installed a carved and gilded pair of pintu pagar half-door panels, and sometimes even decorative moldings that evoked Chinese themes. Inside, a prominent space was also found for two altars, one for deities and one for ancestors, and Chinese-style furnishings. Not all Peranakan Chinese residences though had the full range of these Chinese elements. In addition, because many Peranakan Chinese businessmen also interacted with non-Chinese, they also furnished some rooms in a Western, generally Victorian or Edwardian, style that they also came to enjoy. Displaying books in foreign languages and hanging pictures of European scenes expressed their cosmopolitan tastes.
Peranakan Chinese Seah Song Seah, a gambier and pepper merchant, as with other successful businessmen, maintained two homes. On the left is the home he had built in town on River Valley Road, which has housed the Nanyang Sacred Union Temple since the 1930s, and on the right is his country bungalow on Thomson Road, which has been demolished. (Wright and Cartwright, 1908: 636.)
Chinese-style courtyard houses with a single-storey front hall and a parallel two-storey rear hall, which were linked to a pair of perpendicular wing buildings, were built by Chinese immigrants and Peranakan Chinese throughout Southeast Asia. Only rare photographs hint at their scale. Molenvliet Street, Batavia, today’s Jakarta, Indonesia. Photograph courtesy of KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies.
Fine examples of early twentieth-century bungalows constructed in the East Coast area of Singapore can still be seen. Some of the finer bungalows that were along the shoreline had an enclosed area for swimming built into the sea as protection against shark attacks (Lee Kip Lee, 1995: 42). In addition, both Europeans and Peranakan Chinese built large detached villas—some veritable mansions based on modest bungalows—but others adapted the styles of villas that were then in vogue in England and on the continent. In Baba Malay and Hokkien, these were collectively called ang moh lau “red-hair (European/foreign) buildings.”
Taken a century apart, these photographs reveal the eclectic nature of the Tjong A Fie Mansion, which was completed in 1900. A successful immigrant from Meixian in Guangdong province, Tjong began a Peranakan Chinese family whose members still occupy the home. Jalan Kesawan Square, Medan, Indonesia.
Just as there were stylistic differences as shop-houses and terrace houses evolved, this was true as well with bungalows and villas. While European classical features dominate on the façades, Peranakan Chinese added decorative stucco elements that recall themes then current with new generations of shophouses and terrace houses, “a hotch-potch of elements [that] do not seem to have been applied according to any architectural theory or principle,” in the words of Lee Kip Lin (1988: 128). Mandalay Villa, which was constructed in 1902 and demolished in 1983, was a grand two-storey eclectic residence built by Lee Cheng Yan, a prominent Peranakan Chinese merchant family, in the Katong seaside area of Singapore (see page 17). Set within an expansive garden that was approached by a long driveway, the residence had six bedrooms with a nearby sea-pavilion having an additional two bedrooms to accommodate an extended family that varied in size over the years. With verandas on the front and rear and spacious halls for dining and socializing, the home was often the site of celebratory events. Although no longer standing, Mandalay Villa is well documented with exterior and interior photographs that show not only its classical European features and furnishings but also its functioning as the site for a Peranakan Chinese wedding and a funeral (Lee Kip Lin, 1988: 192–3; Liu, 1999: 224–5; Lee and Chen, 2006: 24–31).
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