The Star Online: Metro: Central
The Star Online: Metro: Central |
| Pre-war coffee shop moving out Posted: FOR about 75 years, Tong Ah Eating House has stood out in Keong Saik Road for its distinctive red-and-white facade and shape as it sits on a triangular plot of land. But from tomorrow, this old-school coffee shop will head out to a new shophouse, even if it is just a few doors down the same road. The move marks the uprooting of a business the great-grandfather of Tang Chew Fue, 50, started at the spot in 1939, a date embossed on a sign proudly displayed at the top of the three-storey building. Tang blames the upheaval on the sale of the property to a foreign investor, believed to be a hotelier. It is valued at about S$8mil (RM20mil), he said. The coffee shop's owner is a relative of Tang, who rents the place for S$8,000 (RM20,000) a month. He declined to go into the reasons for the sale and neither the relative nor the new owner could be reached for comment. Nicknamed Ah Wee, Tang took over the coffee shop from his father in 1999. Little has changed on the menu as the Foochow family stuck to its winning formula of serving kaya toast in the morning and zi char food at night. He will keep the menu intact in the new place at 35, Keong Saik Road, but he worries about his profit margin as he now pays 50% more in rent. "I feel squeezed. Property prices have gone up as many private investors have bought land here," he said. He also worries that the loss of outdoor seating, for which the coffee shop is known, will hurt his business. "The outdoor seating is important to me. In the new location, the interior is large but my customers will have fewer carpark space," he said. The coffee shop's customers, mainly office workers and residents in the area, were similarly nostalgic. "Eating on the five-foot walkway is a treat that has been around for a long time. It is a special ambience with an old-world charm," sales executive Lee Siew Song said wistfully. The 55-year-old works nearby and eats at the coffee shop twice a week. Tong Ah is the second old-world coffee shop to change hands in just over a month. Last month, 70-year-old Hua Bee coffee shop in Moh Guan Terrace in Tiong Bahru was leased to hotelier and restaurateur Loh Lik Peng, 41. As a result, one of its two stallholders, coffee-seller Tony Tiang, 58, called it a day. — The Straits Times/ Asia News Network |
| Posted: A new kind of tourism seems to be emerging in the shadows of a world riven by conflict. IT was a little over three weeks ago that the early morning silence of a base camp near Nanga Parbat was pierced by gunfire. A number of men clad in the uniform of the Gilgit Scouts opened fire on the camp of mountain climbers. When they stopped, 10 climbers and their local guide lay dead. The climbers originated from China, Russia, Nepal and Ukraine. The killers, it is alleged, were locals. The Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan took responsibility for the attack. The reason for killing the climbers, they said, was in retaliation to the drone strikes inside Pakistan. The attacks were widely condemned in Pakistan and abroad. Local news media focused on the area where the climbers were killed, pointing out how another part of Pakistan known for its scenic beauty was stained with the blood of innocent people. In the international media, the deaths of the climbers received some attention, but unsurprisingly not the prolonged coverage that would have been afforded had the climbers been American or British. On the lopsided scales of international sympathy, the world weeps most for only certain types of victims. In Pakistan, where the tears have long since dried up, here was yet another example of why the terrain of the country, from the icy beauty of the northern mountains to the beaches of the sandy south, belongs to war and warmongers. A few people cried at the death of tourism in Pakistan; most, however, were informed of the passing of recreational travel long ago. For years now, Pakistanis, residents of a country in conflict, have not been able to travel with the same freedom as before. In these dark days of daily catastrophe, many an evocative eulogy has been written in memory of the Swat that was not known for shooting schoolgirls, and now for Nanga Parbat that was known for feats of human endurance and courage. At the same time, while tourists of a certain sort may be driven away by the spectre of danger and the idea of an excursion being ravaged by militant groups, a new kind of tourism seems to be emerging in the shadows of a world riven by conflict. In recent years and months, as protests and clashes have broken out in Egypt and Turkey, droves of "revolution watchers" from Western countries are reported to have headed to Tahrir and now Taksim Square, so that they can claim the badge of bravado that allows them to say they were there. With the tools of social media at their disposal, they have reported effusively the drama of teargas shells being lobbed at crowds, security officials wielding their batons and the infectious fervour of the protesters surrounding them. Here is a drama that differs from the usual tasks of the tourist: the taking in of the local sentiment of discontent and revolt, instead of appreciating ancient or natural sights. If the latter pertains to the exotic and different, the tourism of conflict aims at taking in tempestuous, uncertain danger – the ultimate in thrill-seeking. There are limits, of course, to the extent of danger that war tourists are willing to endure, and Pakistan, which has an excess of danger to offer, is too far off the scale to benefit from this newly developed taste for the perilous. For the tourists of war and revolution, anger and protests are entertaining, so long as they do not impinge in any real way on the possibility of their return to calmer shores. Awarded the dubious title of the most dangerous country in the world, perhaps Pakistan needs to start marketing its unrest, its uncertainty, its dark depravity as a way of attracting those bored of the easy, unexciting stability of existence in the rich world. > The writer is an attorney teaching constitutional law and political philosophy. |
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