Gurney Drive is not the place it once was. No longer do the locals swim in the water nor do the women gather an evening fare of prawn and fish in their shawls. Gone is the beach which, at night, was sparsely illuminated by the dim glow of humble fires sending trails of scented smoke into the air. Neither is there space nor silence. Long absent is the peaceful colonial neighbourhood in which influential families spent lazy afternoons in mansions housing a brood of children.

Penang today has no time to consider its past and is a place that seemingly aches to overtake its future self. Hotels, malls and condominiums are the new flora; Mercedes, BMWs, and Ferraris the new fauna. Sounds and sights have certainly changed. The ancient stars have all but given up competing with their artificial relatives as neon signs punctuate the night air.

Gurney Drive has become cosmopolitan, and this stretch has been developed with a determined sense of progress. Posh hotels and soaring condos dominate as the places to stay and live on this “new esplanade,” taking pride in the services available and the luxury offered, but for those pursuing a more authentically local experience, the stretch is also lined with that ultimate in Malaysian character – hawker stalls.

While providing predominantly mamak and Hokkien fare, the street vendors have a huge array of cuisine bustling under the rhythmic beat of metal slaps and stamps as food seamlessly swirls amongst heat and steam. Under the lighted ambiance of their towering cousins, the hawker stall centres sit as makeshift shelters under tin roofs, billowing smoke into the night air.

What else is there? Gurney Plaza? Well… a nice, big shopping mall filled with designer outlets catering for all the consumers in Penang. Of course, it’s decked out with every possible fashion imagination and, of course, the red and white of “sales” signs erupt all year round.

Perhaps the more important question is not what there is but, rather, why it is there? There is hardly anything left of what Gurney Drive used to be apart from the Loke Mansion, which stands as a resolute salute to the bullied past.

Like many places in the world (Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore, or Jakarta for example), Gurney Drive in Penang is succumbing to “blind” modernism; an unnatural need to compete with global progress causing people to forget that the authentic culture, architecture, and heritage of a place holds more value than something created elsewhere. This could be attributed to the fact that every human being suffers from the self-deprecating view that the grass is always greener and therefore strives for something other than what they are used to. I am a prime example, a Westerner living in Asia.

This realisation is particularly acute with regards to Penang. Considering that George Town only gained its UNESCO Heritage status in July 2008, it is alarming to learn that it is already under pressure to keep it. With all the development sprouting from its sandy beaches, Penang’s commercial sector is seriously contributing to George Town’s seclusion to the UNESCO “watch list,” and continued brazen construction will be considered further dilution to the heritage UNESCO is trying to maintain. This is before you consider the consequence of erasing the identity of Malaysia’s Pearl of the Orient.

Gurney Drive is sitting as a halfway house in Penang and a confused mix of two sides of a coin. Whilst trying to make a presence as a swanky address on the island and in Malaysia, it still retains the local hawkers, albeit off the promenade. The local fare is too good to get rid of, feeding locals and tourists alike from dawn till dusk, diminishing the concrete monoliths behind into insignificance.

What Gurney Drive is destined to become, nobody knows. Maybe this sort of development will be forced to look in on itself and consider whether losing its UNESCO listing is worth the cost and prestige of luxury style and living. Maybe the idea of Gurney as it was will die a heroic, assassinated death much like its namesake, Sir Henry Gurney, and put up a fight till the last. Let us hope it is not the latter, as the last it shall truly be.

This article was written by James Springer for The Expat magazine.
Source: The Expat July 2012
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