Penang Watch

A puppet featured in clan jetty's film by Ong

Have camera, will rescue

By ELIZABETH TAI

Continuing our series on the intriguing film projects of FreedomFilmFest07winners, we speak to a first-time filmmaker who is attempting to save Penang’s unique ‘clan jetties’ by making a documentary explaining their fascinating heritage. 

GEORGE TOWN has a problem conserving heritage. At least this is what Ong Boon Keong believes, especially after two clan jetties at Weld Quay, the Peng Aun and Koay jetties, were demolished in April last year despite a campaign protesting the move.  

Blocks of flats are now being built on the land. 

The clan jetties, some of which have existed since the 1890s, were once home to Chinese port labourers. Families from the same clans stuck to the same jetty, hence the term “clan jetties”. 

Today, their descendants continue to live there, though few make their living from the sea. 

The remaining jetties are the Chap Seh Keo (mixed surname), Chew, Lee, Lim, Tan and Yeoh jetties.  

“I’ve found that one of the reasons why people don’t value heritage is because they don’t know the history (of the place). Perhaps the older people know, but the young don’t,” says Ong, 47, who was involved in the campaign. 

Surely the members of the city council, of all people, know the history of the jetties? 

But, says Ong, “The Government says that most of the buildings (in Penang) are privately owned so they can’t do anything.” 

Recently, though, the council seems to have made some effort at conservation: news reports said there are plans to build a walkway that connects the jetties and for an interpretive exhibition to be set up in one of the clan community halls. 

Ong, however, is rather dismissive of such moves when we call him to get his opinion. 

“I don’t think any serious conservationist will say that these are acts of conservation. Replacing the planks is not a priority. The sanitation system is priority,” he points out. 

“The residents have approached the Government about the issue numerous times. It was only lately – a month ago – that there have been some gotong royong (communal work party) efforts when the council brought in people to help get rid of the garbage in the area.” 

Ong is an activist and the coordinator of Penang Watch, a website where Penangites can discuss issues concerning George Town.  

Of the people who live on the jetties, he says, “They’ve been there for over a century, and now their right to live there is renewable year by year. 

“The obvious question is, ‘How can you have a conservation of heritage with a year-by-year lease? 

“Even an ordinary person will ask: ‘Why does your heritage last only one year?’ That’s very funny! I think politicians need to answer that obvious quesstion,” he says.  

If the council were serious about conserving these jetties, Ong claims, it should consider gazetting them as a heritage site. 

And if the historical value doesn’t move it, the council should consider the jetties’ commercial value because, despite their shaky right to exist, the clan jetties attract as many as 20 to 30 buses of tourists a week.  

Says Ong: “The tourists will walk from the beginning to the end of the jetty and then back, but the tour guides won’t tell them much. 

“They will just say, ‘That’s the Penang Bridge’, that’s Komtar (George Town’s most well-known shopping complex)’. About the jetties? Nothing much!” 

Worse, tourists are sometimes fed wrong information. 

”For example, they’re told that the jetties are fishing villages. When in reality not many people fish there,” he explains.  

There was a need to educate the tourists, he realised. A documentary, he thought, would be a perfect tool to do that. 

And as fate would have it, Ong found out that the popular sinseh (traditional Chinese medicine man) in the office next door to his was Chew jetty resident association chairman Chew Hock Eam, 57. (Ong’s office is just a short walk away from the clan jetties.) When Ong suggested making the documentary to Chew, he immediately agreed to help.  

Together with a few others, Ong began filming in 2006. The purpose of the self-funded amateur project was to create a film that could tell tourists enough of the jetties’ stories to make them feel something for the place.  

Ong eventually won a grant to film the documentary on more professional terms when he took part in Freedom-FilmFest07 – though what effect that had on his little film is an interesting tale in itself, told in A surprise win (see page 7). 

His little home movie now has an official name – The Weld Quay George Town Squatters – and has been filmed with proper cameras.  

During filming, the crew lived in Chew’s ancestral home on the Chew Jetty and got a taste of clan jetty life. 

“On the jetty, they don’t lock their houses, day or night. And you can just walk in. It was a very pleasant surprise,” says Ong.  

“They’re in the middle of the town, but in most respects, they’re like a kampung. The families have known each other for generations, are very trusting of each other, and have a close relationship.  

“They’re way ahead of the suburban neighbourhood where you don’t even know your next door neighbour,” Ong notes. 

Of his documentary, Ong says, “It’s almost a sad story.  

“But we’re trying to present the documentary as something you can laugh at and yet be aware of the sad bits of the story. 

“Our intent is not to make people cry; we want to make it attractive to tourists and, at the same time, make them really understand the history of the place,” explains Ong.  

Ong describes his film as a “docu-drama” as there are dramatised segments. However, Ong didn’t hire actors for those bits. He came up with the intriguing idea of using a puppet show for those sections. Specifically, traditional Chinese puppet shows that are staged at the jetties during religious festivals. 

However, getting a troupe to cooperate proved more difficult than he had anticipated.  

“There are not many of these groups in Penang. Getting them proved to be difficult as they are used to telling 300-year-old stories from China. They’ve memorised the music and dialogue, so they’ve not written new scripts.  

“Therefore, it was a challenge for them (to write a new play). And they really didn’t have to do this to cari makan (earn a living) as they have many invites from temples and associations to perform the traditional stuff,” says Ong when I visit him in his Penang office.  

Ong tried to encourage the puppet masters by saying that they’ll get more invitations to perform thanks to the exposure the documentary gives them, but to no avail. Three groups turned him down. 

“We were panicking, we thought that there wouldn’t be anything as colourful to replace the puppet show,” he says.  

However, just as they were about to give up and use wayang kulit – which was something they were reluctant to do, as it was not indigenous to the people of the area – a troupe agreed to stage a puppet play for the documentary. 

“The puppet master and his three puppeteers wrote three songs and figured out how to stage the play on the day of filming,” says Ong. 

The puppet show, which was staged in Hokkien, took a day to film and takes up about 17 minutes of the documentary. It will have English subtitles.  

“There are also versions with Bahasa Malaysia and Chinese subtitles in the works. If the tourists are keen, who knows? We may have Japanese and Korean versions, too,” says Ong with a smile. 

The film will be under 30 minutes, as tourists will not have much time to watch a long documentary, he said. 

And Ong already has a place to screen his documentary: the clan jetties’ two-storey community hall. The documentary will be shown year-round to benefit the tourists. 

“A lot of filmmakers will probably be jealous of us – we don’t have to sell our documentary to television stations or the cinema because we have a place booked already,” Ong points out, laughing. 

But, ultimately, Ong hopes that the film will convince policymakers that the clan jetties are worth preserving as a heritage site. 

“If you take away the heritage, you cannot replicate it,” he says. 

Sunday September 2, 2007

No place like home

IN the 1860s, many young men from the Tong Aun district in China’s Fujian Province left home and came to Penang to better themselves. Many worked as coolies and sampan (boat) men in Penang’s then booming ports.  

And although most initially desired to return home with their savings, many ended up staying on in Penang and bringing their families over from China.  

The clan jetties served as homes for these labourers: Some, like the Chew, Lee, Tan and Yeoh jetties, were built as early as the late 19th century while the Koay Jetty was built in the 1950s and the Peng Aun and Chap Seh Keo (mixed surname) jetties around the 1960s. 

The jetties continued developing, increasing in size and population, until the 1960s, when regional competition started their decline, explains Ong Boon Keong, director of the FreedomFilmFest07 documentary, The Weld Quay George Town Squatters. 

“When Penang lost its free port status, fewer ships came in and the port labourers lost their jobs, their livelihood, everything. Their homes on the clan jetties were all they had left and they treated them as low cost housing,” he says.  

The clan jetties are rich with cultural heritage. The Chew Jetty, the largest one, for instance, is well known for its colourful and vibrant annual worship of the Jade Emperor on the eve of the ninth day of the Chinese New Year. The Koay Jetty was home to the descendants of the Hui people, a minority group in China with intriguing antecedents: they are descendants of Arabic peoples, and they continue to retain customs from their Muslim heritage. 

Sadly, the Peng Aun and Koay jetties were demolished in April last year to make way for a housing project. Today, there are more than 2,000 people living on the remaining jetties. 

I get a taste of jetty life when Chew Jetty resident association chairman Chew Hock Eam takes me to visit his ancestral home in July. 

With Ong and Chew at my side, I walk along a winding wooden platform with wooden houses on either side. I can see the sea between the floorboards and glimpse, through gaps between the houses, ships anchored in the distance.  

Although most of the jetties’ residents no longer depend on the sea for a living, some still earn money ferrying people from ships to the jetties using boats. And the grocery store on Chew Jetty (owned by Chew’s relatives) also earns decent money selling supplies to these ships. 

Occasionally, workers push trolleys heavy with goods past us.  

Although Chew now lives on land, he still considers the jetty his home. Like many homes there, the simple wooden home has been around since the late 19th century, and has been expanded over the decades. 

“This place is so beautiful,” says Chew. “Early in the morning, you will see a beautiful sunrise. At sunset, you’ll see the sky awash with magnificent colours. It’s beautiful! 

“At night, you can lie down and see the stars. Where can you see such things in a city?” Chew asks.  

“You don’t have to worry about food,” he continues, pointing at the sea. “And we have a swimming pool – when we feel like it, we’ll just jump into the ocean!” 

Sadly, his friends who lived on the demolished Peng Aun and Koay jetties are now scattered around Penang.  

Living in flats and houses just can’t compare with living on the jetties, says Chew, shaking his head. 

“It’s not the same anymore. It’s not like living in a village when you live off the jetties. You won’t know your neighbours. The sense of camaraderie is gone,” he says sadly, adding that, “Foreigners like to visit the clan jetties to see something from a bygone era.”  

Which is why the jetties have to preserved, he argues.  

“There are a lot of jetties in Malaysia, but only in Penang do you have jetties on which people still live. If they’re torn down, it would be such a waste,” he says.  

However, Chew acknowledges that the jetties’ facilities need to be upgraded. For instance, they do not have a sewage system, and Chew worries about the lack of fire safety measures.  

Despite claims that more young people are moving away from the jetties, Chew does not believe that the place will ever be totally abandoned. 

“Young people do live here,” he emphasises. “Yes, some do live in flats and houses on the land, but some come back because living in the flats is just not the same as living here. 

“If we don’t live here, other people will fight to live here,” he says with a laugh. 

Focus Sunday September 2, 2007

A surprise win

ONG Boon Keong was quite prepared to make an amateur documentary with someone’s home video camera – then he received the news that he was one of three winners of FreedomFilmFest07, which meant he had the money to turn his home movie into a professional one. 

Ong had submitted his idea for a documentary on Penang’s clan jetties almost as an afterthought to the festival organised annually by Komas (Pusat Komunikasi Masyarakat, a people’s communications centre). Though he had never made films before this, Ong had always had ideas for documentaries and films and had been submitting proposals ever since the festival’s inception four years ago. But he had never won. 

For those who aren’t aware of this increasingly popular indie festival, the FreedomFilmFest works in a rather unusual way by giving awards to ideas for movies rather than the movies themselves. Komas believes in the need for creative media to educate and create the awareness necessary for a civil society. Each year, it picks the best three proposals and awards the submitters RM5,000 each to make their ideas a reality on film. 

Ong’s idea this year impressed Komas judges because it is in line with FreedomFilmFest07’s 50th Merdeka: The Untold Human Rights Story theme.  

There have been numerous documentaries made on the Penang jetties, but always from a cultural perspective, notes Anna Har, Komas board member, judge and creative director of independent film company Big Pictures, in a press release. “It will be interesting to finally see one that takes into account the housing rights of this group of people whose families have been living there for generations, predating our independence.”  

Ong is among three winners of the RM5,000 grant. The other two are Fahmi Reza, interviewed in last week’s StarMag about Sepuluh Tahun Sebelum Merdeka, his story about the path Malaya almost took towards independence; and Indrani Kopal, who will share with us next week her experiences in making She’s My Son, a documentary that offers a first-hand look at the life of a transgendered Malaysian.  

Ong was surprised but pragmatic about his win: “It’s something that is thrust upon you so you have to enjoy it,” he says simply. 

We wondered why he didn’t sound so enthusiastic.... 

Well, it seems that winning the grant “forced” Ong to upgrade – one of the requirements of the grant is that he film his documentary using a bigger camera.  

“We had to chuck all our previous work,” he says ruefully. “I felt a little sad as some of the footage was quite good.”  

Furthermore, the first-time filmmaker had to learn how to direct and edit a film, and his crew was equally new at all of this.  

“The burden is heavy on our shoulders. I’m not sure if we can really do it as we’re new filmmakers and we don’t know the ropes of filmmaking,” he admits.  

Still, they began filming in June and finished in July, and, when I caught up with Ong in Penang recently, he was busy “cooking the soup” (ie, editing).