Lim Jetty

Lim in the name is the Hokkien pronunciation of the Chinese surname Lin. Families with this surname came from the village of Houcunzhuang in southern Fujian. In George Town, Lim men earned their living in port transport: in small sampans, they picked up passengers from large ships and took them ashore, and carried cargo. That is why the houses were built right by the water, and a shared wooden walkway connected the homes to the place where people boarded boats.

Lim Chin Eng grew up here in a boatman's family. His father carried people between seagoing vessels and the shore, and at fifteen or sixteen, the son himself took up the oars. The boatmen of Lim Jetty had a queue: each waited for the next passenger to come to him. For the family, this was daily income, and the teenager began earning money on the same water above which his home stood.

Chin Eng could not swim then. He fell from the jetty into the sea twice, and only after the second fall decided to learn. This detail shows the cost of the trade well: a home over water did not yet make a person a swimmer, while earning a living still required going out every day in a sampan to the large vessels.

In the eighties and nineties, Lim residents were already going out to Japanese fishing vessels for passengers. Chin Eng learned Japanese, hired on as a watchman aboard a vessel, accompanied sailors around the city, and helped them exchange money. So the boatman also became an interpreter and guide when the former transport work was no longer enough.

Later, Chin Eng represented Lim Jetty in preparing George Town's nomination for the World Heritage List. He retold to UNESCO experts a story he had heard from his father. After the city was inscribed on the list in two thousand eight, new construction at the jetty was restricted.

The shared walkway between the Lim homes remains, and families still live behind the doors. The sampans and cargo tongkangs on which father and son worked are no longer at this jetty.