A Memory Of Mums

Today's post is a small Mother's Day tribute to a humble bit of vanity but one utterly redolent with nostalgia. And beauty secrets!

White rice face powder is such a deeply ingrained part of many Southeast Asian peoples' memories of their mothers, that many don't even think of it as a thing on its own. It was the Southeast Asian woman's secret to fighting pimples, lightening her facial skin and retaining its delicate translucence. One of the first things a mother did was to smear rice powder on his or her face. 

Yes, that's right. Boys got the full treatment, too!

If your parents weren't rich, Mum probably bought her bedak sejuk (Malay for 'cold face powder) in small packets or plastic tubes like this. It was called bedak sejuk because it felt cold when applied to your skin.

Some people even made their own. It wasn't really that difficult because all you had to do was soak the uncooked rice grains in water overnight, grind it to a fine paste the next morning and then form it into tiny beads by dripping it from a teaspoon.

Rice face powder was also frequently perfumed with jasmine flowers, too, and that's going to be a completely different post next week.

Of course, if you were well off or there was a special occasion coming round, your mum most likely indulged herself a little and got one of these. It  came in a cake and was so finely ground that it could be applied like the more expensive French face powders of the time. And best of all, it didn't become streaky on Mum's face!

But were the virtues of rice powder just another one of those traditional things that had no scientific basis?

Science has found that rice powder contains para aminobenzoic acid, which is not only a very good sunscreen but also raises Vitamin C levels in our bodies. Rice also contains ferulic acid, which is an antioxidant that when doubles its sun protection ability when added to Vitamins C and E. 

So why did boys have to wear rice face powder, too? Well, rice face powder also contains  allantoin, which is a very good anti-inflammatory and soothes sunburns!

So, Mum was right, after all!  

The Charming Renaissance of Penang's Pop-up Markets!

When Penang was first founded, the earliest markets were little more than a collection of itinerant vendors who displayed their offerings on little more than large leaves or in baskets and rickety wooden stalls for those who could afford it. Then the British built the first proper wet market. It's most likely the one at the corner of Carnavon Street and Campbell Street. The original building is still a lovely place, though seemingly cramped by today's standards.

Those hawkers who didn't manage to get stalls at the many markets built over the years, either simply set up their own stalls all around the fringes of the proper ones - either found alternative venues or created their own. The ever-enterprising Malay, Chinese and Indian hawkers swooped on any open area or unoccupied roadsides along he more popular avenues and set up their own little makeshift stalls. And this is where the pop-up market idea originated.

A little more than thirty years ago, the first state sanctioned night markets appeared on the island. These were called pasar malam or 'night markets' and comprised many hastily set up stalls of various kinds selling all sorts of things. Household goods, cheap  clothes and food seemed to predominate.

 

There are still pasar malam of various kinds all over the isle, the most internationally well-known one being the Batu Feringghi Night Market just a few minutes stroll from the Bayview Beach Resort. It's not properly a pasar malam, many purists argue because of the lack of really cheap household goods like plastic pots, plates, cups, baskets etc. I suspect (ever-thrifty Penangites are famous for wanting everything cheap and good, after all!) but it makes more sense to think of it as an up-market version of an old tradition.

Nowadays, the pop-up day version has a modern and more up-market version,  too. The first to become a regular event was the Little Penang Street Market at upper Penang Road, right behind the Bayview Georgetown Hotel. Held between 10am to 4 pm on the last Sunday of every month, there are stalls selling all sorts of things from potted herbs to hand-carved utensils, paintings, pottery, pre-loved books and crockery as well as local delicacies. There's also a live band as well as dance and handicraft demonstrations.

Another morning up-market pop-up market not too far from the Bayview Georgetown Hotel is the Occupy Beach Street Project which is held from 7am to 1pm every Sunday.. The entire area is turned into a car-free zone for those six hours and divided into four differently unique zones for various forms of stalls and activities.

 

Just around the corner at the other end of Penang Road (turn into Brick Kiln Road), the Hin Bus Depot Art Centre was once an abandoned bus depot but it hosts its own delightfully relaxed Sunday market now. The transformation of the huge semi-open air space began when Lithuanian artist Ernest Zacharevic held his first solo exhibition there. The venue is still available for rent but from 11am to 5pm every Sunday, there's a small and growing pop-up market offering a somewhat more eclectic selection than at other similar venues.

Of course, the biggest difference between day and night markets in Penang isn't in the abundance or lack of sunlight but in the stallholders themselves

. Talk to them and you'll be somewhat surprised to find that those patiently hawking their stuff before sundown might very well be professionals moonlighting as itinerant vendors!

A Little History and A Bit of Romance

A Most Famous Rock

Long ago, when sailors sailing between Europe and the Far East needed water halfway through their voyage, they knew they’d find fresh water, a beautifully restful beach and lots of wild pigs to hunt when they came within sight of a certain rock.

The sea gypsies who lived on the island soon became so used to seeing so many white men around the rock that they even gave the rock a name. They called it Batu Ferringhi or ‘foreigner’s rock’. 

That ‘ferringhi’ is derived from Portuguese gives us a clue to the first Europeans to show up in this part of the world, I think.

Early Penangites

Of course the sea folk were not the only people already living in Penang when the Europeans came. Archaeological evidence suggests that there already people having fun on the island as much as 5,000 years ago. There were also Malays, Minangkabaus, Chinese and Arabs running around long before Edward Lancaster first cast a speculative eye on the place in 1592.

The Founding of Penang

Captain Francis Light. Wasn't he a handsome guy?

The curious thing is that Penang was not founded at Batu Ferringhi where all those sailors kept stopping for water and a bit of R&R just a few minutes' walk from the Bayview Beach Resort. Penang was officially founded over at the northeast tip of the isle instead. By another Englishman, and only after nearly two hundred years after Lancaster first showed up.

The tale of how Captain Francis Light obtained the island of Penang from the Sultan of Kedah is still being argued today. 

Some accounts have it that the Sultan sent a most special envoy - a young and beautiful Eurasian lady named Martinha Rozells - to 'persuade' the lonely young captain to come over from the Indonesian islands and provide protection for the Sultan against his enemies. 

Sounds a bit like a Hollywood movie, doesn't it? It gets better.

As Light was sailing from Kedah, the nearest place for him to drop anchor was not Batu Ferringhi but over where Fort Cornwallis now stands, just a short walk from the Bayview Hotel Georgetown. 

Light has gone down in history as a bit of a conman who reneged on his promise and didn't provide the protection the Sultan wanted. 

There is, of course, some evidence to show that it wasn't entirely his fault because it was all due to a misunderstanding. Light (and the British East India Company) thought he was supposed to defend Kedah from its enemies. The Sultan thought he would do that by attacking them. Neither ever saw eye to eye on the matter but people argue about it, even today.

Still he did his best to make Penang an important part of the British Empire in the Far East and it is due to the efforts of Captain Francis Light and the men who came after him that Penang enjoys such a successful mix of people, traditions and cultures.

One other thing he did, however, was to make an honest woman of Martinha. In a way. There being no Anglican churches around back then, any kind of marriage with the young lady would not have been recognised by his superiors never mind that she lived with him until he died. In his Will which you can see in the Penang museum, he leaves everything he owned on the island to her.

The Seri Rambai Cannon shown here, was cast in 1603  and was actually a gift from the Dutch to the Sultan of Johor. It had a very roundabout route to Penang, going via Portuguese hands to Java, then Acheh and to Kuala Selngor where it was seized by the victorious British. It is the largest cannon at the fort. And because of that, local women sometimes offer flowers, fruit and other sacrifices to Seri Rambai, in the hopes of begetting children.

I hope this little teaser about my home town's earliest days has been interesting to you and that you will come back once in a while to read about other such little known facts.

Welcome to Renaissance Penang

Penang, the Pearl of the Orient, is my much-beloved home town. It has a history that could have come from a Hollywood action movie and a wealth of on-going cultural interchange that comes from the many different races which have made their home on the isle.

On this blog, I hope to post many interesting titbits of information about Penang's people, customs, history, cuisine, traditions and places which tourist brochures and handbooks do not mention, especially since the dear old island seems to be undergoing a bit of a renaissance in many ways nowadays.

I try to be as historically and factually accurate as I can but I do hope you'll forgive me when I write from my own memories of things and events rather than what the history books and official sources say. I hope you'll enjoy reading about all the little things which make up the place where I live.