Taiping

Taiping owes its existence to tin. Deposits found in the Larut valley in the 1840s drew thousands of Chinese miners, organised into rival associations — the Ghee Hin and the Hai San — whose competition for water, land and labour broke into open fighting in a series of conflicts known as the Larut Wars between 1861 and 1874. The disorder, and the interests of Straits merchants, helped push the British into the Pangkor Treaty of 1874, which installed a Resident at the Perak court. When peace was imposed, the settlement was renamed Taiping, from the Chinese for 'everlasting peace'.

As the capital of the new administration it was built up quickly and collected a long list of firsts in British Malaya: the country's first railway line ran from here to Port Weld, now Kuala Sepetang, in 1885; the Perak Museum opened in 1883; the Lake Gardens were laid out on worked-out mining ground in 1880; and the hill station on Maxwell Hill, now Bukit Larut, the prison, the church and the garrison followed. The rain-tree avenues and civic buildings of that period still define the town.

Ipoh's rise with the richer Kinta Valley fields shifted power south, and the state capital moved there in 1937. Japanese forces occupied the town during the Second World War, and the war cemetery dates from its aftermath. Tin declined and finally collapsed in the 1980s, but Taiping, unlike some mining towns, was left with its gardens, institutions and shophouse streets largely intact, and has traded on that quiet inheritance since.

Taiping is a small, mixed town where Chinese, Malay and Indian communities have lived side by side since the mining era, and its identity is bound up in being older and gentler than the cities around it. The Chinese population, the largest of the three, keeps clan associations and temples in the old streets; the Malay neighbourhoods centre on their mosques; and the Indian community, descended largely from estate and railway workers, holds the Thaipusam procession each year.

The Lake Gardens are the town's social heart as much as a park. People walk, run and cycle there at first light and again in the cooler evening, families picnic under the rain trees at weekends, and the trees themselves — enormous, leaning out over the road — have become the town's emblem and are photographed endlessly.

Local pride attaches to the long list of colonial firsts, and to a reputation for being unhurried and well mannered. Heritage walking trails, restored shophouses and small museums have grown since the 2000s, and Taiping markets itself on history and greenery rather than nightlife. Everyday customs are conservative: modest dress, shoes left at doorways, and courtesy towards elders, particularly in the villages outside the centre.

About 245,000 people live in the Taiping municipal area, making it the second largest urban area in Perak after Ipoh, with a much smaller number in the old town itself and the rest in Kamunting and the surrounding suburbs and villages. It is a working provincial town rather than a resort: schools, government offices, the hospital and the prison are significant employers, alongside light industry at Kamunting, rubber and oil-palm estates, fishing and charcoal production on the coast, and a steady trade in domestic tourism.

The old centre keeps its rhythm of early mornings and short afternoons. The market and the coffee shops open before dawn, the middle of the day is hot and slow, and the gardens fill again after four. Weekends bring visitors from Penang and Ipoh, and the town is quietest midweek. Rain interrupts everything regularly enough that people plan around it.

The long-standing concerns are familiar ones for a town of this size: young people leaving for Kuala Lumpur, Penang and Singapore, the cost of maintaining ageing shophouses, flooding after heavy storms, and how to benefit from heritage tourism without losing the ordinary trades that give the streets their character.

Taiping's cooking is Perak Chinese with strong Malay and Indian additions, and it is eaten in coffee shops and hawker centres rather than restaurants. Popiah — soft wheat wrappers rolled around stewed turnip, beansprouts, egg and crushed peanuts — is the snack most associated with the town. Char kway teow, Hokkien mee, curry mee and chee cheong fun are the standard hawker orders, and the Cantonese influence shows in roast meats, wonton noodles and claypot rice.

The coast supplies the rest. Kuala Sepetang, a short drive west, lands crab, prawns and mangrove fish that are cooked in stilt restaurants over the water, and the village is known for its charcoal, made from mangrove wood in brick kilns, and for mee udang, a noodle soup heavy with prawns. Salted and dried fish from the same coast reach the town market daily.

Sweets and drinks belong to the heat. Cendol and ice kacang, shaved ice with palm sugar, coconut milk, beans and syrups, are sold in the market streets; kopi is brewed dark and drunk with condensed milk; and the Ipoh style of white coffee is common here too. Local fruit — durian, rambutan, mangosteen and duku — appears from the orchards around the town in the mid-year season.