The Peranakan Chinese Home

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An American Victor Talking Machine (Victrola) displayed among traditional Chinese furnishings. Johnson Tan Collection, Singapore.

A round blackwood table and stools with marble inserts set in front of an elaborately and symbolically dressed alcove bridal bed. Baba House Museum, Singapore.

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A multistorey skywell, a traditional element in Chinese homes, accentuated with here iron columns, balustrades, and filigreed work fashioned in Scotland, floor tiles from England, and carved wooden lattice panels from China. Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion, Penang, Malaysia.

contents Who are the Peranakan Chinese? Chapter 1 HOUSE FORMS AND FAÇADES Chapter 2 SYMBOLS AND ICONOGRAPHY Chapter 3 THE RECEPTION HALL Chapter 4 THE COURTYARD Chapter 5 THE ANCESTRAL HALL Chapter 6 THE LIVING AREAS Chapter 7 THE BEDROOM Chapter 8 THE KITCHEN Bibliography Acknowledgments Index

Who Are The Peranakan Chinese? Few visitors to Malacca, Penang, and Singapore today leave without impressions of Peranakans, whether having eaten a Nyonya-style restaurant meal, visited one or more of the multiplying Peranakan museums, or marveled at the colorful yet softly polychromatic pastel façades of restored shophouses and terrace houses in what have become vibrant neighborhoods. The thirty-four episode serial drama The Little Nyonya, which aired first in Singapore in 2008–9, put a spotlight on a Peranakan family beginning in the 1930s and following them over the next seventy years. After high ratings and unprecedented viewership in Singapore, the series was subsequently broadcast in Malaysia, Cambodia, France, the Philippines, Myanmar, the United States, Vietnam, China, Thailand, and Hong Kong, before being rebroadcast in Singapore in 2011. International recognition of Peranakan culture came in October 2010 with an exhibition called Baba Bling, Signes intérieures de richesse à Singapour, a sumptuous showcase of objects that was launched at the Musée du quai Branly in Paris in cooperation with Singapore’s Peranakan Museum. In 2011, Joo Chiat, a bustling Peranakan conservation area and trendy hotspot, was named Singapore’s first Heritage Town, with the expectation that it would lead to a boom in cultural tourism. Moreover, Peranakan cuisine has gained prominence globally as Nyonya-style restaurants have opened in London, New York, Sydney, Copenhagen, and Tokyo, among other world cities, and even in Beijing, Hong Kong, and Shanghai in China. These expressions of Peranakan identity, among many others, are not merely nostalgic impulses but speak to the efforts of many people to revive a culture to its proper position after having languished in the shadows over a period of three decades following the Second World War.

Wearing silver amulets, beaded slippers, tunics, and caps, these four Peranakan children pose for a portrait in a studio late in the nineteenth century, Singapore.

Attired in their custom-made wedding finery, the bride, groom, and young attendants pose in the ornate Reception Hall of a Jonker Street residence in Malacca on October 24, 1939. Photograph courtesy of Chee Jin Siew family, Malacca, Malaysia. Who are these Peranakans, Nyonyas, and Babas? These questions cannot be answered easily since the descriptors have been characterized by a remarkable mutability over time and across space. In the Malay language, the word peranakan, which has several meanings that derive from the word anak or child, means those who are the offspring and descendants of intermarriage between a local person

and a foreigner, someone from an outside ethnic group (Tan Chee-Beng, 2010: 32). As an adjective, peranakan is applied as a descriptor of those who are thus locally born to distinguish them from immigrants born elsewhere. In Southeast Asia, there are Peranakan Indians who are Hindu and called Chitty Melaka as well as Peranakan Indian Muslims called Jawi Pekan, in addition to Eurasian Peranakans and Peranakan Chinese, just some of the more notable, named blended families who emerged over the centuries. Beyond the Malay-speaking world, other terms are used for similar mixing. In Thailand, Luk-jin (Sino-Thai) is employed, while in the Philippines, mestizo de sangley (Chinese mestizo) expresses those of mixed ancestry involving Chinese and the indigenous population, but neither of these can be called peranakan. Moreover, it is important to emphasize that all of these groups are incredibly varied in terms of their origins and current forms in spite of what appears to be single words describing them. Perhaps because Peranakan Chinese exceed in numbers all others who are peranakan, it is common for many people to use the single word Peranakan as a substitute for the more accurate two-word phrase Peranakan Chinese. These terms continue to be used ambiguously and inconsistently in scholarly as well as popular writings due to the striking diversity of the region’s mixed ethnic heritage. While Baba and Nyonya are gender-specific terms that refer respectively to male and female Peranakan Chinese, the term Baba is sometimes employed alone to describe Peranakan Chinese in general, “and in this sense is gender free” (Suryadinata, 2010: 4). Baba is also an honorific term for grandfather and elderly men generally, although its use in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore differs. Its origin is unclear—some say the word is derived from Hindi, others that it is a Persian loan word, or even has a Turkic origin. Nyonya, likewise, is a loan word, from Javanese, meaning grandmother or adult woman, a word that may have originated with Portuguese or Dutch colonialists. While Babas and Nyonyas are Peranakan Chinese, not all Peranakan Chinese are Baba- Nyonya. Up until the Second World War, the expression Straits Chinese was often used synonymously for the Babas in the Straits Settlements of Malacca, Penang, and Singapore when they were under direct British rule. As a term made popular by those who were English-educated, the term Straits Chinese today is considered old-fashioned, partially because

the Straits Settlements no longer exist, having been dissolved in 1946, but also because those who call themselves Peranakan Chinese are found in great numbers in Indonesia and elsewhere. Substantial enclaves of Peranakan Chinese historically have been found especially in Medan (Indonesia), Yangon (Myanmar), and Phuket (Thailand), each a node in the far-flung trading network that linked them to Malacca, Penang, and Singapore. Tan Chee-Beng has shown cultural linkages, including the widespread distribution of Baba Malay magazines, beyond these places (1993). Moreover, throughout Indonesia, Peranakan Chinese are found in even greater numbers than in Singapore and Malaysia. Those who speak Chinese in Singapore refer to Peranakan Chinese as tusheng Huaren 土生 华人 (“locally born Chinese”). While peranakan -type Chinese are found even beyond the broader Malay world of peninsular and insular Southeast Asia, Leo Suryadinata reminds us that “the offspring of such intermarriages should not be called peranakan ” (2010: 2). Be that as it may, we have included short discussions and a few contrasting illustrations in this book of Sino-Thai homes in Bangkok and some textual references to Chinese mestizos in the Philippines. Tan Chee-Beng describes the Peranakan Chinese in Malacca and Singapore as “a different kind of Chinese,” “a sub-ethnic category of Chinese” (2004: 113) who, according to Peter Lee, had “a non-Chinese ancestress somewhere in the family tree” (2008: 6). There were and are many variants of Peranakan Chinese. Variations are pronounced from country to country as well as within countries partially because of the different origins of the father in China. Thus differences from family to family are frequently quite distinct. In Malaysia, Singapore, southern Thailand, and southern Myanmar, most Peranakan Chinese claim Hokkien ancestry, that is, the progenitor father migrated from one of the counties in central or southern Fujian province. Other fathers hailed from the Meixian (Hakka), Chaozhou (Teochew), or Guangzhou (Cantonese) regions of Guangdong province, as well as Hainan Island, each of which has distinct cultural characteristics. The same holds true throughout the Indonesian archipelago, underscoring the heterogeneity of local origins of migrants from southeastern China to Southeast Asia. Moreover, few families have records that are sufficiently detailed to allow tracing lineages back into the eighteenth century and earlier. The fact that trading and social networks of the Peranakan Chinese

ranged across an expansive and dynamic labyrinth of business interests as well as social relationships, temple bonds, and family alliances has meant that Peranakan as a label has had different meanings over time. Alternatives materialized in different periods to the degree that it is not possible to speak of a singular type of Peranakan Chinese. While it is rare to refer to Peranakan Chinese in the Philippines, as mentioned above, a mestizo culture emerged there also out of the intermarriage of Chinese immigrant men with indigenous women. While one can point to similarities with the Baba cultures of Malaysia and Indonesia, the Hispanicization of the mestizo in the Philippines led to the formation of a distinctive and dominant Filipino identity. While Peranakans created syncretic cultures that combined local customs with those brought from their homelands, the extent of the differences from community to community has not yet been fully studied and is not well understood. In this studio portrait of the progenitor of the Tjiong family in Parakan in central Java, the elderly Chinese immigrant is seated among furnishings common in upper-class homes.

Tour guides and websites often hyperbolically state a single origin for those who identify as Peranakan Chinese today in Malaysia and Singapore: all are descendants of the Chinese princess Hang Li Poh and her entourage of 500 young women and several hundred young men who were dispatched by the Ming emperor in the mid-fifteenth century to marry Sultan Mansur Shah of Malacca. To some visitors from England, who are aware of well-documented lineages that reach back many centuries, this explanation seems plausible. This is especially true regarding the Arthurian legend and whether the British Royal Family is descended from King Arthur. Similarly, some Americans who know of the strict membership requirements of The Mayflower Society, which honors the memory of the 102 Pilgrim passengers who arrived in what came to be known as Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620, are also fascinated by this tale of the reputed legacy of a Chinese princess and her retinue. The search for “roots” is an increasingly trendy topic for many. Alas, this romantic legend, although often repeated, cannot be substantiated by Chinese imperial records. Moreover, there are no living Peranakan Chinese who have records that link them to such a glorious origin. An alternative, but incomplete explanation that is often repeated is that Peranakan Chinese are all descendants of male immigrants who came from China as traders or laborers from the seventeenth century onward who married only local Malay women. Most of the immigrant laborers saw themselves as sojourners, expecting to save money before returning to China. Yet, according to Siah U Chin [Seah Eu Chin], who reported on the Chinese in Singapore in the late 1840s, only 10–20 percent were able to realize their dreams of returning home (1848: 285). Most, it is usually claimed, either settled down with a local woman of indeterminate ethnicity or in some cases became addicted to opium and gambling, frustrating their return to China. Only a small minority of these struck it rich as landed immigrants and established a verifiable genealogy.

Set beneath the two characters zhui yuan, which together mean “to recall the distant past” and are a prompt to remember the ancestors, is a painting of the Tan family progenitor, Tan Swee Sin (1804–58), Tranquerah Road, Malacca. Sojourning traders who regularly returned to China, while waiting in port for monsoonal winds to change, sometimes took local women as wives at a time during which polygamy was an accepted practice and available Chinese women in the ports were rare. Indeed, a great many maintained multiple families, one in China and at least a second one in the Nanyang or Southern Seas port that produced “mixed blood,” creole children, all the while creating “bilateral kinship structures” of significant complexity in following generations (Frost, 2005: 35). While these patterns also are unverifiable for most of those who arrived, some Peranakan Chinese family narratives continue to tell of forbears who arrived penniless aboard junks from China, then “suffered hardship and endured hard work,” chiku nailao, as the common phrase ruefully states it, then married locally before gaining substantial wealth and high status. Such tales, of course, are only told by the successful. Most immigrants, including those who started Peranakan families, merely

maintained their families with modest incomes from small shops that retailed whatever was needed, or used their hands and simple tools to work tin, wood, leather, and iron, among other materials, into useful and marketable objects. Significant numbers of arrivals and their descendants, moreover, never broke the debilitating chains of poverty, living on as an underprivileged underclass, the hardworking but powerless who dreamed of a better future that was never realized. Coolies, peasant laborers, rickshaw pullers, trishaw pedalers, pirates, fisherfolk, even prostitutes and slaves, lived in the back alleys, on the upper floors of commercial establishments, and on sampans along the banks of streams throughout Southeast Asia for generations. Voiceless in life and generally invisible as they acculturated, they have left illegible traces of their subsistence lives and families for their descendants to probe. Although a Chinese immigrant from Meixian in northeastern Guangdong province, Tjong A Fie began a Peranakan family in Medan, Sumatra, through marriage. In this portrait at the entry of his new home at the beginning of the twentieth century, the family sits beneath a European chandelier and amongst a panoply of Chinese 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 were rooted in their adopted homelands while displaying a remarkably fluid hybridity. “The rather free immigration of Chinese until 1930 changed the demographic structure of Malaya. The ‘immigrant Chinese’ became the second largest community displacing the Baba. The Baba had to adjust to the dominant ‘pure Chinese’ environment. The ‘pure Chinese’ commercial class had emerged and became more prominent than the Baba” since Peranakans were shifting into more professional spheres (Tan Chee-Beng, 1993: 25–6). For some Peranakan families, the decimation of tin, rubber, and other commodity prices following the First World War signaled the major shift in their status. A second shot came during the period 1942 to 1945 with the Japanese occupation of British Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, colonies in which many Peranakans had once thrived but who then lost both a special status and their wealth under the Japanese. In the case of Peranakans in Singapore, change was dramatic: “… it came almost with a vengeance upon the hapless Babas whose soft and pampered living for several generations had left them unprepared for this sudden disastrous reversal of fortune. A high percentage of the 50,000 or so victims of the horrendous massacre of male Chinese slaughtered by the Japanese military during the early days of their Singapore conquest were heads of Baba households and young Babas in the flower of their manhood” (Gwee, 1998: x–xi). Moreover, as the post-colonial establishment of Malaysia and Indonesia as sovereign countries occurred, new national identities were being forged that generally marginalized Peranakan Chinese. Nonetheless, it is important to note that prominent Peranakan Chinese played key roles in, first, the formation of Malaysia and then Singapore. In Malaysia, Tan Cheng Lock, whose ancestral home in Malacca was

featured in Chinese Houses of Southeast Asia, and others committed their lives to Malaya’s Chinese population, both Peranakan and immigrant, and then played crucial roles in the formation of modern Malaysia. Similarly, well-known Peranakan Chinese such as Lee Kuan Yew, Wee Kim Wee, and Goh Keng Swee were key players and important public servants in the creation of independent Singapore in 1965. When Tan Chee-Beng completed his Ph.D. dissertation at Cornell University in 1979, he wrote, “[M]any people in Malaysia, as well as students of Chinese society, know little about the Babas” and “more and more young Chinese of Baba families are reluctant to categorize themselves and be categorized as ‘Baba’” (iii, 1). A Baba himself, Felix Chia wrote in 1980, “[T]here is hardly a Baba youngster today who is aware of his heritage and culture” (viii). During those years, when thought of at all, Peranakan Chinese communities were perceived as declining and disinte-grating, losing attachments with their roots and adrift in terms of their relationship with other Peranakan communities across the broader region. Tan Cheng Lock, venerable statesman in the then Malaya, is pictured here wearing a comfortable sarong, with his son Siew Sin and daughters Lily, Alice, and Agnes in his Malacca villa, c. 1925. Photograph courtesy of the family of Tun Tan Siew Sin.

While there had been periodic hand wringing about the decline of Peranakan Chinese in terms of influence and wealth during this transitional period, there was nonetheless a revival of sorts in the decade or so between the middle of the 1970s and the late 1980s as both academics and the public increased their interest. This attention, however, was less on the historical narrative of Peranakan Chinese than on their material culture, especially the material culture connected with Nyonyas—cooking, ceramics, clothing, beaded slippers, silverware, jewelry, and home furnishings. As the twenty-first century began, however, there increasingly was less talk of Peranakan decline and more of its resilience as a vibrant culture with a proud history as some began to probe what it means to be Peranakan. In Malacca, Penang, and Singapore initially and in Phuket and in Indonesia more recently, a renaissance of things Peranakan arose, some well grounded in history while others were reformulated to meet the contemporary needs of tourists. The formal associations of Peranakan Chinese in Singapore and Malacca, which both have a history of more than a hundred years, having begun as exclusive organizations for Straits Chinese, began to reach out to the general population—and younger Chinese Peranakans who have less connection with their heritage—to generate interest, understanding, and appreciation. The website of the Peranakan Association Singapore today bills itself as “your one-stop resource site for everything Baba!” and unlike decades ago, Peranakan Chinese culture today is highly visible. However, some conservative voices now lament that it is now much too easy to make a claim of being Peranakan Chinese. The passing hazy recollection of a grandmother wearing a sarong kebaya or of her making a tasty Nyonya-style dish seem to be enough to reawaken memories that lead to the declaration, “I am a Peranakan.” The necessary markers often no longer include speaking a Malay or Hokkien patois, addressing elders with the proper term, or observing Chinese rituals, among others, as would have been the norm in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Today, a great many Peranakan Chinese are Christians, have intermarried with non-Peranakans, and have been schooled in Bahasa Melayu, Bahasa Indonesia, Mandarin Chinese, or English. Few today doubt that Peranakan Chinese have shown themselves over centuries to be particularly adept at meeting changing circumstances, and thus are

continuing to evidence an internal cultural dynamism that underscores that ethnic identity need not be static and is often multidimensional. While an emphasis of this book is celebrating old homes as well as their furnishings and ornamentation, these are not presented as ossified phenomena salvaged from a dead or dying culture. Rather, in support of the heightened interest in things Peranakan, these inherited forms found in old Peranakan Chinese homes continue to serve as inspiration for life in the twenty-first century. It is somewhat ironic and significant that swelling numbers of Chinese tourists traveling to Southeast Asia discover rather quickly that aspects of their own material culture, which were obliterated over the past century within China, can be easily appreciated in old homes and temples where Peranakan Chinese continue to be the custodians of Chinese culture’s rich legacy.

This recently restored century-old three-storey terrace residence presents a brightly decorated facade, with an ornate pintu pagar swinging fence-door, a pair of surname lanterns, a jiho wooden board above the door with characters proclaiming “The Glory of the Lineage,” and additional pictorial and calligraphic ornamentation. Wee family residence, now Baba House Museum, Neil Road, Singapore.

There is no single house type that can be described as exclusively Peranakan Chinese. Like Peranakans themselves, Peranakan housing developed with many variations that reflect place, time, and economic circumstances. Moreover, as the twenty-first century begins, the Peranakan Chinese residences that are still standing represent only a fraction of those built in the past when the community thrived. Thus, unfortunately, the surviving examples do not provide a sufficiently large enough sample to establish clearly whatever characteristics might have once distinguished them from the residences of others. Peter Lee and Jennifer Chen in The Straits Chinese House adroitly demonstrate the adaptability of the Peranakan Chinese that made it possible for them to enjoy “a lifestyle both deeply rooted in Chinese tradition, and receptive to the cultures of other local communities” (2006: 20). This is indisputable and has contributed significantly to the maintenance of Peranakan Chinese identify, including some well-documented homes, over time. Yet, contemporaneous—and extant—late nineteenth and early twentieth-century residences of wealthy Chinese immigrants who were not Peranakan also reveal adherence to Chinese tradition while incorporating eclectic, opulent, and fashionable elements similar to those found in Peranakan Chinese homes at the time. As the sections below suggest, the fine homes of Tan Yeok Nee in Singapore, Tjong A Fie in Medan, as well as Cheong Fatt Tze and Chung Keng Quee in Penang, among many others who were immigrant Chinese, saw their homes as statements of their cosmopolitan nature even as some of them took local wives and thus began to establish Peranakan Chinese households. Whatever similarities can be discerned when comparing Peranakan and non- Peranakan residences, however, striking differences are detected once focus is put on family life within the homes of each community, which admittedly were not homogeneous. As the nineteenth century ended, the cultural markers for successful Peranakan Chinese that distinguished them from non-Peranakan Chinese included speaking a Malay patois, schooling in English or Dutch, participating in life-cycle events such as twelve-day weddings and matrilocal marriages, as well as having distinctive clothing, porcelain, jewelry, and cuisine, among others. In addition, surface colors, furnishings, and ornamentation differed from one community to another. Photographs in the following chapters will present not only artifacts that are distinctively Peranakan Chinese within

their homes, but also to some degree compare them with non-Peranakan Chinese homes. Section drawings for what may have been the last fully Chinese-style residence constructed in Singapore at the end of the nineteenth century for the Fujian immigrant Goh Sin Koh. Later converted into an ancestral hall, this grand courtyard residence was demolished in the 1980s. Courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

Set among a bounty of classical pilasters and arches amidst heavily ornamented plaster reliefs, Mandalay Villa was the home of Lee Cheng Yan, who was born in Malacca but moved to Singapore where he prospered in trading and finance. Constructed in 1902 as a two-storey bungalow in the Peranakan area of Katong in eastern Singapore, it was but one of several seaside villas built for the expanding family. The residence was demolished in 1983. A detailed discussion of family life in this residence is provided by Lee and Chen, (2006: 24–31). Artist: A. L. Watson. Courtesy of National Museum of Singapore, National Heritage Board. While there is archaeological and historical evidence of Chinese traders reaching many of the lands that rim the South China Sea more than a millennium ago, as mentioned in the Introduction, it was not until many centuries later that Chinese immigrants were able to construct homes reminiscent of those in China. In the meantime, Chinese traders built simple homes for the local women they took as wives, starting peranakan families during their annual hiatus while waiting for the shifting of monsoonal winds that would allow them to voyage back home to China where they also usually maintained families. For the most part, these initial homes likely were indigenous-style timber structures with thatched roofs of attap (fronds of the nipah palm), with walls covered with matting made of palm-like pandan leaves. Probably little of the furnishings or ornamentation in these early homes was rooted in Chinese traditions. By the beginning of the fifteenth century, however, Chinese immigrants began to settle in increasing numbers along the coasts of the Malay Peninsula, even as annual sojourning continued for others. Similar migration patterns took

hold along the coasts of many of the sprawling islands in what is today called the Indonesian archipelago. By 1678, when Chinese represented one-fifth of Malacca’s population, they lived in 81 brick and 51 attap dwellings in the town itself, with more elsewhere along the shore and inland (Purcell, 1965: 241). According to Francis Light, there were about 3,000 Chinese in Penang in 1794 who “possess the different trades of carpenters, masons, and smiths, are traders, shopkeepers, and planters” while others were squatters and workers opening up virgin land outside of town (“Notices of Pinang,” 1851: 9). With skilled construction workers and an increasingly diverse population with different needs and financial resources, Chinese over time built dwellings in Malacca that were progressively substantial and permanent, indeed quite similar to those in their home communities in China. Five-foot way passages: Jonker Street, Malacca, then three in Emerald Hill, Singapore. Lee Ho Yin’s drawing reveals the evolution of shophouses from the early nineteenth century through the 1930s (2003: 133). A colorful row of terrace houses built in the 1920s along Koon Seng Road, Joo Chiat, Singapore, which have been described by Julian Davison as “Rococo with a dash of Chinoiserie” (2010: 130). After Stamford Raffles signed a treaty in 1824 that led to the establishment of a trading post on the island of Singapore and the formation of the Straits Settlements in 1826, Chinese from both Malacca and China arrived in escalating numbers, reaching more than 100,000 by 1869. Yet, according to Siah U Chin

[Seah Eu Chin], housing for newly arrived Chinese in the late 1840s in Singapore continued to “resemble in a great measure the houses of the Malays, but there is this difference, that the houses of the Malays are mostly raised above the ground, whereas those of the Chinese are low on the surface; the walls of the houses are formed, some of the bark of trees, some of kadjang, and others of dried grass; some cover their roofs also with dried grass; those who are in pretty good circumstances use thin planks for their walls, but there are very few such. Except for the temples, none of the Chinese houses are covered with tiles” (1848: 288). Residential and commercial construction nonetheless continued apace in Singapore as Europeans and Chinese transformed swampy lands into productive agriculture estates, increasing not only wealth but also the desire to transform wealth into fine homes. As architects and draftsmen planned residences for the wealthy to meet new social and economic demands, they incorporated structural concessions that acknowledged the tropical climate of the region. Self-designed dwellings gradually decreased in town while continuing to be built in rural areas (Lee Kip Lin, 1988: 53–85). Similar patterns occurred in the Dutch East Indies, Siam, Vietnam, Cambodia, and the Philippines, each with its own design and temporal characteristics. By the late nineteenth century, five distinct house types had emerged throughout the Nanyang or Southern Seas region: shophouses, terrace houses, detached villas, courtyard mansions, and bungalows. None of these types was the exclusive residential form for any single group. While today some are identified more with Peranakan Chinese, others, such as pure Chinese, indigenous peoples, and British and Dutch colonialists, occupied similar residences as well. Peranakan Chinese, on the other hand, in time introduced layers of color, furnishings, ornamentation, and function that made many individual residences identifiably and uniquely Peranakan. Peranakan Chinese, arguably to a greater extent than even wealthy Chinese immigrants who were similarly cosmopolitan, enthusiastically embraced Western and Malay elements even as they expressed an inherent Chineseness in their homes. Peranakan Chinese residences thus often differ in their degree of eclecticism from the homes of non-Peranakan Chinese. Detailed discussions of the variety of residential types occupied by both Peranakan Chinese and non-Peranakan Chinese families are presented in my Chinese Houses of Southeast Asia: The Eclectic Architecture of Sojourners and Settlers (2010).

Both Western and Chinese elements appear on the façades of shophouses and terrace houses. From left: Tan Kim Seng residence, now Hotel Puri, Heeren Street, Malacca, Malaysia; Cedric Tan residence, Tranquerah Road, Malacca, Malaysia; Persatuan Peranakan Cina Melaka (Peranakan Chinese Association of Malacca, Heeren Street, Malacca, Malaysia; Blair Road, Singapore; Emerald Hill, Singapore. The Blair Plain area was developed in the 1920s. With colorful façades and quiescent charm, the Blair Road neighborhood has undergone significant gentrification in recent years. SHOPHOUSES No generic architectural form is more characteristic of Chinese domestic life in the maritime towns of Southeast Asia than the shophouse, a form whose origins can be traced back to southeast China, the home region of most immigrants. Its narrow and deep shape punctuated by skywells, load-bearing party walls, and an overhanging upper floor that provides a covered walkway along the front together characterize the shophouse as a remarkably utilitarian, versatile, and

economical building type. Moreover, shophouses afford conditions for making a living in which all members contribute to the enterprise while carrying out family life within a single structure. With commercial space on the ground floor opening on to the street and living spaces behind and upstairs, rows of contiguous shophouses were able to meet the needs of generations of Chinese immigrant merchants and artisans, some of whom formed Peranakan families. Other non-Chinese shopkeepers and tradesmen also came to value this type of building where they could display wares easily on outdoor shelves and where they could work in an area with better light and fresher air than inside. The earliest shophouses had nondescript façades with minimal ornamentation. A modest two-storey shophouse from the late 1700s at No. 8 Heeren Street in Malacca, which has been restored, reveals well the functional components that were integral to later, larger shophouses as the form evolved to meet changing needs (Knapp, 2010: 42–5). Late nineteenth and early twentieth-century photographs reveal both the consistency of the early shophouse form as well as its many local variations. While the earliest forms of utilitarian timber shophouses with attap roofs disappeared long ago, temporary buildings using the same materials are found in small towns throughout the region. Extant examples can still be seen in small towns in Indonesia, such as Tanjung Pura and Medan on Sumatra, and Lasem, Rembang, and Semarang on Java, each of which had substantial Peranakan Chinese communities. Where economic development had not yet erased them, many old shophouses constructed of brick and mortar and covered with roof tiles have continued in use as convenient warehouses. While early shophouses were rudimentary and generally lacked external ornamentation, over time they became increasingly elaborate and ostentatious as the form evolved. John Cameron described the “native part of the town” of Singapore in the middle of the nineteenth century as having “buildings … closely packed together and of uniform height and character. The style is a compromise between English and Chinese. The walls are of brick, plastered over, and the roofs are covered with tiles. The windows are of lattice woodwork, there being no glazing in this part of the world. Under the windows of many houses occupied by the Chinese are very chaste designs of flowers or birds in porcelain. The ridges of the roofs, too, and the eaves, are frequently similarly ornamented, and it is not an unusual thing to see a perfect little garden of flowers and vegetables in boxes and pots exposed on the tops of houses. Underneath run, for the entire length of the streets, the enclosed verandahs of which I spoke before” (1865: 59–60). Throughout the nineteenth and well into the twentieth century, the

prototypical shophouse structure continued to evolve from its original form, a shop-cum-house. In time, some shophouses came to serve only as residences without any commercial function. British colonial ordinances in the Straits Settlements helped to standardize shophouses by mandating the use of fireproof materials and introducing the continuous veranda-like covered walkway known as the five-foot way. Interior floor plans changed little over the years, even as widths grew broader and heights increased as reinforced concrete beams came to replace timbers in new construction. As this evolutionary sequence played out, styles changed, but only small numbers of new and larger commercial shophouses incorporating residences within them were built. Older shophouses that had met the needs of earlier generations of immigrants continued to be used, but now were often subdivided into cubicles that provided crowded sleeping space for ever-increasing numbers of poor Chinese immigrant laborers. Thus, instead of a family living behind and above an old shop, the residential space came to be packed with single men, each of whom was hopeful of pursuing the same get-rich optimism of earlier generations of immigrants. This demographic transition brought with it the movement of some established Peranakan and non-Peranakan Chinese families from downtown to more salubrious distant areas. Pure Chinese immigrants setting out to fulfill their own dreams often replaced those who moved. Meanwhile, as unsatisfactory and unhealthy overcrowding in Singapore’s Chinatown worsened, the colonial government began to address issues of water supply, refuse collection, and limited fresh air in the ram-shackle commercial core of the city. “An important innovation was the introduction of a backlanes scheme, the idea here being to open up a corridor between the densely packed terraces of back-to-back shophouses, thereby bringing to their occupants ‘the blessings of light and air’” (Davison, 2010: 120). With these improvements, shophouses reached a new level of functionality that substantially enhanced their intrinsic character as an adaptable space for work and living. Today, throughout Southeast Asia, as in China, shophouses continue to be a vital component of the commercial cores of towns and cities. Although few shophouses are today occupied by laboring Peranakan Chinese families, some old shophouses—and terrace houses as discussed below—have been converted into boutique hotels, B&Bs, restaurants, specialty shops, and townhouses that proclaim the vitality of a once-diminishing Peranakan heritage in those areas of towns with tourism potential.

The doorways from the broad veranda into the residences, which are often left open during the day, are complemented by a perforated metal design above that draws air into and through the Han and Thalib residence, Pasuruan, Indonesia. A multiplicity of styles characterizes ventilation ports on the exterior walls of Peranakan and other Southeast Asian homes. From left: Padang, Indonesia; Penang, Malaysia; Emerald Hill, Singapore; Phuket, Thailand; Emerald Hill, Singapore; Syed Alwi Road, Singapore. TERRACE HOUSES As a truly versatile structural form, the shophouse archetype morphed relatively easily into what can be called a row house or townhouse, serving exclusively as a residence without any commercial purpose. In many areas of Southeast Asia, it is now common to call side-by-side structures whose roots are in the shophouse

tradition, but that serve purely residential functions, terrace (or terraced) houses. This nomenclature conforms to long-standing usage in the United Kingdom and is the convention employed here. The fine book by Julian Davison titled Singapore Shophouse (2010) delineates well the elastic nature of the term “shophouse” and the full evolutionary scope of its many manifestations, including “terrace houses.” Curiously, well into the early decades of the twentieth century, the working drawings of architects in Singapore continued to include the generic designation “shophouse” to describe terrace residences even when such buildings no longer incorporated a “shop.” Thus, it is not surprising that many observers even today consider any narrow and long structure aligned along an urban street a “shophouse,” a lingering inexact and anachronistic term, especially when the building is exclusively a residence. With heightened immigration from China as the nineteenth century ended, as mentioned above, the core of Singapore’s Chinatown became overcrowded, congested, and unsanitary. Swapping convenience for improved quality of life, some prosperous Peranakan Chinese and pure Chinese merchants and entrepreneurs began to move to newly developing residential neighborhoods along Neil Road and Blair Road to the west, as well as River Valley Road to the north of the core of the original Chinatown. As still can be seen today, many of these terrace house residences have façades with Chinese-style ornamental patterns expressed in applied stucco reliefs and on decorative panels. A fine example of this form is the Wee family home, which was constructed along Neil Road in 1895 as one of a sequence of attached terrace dwellings. After a century’s occupancy over six generations by the Wee family, the residence was acquired and restored with a generous gift from the daughter of Tan Cheng Lock, Agnes Tan, to represent how a Peranakan Chinese family lived in the 1920s. Since opening in 2008 as the Baba House Museum, visitors are able to understand Peranakan home life in a comprehensive fashion that complements well the more formal exhibition of objects displayed in the galleries of the Peranakan Museum. Until the late nineteenth century, commercial shophouses had been constructed generally by Chinese craftsmen under the supervision of local Chinese and Indian contractors who replicated existing buildings with the assistance of readily available pattern books. In time, architects who were beginning to design rows of residential terrace houses and some commercial shophouses in Malacca, Penang, and Singapore, began to introduce European- inspired elements. With the addition of classical Grecian columns and pilasters as well as Georgian fanlights, according to Davison, some of the rows of

shophouses “would not have looked out of place in either Cheltenham or Bath (two English spa towns celebrated for their fine Georgian architecture)” (2010: 103). While it is not always possible to uncover which of these homes were owned and occupied by Peranakan Chinese families since there were other Chinese and those of other nationalities who also resided in terrace homes, some have remained in Peranakan families for generations and thus have a clear patrimony. By the early years of the twentieth century, the once remote Emerald Hill area in Singapore, which had been a nutmeg plantation, was subdivided into building plots. Although most of the developers and builders of fashionable terrace houses in Emerald Hill were Straits-born Chinese whose ancestors came from the Chaozhou area in Guangdong province, wealthy Peranakan Chinese families came in time to outnumber other Straits-born Chinese owners there (Lee Kip Lin, 1984: 5–6). Joo Chiat and Katong in the eastern portions of the island, which until the 1920s and 1930s had been dominated by coconut plantations, also came to prominence as Peranakan Chinese who were seeking pleasant places to live built richly ornamented terrace houses and shophouses there. Many of the new terrace residences incorporated a private forecourt or yard with gateposts that separated the residence from the roadway rather than having a linked five-foot way. Even as there continued a consistency in the traditional shophouse floor plan, which met the needs of shifting family circumstances, building plots of terrace houses came to vary in depth and width to meet the differing economic circumstances of families. While the earliest structures rarely exceeded two storeys because of the limitations of building materials and the constraints of construction techniques, many began to be built to three and even four storeys as cement became the preferred building material. As the illustrations in this chapter reveal, external ornamentation varied considerably as they reflected whatever styles were in vogue at the time.

The second-storey bedroom has bars on the windows and wooden shutters that can be left open or closed according to the weather. Wee family residence, now Baba House Museum, Neil Road, Singapore. The public face of any terrace house, even a shophouse is, of course, its façade, which can be viewed in isolation or as part of a continuous sequence of rhythmic elevations, incorporating mixed sets of architectural elements. As the twentieth century began, as has been described above, the architectural design elements on the exterior of both shophouses and terrace houses increasingly adopted aspects of European Classicism even as Chinese motifs also had a place. Gretchen Liu describes this trend as “freely plagiarising Western architectural motifs,” while also adopting Malay-style fretwork and floral ornamentation as well as symbolic embellishment derived from traditional Chinese motifs (1984: 21). European-style stucco ornamentation that included draping swags often complemented Peranakan Chinese glazed tile motifs of colorful birds and flowers as well as richly Chinese symbolic motifs, such as deer, dragons, and qilin, which will be discussed in the next chapter. Terrace houses occupied by Peranakan Chinese and other Chinese had an added marker of Chineseness because of the pronounced use of Chinese calligraphy. The ground floor exteriors of many, if not most, terrace houses clearly expressed their Chinese personality with inscribed Chinese characters representing allusive maxims, a horizontal signboard declaring the family’s ancestral hometown in China, as well as pintu pagar half-doors with carved panels, subjects that will be discussed in the next chapter.

With circular ventilation ports above the latticed windows, this view is of a richly ornamented façade with a dentilated cornice, stucco detailing, and generous use of patterned wall tiles. Emerald Hill, Singapore. The mixing of European aesthetic traditions with Chinese and Malay patterns created an architectural idiom referred to as “Chinese Baroque.” An extravaganza of in-filled exterior ornamentation, this idiom is occasionally an incongruous combining of patterns, materials, and motifs, which is judged by some as more dissonant than aesthetically harmonious. Sometimes compositions on the façade were fanciful and flamboyant, with jostled elements such as Chinese friezes, pintu pagar half-doors, Palladian-style fanlights, arched French windows, ornate Corinthian and austere Doric columns, intricate Malay fretwork

and ventilation grilles, egg and dart molding, extravagant cornices, tropical timber louvers, glazed English tiles, and fluted pilasters and columns, among many other elements. The placement of several registers of colored glazed tiles on the walls below the ground floor windows in Singapore, Penang, and elsewhere was a reworking of a pattern employed by Peranakan Chinese families in Malacca. While in China and early on in Southeast Asia the exterior colors of urban structures were almost universally lime plaster that ages into a mottled white and muted earth tones, more vibrant hues in time began to emerge in the Straits Settlements, first with ochre, green, and indigo. By the 1950s, the full color spectrum of pastel hues and vibrant colors generally associated with Peranakan Chinese dinnerware and textiles became quite popular. Unlike in Singapore, the changes were less dramatic in Penang and Malacca as was also the case in the Dutch East Indies. This profusion of repeating handcrafted and imported details continued until the end of the First World War. After the war, according to Lee Kip Lin, the buildings began to “shed their Chinese elements and decorations” and “assumed a more ‘Western’ appearance” (1988: 127). The pintu pagar half-door can be employed to provide a modicum of privacy to those inside when the double-leaved door is open. Blair Road, Singapore.

Constructed in the late 1920s, this residence of Johnson Tan has undergone significant restoration. Its wall tiles, pintu pagar, jiho board, and abundant calligraphy are hallmarks of Peranakan homes of the time. River Valley Road, Singapore. Wherever they appeared, such eclectic design borrowings created a distinct vernacular aesthetic that has worn well over time in spite of having fallen out of fashion for nearly a half-century. In residential as well as commercial buildings in the late 1920s and 1930s, in Singapore especially, interest turned to Art Deco designs, followed by a wave of post-war functionalism. These architectural trends not only affected new construction but also were applied in the “modernization” and general updating of some old terrace houses throughout the island. Others that were abandoned became dilapidated and ripe for later demolition. In the 1970s, within a decade of the establishment of Singapore as a city-state, extensive areas of old buildings were summarily demolished in order to facilitate urban renewal. These comprehensive urban renewal efforts included the construction of high-density public housing estates, which were emerging to meet a critical shortage of adequate domiciles for the country’s population in a country where land is scarce. Beginning in 1986, the prior overemphasis on urban development was altered in Singapore as planners began to look seriously at conserving the

island’s dwindling multicultural built heritage. Successful projects in gazetted conservation areas subsequently included the concentration of Peranakan Chinese terrace houses in Emerald Hill, Joo Chiat/Katong, River Valley Road, and Blair Plain. In these areas, historic terrace houses and shophouse structures were sensitively renovated as residences to meet the needs of discriminating owners who came to value the legacy of Peranakan Chinese even if they themselves were not peranakan. Today, both Joo Chiat and Katong are well known for the large number of surviving terrace houses and shophouses, rows of which are celebrated for their pastel and bold colors as well as rococo-like façades that mesh many styles. In February 2011, Joo Chiat was named Singapore’s first Heritage Town in recognition of its enduring Peranakan Chinese culture. While neither Malacca, Penang, nor Phuket experienced the same economic vitality that drove many of the stylistic changes in Singapore, each enjoyed a similar evolutionary trajectory in terms of both shophouses and terrace houses, but within a more limited geographic scope. In recent years in the 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 has inserts of individual flowers on the twelve ceramic tiles on each side. No Chinese mansion in Indonesia is more impressive than the opulent one built by Tjong A Fie between 1895 and 1900 in Medan in the northern part of Sumatra. Tjong, a Hakka immigrant from Meixian in eastern Guangdong province, lived there with his third wife, a Peranakan Chinese, whose descendants still treasure the home as a museum of Peranakan Chinese culture. As a fine example of the cultural eclecticism of a Southeast Asian Belle Époque, it mixes the latest European-style furnishings, fine arts, culinary traditions, and the newest inventions with centuries-old styles of Chinese furniture, altars and rituals, food, and costume as a truly hybrid home for a family that had Chinese, European, and local identities. The residence includes sweeping rooms suitable for receptions, celebrations, and festivities that could be enjoyed as well with other important members of the community, whether indigenous royalty or international entrepreneurs and businessmen from the Netherlands, England, United States, France, Russia, Switzerland, Poland, Germany, and Belgium. Photographs of the interior of the house when it was first occupied reveal spacious rooms composed of both Chinese and European elements, which will be illustrated in the following chapters. Queeny Chang, the eldest daughter of Tjong A Fie, left the only written

record describing life in what she calls “Tjong A Fie’s Magnificent Mansion” when it was completed in 1900 (1981, 19–23 ff, 56). As the first residence in Medan to have electricity, not only was there no need to contend with oil or kerosene lamps, there was abundant illumination during the nighttime when circumstances demanded that it shine brilliantly through the front windows on both levels. Set back from the road in front, behind an imposing gate that led to a garden and broad porch, the exterior of the house had an overall modern appearance because of its large windows, square columns, and covered veranda. Yet, on closer inspection, the structure is a Chinese-style mansion with a symmetrical triple-bay plan and carved brackets lifting the roof. The pair of flanking side buildings have unmistakable Chinese gables. Early photographs show the entry porch with hanging couplets, lanterns, and inscribed boards (Knapp, 2010: 146–55). Photographs of the interior of the house when it was first occupied reveal spacious rooms composed of both Chinese and European elements. Looking through the arch of a five-foot way is a glimpse of ceramic tiles on the walls as well as on the pavement. Emerald Hill, Singapore.

Pintu pagar and other doorways vary greatly in terms of wood and ornamentation in Singapore. From left: Blair Road; Emerald Hill; Emerald Hill; River Valley Road; Emerald Hill; Emerald Hill; Emerald Hill; Blair Road; Blair Road; Blair Road; Joo Chiat Road. Imported cast-iron pieces are found in some Peranakan homes as column capitals and bases as well as ballustrades. From left: Tjong A Fie Mansion, Jalan Kesawan Square, Medan, Indonesia; Han Ancestral Hall, Surabaya, Indonesia; Emerald Hill, Singapore. While a handful of Chinese-style manors were built in Singapore during the