The Peranakan Chinese Home

The imposing façade of the Han Ancestral Hall in Surabaya, Indonesia, opens to an anteroom and a long hall that culminates at the ancestral altar, which is centered within a frame of carved hardwoods.

Although undated, this faded photograph documents the character of past ancestral veneration, with substantial offerings in front of the altar. In some Peranakan Chinese homes throughout Southeast Asia, routine ancestral rituals continue to be performed on a daily, semi-monthly, and seasonal basis. Simple daily offerings may be no more than a few cups of tea and lighted joss sticks that are supplemented with wine, fruits, vegetables, and flowers on the first and fifteenth of every lunar month and on the birth dates and death anniversaries of deceased parents and grandparents. Offerings sometimes include meats such as pork, chicken, and duck. The busiest times for ancestral worship fall on three dates set according to the lunisolar Chinese calendar: on the eve of Chinese New Year, the first day of the first month between January 21 and February 20; Qingming, which is called Cheng Beng in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, on the fifteenth day after the Spring Equinox in April; and the days before the Hungry Ghost Festival on the fourteenth or fifteenth night of the seventh lunar month. Important events, such as weddings and funerals, as well as festivities at the New Year are also centered in the Ancestral Hall with some ceremonies taking place in the more public Main Hall in front. Ancestral rituals in Peranakan Chinese homes today, at any time of the year, are generally muted, and the offerings less abundant than in the past. Yet, it is at such times when family members come together that they are able to affirm not only traditional notions of filial piety but also the hoped for unity and continuity of their living family.

A rare circular ancestral chart for the Han lineage illustrates descendants arranged in concentric circles away from the highlighted focal ancestor, Han Siong Kong, at the center.

This is the ancestral portrait of Han Bwee Kong, the son of the Chinese immigrant Han Siong Kong, who is acknowledged by the two characters above as “Founder of the Enterprise.”

Surrounding the skywell in the Wee family home, now Baba House Museum, is a multipurpose space that includes both a family gathering area as well as space against the back wall for the ancestral altar. Chairs, settees, and tables are lined long the walls, and a long tok panjang table is placed in front of the ancestral altar for family dining. A pair of recessed cupboards hold family china.

Until modern times, it was rare to see a formal room designated exclusively for family dining or relaxation in a Chinese home. Rather, the daily requirements for family life filtered into nearby courtyards and skywells, corridors and kitchens, even bedrooms, and sometimes into the formal Main Hall and the Ancestral Hall as well. Chinese immigrants to Southeast Asia brought with them this proclivity for a mixed-use arrangement of domestic space, partially because of the difficulty of adding special-use rooms, patterns that continued in the shophouses and terrace homes of Peranakan Chinese. As seen in earlier chapters, shophouses and terraces houses, which are characterized by a linear sequence of rooms, with one leading into another along a progression from public to private space, often included stylish non-Chinese furnishings alongside traditional Chinese furnishings arranged in conventional patterns, that hinted at changing patterns of use. Activities such as listening to music, playing card games, reading books, stitching embroidery, doing beadwork, playing with children, as well as singing at the piano—some traditional, some modern—were carried out spontaneously and informally in otherwise formal rooms or non-designated spaces. With the construction of villas and bungalows from the late nineteenth century onwards, Peranakan Chinese and others came to adopt new views of how domestic space should be organized with fixed-use rooms, such as parlors, living rooms, and dining rooms fitted with fashionable foreign furnishings and ornamentation.

Designed for comfort and usually made of teak, a reclining planter’s chair, an Anglo-Indian invention, has a cane backing and a pair of wooden extensions that swivel out from under the arms to create a plane on which to rest the legs. Alvin Yapp residence, The Intan, Joo Chiat, Singapore. As in distant Chinese port cities such as Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Tianjin, magazines, newspapers, catalogs, and import shops served as guidebooks for the evolving lifestyles in modernizing homes in Singapore, Malacca, and Penang, as

well as in distant places in Siam and the Dutch Indies. The photographs in this chapter reveal how Chinese heirloom furniture and traditional ornamentation found on the surfaces in the homes of the wealthy came to jostle with au courant styles, including foreign decorative and functional objects, as modern tastes evolved. In these new and larger residences, traditional improvizational use of spaces gradually waned as wealthy Peranakan Chinese adopted Western notions of specific rooms for special purposes that included dancing and banqueting. In addition to traditional Chinese furniture, more modern pieces, such as European- styled brownand-gold settees, sideboards, tables, and chairs, mixed with fashionably utilitarian furniture, such as reclining chairs. Also called Bombay and planter’s chairs, reclining chairs were brought from India by the British and proved equally suitable for use in the humid and hot Southeast Asian region because of their cane backing. A special feature of these chairs is that a pair of lengthy flaps swivels out from under each arm to serve as elevated leg rests. The Wee family terrace residence in Singapore, which is furnished according to styles of the 1920s, includes a commodious family area that incorporates at its core a three-storey recessed skywell. This void is surrounded on three sides by covered areas, each with an important function: a fine staircase with lacquered balusters that leads to private spaces on the second floor; a rectangular walkway lined with photographs and seating; and an area containing both a long table with accompanying chairs and an imposing ancestral altar. Under the stairway is a colorful nook replete with Chinese motifs augmented by a variety of imported European tiles. The focal element of the corner is a square plaster central panel comprising a pair of mythological phoenixes, the male with five serrated tail filaments and the female with two smoother ones, and peonies, which together represent righteousness and prosperity. On the four corners of the central panels is a set of four bats or butterflies, emblems of good fortune. Surrounding these elements, beginning on the right side with a rat and continuing counterclockwise to end with a pig, are the twelve animals associated with the Chinese zodiac that collectively represent the cyclical nature of time. Underneath this feature and along the back side of the skywell are colored ceramic tiles in a variety of designs, including Victorian and Art Nouveau patterns.

Elevated on a carved wooden stand at the center of a round table arrayed with porcelain settings for a banquet, ornamented kamcheng of this sort would be used to serve a rich soup. Johnson Tan residence, River Valley Road, Singapore.

An array of cherki cards such as these were used in a table game as a social pastime by Nyonyas. Photograph courtesy of National Museum of Singapore, National Heritage Board.

Durable blue-and-white porcelain ware was commonly imported from China and used in Peranakan and non-Peranakan homes. The bowl shown here has a sweet pea design at its base and is accompanied by a soup spoon with a thick handle and high-sided depression. © Asian Civilisations Museum, Singapore.

This colorful nook beneath a curved wooden stairway is emblazoned with symbolic motifs, which are discussed in Chapter 2. Wee family residence, now Baba House Museum, Neil Road, Singapore. Immediately adjacent to the skywell in the Wee family residence and along the walkway toward the dining area and ancestral altar is a sequence of tables, chairs, standing and recessed cabinets, as well as family portraits and photographs above them on the wall.

One of a facing pair of built-in cupboards in the Wee family residence that are used to store stacks of Peranakan porcelain dishes. Each was custom-made and has carved ornamentation along the edges, much of which was gilded with a red background. The wall opposite the skywell is filled with photographs of several generations of Wee family members as well as their prominent Lim and Lee relatives, in addition to two large formal ancestral portraits. Below the photographs and mirrors is a low sideboard with side chairs and tables along it. An upright piano, as seen in a c. 1972 photograph, once stood in this location, but is no longer there. A pair of built-in cupboards, called piaktu in Hokkien, which face each other on opposing walls, are just beyond the skywell. While recessed cupboards of this type are not found in China, the nature of the carved ornamentation of the Baxian, the Eight Immortals, along the rim of the doors marks them as having been crafted by a Chinese carpenter. The cupboard on the left holds a set of blue-and-white tableware suitable for daily use, while that on the right contains a set of richly colored bowls and plates for special occasions. Just in front of the ancestral altar along the back wall is a restored dining table or tok panjang—a neologism: tok is Hokkien for “table” and panjang is Malay for “long”—large enough to seat ten comfortably for meals. At the end of the table and just beyond the wall cabinets on each side is a blackwood settee inlaid with mother-of-pearl. While the placement of a family dining table in front of the ancestral altar is an odd juxtaposition, generations of Wee family

members were clearly made aware of the importance of family and lineage while sharing a regular meal together or assembling for a family celebration at this long table adjacent to the ancestral altar. In the Confucian tradition, these spaces together proclaim the pride of the family in its forbears and remind family members of obligations not only to the past but also to the future. Just beyond is the kitchen, another informal area for women to chat with friends as they prepare food, who are able to enter easily through a rear door.

At the head of the stairway on the second floor is an L-shaped corridor lined with chairs, tables, and an antique gramophone. Wee family residence, now Baba House Museum, Neil Road, Singapore.

This pink ground chupu is an ornamented covered jar used to double-boil food, especially soups, in the kitchen, which were sufficiently attractive that they could be brought to the table as a service piece. Some chupu have decoration on the inside as well. © Asian Civilisations Museum, Singapore.

Covered bowls are common and vary in quality. They are often used to serve soup, but also sometimes tea, where the lid can be used to screen the leaves as the tea is sipped. © Asian Civilisations Museum, Singapore. At the head of the stairs on the second floor is additional space used informally, even as the rigid lining up of blackwood chairs along the wall intimates otherwise. A vintage gramophone on a table suggests that family members once gained pleasure from listening to recordings of Western popular and classical music. The Peranakan Chinese bridal suite, which is in the front room, and the Victorian bedroom adjacent to the skywell, are nearby, topics that will be discussed in Chapter 9. A set of serviceable narrow stairs in the back leads to rooms on the third floor, which once provided the family with bedrooms for young children and space for storage. The Persatuan Peranakan Cina Melaka (Peranakan Chinese Association of Malacca) occupies a typical Baba terrace house in an old neighborhood along Heeren Street in historic Malacca. With a narrow width of only 15 feet (4.5 meters), the building stretches to a depth of some 500 feet (152 meters). Just after the Main Hall, which was discussed in Chapter 3, is a series of connected rooms, the first of which is spacious enough to entertain guests who sit on bentwood chairs either around the circular table or on heavily ornamented Western-style chairs along the walls. After passing through this room, there is a deeper space that includes, first, a spiral staircase, then a skywell that brightens the interior. Along one wall is an iron safe, a writing desk, and a carved settee, each set beneath a swag pattern painted on the upper wall. Beyond is what would have been the family’s Ancestral Hall, which is then followed by a second

skywell. Next to the back room is a passageway into an adjacent building that provides an expansive set of function rooms for association gatherings. Malacca’s Tan Cheng Lock ancestral residence is a notable structure replete with furnishings, ornamentation, and memorabilia that declare his Peranakan heritage in which layers of culture are co-mingled. Just beyond the formal Main Hall, which was discussed in Chapter 3, is a spacious vestibule-like sitting room with a round marble-topped table. While the furniture in this room is Western in style and likely crafted locally, the wall decorations are all Chinese. Of particular note is a large celebratory piece of embroidery with figures representing the three stellar gods, Fu, Lu, and Shou—Good Fortune, Emolument, and Longevity —together with an unidentified woman, perhaps an attendant at the center. Along the sides of the embroidery are smaller portraits of the Eight Immortals or Baxian. The sweeping spiral staircase adjacent to the skywell leads to bedrooms on the second floor. Persatuan Peranakan Cina Melaka (Peranakan Chinese Association of Malacca), Heeren Street, Malacca, Malaysia.

Looking back from the stairs and skywell toward the Reception Hall is a multipurpose sitting room with a bookcase and many chairs. Persatuan Peranakan Cina Melaka (Peranakan Chinese Association of Malacca), Heeren Street, Malacca, Malaysia.

Just beyond the Reception Hall is a transitional sitting room that then opens to an expansive space with a skywell at its core. A special characteristic between the sitting room and the skywell space is a series of colorful lattice windows that help bring light inside. Tan Cheng Lock ancestral residence, Heeren Street, Malacca, Malaysia. This reception room is brightened by a pair of beautiful lattice windows, which act as a screen filtering the view through the doors into the areas beyond. A central door then leads from this room into an elongated room punctured by a rectangular skywell, a shaft that reaches up through the second storey. Immediately to the right and tucked into an alcove set beyond an archway is a bookcase stuffed with English-language books, as well as a spiral staircase leading to the second level. An informal setting of a table with four light chairs contrasts with the rows of formal hardwood chairs that stand along the walls. Throughout this area, the walls are covered with historic photographs and horizontal commendation plaques. A study with a desk and bookcases filled with classic texts is aligned along a wall adjacent to the skywell. Above the desk is a commendation plaque presented to Tan Cheng Lock proclaiming “Honor Results from Actual Achievements.” A fine example of a Milners Patented Fire Resistant Safe stands beside the desk. On top of the safe is a signed photograph presented by Chiang Kai-shek to Tan Cheng Lock in 1940, which is propped up by a bust of Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scout movement in 1907.

Prior to the Second World War, the ornamental lattice screen running from wall to wall that opened to the Ancestral Hall marked the boundary between the public and private areas of the residence. Non-family members rarely were permitted to go into this area, beyond which were the family’s private quarters, including two skywells and spaces for family dining, a kitchen and pantry, and bathrooms. A steep staircase leads upstairs to two bedrooms and sitting rooms, which together cover fully two-thirds of the ground floor, with two of the skywells providing light and air.

Upon entering the skywell area, one immediately sees a square table with comfortable chairs as well as, on the left, a line of Chinese-style chairs, tables, and cabinets with historic photographs on the wall above them. On the right of the skywell, a spiral staircase rises to the second floor from an alcove. Tan Cheng Lock ancestral residence, Heeren Street, Malacca, Malaysia. The Emerald Hill area of Singapore, which until 1901 was a nutmeg plantation, was developed in the early decades of the twentieth century as a Peranakan Chinese and immigrant Chaozhou Chinese enclave with a variety of architectural styles applied to the terrace houses. One, which was built in 1924– 5, is now a duplex, the façade of which is shown in Chapter 1. Without windows on the sides, the expansive residence nonetheless has a light and airy feeling derived from the juxtaposition of open and closed spaces, generous windows along both levels of the façade, as well as ornamented ventilation ports above the interior doors. The entryway leads to side rooms and a large dining room at the foot of a Y-shaped set of stairs leading to the second floor. Large pieces of Peranakan brownand-gold furniture as well as furniture crafted in China fit easily in the sprawling spaces that are subdivided into rooms entered through distinctive doorways. Updated and modernized to meet the requirements of renters, this residence has many touches, such as the rear courtyard with water falling continuously along an inserted wall, that bring a sleek, modern aesthetic into its original form. Most of the Peranakan mansions and villas that once stood in Singapore,

Malacca, and Penang are now gone or have been transformed to meet contemporary needs. Among the Peranakan Chinese mansions still standing in Phuket in southern Thailand is the Chyn Pracha Mansion, named after the Thai name for Tan Ma Siang, who was the son of a migrant who came from Fujian to Phuket in 1854 to make a fortune in tin mining. Referred to locally as an example of Sino-European residential architecture, its details were crafted by a carpenter recruited in Penang to build a Peranakan mansion that expressed the cosmopolitan times. With its high ceilings and encaustic tile flooring, the spacious lower floor of the Chyn Pracha Mansion comprises a series of rooms that encircle a large tianjing, which was discussed in Chapter 4. Because of its ornamented arches, fluted columns, and water-filled impluvium with goldfish and flowers, the tianjing appears more like a Roman atrium than a Chinese skywell. The adjacent entry foyer, formal and informal eating areas, and parlors, as well as a first-floor bedroom are crowded with an accumulation of the family’s antique furniture. In addition to imported blackwood pieces inlaid with mother-of-pearl and marble, most all of the furniture lining the walls are brownand-gold Peranakan pieces made of teak, which was popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From a distance, the oversized Peranakan furniture does not look particularly Chinese, merely appearing heavily ornamented with elaborate and ornate patterns. Closer inspection, however, reveals that much of the carved ornamentation, whether finials, crowns, or incised surfaces, consists of traditional Chinese symbolic designs juxtaposed alongside Western decorative flourishes. Cabinets are chocka-block with porcelain Chinese plates and figurines adjoining decorative objects imported from Europe and America. A steep stairway, richly carved and fitted with turned balusters, leads to the upstairs area, which is not accessible to the public and thus its details are not discussed here.

While the major pieces of furniture in this room are European in style, they may have been replicated locally by Chinese craftsmen rather than being imported. Ancillary ornamental pieces include both Chinese porcelain vases and a collection of bell jar displays of either French or English origin. Young Nyonya excelled at producing the intricate displays that they then capped with a hand-blown glass cloche. Pinang Peranakan Mansion, Church Street, Penang, Malaysia.

The dining room in this double-width terrace house has a broad staircase leading to the second floor and opposite it open doorways to the courtyard beyond. Emerald Hill, Singapore. A cast-iron balustrade, cover, and lacquered gate with carved open panels encase the refashioned stairway leading to the second floor, providing secure access and preventing children from falling down the stairs. Imaginative ventilation ports allow air to circulate. Emerald Hill,

Singapore. At one end of the dining room, a recessed cupboard serves to hold porcelain ware. Set in front of the rectangular glass panels are delicate through-carved wooden inserts showing foliage. The lacquered surface provides a burnt copper sheen to the cabinet. Nearby, a set of interior swinging doors with green glass inserts leads to another room. Emerald Hill, Singapore. The eclecticism and cosmopolitan nature of the Tjong A Fie Mansion in Medan, Indonesia, was broached in earlier chapters, with details of the deity altar and ancestral altar presented in subsequent chapters. Although a Chinese immigrant, Tjong A Fie began a Peranakan household with his first and third wives, all the while engaging himself with the vibrant international community. Large bedrooms on the first and second floors and apartment-style living in the side wing buildings provided space for extended family members, but it was in the spacious public rooms throughout the mansion that his penchant for entertaining is most obvious. The grand Entry Hall, which was discussed in Chapter 3 as having an inverted T shape, was a sort of parlor, a gathering space for visitors. In the central section, Chinese-style blackwood furniture dominated while the side halls had Western furniture. At the head of the hall was the magnificent partition wall, with sets of four perforated door panels that provided glimpses through it of the open-air skywell and the rich Ancestral Hall beyond it.

Guests would congregate here as they arrived before proceeding to the great room on the second floor. Glistening with the sun falling on the courtyard, the back side of the hardwood screen with low relief and in-the-round carvings is brightened with cinnabar and gold colors. The impressive Ancestral Hall on the other side of the courtyard, which was discussed further in Chapter 5, epitomizes the grandeur that connects the living with the dead in the homes of wealthy Chinese. Angled stairs on both sides of the courtyard reach to the second level that contains not only a second parlor above the first-floor parlor but also several large bedrooms and an altar room where offerings to Chinese deities could be made. Above the room to venerate the ancestors is a similar sized room with a simpler altar where the Tjong family continues to make offerings to Chinese deities, including Guan Gong, who as a martial figure sits astride a horse and brandishes a sword. Behind him on the altar is a colorful print of Guan Gong accompanied by Zhou Cang and Guan Ping, who were loyal to him. With an ornately ornamented underside, this angled wooden stairway leads to the family’s private bedrooms. Objects—vases, stools, chairs, and tables—were all imported from China. Chyn Pracha Mansion, Krabi Road, Phuket, Thailand.

Looking toward the entryway with its carved and gilded door panels, this narrow vestibule in the Chyn Pracha Mansion is brightened by four windows, two alongside the doorway and a pair on opposite walls. Imported ceramic tiles cover the floors and lower walls.

This small sun-splashed room in the Chyn Pracha Mansion is for taking daily meals. It is furnished with a marble-topped table and a suite of four straightback hardwood chairs, each with a circular marble insert. Nearby are large cabinets for storing linens and dishware.

The elongated formal European-style dining table in the mansion seats ten. At the end of the room is a tall sideboard, which nearly reaches the ceiling, with mirrors that radiate light to supplement the small amount of light from the drop lamps.

In order to support the beams that span the large rooms in the Tjong A Fie Mansion, projecting stone brackets, which are all ornamented with floral paintings, are used to carry the loads. Jalan Kesawan Square, Medan, Indonesia.

This elegant, yet comparatively simple recessed cupboard is one of a pair in one dining room in the Tjong A Fie Mansion. Carved escutcheons grace the ceilings of rooms throughout the Tjong A Fie Mansion, either as center-pieces for elaborate chandeliers or, in this case, a dropped light fixture. Above the first-floor parlor in the front of the house was Tjong A Fie’s upstairs parlor, which was entered through openings in the carved and gilded Chinese lattice screen like the one in the room below. With its six pyramidal chandeliers and large shuttered windows, which could be thrown open, the upstairs room must have been light and airy. Stenciled on the painted ceiling are delicate dragonflies, which have many symbolic associations, including esteem and reverence. This formal parlor was filled only with Western furniture, including rectangular and circular settees, curio cabinets, chairs, and wall stands, as well as paintings, carpets, mirrors, and other decorative trappings. Complementing the grand piano in the downstairs parlor was a tall cabinet pipe organ, a type that gained fame in the late nineteenth century because of its beautiful tones that could be sustained indefinitely. The two long wing structures on each side of the core building, which provided living space for the family units residing in the house, are set back from the projecting terrace at the front of the house to make space for private gardens, accessible both from the covered terrace and the residential quarters. Between the residential quarters and the core building are four rectangular courtyards that help ventilate the house and provide space for indoor/ outdoor plantings. The residential quarters overall include some twenty rooms to serve as bedrooms and for storage, in addition to multiple toilets, and four spaces open to the adjacent courtyards that served as locations for family dining and relaxation.

This densely carved European-style marble-topped console, which is supported by a single leg

and has a mirror above it, hugs the wall in the upstairs parlor of the Tjong A Fie Mansion.

This extraordinary presentation of a bridal suite includes the bed, a veritable room within a room, single and double cabinets, a washstand, a dressing vanity, and countless utilitarian and ornamental items. The bed is fully dressed with embroidered curtains, hanging tassels, coverlet, bolsters, and carpet. Pinang Peranakan Mansion, Church Street, Penang, Malaysia.

Many bedrooms in Peranakan Chinese homes were minimally adorned functional spaces for sleeping and relaxing, just as they were in common homes in China and in those of most Chinese immigrants to Southeast Asia. Yet, bedrooms—as we have seen in other rooms—in the homes of those with means reflect a rich mix of both traditional elements as well as the swirling social, cultural, and technological fashions and innovations that characterized the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Even as some Peranakan Chinese occupied lavish detached villas while others lived in multistoreyed terrace houses, their bedrooms were generally quite similar. While men and women, young and old required bedrooms, each with its own character, there often was one particularly sumptuous bedroom, the bridal suite, in the homes of wealthier Peranakan Chinese. COMMON BEDROOMS Since bedrooms in China traditionally did not have built-in closets, families employed both box chests and tall cabinets of various sizes to store their clothing, which they folded rather than hung. The box chests and cabinets common in southern China were usually bulky and angular, with only surface ornamentation. Peranakan Chinese in Southeast Asia, on the other hand, had more options because they encountered in the imported market not only styles from China but also from Europe. Imported bedroom furniture was available in the port towns in Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, as well in the Philippines and Siam, to meet the needs of foreigners living there. In addition, local cabinetmakers and carpenters crafted copies of imported English furniture, sometimes faithfully but others in curious blends of styles. Thus, it should not be surprising that old Peranakan Chinese homes contained an eclectic mixture of furniture designs.

Two-tiered cabinets of this type were both versatile and beautiful. This one, made of teak, was used in the bedroom to keep kebaya and other clothing, but similar ones were found in other rooms of the house to store objects other than clothing. Late nineteenth– early twentieth century. ©Asian Civilisations Museum, Singapore. Purchased with funds from Friends of ACM through Gala Dinner 2004.

Peranakan Chinese bridal bed and associated furniture from the 1920s in Penang. Photograph courtesy of The Peranankan Association Collection, National Archives of Singapore. From China, the bedroom styles sometimes matched those found in the Main Hall in terms of type of wood and the use of mother-of-pearl inlays, but they also included carved canopy and alcove beds as well as red-lacquered chests and cabinets with gilded relief work that comprised the staple furniture in homes in Fujian and Guangdong provinces. Bulky pieces of Chinese bedroom furniture with doors generally had medallion-shaped lock plates and were sometimes adorned with scenes given shape with delicate brushwork using gold paint. Victorian styles imported from England or the continent included mahogany tables, sideboards, heavy wardrobes, and mirrors, as well as wooden and metal four-poster beds. In addition to these imported styles, locally made furniture that mixed styles increasingly gained popularity in Southeast Asia at the turn of the twentieth century. Crafted by local carpenters and cabinetmakers, many of whom were Chinese immigrants, using readily available teakwood, new styles for bedrooms and sitting rooms emerged that came to be known as Peranakan or Straits Chinese

furniture. Ong Poh Neo calls this furniture “brown and gold,” a term that declares its distinctive characteristics: constructed of teak wood, which varies in color from yellow-brown to dark golden-brown, with bright gilding on many of the carved surfaces (1994). From a distance, many of these pieces look similar to the fancy and bulky furniture fashions that were popular in Europe at the time. On closer inspection, however, it is clear that the ornamental detailing is quintessentially Chinese and more elaborate than imported pieces from either Europe or China because of the expansive openwork crowns, fretwork panels, meticulous carvings, and sculpted claw feet. While some of the ornate floral and geometric forms found on locally made furniture are shared with Western motifs, the presence of pairs of writhing dragons, soaring phoenixes, peonies and prunus, lions and qilin, and bats and carp represent a symbolic vocabulary rooted in Chinese traditions. Some ornamentation even references deities such as Xi Wang Mu, the Queen Mother of the West, who is said to be the dispenser of longevity and bliss. Impressive wardrobes, dressing tables, clothes hangers, and washstands, many of which were custom ordered as wedding gifts given by parents to their children, are among the well-documented examples of “brown and gold” bedroom furniture (Ong, 1994: 11–2; 100–43).

Contrasting with the ornate bridal beds is this “modern” chrome-plated brass four-poster bed, which is enshrouded with gauze-like textiles. The words “Together, the Bride and Groom” are embroidered in Malay on the bed linen. Tucked in the limited space at the foot of the bed is a vanity table with a triple-fold mirror and chair. Wee family residence, now Baba House Museum, Neil Road, Singapore.

One of the two bedrooms on the second floor of the Baba House Museum in Singapore, once the Wee family residence, is furnished as a bedroom from the 1920s. The focal point of the room is a “modern” chrome-plated brass mother- of-pearl inlaid four-poster bed, which is enshrouded with gauze-like textiles. The bed linen is embroidered with the Malay words Selamit paking, which means “Together the bride and groom.” The room also includes a vanity with a triple- fold mirror and a chair, as well as a study area with a desk. The triple-fold vanity mirror displays a brush and hand mirror made of silver. Above the desk and its stack of books is a photograph of the SS Hye Leong, a ship that had been owned by Wee Bin & Co. in the late nineteenth century, together with other family pictures. This room is especially airy because of the cross-ventilation through louvered windows on the two walls that are adjacent to the skywells. Similar furnishings are seen in the Chyn Pracha family mansion in Phuket, Thailand, which includes a brass four-poster bed with coverings and a window dressing made of white lace. Two of the large upstairs bedrooms in the Pinang Peranakan Mansion are furnished as if the residence was a home of a rich Baba in the decades 1930s–1950s. In the Syquia family mansion in Vigan, Philippines, which also demonstrates the blending of cultures, the carved four-poster bedsteads and ornate armoires are all made of local hardwoods such as mahogany. In Tan Cheng Lock’s ancestral home in Malacca, the front bedroom was refurnished with fashionable new Art Deco furniture that was brought from London via Singapore specially for a daughter’s wedding. Peranakan Chinese clearly followed changing fashions, adjusting their lifestyles as modernizing influences spanned the globe, while, as the section below indicates, maintaining traditions. THE BRIDAL SUITE While newlyweds sometimes furnished their bedroom with gifts of “brown and gold” Peranakan as well as imported modern furniture, the most celebrated bedrooms today are those with ornately carved Chinese-style canopy beds and complementary pieces of furniture. The preparation of an ornate bridal bedroom for a newly wedded couple took months to complete and included not only elaborate carved, lacquered, and gilded bedsteads and associated furniture but also colorful embroidered and beaded textiles in abundance. Moreover, the bride brought with her a trousseau of possessions that usually included clothes, accessories, household linens, decorative objects, and utilitarian wares. Fully furnished bridal bedrooms of this type are seen today only in Peranakan homes that have been transformed into museums in Malacca, Penang, and Singapore.

Among the most outstanding examples of a Peranakan Chinese wedding chamber is that found at the Pinang Peranakan Museum in Penang, Malaysia. At one end of the room are three magnificent pieces of furniture. At the center of one wall is an intricately carved canopied bedstead with an almost overwhelming number of carved panels painted in red and gold colors. This boxy bed, a veritable room within a room, is surrounded with embroidered panels and curtains and covered with a bedspread. Each of these is replete with auspicious motifs, presumably hand-sewn by the bride herself. On the bed, there is an assortment of rectangular pillows and tube-like bolsters, some of which have an embroidered and/or beaded pillow end, which is called in Malay kepala bantal. While the decorative motifs are Chinese, some have conjectured that the practice of decorative pillow ends was adopted from an indigenous Malay custom. Beneath the bed is a stepstool flanked by a brightly colored porcelain washbasin and enameled spittoon. Peranakan bridal beds, called ranjang loksan or ranjang kahwin in Baba Malay, usually came as part of a bride’s dowry and were placed in a bedroom in the bridegroom’s home, as was true in China as well. As a modular assemblage of wooden components held together by mortise-and-tenoned joinery, a bed of this type typically arrived at the home unassembled so that the modular pieces could be carried easily up narrow stairways to be assembled in the room that was to become the bridal chamber. This canopy is quite unlike classic Ming dynasty- style alcove beds, which are renowned for their elegant lines and relative simplicity. Peranakan bedsteads, by contrast, are more like those found during the Qing dynasty in Guangdong and Fujian in southern China, which where richly adorned styles with lacquered red finishes and emblazoned with gilded carved panels. Some include mother-of-pearl inlay. Styles vary to some degree from region to region in Fujian and Guangdong, and indeed from place to place in Southeast Asia where immigrant Chinese carpenters crafted them.

With a low cabinet-cum-mirrored dressing table beside it, this brass four-poster bed has coverings, canopy, and curtains made of white lace. Chyn Pracha Mansion, Krabi Road, Phuket, Thailand. To the left of the bed is an elaborate gilded washstand, which far surpasses the relatively simple ones generally used in China. Until the arrival of modern plumbing in a separate bathroom attached to the bedroom, a couple depended on a freestanding en suite washstand. This densely carved, high-backed washstand is divided into four parts: a framed mirror, a shelf for a basin, a drawer for holding combs, soap, cosmetics, and other necessities, and a shelf beneath holding an enameled spittoon. In addition to a set of tiered matching storage cabinets for folded clothing, the set of bridal furniture was completed with a mirrored dressing table for the use of the bride. As shown in this room, the dressing table, which is to the right of the bed, is made up of two components: a glittering low cabinet with its face completely covered with gilded carvings and a separate gilded stand above holding a mirror. Adjacent to the mirror is a Victorian-era cloche, an inverted glass bell jar fitted to a wooden stand with a colorful floral arrangement made of gauze on display inside. The carved ornamentation on each piece merits “reading” in search of auspicious themes and symbolic motifs that offer good wishes for marital harmony, abundant progeny, good fortune, and a long life.

This pair of matching nuptial beds, one for a single person and the other for a couple, would have been placed facing each other for the convenience of the bride and groom. Both are lavishly ornamented with auspicious embroidery, beadwork, and wood carvings. Wee family residence, now Baba House Museum, Neil Road, Singapore. This pair of silver bed hangings, called bakul bunga or “flower basket,” were fashioned in Shanghai and used in a Peranakan home in Singapore in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. Crafted from fine silver sheets hammered to create an embossed surface, their intrinsic beauty was then amplified by using thin wire filigree to give shape to phoenixes and flowers. Aromatic petals and herbs could be placed inside the basket. ©Asian Civilisations Museum, Singapore.

A pair of high-heeled beaded slippers, called kasuk manek, was an obligatory accompaniment when a Nyonya was wearing the sarong and kebaya. Beaded slippers using imported glass beads gained popularity by the 1920s, generally supplanting embroidered women’s slippers that had been worn traditionally. The slipper faces were often crafted at home and then sent to a shoe maker to complete each shoe. Photograph courtesy of National Museum of Singapore, National Heritage Board. A variety of embroidery stitches were employed in crafting quality men’s slippers like this pair, which would have been appropriate for the groom during the wedding ceremony. As with other Peranakan wear, these are both colorful and intricate. Late nineteenth or early twentieth century. ©Asian Civilizations Museum, Singapore. Another fine display of furniture and artifacts associated with weddings is found in the Baba House Museum (Wee family residence) in Singapore. Here,

the bridal suite is located in the front room of the second floor directly above the Main Hall where it receives abundant light and fresh air through a pair of symmetrical windows framing a larger door-like opening at the front. Even though physically close to the more public Main Hall below, this bedroom was considered a remote and private place. In this room, a Peranakan Chinese family put on private display its wealth and taste in what Peter Lee and Jennifer Chen call “inconspicuous consumption” with no expense spared (2006: 710). Although clearly a place to sleep, the bridal bedroom was also the sanctuary for the bride as she established herself within the family. Over time, this once-new bridal suite would come to show the wear and tear of decades of use by young parents as they and their family developed. Wee family lore relates that the bridal bed in this bedroom is the style of those used by Peranakan Chinese in Palembang, a cosmopolitan multicultural port city on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia. Palembang was the hometown of the young bride of Wee Boon Teck, the son of the family patriarch Wee Bin, who had migrated to Singapore from Fujian by the middle of the nineteenth century. It is thus not surprising that the bed incorporates a range of motifs. What is particularly noteworthy about this bridal chamber is that it includes two beds, a marital bed clearly for a couple and a nearby one suitable only for a single person. The main alcove bed, which is open in the front and framed with low rails on three sides, was used for both nighttime sleeping and daytime sitting, a place for conjugal intimacy, to nurse a young child, and from time to time visit with friends. In many ways, an alcove bed within the larger room may be considered itself an intimate “room,” which can be made even more private by dropping the surrounding curtains. Colors around and about the bridal bed are exuberant, replicating the hues of tropical flowers similarly found on Peranakan porcelain ware and women’s clothing. Over a period of days after the assembling of a bridal bed, an extensive array of ornamented textiles would be spread or hung about the bed to enliven the mood for the bride and groom. Close inspection of the curtains and bolsters about any Peranakan bridal bed of this type reveals a plethora of embroidered and beaded auspicious motifs, especially dragons and phoenixes, as well as magpies and mandarin ducks that express harmony between the marrying couple. Without exception on beds of this type, one finds always a shuangxi or doubled happiness character. Usually the smaller bed was placed in front of the larger one where it functioned as a settee or sleeping space. Although it is not certain how a couple used both beds, it is likely that the smaller bed provided a restful separation for the husband when his wife was nursing or cuddling their young child. The pair today is separately

displayed so that each can be enjoyed fully.

In the 1910s, Peranakan women began to adopt the kebaya renda or lace kebaya, which had been a fashion among European and Eurasian women in the Indies. This example, made of figured gauze with delicate, machine-made lace edges, dates to the 1930s, and has the tapered ends typical of fashionable examples from this period. © Asian Civilisations Museum, Singapore. Gift of Mr and Mrs Lee Kip Lee On the floor of the bridal chamber are several colorful carpets, a type referred to as “Irish carpets” and sold internationally at the turn of the twentieth century. These tapestry-like carpets, many of which were produced in factories owned by Scottish textile manufacturers in Ireland, are made of velvet, a type of woven fabric with a dense pile and a smooth finish with saturated colors. Treasured as heirlooms, Irish carpets were not used daily, but were only brought out at festive times, such as during birthdays. As is found in many Peranakan Chinese front bedrooms above the Main Hall, there is a peep hole drilled into the floor, which is “sealed” with a removable block of wood, which the women upstairs could remove in order to glimpse who was visiting in the more public section of the home below. Additional furniture in the bridal suite includes two sewing chests, a wedding bench with baskets on top, several brown-and-gold cabinets used to store clothing, a round table with four stools, each of which has circular marble inserts, as well as a distinctive multitiered Palembang-style gift basket on top of a round Western-style wooden table. In addition, the typical trousseau of a Peranakan bride, including wedding garments, accessories, and jewelry, are displayed around the room. Traditional Peranakan weddings, not discussed here, took place in the past over a twelve-day period, incorporating an elaborate, multifaceted, and prolonged ritual whose purpose was not only to unite the couple but also their families (Lee and Chen, 2006: 79–87). While some rituals were held in the downstairs Ancestral Hall, others used the bridal suite as their obligatory setting.

While weddings of this duration have long fallen out of fashion, news reports today sometimes tell of young Peranakan Chinese who have elected to have an abbreviated version in an effort to have a memorable celebration that echoes that of their forbears. Suspended alongside the embroidered silk curtains of the bed is a group of auspicious yet decorative silver bed hangings and a hook to hold back the curtain. Wee family residence, now Baba House Museum, Neil Road, Singapore.

Set on top of an ornately carved and gilded red-lacquered low cabinet is a equally elaborate mirror with a shelf for beauty products. Nearby is a Victorian bell jar to display a creative arrangement and a blue glass epergne. Pinang Peranakan Mansion, Church Street, Penang, Malaysia.