The Mandailings in Peninsular Malaysia

Preserving Papan Town
The Star

The sleepy town of Papan seems nothing more than two rows of dilapidated shophouses along a dusty road. A walk down the road reveals how deserted the town is. Many of the shophouses are unoccupied and several have ceased in due to neglect and exposure to the elements.

Sounds of a Chinese television serial blare from a half-opened sundry shop while a few locals sit under the shadesof a ranshackled shed, watching visitors fiddle with camera. Istana Raja Bilah, home of the Mandailing noblemen who is also Papan’s first district officer, sits in a corner of the town.

Once a meeting site for Malay dignitaries, British officials and the Mandailing, this huge mansion today stands empty and lonely next to a rotting timber mosque.

Whatever glory Perak’s oldest tin-mining town used to boast of seems a relic of the past. The last time Papan got into the headlines was when the locals protested against Asian Rare Earh’s Toxic Dump in 1984.

A decendant of Raja Bilah is however, determined to preserved the memory of Papan and promote its historic value.

Abdur-Razzaq Lubis and his wife Khoo Salma are creating awarness on the need to rebuild and preserve old towns, beginning with Papan.

"Small towns like Papan have a rich history and unique character and should be revived to attract more inhabitants and create communities," says Salma.

This is a form of urban regeneration, where urbanities are encouraged to move to rejuvenated old towns to take pressure off cities, she explains.

Kuala Kubu Baru in Selangor is one example of an old town which is one example of an old town which staring a new life a a retreat for Kuala Lumpur fold, says Salma.

"Old towns can be reived by bringing in new activities such a agriculture or cottage industry." Located 16km from Ipoh, Papan’s history goes back some 140 years when it was famous as a timber outpost (papan in Malay for ‘sawn timber’).

Papan became a thriving mining town when Raja Bilah, who was appointed by the British as District Officer and tax collector for the tin-rich Belanja district, move there in the year 1877.

He turned papan into the administrative centre for Kinta Valley’s tin-mining activities and in its heyday, the town had a population of 38,000, many of whom were Chinese tin miners.

"In Papan, there was close cooperation between the Mandailings and Chinese as Raja Bilah was accepted as the town’s head not only by this subjects but also the tin miners," Says Abdur Razzaq Lubis.

A standing testimony of this relationship is the Muslim burial ground and Chinese cemetery which are located side by side on a hill by the town’s entrance.

Papan, or more specifically shophouses No. 74 returned to the limelight during the Japanese Occupation.

It was here where Heroin Sbil Karthgesu and her docor husband aided guerillas fighting the Japanese.

In 1977, about 60 households were relocated to kampong Papan Baru, along the Ipoh-Pusing road outside the town. Papan declined into a sleepy hollow. More recently in 1989, a mining company, when discovering that the town sits on rich tin deposits, bought up all the land around Papan with plans to relocate the town and convert the land for mining.

There has been much debate about papan’s fate, and in late 1991, the Museum and State Religious Departments stepped in to lay claim on the town’s historical sites, namely istana Raja Bilah, the mosque and its cemetary.

Since then, there have been numerous calls from the public to preserve papan as a historical site and turn istana Raja Bilah into a tin museum.

According to 1992 news reports, the Museum Deparment indicated that it had plans to restore the historical sites. So far, talk has been just that, talk. Papan is still the proerbial ghost town with a population of about 1,000.It remains to be seen whether Raja Bilah’s decendants succeed in rescuing this town from extinction.

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