Xin Ba Lai
新峇来
(Parit Buntar)

Struggling, elbowing, pushing,pulling,squeezing and bulldozing through the crowd of the would be passengers to board a bus from Nibong Tebal to Xin Ba Lai was not an uncommon scene during those days of the sixties. Those would be passengers were mostly the cinema maniacs intending to enjoy a show at a cinema theatre at Xin Ba Lai.

If the enthusiasm and energy of those folk were to be directed at rugby training, Nibong Tebal could have emerged as a world-class rugby team on those days to beat the All Blacks Rugby Team from New Zeeland.

(Please watch this video clip, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4LNjNXt1yM)

Unfortunately I was among ‘those would be rugby players’ of Nibong Tebal mentioned.

For your information, people living around the Krian District usually acknowledge Parit Buntar as Xin Ba Lai[新峇来]. It was formerly named as 'Xin Heng Kang' [新兴港] by the Chinese residents living there. Later on a new Police station was built in Parit Buntar. So, the residents in this region conveniently renamed the place as Xin Ba Lai [ New Police Station, ‘Xin’ literally means ‘New’ in Teochew dialect, ‘Ba Lai’ denotes the Police Station]. As Parit Buntar occupied a strategic position at the northern part of Perak, it was chosen to be the administration centre of the Krian District. The bus terminal of Parit Buntar had become the transit for the neighbouring towns of Nibong Tebal, Tanjong Piandang, Kuala Kurau, Bagan Serai and Taiping.

Two new theatres, the Cathay and the Capitol cinema theatres, were built at a walking distance from the bus station. The theatres were keen competitors for the viewers in the region.

Once in a while either one of the theatres would be screening a prime show on a Chinese opera film. Chinese residents of Nibong Tebal would be flocking to Parit Buntar by public transport to watch the day shows, especially during the weekends. My mother and her friend would bring along their children to join the crowd.

During those years of the sixties, Huangmei[黄梅调]opera films were in the main stream of the Mandarin film industry; they were very popular among the woman folk. I was equally crazy about the shows that I always followed my mother or my sister to watch the shows at the theatres in Parit Buntar. At times we even crossed the River Krian by ferry from Parit Buntar to Bandar Bharu to watch a film show at Li Hwa Theatre. Sometimes, when we had missed a ferry trip, we had to pay extra money to cross the river by boat so that we did not miss any portion of the main show.
The ferry service was provided free for the public. The ferry was pulled by a steel cable on both ends at the river banks. The service was terminated after the tragic accident occurred on September 13, 1972. Twenty seven people were drowned when the ferry capsized. Later on, a concrete bridge was built across the river to replace the ferry service.
Cinema show business was hard hit and came to an abrupt end in the late eighties or the early nineties with the invention of Video Cassette Recorder(VCR) and later the VCD and DVD players. Any viewer could watch any film show at anytime, for any amount of times, at home with his family members at a relatively low cost; the cost of buying a copy of VCD or DVD.

As a result of which, Cathay Theatre at Parit Buntar and Li Hwa Theatre at Bandar Bharu had turned into "birds' houses" rearing swallows to get bird nests for sale while Capitol Theatre had been converted to a food court. The old town of Parit Buntar has lost some of its lustre after the existing bus terminal and the market in the town had been relocated elsewhere. Luckily the development is on the periphery of the town. The emergence of a new township on the south and the fast development of the housing schemes and shop lots on the north near the location of the Engineering Campus of the Science University of Malaysia, still pivot the old town as the centre point of the development of Parit Buntar as a whole.