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Ipoh History, Malaysia

A historic overview of Ipoh, Malaysia

Ipoh, the third largest city of Malaysia owes its name from ‘pokok ipoh’, which is the name of a local tree, whose toxic sap was also once utilized by pre-Malay aboriginal people for the hunting darts. It is even popular with other names like ‘Pa-loh’ or ‘San Seng’ by Cantonese and ‘Iwoh’ by Fuzhous. The local oral and archaeological evidence indicates that this region was even under the sway of Hindu-Malay Empire of Gangga Negara, which ultimately collapsed around the 11th century.

A few kilometers away from the Tapah, Ipoh developed as a rich area on the trade of tin and the grimy Sungei Kinta contributes in cutting the Ipoh centre into two equals. Some of the colonial streets names have also been changed in order to owe some favors to the Islamic.

Ipoh was properly established in the later years of the 1800s. Founded on the Kinta River banks by the Sumatran chief, styled as Dato' Panglima Kinta, Ipoh is also a home to a large number of miners who made their fortunes in the period of heydays tin. The British mining company’s establishments created the golden financial age in the 29th century as the large monetary institutions like Australia, China Ltd and The Chartered Bank of India set up the shop. The mined tin flow then saw the coming if a large number of people from China that swelled the population in a rapid speed in a very few decades. In the time period of 1930s, the local millionaire Yau Tet-Shin grew the Kinta River eastern bank into what we today know as the New Town.

Ipoh’s position as being the state capital can be dated back from the Second World War whilst the Japanese created Ipoh as being the Perak’s administrative center with the use of great colonial building of the St Michael’s Institution as the headquarters. In the 1950s, Ipoh also established a great reputation as being a hedonistic destination for enthusiastic and vibrant nightlife and entertainment with all its proliferation of the theatre halls, nightclubs and cabarets.

With the fall down of the tin rates in 1970s, the city of Ipoh went into a great decline period. A large number of attempts at refreshing the region have also seen the growth of Greentown Business Center, a theme park and Medan Ipoh. The city is also a great shooting place for the local as well as the international films like ‘Anna and the King’ and ‘Indochine’. This excellent Malaysian city is also popular for its lively sovereign music industry that produces a great variety of local well-known bands.

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