After a breakfast of the most delicious roti canai in Penang at Yaseem’s, on the corner of Jalan Chulia and Penang Road, I walked over to the old Christian graveyard. It is a fascinating place - the final resting place of so many of Penang’s early western settlers. The gravestones are in startlingly good condition, considering that some of them are over two hundred years old.
Many of the tombstones make for sad reading. Life must have been hard here in the early days - the majority of people didn’t get long her to make their mark, the hardships were many and tropical diseases untreatable.
Looking down at one stone I noticed a mist of mosquitos hovering about a foot above the ground and an even dozen feeding happily on my feet and legs. No wonder people didn’t last long here - Malaria must have taken a terrible toll. Swatting away mosquitos with my newspaper I walked further into the cemetery. The mosquitos got thicker, more persistent and their bights were starting to itch like hell. I lasted another ten minutes or so, providing far more meals than I would have chosen before eventually leaving at a gallop, which seemed somehow disrespectful in that place.
Mosquitos must have been a problem in the 18th century too when the East India Company obtained the island to set up a free trade port. To clear the swamp, Captain Francis Light fired silver dollars from his ship’s cannon into the jungle to encourage hard work from the labourers. Sounds like a good scam. I wonder how many they found. New settlers were encouraged, not only by the protection the British offered and the chance of free trade at a time when the Dutch East India Company was taxing merchants heavily, but by the promise of land. Settlers could claim as much land as they could clear. From 1786 when Georgetown was established to 1800, the population increased from a few hundred to ten thousand. Georgetown was named for the Prince of Wales, on whose birthday ‘Prince of Wales Island’ was acquired from the Sultan of Kedah, in return for ‘protection’. Imigrants came from Malaysia, Sumatra, Thailand, Burma, China, India, Armenia and Britain. They came to farm, fish, labour and trade - in cloves and nutmeg, tea, pepper, textiles and, as the industries grew in Malaya, tin and rubber.
The history that produced this ethnic diversity has left its most significant mark in the island’s food. Wherever you go in Malaysia, the quality and variety of food available has to be one of Malaysia’s most memorable qualities. With its three main cultures (Chinese, Malay and Indian) all having richly different cuisines themselves, it could hardly be otherwise. It is easy classify food as Chinese and Indian, but to do so is to make a sweeping statement that, in its simplicity, hides a tremendous diversity of regional variations. The differences between Sichuan and Cantonese, or between Keralan and Kashmiri styles of cooking are great, to mention but a few of the regional specialties. The Chinese and Indian population in Malaysia are drawn from geographically diverse immigrant ancestries. Penang’s restaurants represent, in one compact city, the whole gamut of regional Chinese and Indian cooking, along with some special surprises.
Fusion, in fashion and in cooking, is a term I tend to associate with the late twentieth century, but it was a process that was taking place in Malaya long before. Notably, in Penang the Nyonya Chinese - Chinese immigrants that adopted aspects of Malay culture and spoke a Malay dialect, developed their own special style of cooking - part Chinese, part Malay but notably different to either. In Malacca too, Portuguese settlers, the descendants of whom still speak an old Portuguese, have their own style of cooking.
Apart from such ‘local’ foods, there are other choices today as Penang’s population continues to grow both in size and wealth. Modern immigrants and foreign trained chefs have brought Vietnamese, Thai, Japanese, Korean, Italian, French and generic Western foods to Penang, as well as the inevitable American chains. New dining styles and expectations are developing too, partly influenced by tourism, but to a greater extent by the expectations of the growing middle class. More of which shortly ....
Many of the tombstones make for sad reading. Life must have been hard here in the early days - the majority of people didn’t get long her to make their mark, the hardships were many and tropical diseases untreatable.
Looking down at one stone I noticed a mist of mosquitos hovering about a foot above the ground and an even dozen feeding happily on my feet and legs. No wonder people didn’t last long here - Malaria must have taken a terrible toll. Swatting away mosquitos with my newspaper I walked further into the cemetery. The mosquitos got thicker, more persistent and their bights were starting to itch like hell. I lasted another ten minutes or so, providing far more meals than I would have chosen before eventually leaving at a gallop, which seemed somehow disrespectful in that place.
Mosquitos must have been a problem in the 18th century too when the East India Company obtained the island to set up a free trade port. To clear the swamp, Captain Francis Light fired silver dollars from his ship’s cannon into the jungle to encourage hard work from the labourers. Sounds like a good scam. I wonder how many they found. New settlers were encouraged, not only by the protection the British offered and the chance of free trade at a time when the Dutch East India Company was taxing merchants heavily, but by the promise of land. Settlers could claim as much land as they could clear. From 1786 when Georgetown was established to 1800, the population increased from a few hundred to ten thousand. Georgetown was named for the Prince of Wales, on whose birthday ‘Prince of Wales Island’ was acquired from the Sultan of Kedah, in return for ‘protection’. Imigrants came from Malaysia, Sumatra, Thailand, Burma, China, India, Armenia and Britain. They came to farm, fish, labour and trade - in cloves and nutmeg, tea, pepper, textiles and, as the industries grew in Malaya, tin and rubber.
The history that produced this ethnic diversity has left its most significant mark in the island’s food. Wherever you go in Malaysia, the quality and variety of food available has to be one of Malaysia’s most memorable qualities. With its three main cultures (Chinese, Malay and Indian) all having richly different cuisines themselves, it could hardly be otherwise. It is easy classify food as Chinese and Indian, but to do so is to make a sweeping statement that, in its simplicity, hides a tremendous diversity of regional variations. The differences between Sichuan and Cantonese, or between Keralan and Kashmiri styles of cooking are great, to mention but a few of the regional specialties. The Chinese and Indian population in Malaysia are drawn from geographically diverse immigrant ancestries. Penang’s restaurants represent, in one compact city, the whole gamut of regional Chinese and Indian cooking, along with some special surprises.
Fusion, in fashion and in cooking, is a term I tend to associate with the late twentieth century, but it was a process that was taking place in Malaya long before. Notably, in Penang the Nyonya Chinese - Chinese immigrants that adopted aspects of Malay culture and spoke a Malay dialect, developed their own special style of cooking - part Chinese, part Malay but notably different to either. In Malacca too, Portuguese settlers, the descendants of whom still speak an old Portuguese, have their own style of cooking.
Apart from such ‘local’ foods, there are other choices today as Penang’s population continues to grow both in size and wealth. Modern immigrants and foreign trained chefs have brought Vietnamese, Thai, Japanese, Korean, Italian, French and generic Western foods to Penang, as well as the inevitable American chains. New dining styles and expectations are developing too, partly influenced by tourism, but to a greater extent by the expectations of the growing middle class. More of which shortly ....
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