KUALA PILAH HISTORY 11
THE ULU MUAR AND PEKAN LAMA STORY
Ulu Muar River and the reinforced old wooden bridge that was a the 1910 railway bridge that now is a secondary road bridge linking KP, and Sawah Lebar to the present KP-Bahau road
Kuala Pilah has undergone significant changes in the past more than a century since its founding in the mid 1800s or so .
There was an old town near to the Ulu Muar River, off Bahau Road above in the days when the upper reaches of the River Muar was the "highway " to the village of Kuala Pilah. Kuala Pilah like most interior villages of Malaya probably depended on a variety of jungle produce like rattan, darmar resin, jungle fruits and perhaps the lucrative aromatic wood catted gahru. That is until tin was discovered in the area. Tin mines started up in what is now the Parit Tinggi area on the left side of the present KP Bahau road. At that time Bahau may have been connected to KP by tracks rather than roads (the road to Bahau via Kepis still exists albeit a very narrow one. Kampungs such as Betis near Parit Tinggi were top mining areas and in the early years tin that was mined by local and Chinese miners was presumably sent by river Muar down stream for export . That is until the late 1800s when the British colonial authorities decided to build a rail link to the Singapore-Bahau rail line for ease of transport of tin and other goods . What seems the more logical link to Seremban was not feasible in the days when railways as a primary means of travel, the Bukit Putus barrier between Seremban and Kuala Pilah was simply too high (and expensive) for a rail crossing to be built. Bahau on the other hand seemed so near, just 24 km (16miles) across flat lands and with only a few bridges to build. What was also a deciding factor in the 1910 April 1st opening of the Bahau- KP rail link was the relatively few motorised vehicles in use in Malaya for transport of goods so vital for the economy. Indeed it is likely that the development of KP preceded that of Seremban as the readily available Ulu Muar river was the first "highway," followed by the railway and only around the 1920s the building of roads to link towns in the state to cater for motorised vehicles. Sesmban on the other hand had no large Muar River available and was a good 30 Km from the sea (Port Dickson) The Rail link faded out in the late twenties and motor vehicle took over as the main mover of goods that could reach remote areas far from rivers and the fixed railway tracks and needed no rolling stock.
Ulu Pliah or Kampong Pekan Lama as it is known now (see recent board pointing to Kampung Pekan Lama) opposite the District Offices, KP
Sign boards near District offices KP point to History
A palatial traditional 3 storey house in Pekan Lama. The old villages is on the left bank of the River Muar upstream and the connection to the main Bahau Road is by a very steep road
The Main KP-Bahau road after the Muar River Bridge has a thriving iron mongers' village that catered to people of the district since the early 1900s or earlier. The rows of attap roofed shops wooden and houses have been replaced by zinc roofed houses sheds and shops but remain to date
The site of the building that Sun Yat Sen
A little known piece of History of KP is the site of what was probably the home of Towkay Tung Yen ( a.k.a.Deng Zeru). a wealthy Tin miner from Canton (Guangdong) who came to make his fortune in the Parit Tinggi Tin mines in the late 1800s . He became a nationalist (Kuomintang) leader from China and a friend of the revolutionary Sun Yat Sen. When (like all revolutionaries) Sun was hunted by the agents of the Emperor he sought refuge at the home of his friend Tung Yen - in a hill top bungalow on the site of this modern recently built palatial bungalow on the right bank of the Ulu Muar River and opposite Ulu Pilah or Pekan Lama . The old bungalow a wooden 2 storey building remained well into the 1970s and was in the emergency years the Estate Bungalow of the English Estate Manager, and later left abandoned . Tung Yen after whom Jalan Tung Yen is still named contributed in so many ways to Kuala Pilah's growth, such as building the Lister Memorial in 1900, starting the first English School in 1908, and helping obtain land for the Chinese cemetery in Parit Tinggi. He was a well known Koumintang leader in Malaya and a fund raiser for the Chinese nationalist cause. He left for Canton in 1920 when Sun Yat Sen invited him to become the warden for mines in Canton. He is reported to have died in 1934 in Canton from a lung infection.
More on Kuala Pilah History to Follow
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