When we came to Stulang Laut of Johor Bahru (JB) in 1957, we did not know much about this place. We only called it “New Kampong” in Chinese from the area of stilt houses where we lived to the end of road where is now the ZON Duty Free (see previous chapter). Now I just wonder who lived here before we came.
I found a 1923 newspaper article about Stulang near the end of 19th century which wrote, “on the further side of Bukit Meldrum and only a mile from the town - it was considered that a visit to that place was to court death at the teeth and claws of tigers which swarmed there; ….not till years after…. a kampong built one piles in the sea.” I found the early pictures of Johore Straits and the stilt houses (see pictures at left).
In 2020, the government has been ordered to pay a group of indigenous people (Orang Seletor, they lived on boats and stilts) as compensation for taking them away from their ancestral land where the ZON now stands. Their name means "People Strait" (Selat means Strait in Malay, my early living in Singapore is Silat village).
While we were in JB, we lived in a stilt house located at the seaside of Johore Straits (see left pictures). Just last week my brother told me that the New Hong Kong Restaurant (a landmark) and Johore Hotel were actually located in front of our stilt house facing Singapore. Now the restaurant is still there and where abouts the hotel, hardly anyone mentioned it, is totally absent from history.
I found a dinner menu of this first western style hotel with a picture. I pasted it on the scene obtained from Google map and it matches well. We first lived on the stilts on Jalan Ibrahim Sultan (2nd sultan), later moved to 2nd house on Jalan Ah Siang, and finally moved to 3rd house on Jalan Indera Putra (means Beautiful Prince) located on a hill.
The road connected to downtown is Jalan Bukit Meldrum, the name of a Scotsman who set up the first steam sawmill of JB in 1860 and was the son-in-law of a tutor of Abu Bakar (1st sultan). Strictly speaking, our 3 houses are all in Kampung Ah Siang (see map at left).
When we lived in our 3rd house, we discovered a huge old tomb covered by tall grass on the hill at the back of Johore Hotel. We didn’t know who were in the tomb. It was the best place to scare friends or ourselves.
Only recently this tomb got cleaned up and I realized that it is the tomb of Lim Ah Siang (Teochew) and his 5 wives facing Singapore and ironically also facing our old stilt house.
Lim was a timber merchant, a steam saw miller and the leader of a legitimized secret society (Ngee Heng Company) based in JB. In 1892, Sultan Abu Bakar granted a special land concession to him to develop the Stulang area. Lim built a road right across the center of his concession to his gambling farm built on stilts in the sea facing what is now the New Hong Kong Restaurant. At that time, gambling was prohibited in Singapore, so Singaporeans crossed the straits by boats (the Causeway was built in 1923) to come to the Monte Carlo on the water. I am not sure when our stilt house was built.
To understand why and how the Chinese came to JB or the state of Johor, we need to understand the history on how Johor and Singapore were founded (see left map).
The original Johor Sultanate was founded in 1528 by the son of the exiled sultan of Malacca which was conquered by the Portuguese. In 1641, the Portuguese was defeated by the Dutch and the Johor forces.
In 1819, Stamford Raffles arrived and worked with Temenggong Abdul Rahman (Chief Minister resided in Singapore) to install a 2nd sultan to cede Singapore to British. In 1824, the secret Anglo-Dutch Treaty ceded all lands south of Singapore to Dutch.
The puppet sultan and later his son built Istana Kampong Glam in Singapore (we had visited the palace in 2012). Both died in Malacca. In 1823, British assigned an area in Teluk Belanga to the Temenggong. The area flourished under the Temenggong and his successors, and the British chose to describe as "piracy".
In 1855, Johor was ceded to the Temenggong's son, Daeng Ibrahim. He and his son Abu Bakar actively invited the Chinese migrants over to open up land to cultivate pepper and gambier, and to develop JB (original name Tanjung Puteri, means Cape Princess). Abu Bakar (also known as Albert Baker) grew up in Singapore, spoke fluent English and was noted for his diplomatic skills.
In 1886, consented by Queen Victoria, he claimed the title of Sultan of Johor. To commemorate his ascension, the sultan and his sultanah Fatimah (Wong Ah Gew) built Istana Tyersall in Singapore which was modeled in the movie ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ (below 1st pictures).
This palace, the JB Istana Besar and many landmarks was built by his good friend Wong Ah Fook (Cantonese, there is a street named after him in JB) who was also granted a special land concession to develop the JB downtown area in 1892. By the end of 19th century, JB became a bustling free port and prompted to broaden Segget River and increase landing jetties.
Boats brought in loads of holidaymakers who wanted to enjoy the scenic landscape or try their luck at the numerous gambling farms in town. Among the more favored hotels at that time was the Johore Hotel which had air of grandeur and opulence rivaling those in Far East. The grand downtown Johore Hotel was probably owned by the sultan and it doesn’t exist anymore (below 2nd pictures).
This week I found this hotel located in a 1953 aerial picture showing local people celebrating the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II (see above 3rd picture from the Australian War Memorial museum which we had visited in 2019) at JB downtown. At the upper left of the picture is the entrance to the Johor Sultan Gardens located in the west side of the downtown, which were popular outing places when we were in high school, and our family had visited in 1982 (with my father, see picture in last chapter).
On another hand, I found an advertisement announcing the opening of a new Johore Hotel in Stulang on Sept. 9 of 1956, just a few months before we arrived at JB. May be the hotel franchise taking over part of the land of the tomb of Ah Siang to build a new hotel (read the beginning of this write-up).
During our years after the ravages of WWII, JB slowly lost its grandeur. Left pictures show the 1955 Segget River. Our most memorable downtown place is the food court (Pasak-kia, means small market in Teochew) which was located next to the river (2nd picture).
In our 2019 family trip, we walked from the Hindu Temples on Ungdu Puan Road, turned into the Segget River Road (parallel to Wong Ah Fook Road), through the area where the old time food court is located, and got up to the next road to reach the old Chinese temple (see below pictures).
The Chinese temple was built in late 19th century to house the five deities worshipped by five main clans, Teochew, Hokkien, Cantonese, Hakka and Hainanese. Sultan Abu Bakar continued the goodwill started by his father and encouraged the Chinese to live in peace. He played a role in uniting the Chinese by providing them land to build the temple and the cemetery.
Every year the “Parade of Deities” attracted more than 300,000 people to march around the major roads of the city together with the five deities. We loved to watch or to join it with a bunch of friends. The temple construction was helped and then funded by Ngee Heng Company (a legitimized secret society).
It was disbanded in 1916 because it had achieved its goal to topple the Qing Dynasty (supposed to reinstate the Ming). They built the Ming Tomb and gave the remaining balance of $30,000 to Foon Yew School, a substantial sum in those days for a struggling school, under the condition that the school would perform the annual rituals of the Tomb (twice a year).
My first 3 years in JB was in the reign of Sultan Ibrahim who was born in Singapore and educated in England. He was the son of Abu Bakar with a daughter of a Danish trader and his Chinese wife. The sultanah Wong Ah Gew did not give birth to a son. However, Ibrahim married the daughter of her sister, one of three sisters of Wong family who were married into the royal family.
Ibrahim was considered to be “fabulously wealthy” and an Anglophile spending most of his time away from Johor and died in London in 1959. He opposed the Malayan independence and his heirs tried to rehabilitate his image as a wastrel. The present sultan is his great grandson and the present queen of Malaysia is his great granddaughter (with a British mother). The present king’s father was also a king, and when he was the crown prince of Pahang in 1960s, my father and brothers actually worked on his timber project.
In 2019, our family had visited the Istana Bukit Serene (palace for Sultan and Sultanah of Johor, 1st picture) located in the west side of JB downtown. Our father and sons picture in 1st chapter was also taken in front of this palace in 1982. Below 2nd picture was taken by Xinru for the coronation of the kids. In the same trip, we also visited the Istana Negara in Kuala Lumpur (3rd picture).
The jungle road built by my father’s company, which was called Ng Piew Timber Company, is now a public road and it helped the development of Pahang state (see next write-up). My younger brother had joined the family timbering business when I was in Taiwan.
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