Those homes built in China by Returned Overseas Chinese in the twentieth century underscore the fervor of their attachment to the native soil of their ancestral homeland and the enduring dream of multigenerational residency, a large family living together. Most of their residences incorporate Chinese as well as Western elements and thus are more than mere yanglou. While there are clearly conservative building elements and practices, it is easy also to see innovative and foreign aspects. The willingness to use modern construction materials, even when they needed to be imported, was accompanied by a willingness to adapt to changing fashions and evolving aesthetic preferences.
A detail of the upper façade of the Cheong Fatt Tze blue mansion in Penang (page 128).
HEEREN STREET SHOPHOUSE
MALACCA, MALAYSIA
Late 1700s
Not all of the homes built and/or lived in by Chinese are grand structures that epitomize economic success or celebrate prosperity. Most Chinese migrants and their descendants lived modestly in common dwellings, types which have not been presented in this book either because of their ubiquity or rarity. Indeed, even those whose family narrative is one of rags-to-riches over several generations most likely lived once in a simple dwelling, sometimes no more than a cot in the back of a shop or in simple quarters for coolies and laborers. Surviving examples of such common structures from the distant past are exceedingly rare, not only because of their relatively ephemeral nature but also because little attention was ever paid to their preservation. It is clear that the demise of old shophouses and their replacement with more modern forms diminishes the historical record of life in the past. Fortunately, for those who value a comprehensive view of a community’s heritage, great efforts were expended in recent years in restoring a common shophouse in Malacca that dates to the late 1700s.
Somehow surviving through many periods of cataclysmic change, this early shophouse has undoubtedly served many purposes—shop, residence, storehouse, dormitory, stable, among other possibilities—and may have been occupied at various times by members of any of Malacca’s multinational residents—indigenous Malays as well as immigrants who arrived over the centuries from China, Portugal, the Netherlands, and Britain. In terms of its layout and construction, the building indeed reveals cultural mixing that is consistent with Malacca’s multicultural heritage. It embodies a layering of form and function from an earlier time while representing one stage in the evolutionary process of a streetscape from earlier structures of timber and thatch to more permanent buildings of brick and tile. Much of the attention given to this modest shophouse underscores the presence of purported Dutch aspects, yet most of these same elements would have been familiar to Chinese craftsmen because they were also present in their home villages and towns in southern China. Thus, it is likely—but by no means knowable with certainty—that Chinese masons and carpenters, who probably built the structure, even if under contract to a Dutch owner, would have felt quite comfortable with the forms that emerged.
Dwarfed by the adjacent later styles, this pair of historically significant two-storey eighteenth-century shop-houses is owned by the Cheng Hoon Teng Temple in Malacca.
The horizontal wooden shutters not only could secure the building at night, the lower one could be propped up and used as a display shelf for the sale of goods. The woven screen blocked passersby from viewing life inside the building.
Known today simply by its address—No. 8 Heeren Street—the restored shophouse is located not too far from the quays where boats of various sizes were loaded and unloaded in times past. What type of uses the small building was put to over the years is not known, but for fifty years in the twentieth century, from 1938 through 1989, it served as a kuli keng, which in Hokkien literally means “the quarters where coolies live.” The materials used in its construction were wood for the doors and windows, including the shutters, the staircase, the balustrades for the balcony, and the upstairs flooring, in addition to the battens supporting the roof tiles; clay for bricks and tiles, laterite blocks for the foundations, and lime-based plaster for the walls. There is essentially no applied ornamentation and no way to determine how families in the past might have decorated their humble home.
This modest two-storey building has a narrow façade similar to that of its neighbor, approximately 4 meters wide, and a depth of 26 meters. Both buildings are set back from the street and have an overhanging tile-faced shed roof covering what, under other circumstances, might be a called a front porch. Here, however, the sheltered space is actually an extension of what would have been a shop inside. The wooden entryway is a door divided into two parts so that the bottom half could be shut while the top half was left open. Doors of this type in America are called “Dutch doors” since they are said to have been “invented” in the Netherlands in the 1600s and then introduced by the Dutch in their American colonies. Yet, divided doors have a long history of use in common homes throughout southern China in both urban and rural areas. The wooden shutters covering the large horizontal window that runs across the front wall open in two sections, the larger of which, when secured, provides a broad shelf that could be used to display goods for sale. One sees today a woven screen that blocks passersby from viewing the inside, a utilitarian addition when the building was used as a residence but not particularly useful when it served as a shop. This type of shutter-shelf can still be seen in front of shops in small towns and villages in southern China. The upper portion of the wooden shutter is held in place with two hooks to completely open the front. If desired, the larger bottom shutter can be latched closed, leaving the narrower upper portion open for ventilation and privacy. A single two-shutter wooden window provides light and air for the bedroom on the second floor.
Divided door panels, usually called “Dutch doors” in the West, are also forms found locally in southern China.
A small storage area beneath the plain stairway that leads to the second level.
The semicircular half of a well that was located as part of the skywell so that it could be shared through the party wall of the neighboring shophouse.
The layout of the interior includes a front room, which could serve as shop or residential space, with a smaller room behind it. Beyond is an area that Chinese call a tianjing or skywell, sometimes also called an airwell or lightwell, which is a roofless void form that rises through both storeys to ventilate and bring light into the interior. While rain-water falling into the void could be collected as needed, the building also included a well, which was shared through the party wall of the neighboring structure. Although the Dutch did not have skywells as part of their own architectural tradition, they adapted the form in various parts of their empire, carrying it with them as they spread their sphere of influence. Set off to the side is a wooden staircase that leads to a balustraded balcony. A small kitchen and even smaller tianjing are found in the rear of the building. The second floor provides ample space for bedrooms.
This view across the skywell reveals the gallery-like passageways on the second level.
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