Chinese Houses of Southeast Asia. Ronald G. Knapp

      Early shophouses in the coastal Sumatran town of Tanjungpura, which was connected to Medan by a railway.

      Not too far from the Deli River, the Guandi Temple (Temple to Guan Gong), which was built in the late nineteenth century, has the same structure and layout as a southern Fujian house.

      The Chinese constitute the most valuable part of our inhabitants; they are men, women, and children, about 3,000, they possess the different trades of carpenters, masons, and smiths, are traders, shopkeepers and planters, they employ small vessels and prows and send adventures [sic] to the surrounding countries. They are the only people of the east from whom revenue may be raised without expense and extraordinary efforts of government.... They are indefatigable in the pursuit of money, and like the Europeans, they spend it in purchasing those articles which gratify their appetites. They don’t wait until they have acquired a large fortune to return to their native country, but send annually a part of their profits to their families. This is so general that a poor labourer will work with double labour to acquire two or three dollars to remit to China. As soon as they acquire a little money they obtain a wife and go on in regular domestic mode to the end of their existence.

      The “Chinese Quarter” in Medan early in the twentieth century reveals wooden shophouses on the right side of the road and masonry ones, most likely built later, on the left.

      This Malay-style residence, which is elevated on wooden posts and roofed with attap, was constructed for use by the Chinese supervisor of a plantation in Deli, circa 1885.

      Late in the eighteenth century, well before Chinese began to arrive in significant numbers, Light had already seen the potential value of Phuket in Siam, today’s Thailand. Using Phuket’s common name at the time, he commented that “Junk Salong 45 miles long and 15 broad, is a good healthy island, has several harbours where ships may careen, wood and water safe in all seasons, but it will be six or seven years before it is sufficiently cleared and cultivated to supply a fleet with provisions, it is exceedingly rich in tin ore and may be fortified at a small expense; it belongs to Siam. The inhabitants tired of their slavery are desirous of a new master” (“Notices of Pinang,” 1858: 185). Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century, shophouses in the style of those built in Penang as well as mansions in what is called Sino-Colonial style were constructed in large numbers in Phuket.

      The northeastern coast of Sumatra, which lay across the Strait of Malacca opposite Penang, had received only limited visits by Chinese traders who previously only focused on the potentiality of sites along the east coasts of the strait. Some had come to Laboehan (Labuan) at the mouth of the Deli River, which had been the seat of the Sultan’s power; but there is little evidence of early Chinese settlement there. However, once the Dutch proclaimed their territorial claims to northern Sumatra in 1862, setting in train the opening of the area to large-scale plantation agriculture organized by a variety of European and American firms based upon export crops such as tobacco, rubber, coffee, and oil palm, there was an extraordinary demand for coolie labor that could only be satisfied by immigrants. At first coolies were brought from Penang and Singapore before hundreds of thousands were recruited directly from China and Java using intermediaries who resided in Penang. Because of the insalubrious environment 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