordable\nprices were suddenly gone and landlords, now gleeful at the mercenary\nopportunities their historic properties afforded, ensured that rates were at\nlevels most inner city households could not afford.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“So all the families living\nhere were evicted,” Janet told me that Friday night, walking by the empty\nshophouses of the Khoo Kongsi. “It was very controversial. Sure, they got\nsome sort of compensation, but the houses they were offered were sometimes\nmiles away from Georgetown.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“My family lived in Khoo Kongsi\nsince my grandmother’s time: about ninety years,” Hun tells me. “Now,\nwhen I look at Khoo Kongsi, I feel really affected. We predicted this would\nhappen, back in 2000, and it has, all over Georgetown.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conservation appears to be\nsynonymous with tourism, here: it is obvious from the lamp-post and water metre\nof the Khoo Kongsi street, which I notice to be covered entirely with stickers\nblue and red saying Admission, Adult and\nChild<\/em>. I learn from Janet that the Khoo Trust plans to turn these silent\nspaces into tourist lodgings: an opportunity for outsiders to experience Penang\nHeritage first-hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It’s very sad that people\ndon’t see it with the right perspective,” Hun Meng says. “We need to\nsee our culture and heritage with our own pride, first, before we go to the\ntourists. But they kick away the tenants to invite tourists in. It’s a twisted\nway of dealing with it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These sentiments birthed Mr.\nLovelane, a concerned citizen who just happened to be named after Georgetown’s\nmost mischievous, red-lit street. “We chose that name because it is very\ncatchy. Everyone in Penang knows it,” Hun Meng says. “Now thinking\nabout it, Lovelane is a good name. As a street it’s not as glamorous as\nsomething like Jalan Bukit Bintang. People like it, but they are also shy about\nit. That’s very much like how people treat the issue of heritage.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fine young city kids<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Saturday afternoon I finally have\nthe opportunity to talk to one of the actual Anak-anak Kota<\/em>. We have just had lunch with the DiGi press and we\nare walking down Armenian street, watching the production crew fuss and the kids\nrun around. The air is charged with expectancy, now, hours away from show-time,\nbut Ch’ng Yu Jean has some free time. She is telling me: “It’s difficult\nsometimes, working with a bunch of kids.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yu Jean is now in Form Six, and she\nelaborates. “There were kids between ten and eighteen. But because of this\ndiversity, you get more sensitive. Usually, when you’re older, you have\ncliques: like if you’re Chinese you stay with Chinese. But the younger kids\nwere not so careful, so they interact freely, with everyone. I think us older\nones had to learn from them.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The whole thing was fun,”\nYu Jean would tell me later. “The thing that I got most out of it was\nactually to learn how to appreciate heritage. I mean, not just culture — but,\nyou know, everything around me.” A shift of attitudes, effectively:\n“Before, if you wanted to talk to me about heritage, I would have gone,\nlike, anything lah, you know — a very usual response. But now I would want to\nlearn more.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later, at seven-twenty, I would I\nwould be seated at a table in the Teochew Association on Chulia Street to watch\nState Executive Councillor for Tourism, Teng Chang Yeow take the podium. In his\nsalutations, the YB would decide to deviate slightly from the script, adding:\n“I also want to thank the neighbours,” — and he points up to a\nwindow where I see an elderly woman looking down — “Who are hanging their\nsarongs and clothes and are bringing us back to the past.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is an immensely condescending\nstatement, as if the households all around us were merely actors in some\nday-trip fantasy, and I would stop liking him immediately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Frantic whistle blows interrupt\ndinner. “What are you doing?” Mr. Lovelane says. “The show is\nabout to start!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dignitaries begin to follow this\nfigure, helmeted and jacketed, his heavy ring of keys jingling, whistle blowing\nfrantically, down Pitt Street. There are uniformed men directing traffic off\nthe road, out of the crowd’s way. We notice a stage and white sheet plugging\nthe gap between two shop-houses that says Wayang\nBayang-bayang<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The shadow play relates a curio from\nthe nearby Yap Kongsi’s temple history: a boy goes for a swim in the ocean, and\nemerges from the water possessed by a sea-demon. “Apa sudah jadi? Kenapa\ndengan aku ni?” he cries, but his effigy already shows us this calamity:\nthe puppeteer flicks her wrist, and on its side the shadow on the screen\nacquires a bloated belly and a snout. Boys slaver offstage in effect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The concerned mother now appeals to\na Buddhist priest — a marionette complete with gesticulating fingers,\nclutching beads meditatively — who informs her, after a failed exorcism, that\nthe powerful deity of the Yap temple is her only hope. She brings home the idol\nand a battle in the spirit world ensues. The crowd, sitting and standing, is as\nquiet as a music hall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then the whistle again, and in the\nmiddle of the Armenian-Pitt intersection two rows of young dancers are already\nwaiting on stools, waiting to introduce us to a wealth of gastronomical\npractice: interpretative dance based on the gestures and actions of\nGeorgetown’s street hawkers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And are these dancers sharp. The\ngestures of hand and back reminiscent of kopi-drinking, the noodle-making\nsweeps and arches: they seem effortless. The troupe includes prepubescent\nparticipants, but unlike young children, whose energies are often profuse but\ndiffused, there is nothing uncontrolled about their performance at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was a slow walker, and now I can’t\nget a good view, behind everyone, so I circle the crowd, find a flatbed cart,\nand climb atop. There are people watching from storefronts and second-floor\nwindows. More people join me, and I’m tiptoeing again. One last person gets on\nthe cart and it quivers. I give up and get off. I don’t really get a good view\nagain before the dancers are done and off the road, too soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A last whistle blow and we are\nstreaming into the Khoo Kongsi. Only tag-wearers get in, because there are too\nmany people now, and Janet is worried about safety and ventilation. She’s at\nthe gate, directing lines, welcoming some and apologising to others. “Only\nthe privileged can go in,” says a father to his son.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“What does ‘privileged’\nmean?” his son asks. It is not lost on me, this irony: that the Heritage\nHeboh Street Festival is afflicted by exclusivist tendencies — not by design,\nand Janet is visibly uncomfortable with the necessity — but for practical\nreasons; also, perhaps, because the nature of heritage and conservation, even\nin the paragon Penangite fashion, is officially coupled with outsiders to whom\nthese forms of heritage do not belong: the Wa in KeKKWa was not so long ago a\nT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I’m reading too much into it.\nThough officials and corporate functionaries have tags, so do the participants’\nparents, the street hawkers, the small business owners of Inner Georgetown; the\ncommunity whose way of life was under young scrutiny is, to all intents and\npurposes, here, watching their traditions perpetuated in a successor\ngeneration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yu Jean plays an old Chinaman\nalongside college student Natasha Khanum’s mak cik; they both narrate, in Boria\nstyle, Penang’s 1867 secret society war, and I see these children suddenly\nbelligerent, re-enacting the Ghee Hin and Hai San conflict, where people of\ndifferent colours banded together for all the wrong reasons: the stage turns\nred, the music crescendos —<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the moment is gone. The\nmirrorball begins to spin, the children exeunt, and Natasha begins to waltz: it\nis the Jazz Age, the bloodshed is over, and the gangsters now own Great World\nPark. Film footage of the golden age plays out to the right of the stage; there\nis a spotlight on the left, suddenly, illuminating Mr. Lovelane on a trishaw,\npedalling forward Yudi, full-blown diva tonight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is profoundly moving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tracks of thought have converged on\nthis moment. I think about the steamrolling economic engine of the PDC, with\nBayan Baru and KOMTAR and its disregard for physical inheritances. I think\nabout the Khoo Kongsi, and how its magnificent clan temple behind us has, among\nthe depicted deities, a demon swallowing a man whole: a symbol, perhaps, for\nthe Heritage Trail’s disregard for Georgetown’s soul, its people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think about Janet and her crew\nitself: sixty kids learning the traditions and practices of a community now\nunder threat. I consider the fact that the night seems to end in an idealised\nversion of history, and how this may be read as a retreat or concession, in the\nface of inexorable Progress, into sentimental longings for the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Too cynical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If an introduction to the past must\nbe spectacle, then so be it. We’ll learn to colour in the nuances later. Anak-anak Kota<\/em> is in no danger of\nhalting, and sixty is not a small number. I would ask Yu Jean later whether she\nwould consider being more active in heritage advocacy, and she is affirmative —\nbut the question is moot, because she is already here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yudi’s presence is pure nostalgia;\nindeed nostalgia is not a bad thing, if it introduces us to our own past: look\nat Hun Meng, still Lovelane, enthralled with her performance. Finally, there’s\nDiGi, with its corporate social responsibility, and they must have invested\nmillions: the stage, space rental, printing costs, publicity, allowances, the\namplifiers, the lights —<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And now, there are fireworks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

~~~ <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zedeck Siew has found his Lovelane. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

First Published: 06.09.2006 on Kakiseni <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The entrance to Khoo Kongsi, perhaps one of Penang’s most iconic locations, is a porte coch\u00e8re that precedes facing rows of empty shophouses; buntings line this street tonight, announcing ‘DiGi’s “Amazing Malaysians” and “Madame Heritage Heboh”. Up ahead, a banner saying Anak-anak Kota spans the wall that is the back-end of an ornate opera stage. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"iawp_total_views":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7758,7781,7770,7763,7778,7764,7774,7762,7766],"tags":[922,4056,637,4058,501,639,251,4059,4050,4051,4055,780,4049,3909,4052,4053,4062,40,506,4054,4057,4060,2098,2750],"language":[7785],"writer":[7956],"class_list":["post-27594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artikel","category-seni","category-budaya","category-tarian","category-perayaan","category-muzik","category-ulasan","category-teater","category-seni-visual","tag-anak-anak-kota","tag-arts-ed","tag-arts-education","tag-corporate-social-responsibility-csr","tag-culture","tag-digi","tag-festival","tag-georgetown","tag-goh-hun-meng","tag-great-world-park","tag-heritage-heboh-street-festival","tag-janet-pillai","tag-kekkwa","tag-khoo-kongsi","tag-kompleks-tun-abdul-razak","tag-komtar","tag-madame-heritage-heboh","tag-music","tag-penang","tag-penang-development-corporation-pdc","tag-penang-state-educational-consultative-council","tag-pulau-pinang","tag-usm","tag-yudi","language-inggeris","writer-zedeck-siew-ms"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27594"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38580,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27594\/revisions\/38580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27594"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=27594"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/writer?post=27594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}