History
A family of Chinese traders who were trading between China and the Malay Peninsula established Kuala Terengganu as early as the 15th century. Soon after it was founded, the town grew into an important trading post between the two countries. However, after the Malacca Empire conquered the town, its influence as a leading port in the Southeast Asian region diminished as most of the traders preferred to stop at Melaka, which was the center of trade between China, India and Southeast Asia.
The oldest streets was called Kampung Cina (Chinatown), a settlement where buildings are hundreds of years old. After these very old buildings were threatened with demolition by the city the district was listed in the 1998 World Monuments Watch by the World Monuments Fund (WMF). The site was listed again in 2000 and 2002. In 1998, with funding from American Express, WMF helped Badan Warisan Malaysia (Heritage of Malaysia Trust) to develop a plan to improve the current shop structures. The organization prepared a conservation outline for a pilot project on No. 51/53 Jalan Bandar, and created a video to encourage the local community and others to take part in the preservation effort.
Read more about this topic: Kuala Terengganu
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“What you don’t understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is possible not to know if God exists or why He should, and yet to believe that man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history as we know it now began with Christ, it was founded by Him on the Gospels.”
—Boris Pasternak (1890–1960)
“The history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist a rope of sand.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)