Sunday November 4, 2007
The charms of Chemor
By ANDREW SIA
Photos by ANDREW SIA, ANNE CHEONG and SAIFUL BAHRI
If every face tells a story, then so does every place. With the right guide, history comes alive even in the most unassuming and overlooked of sleepy hollows.
HISTORY books, especially those used in schools, focus on the big stuff – national events, personalities and the like. There is scant room for the story of little places and it is very much left to interested individuals and organisations to keep alive localised history.
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Time seems to have stood still at the well-shaded and ventilated Chemor train station what with its colonial brown-yellow colour scheme and signs still in proper English. |
In Chemor alone we discover gems such as antique train “keys”, oil lamps from Birmingham, marvellous Mandailing food and a literally dying craft.
Chemor is said to be named after transport elephants lumbering between Kuala Kangsar and Ipoh who got themselves “chemar” or soiled with mud, recalls the book Kinta Valley – Pioneering Malaysia’s Modern Development, by Khoo Salma Nasution and Abdur-Razzaq Lubis. However, the arrival of the railways in 1896 (extended from Tanjung Rambutan) quickly put those beasts out of business.
Some 111 years later, the old railway station still stands quaintly amidst huge shady trees – even though trains ceased stopping here in the late 1990s.
“There were just not enough passengers,” explains station master Abdul Halim.
The closed ticket counter and the cat snoozing on the station logbook are both mute testimony to this. However, for colonial era aficionados, there is the “Station Master” sign in English and the sheer spectacle of living history when controlling the movement of trains.
When the group gets curious over a large array of bronze keys in a maze-like contraption, Abdul Halim explains: “Every train has to collect one of these keys when it passes here. That’s a signal of ‘line clear’ before it can move on to the next station.”
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The old British system of ‘keys’ is still in use at Chemor railway station to control train traffic. |
“Even though it doesn’t stop here, it slows down and the driver scoops it up from me as I stand on the platform,” says our genial railwayman.
He takes his position and I wonder for a moment if his arm might get dislocated if the angle is wrong. But no fear, Abdul Halim carries it off with aplomb like he has for the past 15 years and the group claps and cheers.
Even though it’s a warm day, we are kept cool by the station’s eminently sensible tropical architecture featuring abundant ventilation and lots of overhanging roofs for shade.
“Compare this to some of the new stations which are not suitable for our climate,” says Law Siak Hong, president of the PHS and today’s trip leader.
He fears that this beautiful little railway relic will be demolished if the double-tracking project from Ipoh to Padang Besar takes off.
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The station’s log book makes for a good spot to catnap. |
The heritage of Chemor extends far beyond rail lines. For one, it’s a town where the Mandailing people of Sumatra settled and left their mark (see 'We are the Mandailings' on SM6) According to the Kinta Valley book, in the 1930s, Chemor even produced an all-Mandailing musical troupe that played at parties and accompanied bangsawan (traditional Malay drama) performances at the grand panggung wayang or Chemor Theatre.
Law adds that Chinese tai hei or opera troupes also performed here.
“In those days the miners had no entertainment. Their life was one of work, gambling, opium and tai hei.”
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Got it! The ‘key’ in the black pouch is scooped up by the driver as the train passes by the station. |
In the heyday of the Chemor Theatre, audiences would come all the way from Ipoh to watch the resident opera troupe, notes Landmarks of Perak. After that, it was also used as a movie theatre, first for silent black and white films, followed by the “talkies”.
The theatre’s splendid facade can still be seen today. Its trio of wooden arches seem to spring out of slender timber columns with triangular capitals, all topped off by fine Perak-style latticework. Inside, there were two wooden balconies where VIPs would sit.
However, for the past 30 years at least, it has played a much more modest role as a tobacco processing house. Its stage has been dismantled while the wooden staircases and one of the balconies has rotted away.
“I met the owners,” says Law. “They told me they had spent RM20,000 on termite control.”
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The grand Chemor Theatre once staged Chinese opera and Malay bangsawan shows, explains Law Siak Hong of the Perak Heritage Society. |
Behind the shops on the main street, under huge shady rain trees, men still dig out huge tree trunks with hoe-like implements. It’s the same process used to make a dugout canoe, like that one used by the Semelai Orang Asli of the Tasik Bera swamp-lake of Pahang. But here in Perak, they are making traditional Chinese coffins, yes, the type used in old Hong Kong horror movies...
Cham Swee Hung, the third generation of his family in this business, explains that it takes two tree trunks, each split in half, to make one it.
“We don’t use drawings. It (the design) is in our heads,” he says.
Even after the wood has been dried for six months, each coffin still weighs a massive 300kg, requiring massive manpower to lift it.
Kelatang wood is used as it has a lovely grain and not too hard, unlike say ,cengal which will destroy the iron tools, says Cham. Most crucially, the wood will last between 10 and 20 years underground, thus granting a “longevity” of sorts in the afterlife.
As kelatang wood is also in demand for making plywood, prices have jumped up just the past one year from RM650 to RM900 per ton, he says. And, he has to grab the best logs as soon as they arrive at the yard off the timber lorries.
So what does one of these beauties cost? Surprisingly, not an arm and a leg but a relatively modest sum of RM3,000, comparable to a “Western style” coffin made of semi-synthetic chipboard or whatever kind of styrofoam-like wrapping material they have nowadays.
The pragmatic Cham sells those too, as he also has a “modern” funeral parlour in Sungai Petani, Kedah. And yes, he can do Buddhist, Taoist and Christian “packages” he says, while showing off his coffin catalogue.
“Nowadays, only the old folks from New Villages like the traditional coffins,” says Cham. “The town people all want new style coffins. Moreover, the big old ones can’t fit into the cremation chambers.”
Ah, there’s the rub. Perhaps it’s not so much the price of coffins but that of burial plots (as expensive as cars nowadays!) which has deterred people from traditional burials. No wonder the prices of these coffins have not increased so much since the 1970s when it was RM800 each, recalls our koon choy loh or “coffin man” in Cantonese.
Nowadays of course, they are called “funeral contractors” or “providers of bereavement services”. Cham recalls his father could sell 30 or 40 units per month in the past. Nowadays, he’s lucky to offload 10 a month. As such, he only has four old workers left, inherited from his father’s time.
“The young don’t want to learn traditional coffin making any more,” says Cham, adding that he is the only one in the Ipoh area and one of the very few in Malaysia to make such coffins. “I think in another 10 years, this business will end.”
And with that, a fascinating piece of Chemor's heritage, still alive for now, will be truly dead and buried.
Next week: Tanjung Rambutan and Tambun
Related Story:
We are the Mandailings
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