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Slideshow: Papan (Semi-Ghost Town in Perak)

Papan is a century-old half-deserted mining town built on a rich deposit of tin that was due to be dug up before the price of the metallic ore halved in the 1980s. The town had a slight headstart over Ipoh, but was quickly surpassed by the latter by 1892. Papan means "plank" in Malay and probably refers to its early days in the mid 19th century when the settlement came into being as a timber town. Plank Town was the place where chengal was sawn in the 1840's. The chengal woodcutters were said to be Malays while the people who sawed the timber into planks in Papan Town were Chinese. In Cantonese Papan is "Ka Pan"(甲板), which means "first wood" after the wooden water-wheel(Note: Ka-pan 甲板 in Chinese is actually means deck of a boat or ship; in old days, the deck was made of wooden plank, may be from Chengal wood; another meaning means first class wood, may be Chengal is consider the No 1 hard wood). The Chinese characters and the Cantonese and Hokkien pronouncation of the place name is derived from the Malay.At the time about 200 Malays and 200 Chinese worked there in a lumber settlement. Then immigrant Mandailings from West Sumatra came to Papan after the Klang War, and settled in late 1870s and early 1880s, after their leader, Raja Asal was awarded mining rights to the land and later the penghulu-ship. By the 1880s Papan was an important area for tin mining, with 13 mines in operation. A dam was built by the Mandailings, possibly with the help of the Chinese, to supply hydraulic power to the mines. More Chinese arrived in Papan to work in the mines and the town grew. Due to the abundant alluvial tin, Papan grew rich. In 1886, Raja Bilah (his istana or palace remains abandoned in the town) signed an agreement written in both Jawi and Chinese with one Hew Ng Hap (presumably the same as "Hew Ah Ang") and two others. It is possible that the contract was made during a time when there was a fresh influx of Chinese miners to Papan, and the old miners wished to secure their claim to the water reservoir from contending Chinese miners. The leading Chinese miner of Papan Hew Ah Ang, who was previously doing well with a wooden chain pump, saw the advantages of a steam pump. "Hew Ah Ang came to confer with Raja Bilah, he asked for help to apply to the government to buy an engine, so Raja Bilah presented the matter to the Government. So the government helped to buy the first engine which was used in the Chinese mines in Papan". Raja Bilah's allies, the Kar Yin Hakkas, belonged to the Ghee Hin faction. The Ghee Hin headman was based in Papan while the Hai San headman was based in Gopeng, although the leaders of both settlements were Mandailings. In November 1887, a brothel skirmish in Papan escalated into a secret society riot. In the official report of the Protector of the Chinese, the disturbances in Kinta was said to have started "from quarrels between a brothel bully (belonging to the Hai San Society) and between some Ghee Hin men." According to family tradition, the culling took place in Papan on November 29th, 1887. Some of the Chinese women and children in Papan took refuge with Raja Bilah's wife, Ungku Na'imas, whom people called "the warrior woman". Ungku Na'imas, was an expert shooter brandishing a sporting rifle with an eight-sided cartridge. Streets were laid out by the 1890s and, by the turn of the 20th century, the main street had more than 100 shophouses and public buildings. Morning markets were held at the lower end of town. There was a school, post office and government dispensary. Entertainment was confined to the upper end of town, where there was a Cantonese opera theatre, brothels and opium dens. When the railway line was built from Ipoh to Tronoh in 1908, it even had a stop in Papan. Papan is also noted today for being the home of war-time heroine Sybil Kathigasu, an Eurasian of Irish-Indian extraction, who received the George Medal for Gallantry, the second level civil decoration of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth, in 1948, the only woman in Malaya to receive it. Her house at 74, Jalan Besar is now managed by the Mr Law Siak Hong, the Vice President of the Perak Heritage Society, as a showcase of her life. Over the course of 20 months leading up to their capture in 1943, the facility which was their home and clinic, doubled up as a base for Sybil to aid guerilla fighters resisting the Japanese occupation of Malaya during World War 2. She died in the United Kingdom in 1948, from injuries sustained during her incarceration in the Batu Gajah prison where she was tortured by the Japanese for refusing to give up information on those she helped. https://www.nst.com.my/news/nation/20... http://teochiewkia.blogspot.com/2010/...