From the Coast of Southern China, to the Southeast Asia: This is Ruko (Shophouse)
and the brief appearance of kaki lima.
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When I was a kid, I always had this cocoklogi in mind. The word pedagang kaki lima (lit. five feet sellers), is rooted from the three wheels of the cart, plus two feets of the seller, I know it doesn’t make sense. Blame it all to Little Aurelia. The origin of the world kaki lima is so close with the development of shophouses in Southeast Asia, especially in Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
If you are wondering, “why so?”, stay tuned on this channel.
Ruko (rumah toko) or shophouse is an inseparable part of areas with a considerable amount of overseas Chinese settlers. This type of building was brought by Chinese immigrants from Southern China, especially from Quanzhou and Guangzhou.
Citing from Georgetown World Heritage Site, a typical shophouses characteristics are as follows; 1) facing street, 2) built in a row, 3) contains a single party wall separating shophouses on either side, 4) low rise, 2–3 storey, 5) narrow and long, sectioned by air-well, 6) multi-functional, combining residential and commercial use, 7) the ground floor typically used for business, 8) proprietors on the upper floor.
The earliest Chinese shophouses appeared in China under the Song Dynasty (960–1279), which was marked by commercial expansion and flourishing maritime trade, as the consequences of the new commercial pattern. Note the maritime trade here, since the prototype of Southeast Asian shophouses mainly came from the coastal areas in Southern China, the vital player in the pre-modern maritime trade.
The shophouse in South China and were often located along major trade routes. Sometimes the shophouses were built directly out over water routes, which enabled junks to offload their cargo directly into the shops themselves.
Etymologically, the term ‘shophouse’ is based on a literal translation of Chinese colloquial term, where the equivalent in the Hokkien dialect is tiam chu, siong tim and poh tao in Cantonese, and dian wu or shang dian in Mandarin.
Shophouse is a very efficient and effective choice for both Chinese immigrants, they were built for sale or rented to new immigrants seeking their fortune, and the colonial government who use this model as a part of their urban planning. Shophouse was a popular urban fabric because of the socio-economic advantages, then it became the characteristic of the urban architecture of towns in Asia from the 18th to 20th century.
The city Quanzhou served as the ancestral home of nearly 6 million overseas Chinese people in Southeast Asian countries, according to the Quanzhou Municipal Bureau of Statistics in 2016. In 1990, 53.9 percent of Quanzhou’s entire population was either coming-back overseas Chinese or relatives of overseas Chinese, many of whom were driven back by anti-Chinese violence in Malaysia and Indonesia.
Because of the economic incentives through trade, the commercial nature of the shophouse caused it to become the primary housing type introduced in Malaysia by the Chinese immigrants.
The prototype of shophouses in Southeast Asia was brought over by the immigrants from south China, mainly Quanzhou, was an important China’s major port, once known as Zaiton or the City of Olives in Arabic (زيتون). These prototypes were brought over by the immigrants and absorbed local and European details, that is largely visible in the façades.
Teng-a-kha (亭仔跤) is how this European and Chinese hybrid type of building is referred to in Hokkien, and tong lau (騎樓) in Cantonese. It has become an important style in Minnan or Hokkien architecture as this type of building was also brought to Taiwan by Hokkien immigrants, which is why this shophouse is almost everywhere in Taiwan.
This is how the roof of shophouses in Indonesia looked like in the past. They have a very typical Minnan architecture feature, which is the swallowtail roof ( 燕尾脊), where the roof has an upward-curving ridge shaped like the tail of a swallow. This feature emerged during the Ming Dynasty in the 16th century where Fujian people wanted to show off their newfound wealth as a nouveau riche when the business flourished with the foreigners. Again, all thanks to maritime trade.
When the British took over the colony from the Dutch, In Batavia, the Governor General Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles ordered the construction of sidewalks along the main streets of Batavia of a certain height and width: 1 foot (33.5 centimeters) by about 5 feet.
This plan continued when in 1819, Raffles founded Singapore, Raffles included this and other details in his Town Plan of 1822. Citing from the man himself;
“… a still further accommodation will be afforded to the public by requiring that each house should have a verandah of certain depth, open at all times as a continued and covered passage on each side of the street.”
These sidewalks were incorporated to shophouse architecture and became a defining feature of the shophouse, it is interconnected at the front of every building to provide shade from the tropical sun and shelter during the monsoons. Well, little did he know that this particular sidewalk would become a place for trade and commerce in the future.
So, the term five-foot-way is a colloquial expression from Anglo-Asian origin, also known as gho kha ki (lit. kaki lima) in the Hokkien dialect, was initially refer to the sidewalks, but now, it seems like the term is used to refer sidewalk hawker sellers. We’re not complaining though (except Satpol PP).
The five-foot walkways were meant to protect pedestrians from the hot tropical sun as well as rain. But, with the influx of immigrants, work became increasingly difficult to find, and people began using these corridors to set up small businesses instead. It’s cheap and has flexible working hours. They operated wherever space was available and could shift easily to other places.
This kaki lima is more than just a corridor to trade, it grew to become hubs for social and cultural activities. It brings you closer as a neighbour in the shophouses row, and of course you can use it as an additional storage or retail display space.
Shophouses are still developing, even today, in the hot and bustling city of Jakarta, Tangerang, and other areas. In fact, it is still high in demand. It is not a rare sight to see new shophouse rows in areas like Pantai Indah Kapuk, Gading Serpong, Alam Sutra, and other commercial areas, although they only retain the structure, not the original idea of shophouse in the first place, they are mainly used only as a shop now. No one really lived in the second floor of ruko anymore.
References
Dutch Public Buildings in Melaka; Façade Typology Analysis, Melaka International Heritage Conference 2012 (Weebers, R. C)
Documentation and Conservation Guidelines of Melaka Heritage Shophouses (Baroldin, N. M)
Georgetown World Heritage Site Inc. (n.d.). Penang Shophouse : An Online Guide.
The Shophouse Rafflesia, The Malaysia Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 2014 (Jon S. H. Lim)
Chinese houses of Southeast Asia: the eclectic architecture of sojourners and settlers 2010 (Ronald G. Knapp)
Five-foot-way traders. Singapore: Archives and Oral History Department, p. 9. (Call no.: RSING 779.9658870095957 FIV)
A Morphological Study of Traditional Shophouse in China and Southeast Asia 2015 (Wang Han)
