21/09/2025
https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2025/09/21/a-familys-legacy-built-to-last---bricks-and-all
IPOH: For 110 years, a pre-war shophouse along Jalan Bandar Timah (Leech Street) here has stood as a silent witness to Ipoh’s changing fortunes, beginning life as a humble shop selling weighing scales before being reborn as a boutique heritage hotel.
The “Ban Loong” building’s story is also the story of the Loh family, whose five generations have lived, worked and preserved it.
It was in the 1926 that the family patriarch, then just 23 years old, bought the property for RM7,000 after apprenticing at a weighing scale shop.
However the building was restored in 2017.
Hotel owner Loh Ban Ho said his great-grandfather first arrived in Malaya from Canton between 1880 and 1890, during a time when many Hakkas left China to escape poverty and hardship.
“He survived a month-long voyage and landed in Malaya with nothing, working first at a gambling den before starting a family in Sungai Siput,” said Loh, the fourth generation owner in an interview yesterday. (Sept 18)
However Loh said it was his grandfather who laid the foundation of the family’s legacy when, at just 23, he bought the shop for RM7,000 selling weighing scales,and later expanded it into a hardware shop.
“The business thrived during the post-World War II rebuilding period, when zinc sheets and construction supplies were in high demand.
“Back then, the shop sold hundreds of zinc sheets daily for roofing as people rebuilt their homes.
“It was just not a business, but it was also a community hub where workers were fed and housed upstairs, and even new arrivals from China could stay temporarily until they found work,” he added.
Loh said the hardware store remained a fixture in Ipoh for decades, expanding into the neighbouring lot, until the rise of wholesale giants made it difficult to compete.
He said by around 2010, the shutters finally came down, but his father the late Loh Yoon Khoon, an experienced contractor refused to let the building’s legacy fade.
“Rather than allow the building to fall into ruin, we launched a painstaking three-year restoration that cost about RM1mil.
“Completed in 2017, it turned the shophouse into a nine-room boutique hotel while preserving its original bricks, timber beams and facade.
“We built a new structure within the old shell, what is known as a ‘shop within a shop’, where the century-old walls are supported and the building can last another hundred years,” he added.
Loh explained that his father was the one who had the courage and skill to take on the challenge.
The hotel has since drawn guests from around the world
In conjunction with Malaysia Day this year, Loh and his children repainted the original gold-lettered “Ban Loong” signage on the building’s columns, reviving a piece of its past that had long been covered up.
“This building is more than just bricks and mortar, it carried my family through five generations, and my grandfather’s wish was for it to remain in the family.
“With this restoration, we hope it will stand for another 100 years for many more Loh generations to come,” he said.
