ceremonial accouterments. Photograph courtesy of the family of Tjong A Fie.
“Sadly,” Peter Lee moreover tells us, “the real origins of the Peranakans are probably far from romantic” since documents clearly show that immigrant Chinese often purchased non-Muslim slaves from the Celebes, Bali, Java, Sumatra, even Burma and Siam as “wives” in far-flung ports such as Singapore and Batavia during the early period. “It did not take many unions between the Chinese immigrants and slave girls from all over the region to produce the first generation of Chinese Peranakans, who would marry other local Chinese Peranakans, or the next wave of Chinese immigrants. In this way, the Chinese Peranakan community was able to maintain its identity” (2008: 3–4). It is thus impossible to determine with any level of certainty the many paths that led to the establishment of Peranakan families centuries ago.
Some local wives and their local-born Peranakan sons no doubt managed the trading business while the husband/father was away, while others worked side by side in small shops. In the early years, as Peranakan progeny were raised by their local mothers in the company of the immigrant father, they often came to speak a Malay patois with some vocabulary and syntax related to Chinese language. This distinct language, which varied from place to place, continued well into the twentieth century, and is seen by some community members in these areas as the essential marker of Peranakan identify. The Babas in Penang and Phuket traditionally spoke Hokkien that contained a number of Malay loan words. In Malacca and Singapore, the Babas who identified themselves as Peranakan, spoke a form of Malay, which scholars describe as Baba Malay, a Malay dialect with certain Chinese loanwords, especially those dealing with kinship and the Chinese symbolic world. In the Dutch East Indies, today’s Indonesia, a range of different local languages was adopted, further defying generalization.
Besides language, another significant Peranakan cultural marker, continuing even to the present, involved a fusion of culinary traditions that generated unique flavors. These dishes, which are usually referred to as Nyonya style and vary regionally, are basically Chinese in cooking technique and ingredients with piquant condiments and aromatic spices derived from Malay foodways and practices. Moreover, a distinct Peranakan aesthetic developed over time in the realm of women that can be seen in clothing, embroidery, beading, jewelry, and porcelain, examples of which will be seen in the chapters that follow and which are widely celebrated today. Men early on often wore Chinese garments for formal occasions, but later Western suits became common even as they sometimes wore a sarong for leisure. From the father’s side, Chinese names were adopted, ancestors were venerated, specific festivals were observed, life cycle rituals were followed, and temples were built to worship Daoist and Buddhist deities. Of particular significance to this book is the eclectic nature of Peranakan Chinese residences in terms of façades, plans, and furnishings, which combined Western and Chinese elements, as well as a richly symbolic vocabulary that is infused throughout the residences as ornamental motifs.
Much of the acculturation was informal, a kind of “localization,” according to Tan Chee-Beng, in which, “after three generations, one becomes a Baba” (2004: 49). Yet, “localization” was neither a linear process nor one that was homogeneous in its results. Indeed, what it meant to be Peranakan Chinese came to differ from family to family and from region to region as time passed since circumstances varied and different choices were made. While the earliest Chinese males married local women, they nonetheless preferred their daughters to marry sons from other Peranakan families or able immigrants from China, especially from the late nineteenth century onward. In time, intermarriage within the Peranakan community became the norm in a way that was self-perpetuating in that Peranakan Chinese families looked inward rather than outward in terms of their social networks. Peranakan Chinese sons were sometimes sent back to China, where they were exposed intensively to the culture of their forbears, while Peranakan Chinese daughters were prepared by their mothers in the domestic life of their locality. If marriage partners came from beyond the region, they were usually successful Chinese immigrant men or those newly arrived who showed great promise. This not only provided a foundation for future entrepreneurial success but also infused Chinese blood into lineages and bolstered Chinese cultural practices. For old Peranakan Chinese families, Malay and other blood clearly diminished within lineages as time passed. Thus, it is all the more remarkable that many Peranakan Chinese families continued to honor those aspects of their mixed culture that came from the Malay side—food, clothing, and language—even as many of the external markers were strikingly Chinese.
For many Peranakan Chinese, perhaps even most, economic opportunities were limited, and wealth and status did not increase. This was especially true of those living in rural areas and those struggling in towns. Ong Tae Hae (Wang Dahai), a traveler from China to Java in the late eighteenth century, indeed noted the assimilation of the descendants of Chinese immigrants: “When the Chinese remain abroad for several generations, without returning to their native land, they frequently cut themselves off from the instructions of the sages; in language, food and dress, they imitate the natives, and studying foreign books, they do not scruple to become Javanese, when they call themselves Islam. They then refuse to eat pork, and adopt altogether native customs” (1849: 33).
Thus, for many Peranakan Chinese, as generations passed and contact with the Chinese homeland decreased, the need to speak a Chinese dialect decreased and facility diminished. Yet, for those who were educated, motivated, and had sufficient wealth, Chinese tutors were engaged for their children in order to sustain high levels of Chinese literacy well into the nineteenth century. It is interesting that even for those who lost their ability to read Chinese, they were able to benefit from the efforts to translate Chinese classics into Baba Malay, which made Chinese culture accessible to them. Moreover, English and Dutch education became an option for some Peranakan Chinese as British and Dutch control of the region strengthened during the late nineteenth century. This led some Peranakan Chinese to a higher level of multilingual ability, participation as élites in the colonial governments, and prominence as businessmen. The extent of this successful rise in economic and social status of the Peranakan Chinese living in the Straits Settlements is attested to by the family and business accounts chronicled in Song Ong Siang’s One Hundred Years History of the Chinese in Singapore (1923). Moreover, as rooted settlers, rather than as sojourners, some Peranakan Chinese in the late nineteenth century began to rediscover aspects of Chinese culture that had weakened over the decades.
The Peranakan Golden Age, which was a time of political prominence, economic ascendancy, and materially elegant lifestyles, ranged between the 1870s and 1920s. During this period, many Peranakan Chinese enjoyed a higher social status than either the indigenous peoples or new Chinese immigrants while playing prominent roles in both the Dutch and British colonial ventures. It was also during this half-century of cultural efflorescence that most of the Peranakan Chinese homes shown in this book were constructed, furnished, and ornamented. Wedding and other photographs of the period often show the husband wearing Western-influenced formal wear or even Chinese-style jackets and pants, while his demure wife wore a traditional baju panjang, a precursor of the fashionable sarong kebaya, which is a complex blend of sartorial influences from several cultures that has become a Peranakan Chinese icon.
A sweeping wooden spiral staircase, here in a restored century-old shophouse and now a B&B, is typical of Peranakan residences. The Snail House, Jalan Tun Tan Cheng Lock (formerly Heeren Street), Malacca, Malaysia.
In time, however, fortunes changed and both the prominence and wealth of many successful Peranakan Chinese waned. By the end of the nineteenth century, more and more Chinese men, women, and families—“pure” Chinese—were arriving in Southeast Asia, which made more obvious and clear the sharp distinctions between them and the several manifestations of Peranakan Chinese. The fluidity of these identities was highlighted in a recent exhibition titled “Chinese-More-or-Less” at the Chinese Heritage Centre, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Called sin-kheh (“new guests [immigrants]”) in Malaya and totok (“full-blooded”) in the Dutch East Indies, these new arrivals were oriented to China whereas Peranakan “locally born” Chinese
