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Chinese Peranakan: A Culture More Than The Sum Of Its Parts [3 Reports]
International Herald Tribune
April 24, 2008
A culture more than the sum of its parts
By Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop
SINGAPORE -- Over the centuries, Chinese migrants have spread around
the world, often creating enclaves within large cities, Chinatowns
where their culture, including religious practices, culinary skills
and artistic tastes, would remain intact. But in peninsular Malaysia,
Chinese migrants integrated so well with the locals, appropriating
certain cultural traits and
assimilating these into their own culture, that they created a new
culture with its own identity: the Straits Chinese Peranakan.
Chinese merchants first settled in Malacca in the 15th century,
and by the 19th century they were playing a pivotal role as intermediaries
with the Portuguese, Dutch and then British colonial traders. As
the Chinese merchants started to integrate with the local population,
they started fusing their Chinese heritage with the local Malay
influences, developing a distinctive hybrid culture.
''The Peranakans were very open-minded toward other cultures, and
they took the best from everywhere,'' said Kenson Kwok, director
of the Asian Civilization Museum and the Peranakan Museum in Singapore.
''They were able to operate in a multicultural world, something
we all need to be able to do today. We all need to speak
different languages and operate in different cultures, and that's
something the Peranakans were doing back in the 19th
century.''
The small Peranakan Museum, which reopens on Saturday after two
years of renovations, explores this unique culture, presenting artifacts
like porcelain, jewelry and textiles from the former British Straits
Settlements of Malacca, Penang and Singapore, as well as displays
that detail the Peranakans' way of life, including their elaborate
wedding ceremonies, religious practices and funeral rites, some
of which continue to this day.
As intermediaries between the British and mainland Chinese traders,
many amassed large fortunes, which they used to spend lavishly on
their homes, commissioning, for example, colorful porcelains from
Shanghai, known as Nonyaware, and elaborate gold and silver jewelry.
The Peranakan culture was very colorful and elaborate, and Nonyaware
is a great example of that taste, says Randall Ee, a curator at
the Peranakan Museum.
While Chinese utensils tended to be plainly decorated and painted
in pale washes of enamels, Nonyaware is characterized by vivid enameled
tints on a brilliant painted background, and they were decorated
primarily with flowers, peonies in particular, and phoenixes. ''The
Chinese wanted to appreciate the whiteness on their porcelains because
it tells you of the quality of the firing, but the Peranakans appreciated
the color and the form - not so much the porcelain - so their porcelain
is completely covered with color,'' Ee said.
Pola Antebi, who heads Christie's Chinese Ceramics and Works of
Art Department in Hong Kong, notes that the Peranakan patterns would
have been considered too busy to be used as table settings for the
mainland Chinese market. ''The table settings incorporated some
Western-shaped vessels as well, such as cups with handles, as the
Peranakan adopted drinking tea in English teacups,'' she said.
Some of the rare porcelains on display at the museum include large
kamcheng jars (covered food containers) topped with a finial in
the shape of a qilin (a Chinese mythical animal) and decorated with
unusual café au lait or coral red colors.
Another distinctive expression of Peranakan aesthetics can be found
in their beadwork and embroidery, which was often produced by the
Nonyas (the Peranakan women). The eligibility of a young Nonya in
well-to-do families could hinge on the quality of her needlework,
and she had to produce a complete trousseau, painstakingly using
thousands of tiny glass beads, often imported from Europe.
The museum displays needlework examples of beaded slippers, a densely
beaded daun nipah case (which would have contained palm leaves used
to make hand-rolled cigarettes), as well as embroidered kebayas,
the traditional long-sleeved, tight-fitting blouses that first appeared
in the nonyas' wardrobe in the 1920s and that today remains very
much in fashion in the region.
Four galleries are devoted to the story of the traditional 12-day
Peranakan wedding where significant ceremonies like the
lap chai, (exchange of gifts) and chiu thau (coming of age, which
was the most important rite) are presented.
''While the actual wedding took place on the first day, the ceremonies
stretched over 12 days until the bride left her
parents' house and moved in with her in-laws,'' Ee said.
The recreated wedding chamber displays an ornately carved Ranjan
Kahwain (wedding bed) decorated with beadwork and embroidery featuring
motifs such as birds, rats and crabs, (seen as fertility symbols
by the Chinese.) ''A young child, preferably a boy, would roll three
times across the bed three or four days before the wedding,'' Ee
explained. ''The child would come from a family who has many sons,
to get his male energy.''
Other contextual presentations include a Peranakan dining room
set up for a grand banquet, a religious altar to worship
ancestors, as well as a coffin decorated with a colorful embroidered
cover. ''The coffin is actually not empty, we've put
some wood inside, because our belief is that a coffin cannot be
left empty or it calls for someone,'' said Ee, who is Peranakan.
While the Peranakans absorbed the local culture around them from
very early on, they held on to their religious beliefs from China
strongly and for a long time. The ACM curator David Alan Henkel
notes that by the mid-19th century, many Chinese migrants coming
to the Straits Settlements were surprised to find archaic worshiping
practices that were no longer to be found in China.
Yet as they interacted with the British colonial rulers, the Peranakans
became influenced by Western ideas, and many
converted to Christianity. The museum displays an example of a Bible
written in Baba-Malay (the Peranakan language) as well as a rare
Catholic altar converted from a Chinese piece of furniture that
is decorated with Daoist deities, like the
stellar gods of happiness, wealth and longevity, and auspicious
creatures juxtaposed against a central Catholic devotional image
of the Holy Family.
Kwok says the
curators have strived to present the Peranakan culture not as a
''dusty'' one of days gone by. ''We don't want the museum to be
seen just as a celebration of the past. It is also a record of the
present, and we have tried to look at the taste of the Peranakan
and re-interpret it in a contemporary way,'' Kwok said, pointing
out that the museum also includes a few contemporary paintings by
Peranakan artists.
While the museum exhibit concentrates on the former Straits Settlements,
it does include a few exhibits from Sumatra and
Java. ''In the future we hope to widen that brief and look at other
Peranakan-related communities in southern Thailand and even some
in Myanmar,'' Kwok said. ''The field is wide open for research.''
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New Singapore museum preserves unique Peranakan culture
By Melanie Lee
SINGAPORE, April 25 (Reuters Life!) - In a faded sepia picture,
a young Chinese woman wearing an elaborately embroidered blouse,
sarong and finely beaded slippers, stares out from history.
The snapshot, taken at the turn of the last century, of a Nyonya
or Peranakan woman, is one of the 1,200 artefacts on display in
a new museum in Singapore dedicated to preserving the little-known
Southeast Asian culture.
The descendants of Chinese migrants, Peranakans, whose name means
"local born" in Malay, came to the Malay peninsula from
the fourteenth century onwards.
Marrying local women, they settled down and formed a hybrid culture
that mixed Chinese, Malay and European influences, and differentiated
themselves from later waves of migrants from China with their unique
language, arts, foods and dress.
While there are no reliable population estimates, as many as 10,000
ethnic Peranakans may live in Singapore, whose new
Peranakan Museum, opening on Saturday, houses the world's biggest
collection of the culture's artefacts."Some of these things,
the quality is so exquisite," Kenson Kwok, director of the
museum, told Reuters.
"You can't see a comprehensive display of Peranakan material
of this quality anywhere else."
Only two other museums in the world house Peranakan material, both
of which are smaller and more niche in focus, Kwok said.
The partly-government funded S$12 million ($9 million) museum aims
to draw 120,000 visitors in its first year, with Singapore trying
to grow tourism to help offset declining manufacturing.
Among the jewels of the collection is an ornately carved nineteenth
century blackwood chair, inlaid with marble and
painted with flowers, and an elegant 3-foot beaded tablecloth featuring
colourful exotic birds.
Ceramics, textiles and pieces of furniture -- donated or on loan
from Peranakans in Singapore and Malaysia -- are spread through
10 galleries.
Interactive displays show an elaborate 12-day wedding and a Peranakan
funeral, complete with women wailing in the background.
NYONYAS AND BABAS
The new museum joins something of a small Peranakan renaissance
in the city state.
While Peranakans are no longer as distinct a community in Singapore
as in the past, the country saw its first
comprehensive dictionary of the Peranakan dialect "Baba Malay"
published in 2006. A baba is a Peranakan man.
Peranakan food has also made it to the mainstream, said Linda Chee,
editor of Singapore's Peranakan magazine.
Popiah (fresh spring rolls), the curries sold at Chinese food stalls,
chap chye (mixed vegetables in bean sauce) and pineapple tarts all
have Peranakan roots, she said.
Half a dozen Peranakan restaurants sell traditional dishes such
as fishcakes, chicken with black nuts, glutinous rice dumplings
and chili-based sambals.
Others see echoes of Peranakan women's fine silver belts in the
-- plasticated -- silver belts worn by the city-state's teenage
girls, and in the flower-patterned uniform worn by the national
airline's 'Singapore Girl' stewardesses.
Bright yellow, green and pink Peranakan-style porcelain tea cups
and plates also make popular souvenirs with tourists.
But hanging onto heritage can be a challenge in modern, multicultural
Singapore, Chee said.
"Not many in my generation and even fewer of those in their
20s and 30s can speak the Peranakan patois which gives us that sense
of familiarity within the community," she said.
"Hopefully, the growing pride in being Peranakan can help
to reverse the situation."
Just because modern Peranakans do not often wear traditional outfits
or observe traditional rituals does not mean the culture is dead,
said museum director Kwok.
"Important aspects of the culture are still alive in Peranakan
families," he said.
"I won't say it's dying, but some of the archaic and elaborate
ceremonies are not practical and people don't have the time to do
those anymore."
(Additional reporting by Kevin Lim; Editing by Neil Chatterjee
and Gillian Murdoch)
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Factbox-Five facts about
Asia's unique Peranakans
April 25 (Reuters Life!) - Crammed with beaded slippers, bright
porcelains and marble-inlaid furniture, Singapore's Peranakan Museum
opens on Saturday to showcase the colourful but little-known hybrid
Asian culture. Here are five facts about the Peranakans and their
culture.
* Peranakans come from different parts of Malaysia, such as Penang
and Malacca, as well as coastal areas of Indonesia's Java and Sumatra
islands.
* Many Peranakans have since migrated to different parts of Southeast
Asia, including Singapore. Female Peranakans are
called 'nyonyas' and the men 'babas'.
* A matriarchal society, the head of a Peranakan household is usually
the grandmother. Babas were the breadwinners of the family.
* Peranakans were bilingual, speaking English as well as their
dialect of Baba Malay, and embraced influences from various religions
including Buddhism, Taoism, ancestral worship and Christianity.
* In the nineteenth century Peranakans sent their children to convent
schools instead of Chinese schools to learn English,
unlike most children of that time. As a result, Peranakan culture
absorbed European influences and some converted to
Christianity.
(Writing by Melanie Lee; Editing by Gillian Murdoch)
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