Dear Conscious Readers,
Thank you for reading Conscious Living, where we explore how to live intentionally in the present while connecting with our past, the people around us, and the world at large.
This essay took longer than expected—notwithstanding a family holiday in between—but also because I challenged myself with ’s fantastic writing intensive on The Power of Place. ’s post Hometowns also inspired me to dig deeper into where we came from, though I’ve only scratched the surface here.
And thus this little ode was born. I hope you’ll enjoy it.
Consciously yours,
Rachel
We knew no other place than this, where the blue and orange light of dawn peeks through the surrounding dark purple hills, piercing the thick fog left behind by the humid tropical night, where ancestors still search for their descendants, descendants who no longer remember them.
Cows moan, frogs croak, and insects hum through the night. The chorus ceases when the lorry rumbles to start its day of toil, and the rooster jumps onto the rusty wire fence and crows, and crows, and crows.
The midday heat ushers everyone indoors, into the safety of shade—the day hits the pause button for a brief intermission.
Every afternoon, rain pours from voluminous clouds crashing into the surrounding hills, like a velvet curtain falling after a show.
The rain stops as suddenly as it comes. Heat turns to steam. The scent of earth and asphalt rises. The raintown exhaled.
Our town was dug out of the tin ore rush in the 1850s, as droves of Chinese poured in, chasing promises of wealth and fortune—our grandfathers amongst them. The culmination of this frenzy was the infamous Ghee Hin and Hai San feud during the Larut wars. The British saw the opening, marched in under the guise of restoring peace, and planted their Union Jack on the tin mines instead.
They named it Taiping (太平)—Great Peace. Whether in irony or hope, we never knew.
A century later, once the ore had all been mined and traded, and the town had passed its peak prosperity, the miners moved south to Ipoh’s new mines or died of old age, leaving behind vast dugout pits. Nature reclaimed them with water, dissolving all traces of greed, transforming them into lakes.
Now, rain trees bow over as if clawing their way to the water. Lotus flowers bloom during the drier part of the year on ponds like a pink blanket. Lush trees flank the meandering paths.
White egrets, once only passing through, now settle in this paradise, occasionally fluttering their wings and startling the stillness with an occasional squawk.
The water is still and calm, so still that if you stand on one of its Chinese-inspired bridges, you’ll see red, white, and orange koi swimming in it, oversized from the generous feeding from visitors.
Peace reigns in this place, known to us as Lake Garden, quietly fulfilling the town’s name.
Walk down any of its roads and you will reach the heart of the town, where gridded rows of colonial shophouses blend Chinese and British architecture.
High shuttered windows adorn narrow double-storey shops, wedged so close they’ll collapse without one another. The rows of shops, with darkened masonry walls and crumbling tiled roofs, were sliced off at both ends like a block of bread.
The clock tower, whose bell never tolled, stands at the center—a sentry still keeping watch long after the hands that raised it had gone.
We are the forgotten town that helped build northern Peninsular Malaysia into the modern, thriving land it is today.
We had the first train station in the country, but hardly anyone disembarks here, not on their journey between the cities—Kuala Lumpur, Ipoh, and Penang. Having been mined to emptiness before its neighbors, the British left for good before it ever had the chance to be declared a city.
Still, we pay taxes on every sen earned to stand in the disappearing valley of a town that becomes the ghost of our success.
Our lawns are tiled for convenience, sometimes with a patch of grass we call a garden, but nothing ever grows, and nobody ever lingers.
Every house has a Proton or a Perodua, sometimes a Toyota or a Honda—one parked on the porch, another out on the curb by the gate. Beside it stands a metal contraption cradling an oversized plastic tong stuffed with garbage.
Once a week, the lori sampah clatters by and empties them with a sharp clang, leaving behind a sour decay that lingers for hours until the rain washes it away, and the children come out to play, between rows of slim, high-ceilinged houses. Hot air escapes through its open slatted vents above, like a thief in the night.
It’s a town where teenagers, having nowhere to go on Friday nights, ride their motorbikes to the memorial cemetery, a graveyard of stones for Allied soldiers from a war no one remembers, among strangers who no longer know them, and will never know them.
In this dark soulless place they idle, smoke some, and talk over one another in multiple dialects, blasting “Iris” or “Hoi Fut Tin Hung”, depending on their schools—the Chinese or the British1, until they look down one night and realize they’re thirty-something and have been plucked and planted in the megacity three hours south, still in a daze, wondering where the empty streets and unpeopled spaces have gone.
It’s where the older folks meet daily for kopi-o or cham-peng at the kopitiam with friends they’ve grown old with, each time quietly wondering who won’t be coming ever again, before sitting together in a row on red plastic chairs outside gold shops that never seem to sell a thing, along Jalan Taming Sari—the main road—to stare at the sky and bet on the exact moment the first drop of rain touches the ground.
It’s where those between the young and the old are not seen, because they are in the megacity earning money while their aging parents care for their carefree children.
And each morning, when the heavy fog finally settles, forgotten laundry hanging outside now wetter than it was the night before, the elderly amble to the morning market, while the school buses shuttle the children from home to schools dictated by the past.
And as the days pile into years, you’d cook and clean, the children would learn and play, until they, too, are gone, just as you were about to leave this world. Then your children would slowly return to sit in your empty rattan rocking chair, reveling in their childhood peace until their children send theirs back.
The cycle renews itself. That town.
And that town is ever there in the valley, a midwife and a keeper, ever receiving, ever raining.
It is where we came from. It is where we left. It is where we shall return.
I’d love to hear from you: what place holds your memories, your leaving, and possibly your return?
And if you enjoyed this kind of immersive personal essay that explores the intersection of memory and how it shapes our present, consider—
“Chinese” schools typically refer to vernacular schools with Chinese-medium instruction, while “British” refers to national schools influenced by colonial education and English-language use—labels casually inherited over time.
As you know, Penang is not just my hometown, it's my heart-town. It's the place my ancestors settled over a century (or more) ago. But Taiping, seriously, I really want to visit it if fate allows me. So far, three times, and I've not succeeded. I've spun a romantic tale where, in my past life, I've somehow offended the gods of Taiping haha.
Anyway, a colleague told me that there's this really famous Yong Tau Foo store in Taiping town that I need to try, so maybe my fourth attempt is the charm?
Twas beautiful writing, Rachel. I felt that i was walking around the main road where Slang Malam and Panorama hotel sits. (Well, not exactly, but somewhat there).
Was the old aunty selling wantan noodles along the KFC row already there?
Was it after 3 or before 3pm where the first raindrop counts? Haha.
Not to mention that food court where char kuey teow #46 is washed down with leng chee kang or ang tau kar. Brilliant.
There is beauty in life when we finally recognise that there isn't a separate one from the self.