Melaka in the 1830s

I used to see a lot of cheerful and refreshing green performed by the waving of the padi leaves when I travelled from one point to another. I have never walk far as a boy nor boarded a bus but being chauffeured in a Morris Minor, a Ford Cortina … or better go for a bicycle ride with schoolmates from Malacca High School. Malacca High School is a school opened in 1826 as the Malacca Free School.

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In the early 1830s land within the present busy Melaka town came under cultivation for padi, coconuts, sago, poultry, cattle, vegetables, and fruit, where much of which was exported to Singapore.

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I still remember seeing a man plucking the coconuts in front of my house and a woman harvesting kalian in Bukit Piatu. Rice fields here and there, in Bukit Serindit near the present Tun Fatimah Stadium, in Bacang near to the present Tesco and Aeon Bandaraya, … and +Orang Melaka  has to buy 1/3 of of her consumption from other States.

Once I asked a descendent of a rich Peranakan family, “How the Peranakan become so rich?” He told me his great-grandfathers planted tapioca. What he said is true, because in history, tapioca industry was thriving by the late 1860s.

Those were the days when the Baba make money when the British ruled Melaka from 1795 to 1957.

If not for tapioca, fruits and coconuts which helped Melaka commercially, in 1859, disease brought about by flood in the wet season turned Melaka into a condition of utter ruination.

Like how Singapore has modernized the present seafront of old Melaka (the Harbour City, the Dataran Pahlawan…) Singapore acted as a stimulus for Melaka in the past. The Gen-Y may not know that once tin and gold was mined in several places in Melaka and later the miners drifted to richer mines.

Melaka provided the finance, labour and sales outlet to districts of Sungai Ujung, Lukut and the Klang valley when the British ruled. Because British let trade to private enterprise, businessmen like Chee Yam Chuan, Chan Tek Chiang and See Boon Tiong were involved in the mines in those areas.

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The Chinese began to take over the Dutch houses that still stand today along the Heeren Street of Jalan Tun Tan Cheng Lock. The street was also called the millionaires row and the Park Lane of Melaka. A street parallel to Jonker Walk, the street was fully and thickly covered with burst red pieces of paper from the firecrackers that was roaring continuously over the days during the Chinese New Year.

Have you visited the Baba-Nyonya Museum?