historical and residential areas of these three towns, efforts have been made to arrest the decline of traditional trades in shophouses even as there has been encouragement of those services that will help build the infrastructure necessary for sustainable cultural tourism. This has been accompanied by a celebration of their Peranakan Chinese heritage that is inextricably tied to surviving shophouses and terrace houses, among other cultural markers. The residential and commercial cores of Malacca and Penang, which include many Peranakan Chinese shophouses and terrace houses, were included in the listing of these two historic towns as UNESCO World Heritage sites in 2008. In recent years, community leaders in Phuket, which also has substantial Peranakan Chinese architecture, have debated whether pursuing World Heritage status would be a positive or negative factor in the further development of tourism on the island.
Colorfully ornamented second-storey façades: From left: first two, Emerald Hill, Singapore; second two, Syed Alwi Road, Singapore.
These efforts at the restoration of old shophouses and terrace houses are in striking contrast to an alternative use that is proliferating in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. In towns throughout the coastal areas of these countries, structures that once were elegant terrace homes or serviceable shophouses have been transformed into “barns” or aviaries as breeding sites for dense colonies of swiftlets, small birds whose nests comprise layers of solidified saliva. Edible birds’ nests are a necessary ingredient in making bird’s nest soup, a delicacy appreciated by Chinese for centuries for its reputed therapeutic properties. While bird’s nest soup was once a culinary specialty enjoyed only by the very rich and the imperial family, the demand increased substantially in recent decades as China’s nouveau riche came to enjoy unparalleled prosperity that has been accompanied by a desire for expensive gastronomic delights.
Swiftlets, which once occupied seaside limestone caves exclusively, opportunistically found abandoned old shophouses and terrace houses suitable as alternative habitats because of their dark interiors and satisfactory range of temperature and humidity. Once entrepreneurs realized that swiftlets return season after season to the same spot where they had nested before to build a new nest, even if their past nest had been removed, they saw a bonanza in old buildings as lucrative venues for harvesting a highly valued commodity to help meet what is seen as an insatiable Chinese appetite for them. Nearby local residents along historic streets, such as the Peranakan Chinese enclave in Malacca, where swiftlet houses have proliferated, complained increasingly of noise from the birds themselves as well as chandelier-like sound systems that mimic the ambient twitter of swiftlets, multiplying bird droppings, and the fear of avian-borne diseases because of the proximity and number of swiftlet nesting houses. As the bird’s nest industry has burgeoned and objections increased within towns, new shophouses have been constructed in the nearby countryside that have commercial space for a small retail shop or workshop on the ground floor and “residences” for the birds on the upper floors. These new shophouses generally lack any exterior ornamentation.
COURTYARD MANSIONS
While modernizing influences, creative innovation, and changing fashion all contributed to the evolutionary patterns of shophouses and terrace houses, a remarkable and somewhat unexpected phenomenon emerged during the last third of the nineteenth century: wealthy Chinese immigrant entrepreneurs built authentic Chinese courtyard mansions and manors. Few of these immigrant success stories can be attributed explicitly to Peranakan Chinese, yet it is certain that some immigrant men from China did marry local women and thus produced children and descendants who indeed were Peranakan. As was the custom at the time, many of these rich men also had other wives and concubines at other locations in Southeast Asia as well as back in China. There is little in the written record of the women they married, thus it is left only to their residences to suggest the nature of their families.
Outstanding examples of these manors and mansions in Singapore and Penang in Malaysia, Medan and Batavia in the Dutch East Indies, as well as in Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines can be glimpsed in old photographs. Only a few are still in existence today. It is a curiosity that four of the individuals who built large mansions that are still standing also constructed grand retirement residences in their home villages in China (Knapp, 2010: 37–9). As prosperous community members who had close relationships with European government and business people, many unfailingly incorporated modern elements in their fundamentally Chinese mansions and manors for the enjoyment of their families just as was the case with Peranakan Chinese of similar social standing. To do the construction, specialized craftsmen from China came on long-term assignment, who then worked with already arrived immigrant laborers. Imported building materials came from China, sometimes as ballast in trading vessels, which then were integrated with plentiful local woods to create grand residences that would have been appropriate back home.
Batavia in the Dutch East Indies was a “Chinese colonial town under Dutch rule” from the eighteenth century onward with both Peranakans and totok inhabitants (Blussé, 1981: 159ff). While no Chinese residences from the eighteenth century remain in the city, which is now called Jakarta, there are some from the nineteenth century when Peranakan Chinese built many fine Chinese-style homes. Members of the Khouw family built three late nineteenth-century mansions along the fashionable Molenvliet West alongside older Dutch mansions and hotels. Only one of these three, which was constructed in either 1807 or 1867, survived well into the twentieth century, having followed a tortuous journey of being threatened with destruction to miraculous survival (Knapp, 2010: 172–9).
Another fine home in Jakarta still occupied by the Peranakan descendants of the family that built it is the Souw Tian Pie residence, which was constructed early in the nineteenth century by a successful community leader. While originally there were three parallel structures and a pair of perpendicular side wings to the structure, its overall scale was diminished over time as sections were demolished. Family memory recalls that the wooden members—columns, brackets, tiered trusses, doors, and windows—as well as those carved of stone—lions, stools, benches, and drums—were all crafted in China and sent to Batavia by ship for assembly and placement. Among these is a grand altar, which is still used daily for rituals, comprising three intricately carved tables set with statues of Guan Yin as well as the votive articles.
Some 20 kilometers to the west of Jakarta, in an area that once was covered with plantations farmed by Chinese immigrants, was the expansive home of Oey Djie San, which is said to date from the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. When we visited the rambling estate in June 2009, most of the building was still standing, but by the end of the year was demolished in spite of the outcry raised by preservationists. What was remarkable about this Peranakan Chinese residence was that it actually comprised two back-to-back houses, one built in Chinese style facing the river, while the other, a Dutch Indische-style building with a trapezoidal roof and columned veranda, faced the road. Like many early Chinese houses in Indonesia, the structure included three parallel buildings with open courtyards in between. The first and third buildings were single-storeyed while the middle one had two storeys and was elevated on a slightly higher podium, with walls constructed of red bricks. Baked terra cotta roof tiles and square floor tiles were used throughout, with windows and columns made of local hardwoods (Knapp, 2010: 180–5).
Some of the most beautiful ceramic wall tiles grace the outside walls and pediments of gates of homes on Emerald Hill, Singapore, which was developed between 1902 and the 1920s, becoming in time a concentrated neighborhood of successful Peranakan Chinese.
Each of the columns that line a series of 1920s shophouses along Singapore’s Syed Alwi Road
