Chew Jetty

This guide to Chew Jetty in Penang Island opens in 2006, when bulldozers flattened two nearby wooden jetties in days and the Chew clan watched, wondering if theirs was next. It goes back more than a hundred fifty years to the immigrants from Tong'an, near Xiamen, who built out over the harbor water because they couldn't afford land onshore. You'll hear how the same plank walkway that still runs the jetty's length once helped residents through the Japanese occupation of the 1940s, when fishing was tightly restricted. Look for the hand-lettered signs on a few doors as you walk the boards.