Heritage-rich road still lures lovers of authentic Chinese food
Old-timer: Chan tending to a customer at his outdoor barber corner in Jalan Sultan. He took over the stall from his father more than 40 years ago.
The barber’s corner run by Chan Hong in Jalan Sultan is a piece of history in motion. He has been offering a snip or a shave from here for more than 40 years. Many also come from afar to get Chan to attend to their ear-related problems with traditional medicine.
The 69-year-old loves showing customers his “family heirloom” — a 90-year-old plaque penned by his father and two 70-year-old barber chairs cemented to the ground. The tools he uses are mostly antiques, too.
This corner has attracted so much attention that Chan puts up a small request: ‘RM5 for a photo’.
“I learnt these skills from my father. He went to America from China, but he came here because his English was not good. I have been here all my life; my children are engineers working overseas but I still want to run this business or else I will be so bored at home,” said the chatty man.
Chan said he was there when Jalan Sultan was still crammed with zinc-roofed houses. The site of Kota Raya shopping centre was occupied by the Sultan Street railway station, next to it was the ‘Sky-Pointing Street’ where prices of goods were sky-high but could be slashed by half with some haggling.
“The ZhongHua Lane, where the Lee Lam Thye Market is now, was called the ‘Lane of Truths’ as it was where people converged for their daily dose of tales. The storyteller would collect a round of money whenever the joss stick burnt to its end, else he would not reveal ‘the next episode’!” recalled Chan.
According to the author of The Disappearing Kuala Lumpur, architect and heritage conservationist Teoh Chee Keong, Jalan Sultan got its name before 1889.
Insightful: Teoh, who wrote a book titled ‘The Disappearing Kuala Lumpur’ has done exte nsive research on the Old Kuala Lumpur.
It was the proposed location for Sultan Abdul Samad’s palace in conjunction with his visit to Kuala Lumpur after the Klang railway was completed. The proposal did not materialise.
Jalan Sultan was first developed as a spill-over effect from the then centre of Kuala Lumpur — now Medan Pasar where the two rivers meet.
In 1857, Raja Abdullah brought some 200 Chinese tin miners to explore the tin-rich area blanketed with jungle, where a small Malay community had settled.
“The centre of a typical city in Malaysia is usually a palace, a mosque or like in this case, a market for tin trading. Other trades existed to meet the needs, so you would have shops selling sundries and dried seafood on the fringe of the market that sold perishables.
“Further away, you could find tailors, goldsmiths, restaurants, stationery shops and so on. Lastly, you would need to have coffin shops, set up in the relatively quiet Jalan Sultan situated across a river that later become Jalan Tun Tan Cheng Lock,” Teoh said.
Long-time resident: Lai has been selling claypot chicken rice in Jalan Sultan since 1983
The funeral parlour ‘Chik Sin Thong’ (which means The Merit-Accumulating Hall in Cantonese) was a landmark.
Although demolished in 2005, the building has left a vivid impression among KL folks.
“Old and poor miners spent their last days on the upper floor of Chik Sin Thong, and when it was time, they were sent downstairs for the funeral,” Teoh said.
Gone with it was the Hong Tou Guesthouse, said to be Kuala Lumpur’s first hotel that brought the street to its heyday in early 1960s.
The Yan Keng Benevolent Dramatic Association is the grandest building left to play the role of a ‘big brother’, defending the dusty past together with rows of smaller shophouses.
Some old trades can still be found in Jalan Sultan, such as mole-removing, fortune-telling and denture customisation. The best thing is, good food is still aplenty, in the same good old flavours apparently.
“I miss the Ding-Ding Candy and the pickled mangoes sold from shoulder poles,” reminisced Poon Foong Kwan who runs a cigarette wholesale business there.
Growing up in Jalan Sultan, she witnessed how shops selling textiles, coals and coffins made way for backpacker hostels and restaurants. “Strangely, as kids, we were never afraid of the coffin shops,” she added.
She also bid adieu to many old friends whom she lived with on the upper floor of the shophouses; they left in year 2000 when rental soared following the repeal of the Rent Control Act.
Good old flavours: The ‘appetising’ side of Jalan Sultan appears when night falls.
The shophouses used to be home for up to 60 tenants but was later limited to 20 to control the spread of illness. Now, they are mostly for storage or inhabited by foreign workers.
Jalan Sultan is always a picture of hustle and bustle even though traders lament that business has dropped. Lai Chai Chin, 60, who has been selling claypot chicken rice since 1983 said things had not been the same ever since Rex Cinema closed down.
“The cinema was one of the most popular hangouts in the 1980s. We (hawkers in the area) would walk over for midnight shows after we closed for the day,” he said.
The Rex building still stands but is now a hostel while the Popular Bookstore, another iconic landmark here, is now a convenience store. The street is marked by chain outlets — Watsons, Guardian and Nando’s — on one end, while the Klang Bus Stand and Uda Ocean on the other have been demolished for the MyRapid Transit project.
The strong smell of cooked food wafting from Jalan Sultan always attracts those who have left, but one wonders how long the attraction will last as the traders’ children move on to other ventures.
“Some of our regulars have been with us for three generations,” Foo Yong Cheong, 63, said proudly. With his wife, he has been running a famous stall selling groundnut and pork trotter soup for more than 30 years now.
“This street is not as busy as Petaling Street but people come here for food. I would say this is still the place to taste the most authentic flavours, though some really good stuffs are no longer here, like Nanyang coffee,” Foo said.
~News courtesy of The Star~
Old-timer: Chan tending to a customer at his outdoor barber corner in Jalan Sultan. He took over the stall from his father more than 40 years ago.
The barber’s corner run by Chan Hong in Jalan Sultan is a piece of history in motion. He has been offering a snip or a shave from here for more than 40 years. Many also come from afar to get Chan to attend to their ear-related problems with traditional medicine.
The 69-year-old loves showing customers his “family heirloom” — a 90-year-old plaque penned by his father and two 70-year-old barber chairs cemented to the ground. The tools he uses are mostly antiques, too.
This corner has attracted so much attention that Chan puts up a small request: ‘RM5 for a photo’.
“I learnt these skills from my father. He went to America from China, but he came here because his English was not good. I have been here all my life; my children are engineers working overseas but I still want to run this business or else I will be so bored at home,” said the chatty man.
Chan said he was there when Jalan Sultan was still crammed with zinc-roofed houses. The site of Kota Raya shopping centre was occupied by the Sultan Street railway station, next to it was the ‘Sky-Pointing Street’ where prices of goods were sky-high but could be slashed by half with some haggling.
“The ZhongHua Lane, where the Lee Lam Thye Market is now, was called the ‘Lane of Truths’ as it was where people converged for their daily dose of tales. The storyteller would collect a round of money whenever the joss stick burnt to its end, else he would not reveal ‘the next episode’!” recalled Chan.
According to the author of The Disappearing Kuala Lumpur, architect and heritage conservationist Teoh Chee Keong, Jalan Sultan got its name before 1889.
Insightful: Teoh, who wrote a book titled ‘The Disappearing Kuala Lumpur’ has done exte nsive research on the Old Kuala Lumpur.
It was the proposed location for Sultan Abdul Samad’s palace in conjunction with his visit to Kuala Lumpur after the Klang railway was completed. The proposal did not materialise.
Jalan Sultan was first developed as a spill-over effect from the then centre of Kuala Lumpur — now Medan Pasar where the two rivers meet.
In 1857, Raja Abdullah brought some 200 Chinese tin miners to explore the tin-rich area blanketed with jungle, where a small Malay community had settled.
“The centre of a typical city in Malaysia is usually a palace, a mosque or like in this case, a market for tin trading. Other trades existed to meet the needs, so you would have shops selling sundries and dried seafood on the fringe of the market that sold perishables.
“Further away, you could find tailors, goldsmiths, restaurants, stationery shops and so on. Lastly, you would need to have coffin shops, set up in the relatively quiet Jalan Sultan situated across a river that later become Jalan Tun Tan Cheng Lock,” Teoh said.
Long-time resident: Lai has been selling claypot chicken rice in Jalan Sultan since 1983
The funeral parlour ‘Chik Sin Thong’ (which means The Merit-Accumulating Hall in Cantonese) was a landmark.
Although demolished in 2005, the building has left a vivid impression among KL folks.
“Old and poor miners spent their last days on the upper floor of Chik Sin Thong, and when it was time, they were sent downstairs for the funeral,” Teoh said.
Gone with it was the Hong Tou Guesthouse, said to be Kuala Lumpur’s first hotel that brought the street to its heyday in early 1960s.
The Yan Keng Benevolent Dramatic Association is the grandest building left to play the role of a ‘big brother’, defending the dusty past together with rows of smaller shophouses.
Some old trades can still be found in Jalan Sultan, such as mole-removing, fortune-telling and denture customisation. The best thing is, good food is still aplenty, in the same good old flavours apparently.
“I miss the Ding-Ding Candy and the pickled mangoes sold from shoulder poles,” reminisced Poon Foong Kwan who runs a cigarette wholesale business there.
Growing up in Jalan Sultan, she witnessed how shops selling textiles, coals and coffins made way for backpacker hostels and restaurants. “Strangely, as kids, we were never afraid of the coffin shops,” she added.
She also bid adieu to many old friends whom she lived with on the upper floor of the shophouses; they left in year 2000 when rental soared following the repeal of the Rent Control Act.
Good old flavours: The ‘appetising’ side of Jalan Sultan appears when night falls.
The shophouses used to be home for up to 60 tenants but was later limited to 20 to control the spread of illness. Now, they are mostly for storage or inhabited by foreign workers.
Jalan Sultan is always a picture of hustle and bustle even though traders lament that business has dropped. Lai Chai Chin, 60, who has been selling claypot chicken rice since 1983 said things had not been the same ever since Rex Cinema closed down.
“The cinema was one of the most popular hangouts in the 1980s. We (hawkers in the area) would walk over for midnight shows after we closed for the day,” he said.
The Rex building still stands but is now a hostel while the Popular Bookstore, another iconic landmark here, is now a convenience store. The street is marked by chain outlets — Watsons, Guardian and Nando’s — on one end, while the Klang Bus Stand and Uda Ocean on the other have been demolished for the MyRapid Transit project.
The strong smell of cooked food wafting from Jalan Sultan always attracts those who have left, but one wonders how long the attraction will last as the traders’ children move on to other ventures.
“Some of our regulars have been with us for three generations,” Foo Yong Cheong, 63, said proudly. With his wife, he has been running a famous stall selling groundnut and pork trotter soup for more than 30 years now.
“This street is not as busy as Petaling Street but people come here for food. I would say this is still the place to taste the most authentic flavours, though some really good stuffs are no longer here, like Nanyang coffee,” Foo said.
~News courtesy of The Star~
