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<body> <b><font SIZE="5"> <p ALIGN="CENTER">PERANAKAN ETHNOCULTURE</p> </font> <p ALIGN="CENTER">(Copyright © 2000 Hugh M. Lewis. Textual references in this work are covered by fair-use policy. A copy of this document may be printed and used in the class-room for educational purposes)</p> <p ALIGN="CENTER">02/19/00</p> </b> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a HREF="peranakanframes.htm#one">The Overseas Chinese</a><b> </b><a HREF="peranakanframes.htm#two">Mestizo Chinese</a><b><font SIZE="4"> </font></b><a HREF="peranakanframes.htm#three">Me'tis Chinois'</a> <a HREF="peranakanframes.htm#four">Thai Chinese</a> <a HREF="peranakanframes.htm#five">Burmese Chinese</a><b><font SIZE="4"> </font></b><a HREF="peranakanframes.htm#six">"Borneo" Chinese</a><b><font SIZE="4"> </font></b><a HREF="peranakanframes.htm#eight">Baba Beginnings</a><b><font SIZE="4"> </font></b><a HREF="peranakanframes.htm#nine">Nonya Culture</a><font SIZE="4"> </font><a HREF="peranakanframes.htm#ten">Straits Silverwork</a><b><u><font SIZE="4"> </font></u></b><a HREF="peranakanframes.htm#eleven">Nonya Ware</a><b><u><font SIZE="4"> </font></u></b><a HREF="peranakanframes.htm#twelve">Nonya Costume</a><b><u><font SIZE="4"> </font></u></b><a HREF="peranakanframes.htm#thirteen">Nonya Beadwork & Embroidery</a><font SIZE="4"> </font><a HREF="peranakanframes.htm#fourteen">Nonya Cuisine</a><b><u><font SIZE="4"> </font></u></b><a HREF="peranakanframes.htm#fifteen">Sireh Chewing, Tea and Cards</a><b><u><font SIZE="4"> </font></u></b><a HREF="peranakanframes.htm#sixteen">Architecture</a><b><u><font SIZE="4"> </font></u></b><a HREF="peranakanframes.htm#seventeen">Furniture</a><font SIZE="4"> </font><a HREF="peranakanframes.htm#eighteen">Birth Customs</a><b><u><font SIZE="4"> </font></u></b><a HREF="peranakanframes.htm#nineteen">Marriage Customs</a><font SIZE="4"> </font><a HREF="peranakanframes.htm#twenty">Peranakan People</a><font SIZE="4"> </font><a HREF="peranakanframes.htm#twentyone">The Social World of the Straits Chinese</a><b><font SIZE="4"> </font></b><a HREF="peranakanframes.htm#twentytwo">Baba Malay Language</a><b><font SIZE="4"> </font></b><a HREF="peranakanframes.htm#twentythree">Baba Religion</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> <p>"Peranakan" is a Malay term designating a particular Creole culture of partly assimilated Chinese in Malaysia and Indonesia. To an unknown extent, these peoples' distinctive identities were the by-products of political-economic and culture historical forces of social integration within a colonial Southeast Asian context. In certain places during the colonial era, especially in the so-called Straits Settlements, of Penang, Malacca and Singapore, the "Peranakans" emerged as a distinctive, fully crystallized ethno-cultural orientation with its own sense of cultural focus and elaboration of distinctive, ethnically defined traits. This became the highly stylistic culture of the "Babas and Nyonyas."</p> <p>The Babas represent something unusual and therefore interesting in the world, but not something that was to be unexpected, given the social conditions and historical contexts in which they emerged to define themselves as distinct and separate from all other people. They are not to be facilely dismissed as but one more of many sub-groupings of the Chinese nation, but another minor variant upon a dominant theme of sinicization, because they stand clearly apart from all other Chinese in Southeast Asia--their cultural orientation ran somewhat across the Chinese grain.</p> <p>They represent a dynamic aspect of Chinese cultural character that would be considered uncommon in terms of the patriarchal and xenophobic Sinitic stereotypes. They represented a synthetic and syncretic capacity of Chinese to readily incorporate and assimilate foreign elements in a creative way when given the context and opportunity, and incentive, to do so, and to redefine their own identity in a way which does not always fall beneath the umbra of their Ancestor's Shadow.</p> <p>But the Babas also stand for something else which is perhaps more interesting from an anthropological standpoint. The study of their provenience in time and place, their emergence, historical elaboration, and subsequent submergence beneath the tides of modern historical developments, allow us to ask critical questions about some of foundational concepts concerning culture, ethnicity, social structure, historical patterning, and even evolutionary processes of change.</p> <p>They represented an interstitial, as opposed to marginal, sub-grouping of a wider stream of humanity. Their life-ways straddled the entire rural-urban continuum, and was as much a product of the cityscape as it was of the countryside. They were not a band or tribe or peasant village. They were not a ghetto, an ethnic enclave, a colony, a cult or sect, a caste, a class, a party or a corporate institution, and still, as an enduring yet ephemeral historical phenomena, they were as real and distinctive as any grouping on earth. Uncommon as they have been, they did not stand completely alone in the annals of history--there have been other similar kinds of groups in other parts of the world.</p> <p>To claim that the Baba Chinese were a residuum of a colonial era is only a biased part of the whole picture. The emergence of their kind is to be expected any time there has been prolonged, organized, and creative contact between different cultures, different civilizations, different races, and different streams of history--such groups form like swirling eddies in the confluence of great rivers.</p> <p>They are not so much transitional cultures as they are cultures of transition--new and emergent possibilities of cultural patterning created as a result of acculturative interchange and historical transition. They are cultures of convergence that are only possible when different groups of people are forced to live together in some degree of mutual symbiosis and tolerance.</p> <p>From the standpoint of the study of cultural transmission and change, the case of the Baba's represent an interesting model of an evolutionary process of cultural speciation that occurs as the consequence of acculturation. The fundamental reconfiguration of basic cultural patternings as the direct result of such processes of acculturation, and the emergence of a new and viable cultural orientation with its own distinctive sense of cultural value and historical tradition.</p> <p>This process of cultural convergence and speciation affects virtually every aspect of the cultural configuration--evidence for the basic changes are to be found in language, religion, arts, social structure, values, worldview, dietary patterns, ethnic identity, etc. The patternings produced by the convergence of two or more separate cultural configurations form something of a moire' that contains elements of both configurations but in a new arrangement.</p> <p>With the Babas, we get a glimpse of culture history in the making--if not actually on the level of individual actors and their decision-making, then on the next higher level of primary social groups and communities acting in concert and in a directed manner to fashion their own sense of history.</p> <p>We can also see, in the momentous and inevitable turn of the wheels of history, the larger historical structures that remain always in the background, like the hour hand of a clock, slow and imperceptible in its movement, yet inexorable in its constraint and imperative for human action. We can clearly see how new cultural possibilities can be created, and then taken away, by larger mitigating historical structures. If the conditions are not appropriate for the germination of culture, as for the germination of seedlings in the earth after a long and severe winter, then no amount of growth can be expected.</p> <p>With the example of the Babas, the general framework of culture history can be articulated with the narrower focus upon the ethnohistories of particular peoples of particular periods and places. With the Babas, we can get a partial picture of how cultural dynamics intermesh with historical process. We can write, and rewrite, the story of the Baba's in such a way that combines the narrative frame of historical explanation with the descriptive frame of ethnographic exemplification.</p> <p> Ethnos names a basic operative principle in the definition of human identity and difference in a social world. Human history has largely been a narrative of the formation, conflict and resolution of human identities and differences between different groups of people across time and space.</p> <p>Ethnos also marks off a central principle in the study of the human condition in the world, of its many variations, its 'grand arc' of possibility, and its basic structures of pan-humanness. Basic human identity is constituted socially and historically in the world--it is constructed--and then, in turn, becomes the central organizing principle for the construction of the world. We make the world in terms of how we see ourselves in it in relation to other people, and we make our own identity in terms of how we see the world of others.</p> <p>Ethnoculture is my designation for the distinctive identity and difference of a people that is defined both socially in relation to other groupings, and historically in terms of its origin, development and direction, in <u>terms which are emically salient for the people who are so defined.</u> The objective of the study of ethnoculture is to discover and derive the basic principle of ethnos as it is culturally and historically elaborated and operative in the world, as well as the factors, which constrain and influence its development.</p> <p>Ethnoculture inevitably involves the inseparable problems of the construction and "re-presentation" of reality, and the construction of "reconstructions" as well as the problem of defining the subjective/objective basis of group integration and the influences of change. Thus, both ethnoculture and ethnohistory centrally deal with the dilemmas of "historicity" and "facticity" in seeking primary sources and questioning the political and ideological foundations of knowledge and the tautological conundrums of theories, and hence both are a needed antidote to fast and nonreflexive explanations about human experiences.</p> <p>The ethnoculture of the Baba's is exemplary, and problematic, for a number of important anthropological reasons. In seeking to establish a base-line for traditional Baba Chinese culture, it will be discovered that such a base-line is at best only a model, an ethnohistorical construction, that we need elaborate only in order to subsequently amend or refute by the discovery of contrary, alternative or supportive evidence.</p> <p>The ethnocultural continuum of the Peranakan Chinese of Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia manifests several significant dimensions that can be referred to as social structure and process, language, religion and ethnicity. Though the most visible Babas and Nonya's were the upper class merchants of the port cities of the Straits, and were thus very much fixtures of the urban city-scape, we can probably correctly claim that the "average" Peranakan was a petty merchant trader who was "in the middle" in a variety of senses. Also we cannot ignore a substantial number of rural Peranakans who were agricultural pioneers and entrepreneurs, or who were long settled in small village colonies that dotted the countryside.</p> <p> </p> <p>We must therefore take into account a fairly broad range of social stratification and occupational differentiation within Peranakan communities. To be Peranakan was not to be only one kind of person and Peranakan cultural orientation did not imply simply one set of acquired traits. It consisted more of local and regional variations upon a common theme, and even thematic variation upon a common, polythetic set of cultural features.</p> <p>Peranakan social realities varied widely over both period and place. What it may have been in pre-contact Malacca, versus what it apparently had been in Nineteenth Century Singapore, to what it was to become in Indonesia or Penang in the modern, post-colonial era, may well be quite different sorts of things only somewhat spuriously subsumed under the same basic epithet.</p> <p>Of course, from an ethnocultural point of view, we must assume at least one basic chain of continuity between the distant past and the immediate present and that is the linkage of cultural, if not biological, heredity. This is the ethnocultural continuity of people who are the direct descendants, whatever the number of generations removed or diluted, from those who first were known as or eventually came to be called "Peranakan," and who have retained some minimal sense of what it is to be a Peranakan. And in this sense of familial inheritance, early childhood socializations, primary social networks and corporate institutions, and important life experiences which become played out in the relative presence or absence of the most significant others, critically influenced and shaped the nature and culture of this kind of ethnocultural identity.</p> <p>And in this regard, both ethnos and culture become very real and very significant social and historical forces to be reckoned with, as both come to have a molding influence upon the subjectively lived experiences of the individual "culture bearer." Both come to have a massive, basic shaping and constraining effect upon experience and interaction in the world, as both subjectively internalized and externally objectivated, and has both a realizing agency of potentiality and a mediating mechanism in dealing with change and difference.</p> <p>This speaks for a much deeper and more basically rooted connection between ethnos and culture than many scholars of ethnicity, who stress the communicative, social, economic and political aspects of ethnicity, seem willing to acknowledge. A primordialist view of the relation between ethnos and culture holds that such an identity is more foundational and less easily alterable than other kinds of identities--national, religious, social--and that these other identities might achieve some sense of ingrained embedding by their primoridialist connections with a peoples shared ethnoculture.</p> <p>There are two theoretical implications of this primordialist view of ethnoculture. First, the basic ethnocultural continuities--the common core of a shared identity--cannot be simply negotiated away, transacted, traded in or changed "for a new suit of clothes." Though boundaries between groups are negotiated, these boundaries are always fuzzy and always encompass a more conservative "prototypical" core. Second, the outward aspects of ethnoculture are largely historically determined, and thus the actual significances of ethnocultural identity are quite variable across space and time--the combination of the core traits are likely to be lost or added, variably mixed and interchanged.</p> <p>A third implication forthcoming from the first two is that ethnocultural identity tends always to draw from the past, from its traditions, its styles, customs, habits, lessons and myths, for purposes of the present. It also tends to appropriate elements and aspects of the present for the sake of reconstructing and overcoming the "lost sense" of the past. This makes ethnoculture both very functionally adaptive and very conservative. This always creates a dialectical tension about ethnocultural identity that is never without some contradiction and some interesting conflicts.</p> <p>Another significant dimension of the problem of Peranakan "Ethnoculture" are the social distances, contradictions and obstacles spanned between traditional Chinese cultural foci, on the one hand, and becoming a part of the Malay cultural tradition, on the other. Peranakan culture was not just intermediate in the socio-structural sense of being comprised of "pariah" merchant middlemen. They also were an in-between socio-cultural phenomena as a "transitional culture or a "culture of transition" arrested somewhere along the process of assimilation of a minority Chinese group into the social ethos of the dominant Malay host culture.</p> <p>On top of being such a culture defined somewhere along a continuum of assimilation, the Peranakans also came to constitute a "culture of amalgamation" which was defined by some modicum of ethnic intermarriage and intercultural integration. Even more problematic, we must also take into account its orientation as a "culture of acculturation," subject as it was to strong foreign influences.</p> <p>And, to top all this sociological jargon off, we may speak of Peranakans as being commonly also a "culture of accommodation" in that its basis was formed in a context that promoted mutual interaction, basic reciprocities, and mutual adjustments to social differences during different historical periods. So we must again ask ourselves, what, and where, is Peranakan ethnoculture?</p> <p>In this regard it is commonly assumed that the principle barrier to full assimilation of the Peranakan Chinese into the dominant Malay or Indonesian societies has been the Islamic faith that prohibits intermarriage without conversion. But evidence supports the contention that Islam was not everywhere equally the same kind of barrier to intermarriage that it has more recently and commonly become. It is also commonly contended that Malay culture and ethnic identity has been founded centrally upon the principle of being a good "fundamentalist" Muslim. This is a legal prejudice that has become predominant in modern nation-states that failed to effectively separate church and state, but being Malay has long been something more, or else, than only being Moslem.</p> <p> </p> <p>Conversely, it is often argued that traditional Chinese cultural identity has been founded upon the principle of ethnos that is relatively independent of any religious components. Traditional Chinese religious orientation is held to reflect the openness and syncretistic character of the Chinese social world, and the synthesizing qualities of the Chinese mind. But evidence also suggests that there is something fundamental to the core of "Chineseness" which has basic religious overtones. The Chinese world and worldview may not always have been as open as it is represented to be much of the literature, and Islam may not have provided the only barrier to the assimilation of the "Peranakans" into the host society. "Chinese Religionists" frequently seem to present as great a barrier to passing between Chinese and Malay worlds as anything Islam has been purported to do.</p> <p> </p> <p>Regarding intermarriage, it is evident that interethnic social integration and cultural amalgamation can effectively proceed without the requirements of members of contraposed groups being wed, and that intermarriage is also a sociocultural possibility whether or not other processes of social integration and assimilation are occurring. What it seems to require most is the tolerance and willing acceptance of the different families, and communities, that are thus united--and nothing can so divide brothers and families against one another as relatively remote, and frequently self-serving, political interests.</p> <p>It is worthwhile to briefly speculate on the ethnogenesis of Peranakan ethno-culture, especially the focal and elaborate kind of Baba and Nonya culture that apparently developed during the Nineteenth Century in the Straits Settlements.</p> <p>A romantic model would be a story of the original Nonya who set the entire Nonya culture snow-balling in its development through the many successive generations, from mother to daughter in an unending chain. Was she a Chinese woman, the daughter of an Imperial emperor of China, sent to Malacca to take the hand the Malay Sultan, adopting Malay dress, Malay speech, Malay beliefs, but remaining basically Chinese to the core? Or was she but a young outcast of a Malay kampong, a debt-slave or a concubine of a rich Chinese kapitan, basically Malay in most aspects but constrained in fundamental ways by a patriarchal Chinese tradition? Are the Nonya's basically Chinese or Malay?</p> <p>It is not too far fetched to imagine a relatively small group of original Nonyas of Malacca, somewhere in the Sixteenth Century, who found themselves in a unique situation to create a whole new cultural patterning and style. They subsequently elaborated and handed this culture down through their daughters, essentially unchanged, until the twentieth century.</p> <p>In this regard, it would do well to remember the subservient role of the woman in traditional Chinese society. Only as a mother and matriarch of a domestic household does a woman hope to have any power or influence, and only as this power could be realized through a father, a husband or a son, or alternatively, only through a separate status network-hierarchy of other women, mothers and daughters.</p> <p>The suffocating love of the mother for the son is a fundamental cultural psychological theme of Chinese tradition and ethos. In an almost exclusively male community--male dominated in every way--in the early trading outposts of the Nanyang, an empty niche would have been created in a displaced and makeshift Chinese cosmos. It was a niche that would have had symbolic, social, structural and psychological components, by the dearth of Chinese women and mothers that could not be simply filled by the services of a few prostitutes. This niche would not have been an unattractive one to fill, as it had the promise of some wealth and advantage among tradition bound people who would not have otherwise realized such things. This empty niche left an opening in the traditional Chinese cosmos for the incorporation of foreign elements.</p> <p>We must seriously ask why it was almost exclusively domestic and female Malay elements that came to so strongly define what was distinctive about Nonya culture. We are left with a kind of proposition that there may be basic dimensions to its culture that were defined along lines of female and male identity respectively. A useful kind of distinction to make is between ethno-political symbols that are primarily concerned with external boundary maintenance and ethno-religious symbolism's that involve domestic relations and conceptions of sacredness, and the association with these kinds of symbols to male and masculine domains and features, and feminine and female traits, respectively. In the case of the Babas and Nonyas, what fell away from the tradition-bound Chinese Confucian orientation was the whole female side of its cultural orientation, to become infused, ethno-culturally, if not quite racially, with many Malay elements.</p> <p>The second alternative was that Baba fathers and sons were left to fill play the part of "reality culture" bearers--to use Alfred Kroeber's distinction--in networks which were externally oriented to culture brokerage and the mediation of differences. Nonya mothers and daughters were left separately to play a role the construction and elaboration of an almost exclusive "value culture" that was almost entire a feminine prerogative. Within domesticated social spheres, women were left to claim and compete with one another for status.</p> <p>When we consider the religious orientation of the Babas and the Nonyas, we are faced with another paradox--though incorporating many Malay elements involving trance, superstition, animistic spirituality, spirit possession and ritual, the Peranakan pantheon of deities remains basically Chinese in character. We must confront the possibility that no religion or religious system, as it is lived by an ethno-cultural grouping of people, is a purely unitary phenomenon. We only have to look to the incorporation of local deities, beliefs, and cults all over the world, into the sainthood of a strictly monotheistic Catholic orthodoxy to see a similar kind of lived religion in action.</p> <p>The alleged matrilocality of the Babas and Nonyas, as a persistent and pervasive social institution, also demands some sort of explanation in terms of origins and primary causes. Though theirs was not a culture characterized by chronic warfare that demanded the long-term absence of the males, they were a settlement of sojourner-traders in which the economic interests of the males demanded long periods of absence. They were also a group which may have always been defined by some kind of interethnic stress or tension, if not always outright conflict and competition. It is also apparent that though the traditional Nonyas may have held the keys to the home, even the shop, as well as to whatever domestic wealth possessed by the family, they were not themselves involved in any forms of primary production or external economic activity.</p> <p>Unlike many other Southeast Asian women, they were not themselves petty traders or producers. Thus we are left to explain an apparent exception to the cross-cultural rule of matrilocality, in terms of origins and causal factors that stressed the rarity-value of women who were in every respect a minority, based upon their reproductive role as the principle providers and care-takers of children who were brought up to think of themselves and call themselves Chinese even though they often acted and talked like Malays, and in terms of the elaboration of a strictly domestic, female-centered culture that was transmitted through processes of both primary and secondary socialization through the daughters.</p> <p>The daughters became the principle culture-bearers, and inheritors of values, attitudes, and characteristics that were distinctively Nonya. And if the mothers were the principle arrangers in their children's marriages, then they must have taken much care in finding suitable partners who would contribute to, rather than take from, their domestically oriented, female-focused culture.</p> <p> </p> <p>Another paradox is that though in relation to their male relatives the Nonya women were always in a subordinate position, at least within the interior world of their domestic household, the differences of age came to override those differences based upon gender. Within their own internal world, the Nonya's came to control resources, power, prestige and privilege that sometimes matched that of the Babas in the outside world. It is even more of a paradox when we consider that young Nonya daughters still had inferior value compared to that of Baba sons, though they were the principle agents and carriers in the transmission of Nonya lifeways, they did not gain ascendant status except through marriage, motherhood and the subsequent marriage of their own sons and daughters. The Baba boys were clearly privileged, even though from a strictly cultural point of view they would always remain peripheral, because they still were under the penumbra of the ancestor's shadow--it was still the Confucian thing to do.</p> <p>Peranakan ethnoculture, especially the distinctive form that came to bloom in the Straits Settlements during the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries, was clearly something more than just a by-product of colonial political economy within a plural society. In fact, its occurrence may have been quite separate and independent of the colonial setting, and some evidence at least suggests that the colonial framework may have actually hindered and limited its development and fluorescence in fundamental ways.</p> <p>European colonialism did clearly serve to highlight it, to underscore its ethnocultural distinctiveness and difference in ways that it may not have otherwise been emphasized. The fortunes of the Babas and Nonyas within a foreign administrative structure were only indirect results of this contact and acculturation--the effect rather than the cause of such contact and acculturation. It was the very inbetweenness of Straits Chinese society that permitted them the latitude to serve the critical role of culture brokers and articulatory intermediaries within a colonial social system, a role which was effectively not available to the members of other, more tradition-bound groups. And with their increasing wealth and structurally defined privilege and opportunity within the colonial framework, their visibility, distinctiveness, status and prestige also increased.</p> <p>If the Babas and Nonyas were not directly the by-product of a somewhat superficial colonial arrangement, then they must be understood in another set of terms. If they weren't primarily colonial then they were preeminently traditional, and what has been pulling them apart today have been larger forces of modernization that have been wearing away the fabric of many different people's cultural traditions. What is tradition from a modern, secular point of view? Values and orientations of family, lineage, respect for and preservation of the authority and legitimacy the past, a central place in one's world for religion, the primacy of the family as the main stage and process of socialization and cultural transmission, values of nurturance and interdependency rather than independence and personal dominance. "Tradition" defines the principle domain of ethno-culture.</p> <p>The very factors that fostered the Peranakan's structural fortune in the colonial era, led to their structural misfortune, their social disintegration, their loss of visibility and status in the post-colonial era which as to define itself along new lines, imported from the West, of modernization, development and nationalism. As the Overseas Chinese have come to face increasing ethnic segregation and discrimination in most modern Southeast Asian nation-states, the splitting apart of splintered ethnic segments of society and the widening gulf between indigenous majorities and Chinese minorities has tended to pull apart and distintegrate the Peranakans who were structurally in-between.</p> <p> Each new generation of Baba and Nonya is left with fewer alternatives other than to attempt passing into one or another of the segments of modern society. Less and less of their own culture and their own people are left over by which to continue to construct and maintain a separate, distinctive Peranakan identity. Because passing downhill and out of contexts defined by overpopulation and fierce social circumscription and competition for very limited resources is much easier than passing "uphill," most Peranakans have been undergoing resinification.</p> <p>For some reason, becoming a Moslem in order to pass into Malay society has never been a viable option open to most Peranakans. The losses in social status and individual identity in both Chinese and Muslim worlds would have been much greater than the few gains in social security and acceptability. Though the Malays are in a structurally predominant and superior position to the Chinese, their place is by no means an enviable one. Few Chinese would undergo circumcision in order to trade places with their Malay counterparts, neither in politics and especially not in business.</p> <p>The only other alternative seems to be one of escape from the Southeast Asian setting--to Singapore, or better yet, to the common wealth countries or to the United States. English language, Western education, the acquisition of money, material wealth, and Christianity are all efficacious vehicles for such escape.</p> <p>With the disintegration of Peranakan ethnoculture, we are witnessing a kind of socio-cultural atomization of Peranakans into smaller and smaller groupings, ultimately to become enclosed as separate family units, or even as lone individuals culturally astray in the wider social stream. With fewer and fewer social basis available for interaction in the wider world in purely Peranakan fashion, more and more peranakans are feeling themselves cut off from their roots, from the tradition in which they themselves were raised, adrift upon the tides of change.</p> <p> </p> <b><font SIZE="4"> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="one">The Overseas Chinese</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> </font></b> <p>The "Peranakan problem" cannot be finally resolved if it is not sufficiently situated within a larger setting--ultimately within the framework of traditional and colonial Southeast Asian civilization. Many of the basic structural features that underlie the formation and ordering of the Peranakan world are features basic to the patterning and developmental processes of much of the Southeast Asian world. The maritime openness and outward-looking orientation, the natural, tropical environment, the role of rivers in the integration and incorporation of diverse and different ecologies within a single "interregional system," the recurrent structural theme of the "organization of diversity," that like the supernatural percussive melody of Gamelan, reverberates in every ritual, in every myth, in every language.</p> <p>Foremost of the themes that have united Southeast Asia as a region and that help to contextualize the "Peranakan problem" is the influence that diverse, foreign cultures have had in the stylistic and structural development of what can be referred to as a typically "Southeast Asian civilization." Acculturation, whether religious, political, economic, or social in character, has long been a perennial influence in the region, and different culture historical phases of acculturation can be used, almost in the manner of archaeological stratigraphy or stylistic seriation, to uncover the many layers of culture that have become embedded one on top of the other throughout Southeast Asia. Each phase contributed to the development of Southeast Asia upon a new level of sociocultural integration and structural articulation. The incorporation of foreign elements, ideas, things, and people, served as a common catalyst, a common stimulus, to the endogenous elaboration and development of Southeast Asian civilization.</p> <p>Inextricably entangled with the problem of such acculturation and the incorporation of diversity, is the problem of "ethnos" as a central organizational principle of Southeast Asian civilization. Ethnicity as the study of ethnic identity and ethnogenesis as the study of ethnic origins, are intrinsic and basic dimensions of Southeast Asian studies in general. "...ethnic diversity is so fundamental in Southeast Asia that it is one of the great laboratories for the study of ethnicity." (D. E. Brown, 1976:99) It was in general reference to Southeast Asia, and in specific relation to the pervasiveness of the Overseas Chinese there, that had led J. S. Furnival to formulate his now classic theory of "radical pluralism"--the social integration of people of many cultures in a common market place and under the aegis of a common political structure.</p> <p>Because the Peranakans were basically Chinese, members of the so-called Nanyang, the centrality of the principle of ethnos is especially important in their study, such that we may refer to a basic Chinese cultural "ethos of ethnos" that was part of the openness, organizational refinement and intricacy, and adaptability of the Overseas Chinese social system.</p> <p>This brings out the central dilemma of the study of ethno-culture, and that is the problem of determining the appropriate criteria for drawing the line between what constitutes an ethnic group, or an ethnic phenomena, or an ethnic category or identity, and what is constitutive of genuinely "cultural" ethos and difference, cultural traits, orientation and tradition.</p> <p>Anthropologists have typically treated culture in a nominal manner as if it were some kind of boundable entity, a group, an organization of meaning and value that endures through time and that evolves according to its own internal logic. Ethnicity has remained somewhat of a sociological aspect, a process of inter-group identification and ascription, reference and boundary-maintenance.</p> <p>Ethnicity is commonly associated with a chauvinistic kind of pride--the ethnocentric pride in the superiority of one's own way of life over others, and, as well is commonly conflated with fallacious and fictitious ideologies of racial origins and biological difference. Culture is typically treated as something that is more fundamental, and basic to humankind. It is social, it is universal, it is pervasive in all we do, it is largely out of awareness, and thus mostly transparent and invisible within ourselves. And yet ethnos and culture cannot be effectively separated in our analysis of human reality, as neither can we teeth out what are psychological variables, historical changes and continuities, and our own shared constructions of reality.</p> <p>Ethnos and Culture coexists along a common continuum, a continuum that is multidimensional and that is constituted by a complex relational dialectic between many mutually constraining factors and forces. This ethno-cultural continuum exists through real historical time, across real social space. It only exists because all people, as actors upon the same stage, face a common dilemma in transacting and negotiating the boundaries and areas of their realities with other, different peoples.</p> <p>Ethnoculture then, is the study of how people, their identity, their social positionality, their consciousness and outlook upon the world, are critically conditioned and constrained by their inevitable relationships with other peoples. It is a study of human difference, of how such difference can be constitutive of unity and diversity, cooperation and conflict, in the world.</p> <p>Ethnoculture is also a study in how we become shaped by the many influences of the social world that we live within, and how, in turn, we come to shape that world. Finally, ethnoculture is also a critically reflexive study of the relative limits of our knowledge of both others and of our selves in the social world. Just as we cannot clearly disentangle where the study of ethnos ends and the understanding of culture begins, so too we cannot finally say where ends the problematic understanding of ourselves and where begins the unproblematic study of others.</p> <p>The understanding of Peranakan; ethnoculture cannot be had outside of its broader 'traditional' Southeast Asian context. It shares many of the continuities that are distinctive of Southeast Asian civilization. Civilization is here taken to be a trans-cultural and panhuman process of historical development--a process that is socially and culturally integrative and interregional in scope. Certain general cultural style-patterns are associated with particular instances of civilization, as are particular incidences of "Great Men" or genius whose innovativeness and spirit serve to characterize the style patterning of the age. The civilizing process consists of a structural dialectic of emergent complexity in interregional systems, a dialectic involving social, political, economic, religious and psychological factors. It involves increasing levels and areas of integration and increasing heterogeneity of socio-cultural transmission from local to regional and interregional to global contexts, which result in stimulus generation of modified patterns at all levels of human organization. Processes of both exogenous, or external, acculturative influences of change, as well as internal, endogenous enculturative influences are involved in the construction and transmission of ethnoculture.</p> <p> Peranakan ethnoculture as both part of a wider confluence of Southeast Asian Civilization and as constituting a particular culture historical instance of typical, and in some ways, prototypical, Southeast Asian civilization, is the product of many diverse extraneous influences. Thus, Peranakan culture has its place within broader cultural and historical streams of the human world that deserve closer study and understanding.</p> <p>A model of the function of ethnos in the decision-making process of migration, identity and development that goes into the history of the making of Nanyang civilization is evident from the consideration of Baba culture in the larger context of the Nanyang. The Babas were a kind of pariah class created through cultural integration, acculturation, and amalgamation between Muslim Malays and Buddhist Chinese, in which basic differences in religious tenets precluded the kind of complete cultural assimilation that was possible in Thailand.</p> <p>Post-Independence Malaysia fostered strict policies of structural discrimination and segregation between the Malays and the Chinese. These policies lead to the disintegration of the basis of Baba culture. Singapore, a Chinese city, gained its own independence from Malaysia, and, in the definition of its newfound national identity, excluded all that was Malay from its own identity. Those aspects of Baba culture that were Malay were cast out, leaving a gulf in its identity between the East and the West. At first it strongly oriented itself to the British model, and later has gone through a period of resinicization in renewing trade contacts with Taiwan.</p> <p> The situation for the Babas of Malacca was just the reverse. The oldest Baba community, and in many respects the most Malayized, these people found themselves symbolically appropriated and at the same time enclaved as the museum pieces of Malaysian national heritage. They have since come to represent the archetypical Babas, though they were but a variant of a more general theme. These Babas had no option in the matter but to submit to their own cultural cooption by the Malays.</p> <p>In Penang, the next oldest Baba settlement, which remains more than 90% Chinese in composition, the pathway taken by the Baba communities was a bit more tragic. These Babas strongly identified with the British, and were less Malayized than the Malacca Chinese. They initiated a separatist movement for Penang's status, similar to Singapore, but failed, not receiving the backing by the British.</p> <p>Ethnos can be seen as a principle determinant factor in the decisions and opportunities open to people in the course of their lives. People attempt to optimize their prospects, given alternative sets of possibilities, but these possibilities themselves are constrained within a larger, ethnically defined context, such that choices made are not unlimited, and vary considerably for different peoples.</p> <p>The Nanyang can be seen as a vast network of crisscrossing pathways that allow labor, resources and capital to move in different, frequently shifting, directions. Against systematic discrimination or persecution, Chinese are faced with a range of alternative choices--they can either opt to assimilate completely into the local population, become enclaved and ghettoized, segregated and discriminated against, migrate 'back to china' or seek a new homeland in another part of the Nanyang. The flight of Capital from Hong Kong to the U.S., the Nanyang and the Common Wealth, is but one more example of this social historical movement of people, wealth, resources and culture.</p> <p>Which directions Chinese take will depend partly upon the dialect group--Cantonese will take Cantonese pathways, and Hokkiens will follow Hokkien roads. Not all Chinese of the Nanyang hold Singaporean culture to be the model or principal orientation of their lives. The Singaporeans have, by and large, been cut from their roots to the Chinese homeland, but many Chinese throughout the Nanyang, Malaysia included, have maintained these Ancestral ties for generations. Chinese may see Singapore symbolically as a success story, as a financial capital and trade center of the Nanyang, but they do not identify with the Anglicized, modernized Baba orientation of the Singaporean people--they look elsewhere for their models of Chineseness.</p> <p>The principle virtue and limitation of the Baba people are that they no longer live directly under their Ancestor's shadow. Singaporean culture is native to Singapore and the Straits; this is their homeland to which they are fixed. Chinese who have kept their ties to the mainland have other options open to them, but do not see Singapore or Singaporean culture; as the primary alternative for their lives.</p> <p>The virtue of the larger Nanyang identity that depends upon its old identification with the mainland is that this permits the Chinese a relatively wide access to a number of possible alternatives. Chinese become united under a broader umbrella of pan-Chineseness that encompasses different dialect groups. Such Chinese are permitted to work together and even trust one another in contexts in which the only common bond may be a superficial knowledge of Mandarin. This latitude is an advantage of maintaining a Nanyang orientation not permitted to the Babas.</p> <p>The principle of the cultural models of ethnos in providing options and in constraining the directions of decision-making in peoples' lives is an important one. We can see that such ethnos is always defined in relation to reference or counter-reference groups--for the Singaporeans, the Malays are a counter-reference other, and constitute the greatest threat to their separate identity. On the other hand, the British model has served as the principal reference group for these peoples. Other models are available to other Chinese. Some may still look to the mainland, others to the Nationalist Government of Taiwan. Many undoubtedly see their successful cousins in the United States and the Commonwealth. Many are likely to follow those who came before them.</p> <p>Perhaps the greatest illusion that a Westerner could entertain with regard to the Chinese is that they are all basically the same. The very basis of ethnic Chinese identity; is its cross-cutting nesting of identities within a larger network of social distinctions on the basis of village, clan, kin-group, dialect, class, age, etc. Every Chinese person has a place within the vast theater, and every Chinese is supposed to know this place. Indeed, ethnos, or ethnicity, for the ethnic Chinese is the primary organizational principle of their society. Chinese typically make fine distinctions between other Chinese that are invisible to Non-Chinese eyes.</p> <p>Intra-ethnic Chinese distinctions have been referred to as "subethnic" identities based upon local-linguistic-ethnic distinctions. It is highly ascriptive in character, being linked to the strong patrilineal reckoning of Chinese kinship. Chinese successfully exploited this organizational ethos of ethnos in navigating and negotiating several different status-role identities within more than one organizational structure. They thrive on a fundamental status ambiguity, inter-positionality between structures, and a kind of chameleoness of code switching that would befuddle others.</p> <p>Chinese may well be one big family, but it is a family divided under one roof. The terminological distinctions made in kinship reckoning are fine and of massive detail. It is fitting that both Chinese heaven and hell are vast multi-tiered bureaucratic structures occupied by greater and lessor gods. Clan organization and a segmentary lineage structure facilitate mobilization as well as fine-tuning of internal differentiation. Trade associations, secret societies, Kong si's, all cross cut Clan and lineage structures to weave Chinese into a closely knit social cloth. </p> <p> </p> <b><font SIZE="4"> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="two">Mestizo Chinese</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> </font></b> <p>The formation of the Baba culture may have been unique in Southeast Asian History, but cultural correlates are to be found in other places and other periods of the Nanyang. The mestizo Chinese of the Philippines, distinguishable there since the eighteenth century, have made important contributions to the historical development of the Philippines, being mainly implicated in the Philippine Revolution against the Spanish, serving as a major catalyst in social change and economic development of the Philippines, and a leading component in the hispanization and creation of a distinctive Filipino culture. Structurally similar to the Baba's, they constituted a pariah group situated between the ethnically stronger Chinese and the indigenous Philippinos. ".... In most parts of Southeast Asia the Chinese <u>mestizos</u> (to use the Philippine term for persons of mixed Chinese-native ancestry) have not been formally or legally recognized as a separate group--one whose membership is strictly defined by genealogical considerations rather than by place of birth, and one which, by its possession of a unique combination of cultural characteristics, could be easily distinguished from both the Chinese and native communities."(E. Wickberg, "The Chinese Mestizo in Philippine History", in <u>Journal of Southeast Asian History,</u> Vol. 5, no 1, 1964) These Chinese mestizos had become prominent in landholding, wholesale merchant activities, and in the professions. They grew in wealth as a middleman pariah class, concentrating and virtually monopolizing on the internal trade of the Philippines.</p> <p>The Chinese mestizo of the Philippines; was strongly hispanicized, politically, in the adoption of Catholicism, in the adoption of Philippine versions of Hispanic culture. Their dress was unique in this regard--"models of what the urbanized Filipino of the late nineteenth century would wear." (ibid. p. ?) Their culture was an urbanized one, and the maternal influence hispanicized, catholicized mothers in the rearing and socialization of the children, were important factors in the development of the cultural distinctiveness of the Chinese mestizo.</p> <b><font SIZE="4"> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="three">Me'tis Chinois'</a></p> </font></b> <p>The Chinese presence in Cambodia and Cochin China, or what later became South Vietnam, has been very old. Early evidence from the eleventh and twelfth centuries AD mention the presence of a small Chinese community in Anghor Thom, merchants and carpenters who came by sea and who married local women. By the thirteenth century, a substantial Chinese settlement in Phnom-Penh is noted, and the emergence of this center from a locally oriented one to a major foreign trade entrepot, coincides with this settlement. Chinese communities were found there by the Spanish and later by the Portuguese in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries. Cantonese mercenaries in the service of the Anamese emperor established a fort at Mytho along the Mekong.</p> <p>After more than a century of occupation, these Chinese were later forced to abandon this settlement and migrated to the location near Saigon that later became known as Cholon, "...and soon established a trading town that soon became the centre of Chinese trade for the whole of Indochina. Many of these Chinese adventurers married Annamese women and produced the Minh-Huong, the Sino-Annamese who were treated as a separate minority group throughout the nineteenth century in Annam and Cochinchina, and who, for a short period, constituted a separate legal group in Cambodia as well." (W. E. Willmott, "History and Sociology of the Chinese in Cambodia Prior to the French Protectorate", in <u>The Journal of Southeast Asian History </u>,Vol. 7, no. 1, 1966)</p> <p> By the time of the arrival of French and British explorers, Phnom-Penh was mostly a Chinese city, composed primarily of immigrants from Cholon, and who had tied up the local trade in fish and rice. These Chinese were probably mostly Cantonese and Hainanese, the descendants of Ming patriots.</p> <p>Reference is made in the legal code of the Khmer Kingdom to granting of positions of authority over the Chinese community to "me'tis-chinois." (Lecle're, 1898:115) Chinese were not subject to the legal marriage prohibitions between Cambodian Buddhists and foreigners--perhaps because they were Buddhist as well, and because it was relatively easy for a Chinese to assimilate, if he so desired, into Cambodian society. "Any Chinese born in Cambodia was considered a Cambodian if he adopted Khmer customs and dress Sino-Khmer were automatically Cambodians." (Ibid, pg. 31)</p> <b><font SIZE="4"> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="four">Thai-Chinese</a></p> </font></b> <p>The Chinese in Thailand represent another instance of partial assimilation and the formation of an important pariah group. Constituting perhaps an eighth of the total population, they are small traders and merchant middlemen--"virtually any article bought or sold in Thailand passes through the hands of one or more Chinese middlemen."(Richard Coughlin, <u>Double-Identity</u> 1960: 2) Chinese traders in Thailand date back at least to the thirteenth century. A French account from 1687 reports about 3,000 Chinese at Ayuthia. By this time, the Chinese controlled most of the trade in the country. A Teochiu Chinese, Taksin, rose to power as the King of Siam after expelling Burmese invaders who had destroyed the capital. The predominant presence of Teochiu Chinese in Thailand is probably related to this important historical episode. Taksin was assassinated by his son-in-law, Chao Phya Chakkri, who founded the present Bangkok Dynasty. The royal palace was established in the old Chinese quarter of the city, "ruled by a rich Chinese merchant with the noble rank of Phraya."</p> <p>Continual warfare with Burma and Cambodia had decimated the Thai population, and thus Chinese immigration was welcome. "Meanwhile a war-surplus of females became available to the bachelor (or otherwise) Chinese immigrants and Chinese blood was literally fused with both the royal and common blood of the Thai people." (Joseph P. L. Jiang, "The Chinese in Thailand: Past and Present", in <u>The Journal of Southeast Asian History, </u>Vol. 7, no. 1, 1966:42)</p> <p>Chinese figured prominently in the economic development of Thailand--they held many 'tax-farms' and controlled the junk trade that was held by a royal monopoly on foreign commerce. They constituted artisans, craftsmen, metal smiths, builders, as well as mining, planting and timber.</p> <p>Chinese-Thai intermarriage was great in old Siam, and there seems to have been no boundaries or discrimination against such amalgamation. The net effect seems to have been near complete assimilation of Chinese by the third or fourth generation, with only some Chinese cultural elements, such as ancestor worship, remaining. "Since the earliest times prominent Chinese were often recruited to governmental, especially diplomatic service. The majority of these were second generation, and were more than half assimilated..." (ibid, pg. 51)</p> <p>The status of the Nanyang Chinese; in Thailand was directly tied to Thai tributary tutelage to Mainland China, and to their usefulness to both the Thai royalty and to the Thai people in economic activities. The Chinese were not discriminated against, and were given virtually free and ungoverned reign in their own spheres of activity, and yet the Chinese were clearly made politically subordinate to the Royalty.</p> <p>They filled a critical, intermediary niche as a pariah group which was not traditionally a part of Thai social structure, but which was necessary and vital to the economic development of old Siam. With the encroachment of Western domination over China, its loss of status to the Thai Royalty signaled a reversal in the status of the Chinese in Thailand, so much so that by the early 20th Century we find mention of the Chinese of Thailand as "Asian Jewry" and the promotion of Thai nationalism, an orientation inherited from the West, is closely linked to growing anti-sinicism. Policies of enforced assimilation of the ethnic Chinese into Thai culture--"Thai-ification"--and of systematic discrimination against the Chinese in business and public life, have grown and continue unabated until today.</p> <p> </p> <b><font SIZE="4"> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="five">Burmese-Chinese</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> </font></b> <p>The Chinese in Burma; are not outstanding in the History of the Nanyang. Burma shares a common border with Mainland China, and this has constrained status of the overseas Chinese there in important ways that the Chinese of Burma have not been ignorant in taking advantage. Though highly visible in many sectors of the economy, they were never as economically predominant there as elsewhere in Southeast Asia, in part because they had close competition with Indian merchants. Victor Purcell notes that intermarriage between Chinese men and Burmese women was not uncommon, and that the male offspring of such unions remained identified as Chinese, while the female offspring become identified as Burmese. He goes on to remark that Chinese there become almost completely assimilated by the second or third generation, losing all their Chineseness--thus, despite a continual influx of new Chinese immigrants into Burma, the total number of people identified as Chinese there remains effectively stable.</p> <p> </p> <b><font SIZE="4"> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="six">"Borneo" Chinese</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> </font></b> <p>Evidence supports the possible presence of Chinese upon the island of Borneo from as early as the 7th Century, and possibly even earlier, with archaeological evidence dating to 117 BC, upon an old site in the region now occupied by Brunei; and Sarawak. (Victor Purcell, 1966:11) Early Chinese Chronicles of the Liang (502-566) and Sui (589-618) Dynasties mention "P'oli", known since the Tang (618-907) Dynasty onwards as "P'oni" and thought to be the early name for Brunei, had given a description of its direction and of it's inhabitants which fit well that of Borneo. Later Chronicles mention the same kingdom comprising fourteen provinces extending along the northern Borneo coastline and as far as the Philippines. (John Chin, <u>The Sarawak Chinese</u> 1981:1-2)</p> <p>Assimilation of Chinese, of ulu-traders, in Borneo has been held to have been widespread. Rates of intermarriage with native Dusun and Sulu peoples were probably high. The Chinese have long figured in the "ulu" trade and resource exploitation of Borneo, as well as in its mining and agricultural pioneering. An early Kong Si system provided the organizational base for the mobilization of labor and resources in the development of trade and resource production in Borneo. Trade networks with indigenous peoples brought them into continuous contacts and interactions with these peoples, as these people grew accustomed to their goods and their presence. Chinese now comprise a significant minority in Borneo, comprising most of the ethnic-dialect groups representing the Overseas Chinese. Intermarriage with local wives was frequent, especially in the earlier periods, in part because of the male-biased sex ratio among the Chinese, and because such conjugal unions facilitated economic relations with the indigenous peoples. More recently, such intermarriage is virtually nonexistent, in either urban or rural segments of Chinese society, and "Peranakans" of means are remarrying back into "pure" Chinese society. "When it does occur it reflects the low status of the individual involved and his difficulty in finding an acceptable mate within the bounds of his own ethnic group." (David Fortier, "The Chinese in North Borneo," 1957:16-7) </p> <p> </p> <b><font SIZE="4"> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="seven">Peranakans/Babas</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> </font></b> <p>The Peranakan Chinese of Indonesia, "Peranakan" meaning literally "mixed blood," were the group most closely related to the Babas of the Straits. They are virtually identical in many cultural aspects, and yet they have had different histories and different trajectories of development. Both groups are principally Hokkien Chinese, both groups have assimilated similar elements of Malayo-Indonesian culture, and yet both groups looked to different European Colonial masters for their primary orientation in the modern world. The demographic profiles of the Peranakans of Indonesian and the Babas of Malaysia are substantially different--while the Nanyang Chinese of Malaysia constituted about 40% of the national population, being the largest group of Overseas Chinese, the Baba's represent only a small minority of the Chinese. On the other hand, the Chinese of Indonesia, while almost as numerous as the Malaysian Chinese, constituted only about 3% of the total population of Indonesia. But on the Island of Java, where the Nanyang Chinese were most numerous, the Peranakans constituted over 50% of the Overseas Chinese. Enforced segregation, a policy begun with the Dutch, has long served to mark off and isolate the Chinese communities in Indonesia. The principle division there was between the 'Totok" or "Singkeh" Chinese, and the Peranakan, or "mixed-blood" or "Indonesian born" Chinese. More than 85% of the Peranakans are to be found in Java concentrated in the main urban centers. The Peranakans were Hokkien descent, while the Totoks who came later were primarily Cantonese.</p> <p> </p> <b><font SIZE="4"> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="eight">Baba Beginnings</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> </font></b> <p>The Babas of Malaysia commonly referred to themselves as Peranakan, and even though among Malays this may have had derogative connotations of "mixed" or impure blood, the Baba's were proud of their heritage and of their name. John Clammer notes that Peranakan "is the Malay designation for 'local-born people.'"(1980:3) According to Tan Giok-San who wrote the first comprehensive ethnography of the Peranakans of Indonesia, the word "peranakan" is derived from the Malayo-Indonesian root "anak," meaning child, with the prefix "per" and suffix "an", rendering the meaning "born of." (1963:pg. 11). In modern medical terminology, "peranakan" is the part of the female anatomy closely describing the uterus. (Wazir Jahan Karim, "Prelude to Madness: The Language of Emotion in Courtship and Early Marriage" in <u>Emotions of Culture: A Malay Perspective</u>, edited by Wazir Jahan Karim, 1990:49) "Malay midwives describe it as the place in the abdomen where 'the foetus clings' and the baby begins to grow. Hence it is closely associated with blood, semen and fertilization, in the sense that a foetus is recognized to develop from a clot of blood after fertilization takes place." (Ibid. pg. 49-50) Peranakan Indonesia or Peranakan Malaysia refers to "born of Indonesia" or "born of Malaysia" respectively. It came to have the euphemistic connotation of "mixed-blood" and was applied to any native-born who were of mixed descent--Arab Peranakan, Chinese Peranakan, Dutch Peranakan, Jawi Peranakan, etc. It seems as though the Chinese Peranakan, always a significant if not a preponderant minority, appropriated the term as their own.</p> <p>The terms Baba and Nonya, or Nyonya or Nona, are often applied to the Peranakans, particularly of the Straits Settlements. These terms mean "Man" or "mister" and "Woman" or "Mrs." or "Miss," and carry the connotation of "Gentleman" and "Lady." Again, according to Tan, Indonesian kin-terms used by elderly women, referring to the child's spouse, were sexually marked--"<u>Babah mantu"</u> (Daughter's husband) and "<u>Njonja mantu"</u> ("Son's wife" Tan Giok-lan, 1963:pg. 125). One can only speculate whether the terms Baba and Nonya became marked for those of mixed marriage between Chinese and Malayo-Indonesians, and thus appropriated by the Peranakans to refer to the male and female spouses of such marriages.</p> <p>J. D. Vaughn, in his early work <u>The Manners and Customs of the Chinese of the Straits Settlements </u>(1879) traced the etymology of the word Baba as the a term used by Bengali descendents to designate European children, "and it is probable that the word was applied by the Indian convicts at Pinang to Chinese children and so came into general use." (Reprint, 1971: 2) R. J. Wilkinson held that Baba was a descriptive name for "European, Eurasian and Chinese males to distinguish them from men born in Europe and China," and a "Descriptive name applied to male Straits-born Chinese." (R. J. Wilkinson, <u>A Malay-English Dictionary</u>, 1959: 50) Kobayashi Shinsaku has speculated that Baba may have been a corruption of the Malay word for father, Bapa, employed as an honorific for the Peranakans of Java. (Kobayashi Shinsaku, <u>Shina Minzoku no Kaigai Hatten Kakyo no Kenkyo</u>, 1931:93) John Clammer cites speculation that "Baba" should be rendered as "ba-ba," indicating ignorance of Chinese language and customs. "If this is at all true, it would account for many Straits Chinese disliking the term when it is applied to them!" (1980, footnote, pg. 5) On the other hand, Png Poh-Seng notes that "In the heyday of Straits Chinese prestige and influence, it was an advantage to be a Baba, and it is not far-fetched to assume that all Straits-born Chinese then liked to be known as Babas." ("The Straits Chinese In Singapore" in <u>The Journal of Southeast Asian History</u>, 1969:pg. 97) Png Poh-Seng concurs with the early definition provided by the Rev. Carstairs Douglas, "as it is fairly certain from accounts of Sino-Malay marriages in Malacca that the term was introduced to describe the progeny of such mixed parentage." (Ibid. pg. 96)</p> <p>Png Poh-Seng noted that "It was also not uncommon for families, especially local-born Tiechius, to name their sons Tua-ba..., Ji-ba..., San-ba..., Si-ba..., and their daughters Tua-nya..., Ji-nya..., San-nya..., and Si-nya..., in order of age." (Ibid. pg. 98)</p> <p>My wife, a direct descendent of the Nyonyas from Penang, sometimes sings to our baby girl "Noni, noni keng, Ah pek jeep pang keng, pang keng mui bey key so, Ah pek long toe" (translated, it reads "Noni, noni keng, old man goes into the bedroom, forgot bedroom door is not locked, the old man pushes it down") I ask her what the terms "Noni, noni keng" stand for, and where she first learned it, and she says she doesn't know, it just rhymes with the rest of the song, and it is something she had been singing since she was a child.</p> <p>Excessive ink spilt over the speculative etymology of such words as Baba and Nyonya and Peranakan is not mere equivocation, as it points up a fundamental dimension of ambiguity of such primary terms of reference. It has been an ambiguity that is carried over into the other apellations "Straits-Born" and "Straits Chinese" that are frequently used synonymously. The British Rev. Carstairs Douglas, in his dictionary of spoken Amoy Hokkien, notes that the term "Baba" carried over into the Hokkien language to refer to "a half-caste Chinese from the Straits." In the Straits, however, the term is applied to all Chinese born there, half-caste or not." (J. D. Vaughn, 1879:pg. 2) John Clammer again comments that "there was from a very early date a distinction between the Straits Chinese, who were culturally distinct, and the other immigrant Chinese in the Straits Settlements." (Ibid. pg. 4).</p> <p>The fundamental ambiguity found in all three sets of terms, Peranakan, Baba and Nyonya, and Straits Chinese, is one of the implicit denotative/connotative significance of "local born/mixed-blood," respectively. Not all local born Chinese were "half-caste" or "half-breed" even though they may or may not have been called "peranakan", Baba, or Straits Chinese, and, at least for the Indonesian Peranakans, about three-quarters were of mixed parentage.</p> <p>This ambiguity is essential to understanding the identity of the Peranakans and Babas, because they constituted an interstitial group situated somewhere between the Chinese and the Malayo-Indonesians, along two separate but convergent dimensions--racial and kinship identity, on the one hand, and, on the other, cultural identity. It was just this inbetweenness, so important in-group and individual reference, which became linguistically "marked" by such special appellatives and which could be used either euphemistically in a positive way to connote ethnic pride or dysphemistically in a derogative way to register cultural/racial inferiority. The connotation of "native" or local-born is more positively salient than the meaning of half-breed that carried a negative connotation.</p> <p>Some of the earliest evidence for the Chinese in the Nanyang comes from archaeological sites in Java, Sumatra, and Borneo, including Chinese sepulchral pottery vessels, which date to the second and first centuries BC. "From these finds, De Flines inferred, no doubt correctly, that Chinese colonists or merchants must have lived in Indonesia as early as the Han period." (Victor Purcell, <u>The Chinese in Southeast Asia</u>, 1951: pg. 11)</p> <p>There can be little doubt that the Chinese had been in Java for a long time. No doubt that in these long settled communities, Chinese took local wives and established families. There was in these Islamic societies a barrier to the local assimilation of the Chinese. It is apparent that the Chinese took wives from the lowest social classes, or slaves, from non-Islamic groups or the Balinese. The inferior status of these women precluded their capacity to culturally assimilate the offspring of these marriages "so decisively in favor of native culture as did Thai wives. Furthermore, if sons and daughters remained within the Chinese community, after a few generations, native-Chinese intermarriage would decline, as the Chinese community provided its own wives. We know that the first headmen or kapitans of the Chinese in seventeenth century Batavia had Balinese wives, but by the eighteenth century their successors were marrying daughters of other Chinese officers." (Mary F. Somers-Heidhues; <u>Chinese Minorities in Southeast Asia</u>, pg. 36-7)</p> <p>Dutch policies legally prohibited intermarriage of the Chinese (1717) and their assimilation to native status. They were quartered off in their own colonies, required to wear typically Chinese dress and were not permitted freedom of movement outside of these except when in service of the Dutch interests. Later, in 1854, they were set into a separate, higher tax category. Later influx of Chinese Totoks, and especially Chinese women, even further discouraged assimilation and acculturation of this group, and even resulted in some degree of 'resinification' into the new Chinese communities.</p> <p>It appears that the Peranakans of Java, and perhaps Baba communities of Malacca, became effectively stabilized sometime between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, as effectively closed and self-perpetuating communities which had their own cultural orientation. Coincidental with this period were Imperial Edicts beginning in the early eighteenth century and in effect until the early nineteenth century which effectively prevented further emigration from Southeastern China and which strongly discouraged the repatriation of those Chinese abroad, under penalty of punishment. It was then, during this period that the Chinese communities could no longer look back to China with the hope of some day returning to be buried there. This must have provided a strong incentive for these Chinese to reorient themselves to their local context, to effectively break off their ties to the homeland, and to cultivate a sense of a local cultural orientation which involved some degree of indigenous acculturation and assimilation. Once formed, these separate and isolated Chinese communities, with their peranakan cultural practices and orientation, remained effectively segregated up until their eventual disintegration and demise under the modern policies of the new Indonesian and Malay nationalisms.</p> <p>The earliest evidence for Chinese communities in the Straits must be taken to date from eunuch Cheng Ho's founding of Malacca in 1408. It can be safely assumed that from the time of its founding, Chinese must have had a regular, if not continuous, residence there. It is likely that the earliest Chinese settlement had more of the character of a transient camp or a small trading colony than of a settled, internally organized community. "From the available Chinese, Malay and Portuguese sources, it seems certain that there was a Chinese trading community in the port-city of Malacca before the fall of the Sultanate in 1511. But whether these Chinese represented a permanent or a fluid society, that kept coming and going with the monsoons, is still uncertain. The size of the Chinese trading community was probably small and insignificant. However, it laid the foundation for the development of a permanent Chinese community in Malacca."(Yeh Hua Fen, <u>Historical Guide of Malacca</u>, 1936)</p> <p>There is no uniform agreement on this score of the early Chinese settlement of Malacca. Victor Purcell is somewhat skeptical, having stated that permanent Chinese communities were not established of any significant size until the coming of the Europeans. It is apparent that Chinese had formed settlements in some of the port cities of Java prior to the European contact, and these perhaps constituted some of the earliest Chinese settlements in the Straits. Mention in the early Portuguese references is only of Chinese junks whose crew and traders remained on board. A Campon China is given on the map in Eredias history of Malacca, 1613, but this settlement is only of a very small size. The paucity of reference to the Chinese in the early Portuguese texts on Malacca may not be an indication of the lack of Chinese inhabitants there so much as an indication of the lack of Portuguese attention or interest in such details.</p> <p>There is a story of Sultan Mansur Shah, from 1462, to whom the Emperor of China's daughter, Hong Li-po, was sent for their hand in marriage. The Emperor sent a fleet of one hundred "pilus" bearing 500 daughters of his paramantris as handmaidens to the Princess.</p> <p>The well mentioned in this reference has long been the source of drinking water famous for its taste, and perhaps its curative properties as well, so much so that its waters have been transported to neighboring countries, as far as Sumatra, during times of drought and pestilence. The location of the later Bukit China, of the Princess Hung Li-po's dwelling, on this hill, and the digging of a well at its base, may have been, from the standpoint of Chinese Geomancy, a propitious place.</p> <p>It seems likely that, sometime between Cheng Ho's first visit, in 1403, Alfonso d' Albuquerque's conquest of Malacca in 1511, and the Dutch conquest in 1641, Chinese sojournership at some point crossed the thin line to colonial settlement. Evidence of grave inscriptions at the Chinese cemetery, Bukit China, the oldest of which date to the sixteenth century, and the next set which date to the beginning of the Ching Dynasty in the 1644, have some bearing on the early Malacca Chinese. "One of them is that of the husband and wife of a certain Ng by surname...The tombstone of the right one shows that the dead was a Kapitan, surnamed Tay, while that of the left, the Kapitan Nya, or Lady Kapitan or the Kapitan's wife, probably a native woman...." (Yeh Hua Fen, <u>Historical Guide of Malacca</u>, 1936:pg. 79) The oldest family lineages of Malacca Chinese, the Tans, Tays and Li traditions, do not go back further than the first half of the seventeenth century. (Victor Purcell, "Chinese Settlement in Malacca. <u>Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society</u>, Vol. XX, Part I, pg. 122-3)</p> <p>The Dutch give reference to a Chinese community--"The 300 or 400 Chinese shopkeepers, craftsmen and farmers could be allowed to settle down at their own convenience, provided they cultivate the gardens within their territory. They can hire or occupy those empty houses that can be saved from collapse or destruction. The ruined gardens between the river Boekit Tjina and the southern suburbs should be lent to Netherlanders, Portuguese, Malaccans, and Chinese to be cultivated.... For these some 800 to 1,000 Chinese settlers would be very useful."(Justus Schouten, "Report of 1641 to the Dutch East India Company") The Dutch appointed "Kapitans China" to manage the Chinese community of Malacca, much as they did in Java and Batavia. "The Chinese living at Basar on the north of the city have their own Captain Notchin who lives on small merchandise." Thus we get the beginning of a succession of "at least" eleven Kapitans China. These were Hokkiens, and their descendants, who had fled the Manchus and who maintained strong loyalty to the old Ming Dynasty.</p> <p>By 1678, Governor Balthasar Bort gave a census figure of 892 Chinese in Malacca out of a total of 4, 884 people. "The Chinese had 81 brick and 51 atap houses with 127 men, 140 women, 159 children, 93 male slaves, 137 female slaves, and 60 children of slaves inside the city limit."(Victor Purcell, 1947:pg. 124)</p> <p>By 1750 the Chinese population was 2,161, dropping to 1,390 in 1760, which remained stable until the British occupation in 1795.</p> <p>Most of the Hokkiens of this early period were merchants, but this community became joined by a large Hakka contingent of farmers who pioneered into the hinterlands and played an important role in the opening of the interior states. "The famous pioneer of Kuala Lumpur, Yap Ah Loi, a Fui-Chiu Hakka, was one of them..." (ibid. pg. 83)</p> <p>With the onset of British rule in the Straits Settlements, the Chinese population increased greatly there. The British found the Chinese useful, and did not discourage the Chinese from developing the coolie system, or the "credit-ticket;" or "Kheh-tau" system, of immigrating indentured Chinese laborers in massive numbers. Within seven years of the British acquisition of Penang in 1786 and the founding of its fort there in their effort against the French, the Chinese population had increased to over three thousand. Sir Francis Light, the British Founder of Penang, encouraged the Chinese to immigrate there, "whom he held to be 'the only people of the East from whom a revenue may be raised without expense or extraordinary efforts of government.'" (T. Braddel, 'Notices of Penang", <u>Journal of the Indian Archipelago</u>, 1850:641)</p> <p>The first Chinese to establish themselves in Penang came from a Chinese community in Kedah, and the first Kapitan China was a baba from there named Koh Lay Huan. He settled there as a merchant, planter and tax farmer, and maintained one family in Kedah and another in Penang. His son by his Penang wife accompanied Sir Stanford Raffles to Singapore in its opening in 1819.</p> <p>The other most influential Chinese families were the Khoos and the Kohs, who were interrelated by marriage. The Khoo Kong Si is an old historical monument to be found in Penang today. My wife's father's family may have been descended from this lineage. "In the former days long-settled Chinese families in Kedah and Penang had intermarried with Malays, but with increased immigration from China from the middle of the nineteenth century, this mixed Chinese-Malay or Baba stock tried to marry pure-blooded Chinese." ("An Immigrant Society," pg. 10-11)</p> <p>It seems apparent that some of the first Chinese there were also the Baba businessmen from Malacca, who rapidly took advantage of the opportunities that were the result of British colonization.</p> <p>A similar pattern began in Singapore with its founding in 1819, at which time there were no Chinese present, but the Chinese population of which grew to several thousand within a year. "Many of the principal Chinese families of Malacca took part in the opening up and growth of Singapore and Penang, but continued to keep their families and the family houses in Malacca..." (Yeh Hua Fen, <u>Historical Guide of Malacca, </u>1936: pg. 16) Thereafter, the Chinese population in the Straits Settlements grew steadily. "In 1840, 5,063 of them arrived, and by 1865, twenty-five years later, the number had increased threefold to 17,439." However, the formation of large and more permanent Chinese communities in Malaya did not take place until the 1880's when large-scale Chinese immigration began.</p> <p>"The influx of Chinese immigrants by the thousands was mainly the result of the establishment of British political control over the Malay states after 1874. The economic development and the law and order brought about by the British served as a great stimulus to immigration, and hence the Chinese population in Singapore and Malaya increased substantially." (Yen Ching-Hwang; <u>The Overseas Chinese and the 1911 Revolution</u>, pg. 4)</p> <p>A census figure for the Chinese of Singapore in 1848 lists 1,000 "Malacca Chinese" versus 9,000 Hokkiens, 19,000 Tiuchius, 6,000 Cantonese, 4,000 Hakkas and 700 Hainanese. (Siah U Chin; "The Chinese in Singapore", <u>Journal of the Indian Archipelago</u>, Vol. 11, 1848: pg. 290) An 1881 census recorded in Singapore 4,513 "Straits-born" men out of a total Chinese male population of 72,571, and 5,014 "Straits-born" women of a total of 14,195 Chinese females.</p> <p>It is apparent that during this early era of British colonization, the Baba Chinese held an exclusive advantage over the new "singkeh" Chinese. Maurice Freedman wrote, "When Singapore was founded as a British settlement in 1819. Babas were among its first inhabitants, and they occupied throughout the nineteenth century a prominent position in local Chinese society, maintaining leadership within it by virtue of their commercial success and by absorbing ambitious immigrants from China into their ranks." ("Chinese Kinship and Marriage in Singapore" <u>in The Journal of Southeast Asian History)</p> </u> <p>It is apparent that these Baba's also held a kind of monopoly over the institution of marriage among the Chinese of the Straits. "The Chinese who congregate here are a mixed mass from all parts: the unmarried ones among them are very numerous and the married ones very few.... upon a general calculation I should suppose there were about 2000 married Chinese."(Siah U Chin; "The Chinese In Singapore", ibid. pg. 284) The same author notes that the greatest number of married Chinese men are "found among the Malacca born Chinese next to them among the Hok-kien shop keepers, then the Tio-Chin.... As for common laborers and coolies and those who have no fixed employment very few among them get married." (Pg. 284)</p> <p>It was apparent that the local orientation and settled state of the Baba communities in the Straits resulted in the need to establish and maintain a local system of marriage and kinship. With increasing immigration of Chinese into the Straits Settlements, this community soon became a minority of about 10 percent of the Chinese population in Singapore. Most of the Chinese born in the Straits Settlements during this era were Baba by birth.</p> <p>Before the turn of the Twentieth century, very few Chinese women immigrated into the Straits, and the ratio of men to women in these communities was very unbalanced. "Originally the inhabitants of Malacca, the Babas later spread to the Malay States and other British settlements. With increased immigration, half-caste Sino-Malay; girls married immigrants from China as their fathers were reluctant to marry them to Malays, and their <u>progeny</u> would have less Malay and more Chinese blood. In time mixed parentage almost disappeared, but the descendants of the Sino-Malays continued to be known as Babas. Then by the time the Straits Settlements; came into being in 1826 there were few Babas who were actually Sino-Malays." (Png Poh-Seng, pg. 96-7)</p> <p>With the turning of the 20th Century, the Straits Settlements are well established within a Nanyang network that extended across the Straits to include the Peranakan communities of Java, as well as hinterland communities in the interior states of Malaya. Penang, Malacca and Singapore had all developed into Baba communities along divergent lines--those of Penang being more Chinese, the Malacca more traditionally Sino-Malay, and the Singaporeans, more strongly oriented towards the English due to the role of English in education, modernization, urbanization and development.</p> <p>The Twentieth century brought with it a basic change in the status and position of the Baba and Peranakan communities of the Straits. Modernization, the importation of Western-styled nationalisms in the form of new political parties and movements, both in China, in many Southeast Asian nations, as well as in the Nanyang, tended to increasingly exclude the participation of the traditionally and colonial Babas. The Babas lacked the socio-political organization of their Chinese cousins, and came into increasing competition with these organizations. This lack of internal organization had its advantages for entrepreneurship and acculturation to the British colonial system, but it had critical disadvantages in the lack of mutual support, political-economic mobilization and organization, etc.</p> <p>The Baba's tended to lack the political conscience which begun to spring up among both the indigenous Malays and the singkeh and "Totok" communities, having defined their identity primarily in relation to the British administrative authority. Indeed, in many occasions, their self-professed loyalty to the Queen was more British than the British.</p> <p>Thus the beginning of the Twentieth century marked the beginning of the end of the traditional Baba way of life. Baba culture continued to sustain itself as a community, but with increasing adversity and difficulty. It is likely that socially and culturally it became increasingly atomized and disintegrated, becoming a kind of home-bound family orientation which had less and less to do with the changing outside world. They persisted with what became increasingly ethnocentric, snobbish airs of cultural superiority based upon their predecessorial claims, but this was in the face of decreasing relevance and credibility within a modernizing world.</p> <p>Invasion by the Japanese marked the end of Baba supremacy in the Straits Settlements. Many Baba leaders were executed by the Japanese. After the war, the Baba community retained much of its wealth, but lost most of its privilege. In Singapore, they were effectively absorbed by the larger Chinese component, and "The result of these processes was to make the Singapore Babas less easily distinguishable--especially from the English-educated Chinese who not only abound but are on the increase." (Clammer, ibid. pg. 8) In Malaysia, the Straits Chinese developed their own political associations, later known as the "Peranakan Association," from about 1900. In Indonesia, the Peranakans were relatively late in forming their own political organizations, remaining politically disinterested and neutral as long as possible, until increasing discrimination encouraged the formation of "Baperki" in the late 1950's.</p> <p>In Penang, Straits Chinese leaders began the Penang Secession movement which lasted from 1948-1951, and which was defeated by the joint efforts of the British and Malay parties. The failure of this movement sealed the fate of the Penang Straits Chinese to determine their own political, economic and social future in relation to the newly emerging nation of Malaysia.</p> <p>Since the independence period of Malaysia and Indonesia, the Babas and Peranakans have been considered a dying breed and a cultural anachronism of a bygone colonial era. Peranakan status in Indonesia, subsequent to the riots and political upheavals and anti-communist reaction of 1963 and 1965-6, has declined as a segregated community, and the Peranakans seem to have undergone systematic 'ethnocide.'</p> <p>In post-independence Singapore, the Peranakan community was resinified and became increasingly modernized and westernized. Singapore national culture effectively absorbed its Baba basis, using its western orientation as a basic cultural model for its modernization. In the process Baba culture in Singapore has become a thing of the past without much relevance to a nation preoccupied with modern development.</p> <p>Old Chinese sections of the city, a nostalgic reminder of the Chinese colonial past, have been nearly completely razed to make room for modern business buildings, malls and tenement flats. In modernizing Malaysia, the Chinese community in general, including the Babas, has been on one hand effectively segregated through structural and social discrimination, and has endured under policies designed to enforce cultural assimilation to the Malay national culture that remains traditionally Muslim in orientation.</p> <p>The Babas of Malacca have been more or less symbolically appropriated as an anachronistic model of Sino-Malay cultural assimilation. The Babas of Penang and elsewhere have seen their community basically split apart. Some were reabsorbed by Hokkien and Tieu Chiu Chinese communities, others more inclined to the English language and British culture, being left furthest out on the limb, with many who could afford the cost migrating to the Common Wealth countries.</p> <p>Ethnic revitalization can only happen in a dominant society that honors its cultural heritage and traditions, and yet this can prove to be almost as ethno-historically revisionist as a society that seeks to hide or erase its past. Past cultural forms and models can be adopted by an emerging middle and upper-middle class that were defined by its standardized national cultural orientation as almost a kind of national mythology and as a form of elaborate play that mediates the new and old in the transformations of the past into the present. As an intermediate, somewhat transitional cultural model, Sino-Malay Baba culture can and has been appropriated by both Singaporean and Malay societies to legitimate a larger range of national cultural interests--different elements of the original culture have been highlighted and emphasized, and other, contradictory aspects, conveniently ignored or even forgotten.</p> <p>"The Baba is thus faced with a terribly difficult identity problem--he has a culture, but one for which the sustaining conditions have vanished; yet he is encouraged to think of his culture as an important contribution to the Singapore ethnographic scene. Indeed, I have even heard it said that the Baba culture is the only 'true' Singaporean culture. Mutiracialism as a policy may well therefore have the (presumably unintended) consequence of artificially supporting minority cultures which in the normal course of events would probably pass naturally away." (John Clammer, 1980:139) Yet the contradiction was not a part of the original culture, but a part of the current conflict of competing identities, interests and trajectories.</p> <b><font SIZE="4"> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="nine">Nonya Culture</a></p> </font></b> <p>It has been argued that the Baba's did not in fact possess their own culture--rather, they possessed a distinctive ethnicity that became translated in certain specific ways. ".... The term 'Baba Chinese' is commonly used as an ethnic label and it should not be assumed that since there is such a thing as an ethnic group there must therefore be a Baba Chinese culture which is shared by all Baba Chinese and entirely distinct from other ethnic groups.... What can be derived is that there was and is such a thing as a Baba Chinese ethnic group who used some cultural traits to distinguish themselves ethnically; we cannot, however, conclude from such scanty data that there is a distinctively Baba Chinese culture...." (Cecilia Ng Siew Hua, 1983: pg. 98-9)</p> <p>Such an argument begs the critical question of where we should draw the line between an ethnic group and a genuine culture, and how we should define either culture or ethnicity in contrast to one another. In this regard, the Babas had shared with the rest of the Nanyang, albeit not as strongly, in the basic Chinese organizational principles, an ethos of ethnos--such that ethnic identity and difference became the basis of a shared cultural orientation.</p> <p>It seems that socio-cultural barriers of language, religion, custom and belief were great enough to have caused an effective separation, isolation and emergent distinctiveness of cultural orientation among the Baba's and Peranakans. Barriers to marriage and mobility by Chinese in Islamic society, unless proclaiming faith in Islam and foregoing one's own, usually cherished Chinese cultural identity, were strong enough to prevent rapid or complete assimilation of the Chinese merchant communities.</p> <p>These communities also maintained some modicum of contact with the Chinese mainland and with other Chinese communities, as well as with a broader, outside world. These Chinese had an Imperial civilization several thousand years old to look back to as a source of ethnic pride, identity and solace--a civilization that was quite developed and sophisticated for its time. Chinese have long been notoriously sinocentric in their value orientation and world-view, wherever they may be found. They never give up completely a core of Chineseness. Furthermore, these communities were likely to have received periodic injections of new immigrants, sojourners, or refugees who were navigating the Nanyang, even during its era of Imperial ostracism and isolation from China.</p> <p>Thus, community separateness of these early Chinese in Java and Malacca was defined as much from without as from within. Once these communities had grown to a sufficient size, say several thousand; they were stable enough to be both racially and culturally self-perpetuating. The two or three hundred year period of their early pre-modern development was certainly long enough for the emergence of a unique cultural orientation to be well-formed and virtually complete in most aspects. In this regard we only have to look back upon our own shallow sense of American history to see how quickly, and firmly, a typically 'American' character and culture formed in the world, and what its consequences may have been in the world.</p> <p>It is possible that the base of this cultural orientation developed relatively early in its basic form, and once having come into being, grew in size and elaborateness, but remained basically the same to be perpetuated via 'ethno-endogamy' through the many generations.</p> <p>It is difficult to refute, or interpret, the material evidence for Baba culture. Silver-work, Chinaware, styles of dress, cuisine, marriage customs, speech, all suggest a basic difference and shared uniqueness of the Babas from either more traditionally oriented Chinese on the one hand, and the Muslim Malay culture on the other.</p> <p>To attempt to triangulate Baba ethno-culture, we can sense a convergence of the evidence toward support for the idea of a distinctive cultural orientation. Distinctive aspects of Baba culture emerge in language, religion, material culture, social structure and organization, in values, world-view, in literature, as well as in self-professed aspects of personal identity and group affiliation.</p> <p>Furthermore, if the Babas and their Peranakan cousins in Java in fact constituted a unique cultural grouping in the world, then there is a need to find some sense of focus and center for such an orientation, as well as a sense of its own self-styled 'raison d'etre' and basic understanding in relation to the world.</p> <p>The cultural focus of Baba and Peranakan culture was upon the domestic life of its womenfolk. Virtually every material artifact that is identified as distinctively Baba is related to the personal dress, adornment, cooking, and marriage of the women. It is something of a paradox that we should choose to call it "Baba" culture as opposed to "Nyonya" culture.</p> <p>This focus fit the historical picture of the origin of the culture-women had central value and status, as they were relatively few in an immigrant colony context that was heavily male-biased. John Clammer speaks of the "rarity-value" of girls in such a society, which accounts for the seclusion imposed upon younger women, especially unmarried Nyonyas, as well as for the relatively high status of Nyonyas, and even for the frequent occurrence of female heads of households. "A woman, particularly an elderly one, would on the death of her husband become household head, rather than allowing such a position to fall to her eldest son. This is not so surprising when one recognizes that she would already have been exercising considerable (if informal) social power in her household." (1980:38)</p> <p>It seems likely that the Nyonya wives of the Chinese were the principle elaborators of its distinctive cultural traits. They were not the silver smiths, potters and craftsmen who made these artifacts, but they must have been the mothers of the craftsmen, as well as the principle buyers of the wares. It also seemed as if the cultural orientation was set up, from early on, to secure its reproductive base, to confer upon its women a special, privileged status which made them symbolically and socially attractive in lucrative marriage arrangements, and to promote a social structure that is based upon 'marrying in' to the community rather than marrying out, and to 'marry up' the social ladder rather than across or down.</p> <p>If the original wives of the original Babas were in fact of low status or they were slaves or concubines. ("In addition to such voluntary unions, it was possible for the Baba community to purchase Malay girls who were debt slaves or to marry those who were partial outcasts because of their social behavior." L.A.P. Gosling, 1964: 216) then these wives must have from early on formed their own sense of anti-structural communitas, within the context of which they elaborated their own symbolic system that they subsequently bequeathed to their children and grandchildren.</p> <p>This female orientation of Baba culture would explain the relatively a-political nature of its orientation, and the freedom which the Baba male had in defining his own identity as either Chinese "Towkay" or Western "Orang Pute." The male was involved almost exclusively in mercantile activities that accrued material wealth to the household and the community. If perchance he became a leader, a "Kapitan China" or a Towkay, then this was done so on a model that was more appropriately, prototypically Nanyang Chinese. It is noteworthy in this regard that the Babas wore either western dress or Chinese costume, but rarely the Malay sarong. On the other hand, the customary dress for the Nonya was the Malay sarong and kerbaya, adorned with jewelry distinctively peranakan in style. The Baba was quick and emphatic in stressing his Chinese identity--the Nonya was persistent in cultivating a more Malay style of life.</p> <p> </p> <p>If this was the case, then the apolitical character of Baba culture allowed the male the freedom and capacity to acculturate and accommodate different political symbol systems--either Western or Chinese or Malay, without his cultural identity as "Baba" being threatened or compromised. It was not that the Baba could not deal politically in life. Indeed, he often did so with unusual talent--rather his cultural orientation allowed him the freedom to engage politically or not without cultural constraint. Notions of territoriality and boundary were negotiable. About the only real political boundary firmly in place being that boundary which secured the domestic life of the culture.</p> <p>The domestic life of the women, perhaps being more religiously oriented rather than political, constituted the core of the Baba culture. It is noteworthy in this regard that the Nyonya women were rarely themselves engaged in petty trade--a not uncommon preoccupation among Southeast Asian women in general. Rather, they were engaged in domestic management, and perhaps as well, in their husband's bookkeeping. Furthermore, they were renowned as inveterate gamblers, with their own style of card game. It can be expected that the religious patterns of the Nyonyas were distinctive in several ways that helped to reinforce and reflect this somewhat exaggerated domesticity and female orientation of the culture.</p> <p>Nyonya women had eventually achieved, within their cultural universe, a degree of independence, autonomy and status which was not characteristic of their more traditional Chinese or Malay sisters. "A change came over our people. With good intentions, certain people relaxed the old rules and gradually the old restrictions became impossible, and almost all at once our Nyonyas insisted on their <u>rights</u>.... All the evils complained of against the Nyonyas may be traced to the pernicious bondage under which they have been brought up...." ("Our Nyonyas" <u>Straits Chinese Magazine</u>; Vol. VII, No. 4, Dec. 1904) They were not marked off as an inferior caste, but came to claim for themselves the principle prerogatives of their culture.</p> <p>Uxorilocal residence patterns; has long remained a curiously anomalous feature of Baba culture--institutional arrangements that have persisted historically in spite of the loss of its original cause and reason. The wife's spouse married into and lived in the mother's household. The senior Nonya in such a situation would come to have a degree of influence, especially when her husband was away on business, which would make their status and position in society enviable.</p> <p>The wife would retain a measure of respect and familial support she would not have if she had moved into the husband's parent's household. The husband would find himself in a peculiar position, especially for a more traditional male not brought up in such a household, in which he would have to compromise some of his male prerogatives, and in which he would find himself compelled to achieve in ways he may not otherwise have done.</p> <p>The male, and the son, probably retained much of his privileged, paternal Chinese status. But he was more compelled to define that identity exclusively in terms that was outside the household, and, furthermore, basically outside of the central bounds of the culture of which he was attached, if not by birth, then by marriage. His only cultural obligation was to protect and support his domestic base of support, but not necessarily to dominate it or to be a central part of its domestic orientation.</p> <p>According to my wife who is a direct descendant of Nonyas, the male child would be taken out into the male world by the father, while the female child would remain in the female world of the mother.</p> <p>The following is a summary of most of the cultural traits that are identified as distinctly Baba and Nonya. It is worth reiterating that these traits are all related to the world of the Nonya.</p> <p> </p> <b><u><font SIZE="4"> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="ten">Straits Silverwork</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> </font></u></b> <p>A long tradition of local handiwork by Chinese silversmiths dating back to at least the sixteenth or seventeenth century, and which became obsolete in the early 20th century, produced many kinds of objects now quite rare that belonged to a distinctive style tradition. Silver and silver-gilt articles were long regarded by Nonyas as status symbols (Ho Wing Meng, 1976:38<u>)</u> They commissioned or bought from local silversmiths mostly fine items of jewelry for personal adornment, ornamental articles and "utensils specifically to give that added touch of luxury and ostentation to their ornately furnished homes." (Ibid. pg. 38) These articles were not the large size of similar European goods, but were confined to "personal ornaments, objects of virtue, occasional pieces of trophies, decorative bowls with matching saucers and spoons, little tea-cups, teapots, wine-ewers, pillow and bolster plates, incense burners, curtain hooks, ornamental plaques, little vases and betel nut or sireh boxes." (Ibid. pg. 38)</p> <p>Extant pieces of antique Straits silverwork are generally small, fine and noted for their intricate workmanship. Their decorative motifs first present to the eye a chaotic confusion lacking unity of theme. Phoenixes, Dragons, Lions, dogs, against a floral background of prune blossoms, chrysanthemums, lotuses and peonies, are occasionally interspersed by Buddhist-Taoist symbols. This hetereogenous assortment of motifs made such silverwork unappealing to early connoisseurs as compared to the more elegant and simple designs of Malay silverwork that presented only geometric or arabesque floral motifs. The bulk of this silverwork was intended as wedding gifts, and the symbolisms portrayed carried Chinese cultural-religious significance for the recipient of the gift. The style, though cluttered and thematically un-unified, is exuberant with energy and is so clean and clear in relief that it conveys a sense of three dimensionality.</p> <p>Not all Straits silver is this fussy, some is of quite simple design, and some is done with an eye for patterned symmetry. Overall, the conception of design of Straits silver is held to be simple and recognizable clear--for its ornateness and intricacy its patterns are rarely distorted or ornamentally overburdened. Chinese silversmiths preserved the original form and integrity of the basic utensil no matter what the design--the designs is exclusively relief as opposed to chased or engraved works, ornate and varied.</p> <p>Buntal pillow plates for embellishing bridal pillows were adopted from ancient Hindu-Javanese civilization of Palembang and Kedah. Other kinds of articles include bracelets, Nonya hairpins, sireh boxes, curtain hooks, ornamental bells, caskets or "ganchu ranjang", and talismans for the bridal bed, distinctive belts and buckles worn by Nyonyas, ladies purses, key holders, brooches, "kerosangs" or buttons for the front of the kebaya blouses, necklaces and chains, earrings, finger rings, anklets, hairpins ("kerok kuping chuckuk sanggul" which means to "scratch the ear, pierce through the hair"), as well as other miscellaneous items such as chopsticks, pocket plaques, buttons, "and other types of ornamental accessories for the bridal troussseau." (Ibid. pg. 89)</p> <p>".... The majority of Straits Silverworks...may generally be dated back to the nineteenth century; for it was during this period that the baba community reached its zenith of prosperity; so that large quantities of silver ornaments, jewelry and other objects of virtue were turned out to meet the requirements of the nonyas whose love of ostentatious display was proverbial.... By the 'twenties or the 'thirties Straits silverworks had virtually become a thing of the past." (Ibid, pg. 95)</p> <p> </p> <b><u><font SIZE="4"> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="eleven">Nonya Ware</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> </font></u></b> <p>The Nonya's were renowned for the elaborate and richly decorated porcelain--".... In the days gone by, the wealthier babas spared no expenses or trouble to procure direct from the famous porcelain-centre of Ching-te'-chen, Kiangsi Province, grandiloquent vases, ornamental jars, gold-fish bowls, flower pots with matching stands, ceremonial basins and complete dinner services and tea sets sometimes running into thousands of pieces specially designed and decorated to their own specifications." (Ibid. pg. 38) The designs of these pieces are noted for their multiple colors, their variety and richness of design, and for the presence of design patterns on the inside of bowls and plates.</p> <p>My wife's mother owned a collection of these dinner ware handed down from her grandmother, which she would have inherited were they not destroyed in the container in which they had been packed away. According to my wife, they consisted of plates and bowls of various sizes, spoons, and a big porcelain soup ladle. The designs were deep, muted blue in color, of an indistinct wavy floral pattern--brushed on designs that were undefined.</p> <p> </p> <b><u><font SIZE="4"> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="twelve">Nonya Costume</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> </font></u></b> <p>The "baju panjang," a long sleeved, knee length, thin transparent blouse, with scalloped edges, worn with an inner white undershirt, held together by the "kerosangs," a set of "three round silver-gilt or gold brooches studded with pearls and other precious stones. Underneath a sarong was worn. They tie their hair into a top bun, tied with three pins. For special occasions, cloth slippers are worn, "often richly embroidered with silk or gold threads, sequins, beads and gilded ornaments." (Png Poh-Seng, 1969:110) "Except for young girls, a large handkerchief folded diagonally into a triangular shape was usually draped over the right shoulder as part of their outfit. This was fastened to the <u>baju</u> with a jewell brooch from which might dangle a bunch of gold lucky charms." (Ibid. pg.110)</p> <p>The style of Nyonya dress has seemed to change over the generations. From about the "baju panjang" gave way to the sarong and kebaya, introduced by the Javanese peranakans and adapted from the Malay "baju kurong" similar to the "baju panjang" worn by elderly Nyonyas. The Kebaya was adopted by younger Nonyas, a shorter version of the "baju panjang" made of muslin-like or voile fabric and much more elegant in appearance. The Nyonyas used a great deal of fine floral or foliage lace in their kebayas, the best embroidery coming from Javanese Chinese tailors. This was worn over an inner vest-coat. The Nyonya kerbaya differs somewhat from the Malay or Indonesian forms by being more loose fitting, whereas the latter are typically body-hugging "V" shaped "tapering towards the waist and then flaring downwards to emphasize the women's narrow waist-lines." (Ibid. pg.27) The tighter fitting form has been adopted by the younger Nyonyas--the grandchildren of the Nyonyas of a half-century ago who wore the more traditional "baju panjang."</p> <p>The Nonyas adopted their own style of hair-dressing from the Indonesian and Malay customs of combing their hair backwards in long tresses which are twisted and turned into a large loose knot, shaped like a donut, at the back of the head, which is secured by clips and pins. The Nonyas combed their hair very tightly back in the form of a long plait held together by the application of water glue, and twisted into a small, tight topknot called "sanggul siput," which means literally "sea shell". "The top-knot, in the old days, was usually embellished by three remarkable-looking silver hair-pins of various sizes; the largest being about seven inches long, with a bolt-like crown, is inserted right through the knot, while a second and shorter one, more delicately designed to look like a spray of leaves set with pearls or semi-precious stones, is inserted crosswise into the base of the top-knot; and finally, the third and smallest hairpin, similarly designed, is inserted into the stem of the knot. Like their Malay and Indonesian counterparts, the Nonyas sometimes inserted jasmines and other highly scented flowers into their hair buns." (Ho Ming Weng, 1976:27-8)</p> <p>Nyonya women were noteworthy for their over-dressing and ornamental ostentation of jewelry. "It has been suggested that many wives pestered their husbands to buy them valuable jewels to enhance their security; others found in diamonds a salve for the trials and tribulations of domestic life." (Png Poh-Seng, 1969:111)</p> <p> </p> <b><u><font SIZE="4"> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="thirteen">Nonya Beadwork and Embroidery</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> </font></u></b> <p>Nonyas made in their homes colorful beadwork and embroidery. They embroidered their kerbayas in colorful, lacy floral patterns. They made cloth shoes, slippers, vases, purses, spectacle holders, jewelry containers, wedding ornaments out of colorful beads--items which resemble in both design and form both the silver-work and the ceramics. Mothers taught their daughters and the work was mostly domestic. They used tiny beads and special threads of silver and gold. Designs incorporated animals from the Chinese Lunar Calendar as well as floral patterns.</p> <p> </p> <b><u><font SIZE="4"> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="fourteen">Nonya Cuisine</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> </font></u></b> <p>Spicy, using a lot of tamarind, coconut milk, chili, banana leaves for wrapping and balachan, a fermented shrimp paste, "petai" and "jering", a kind of seed, "gulai" curry, and Kueh, small cakes using a lot of coconut milk, gula malacca, or brown sugar, screw-pine leaf, or "daun-pandan," "bunga telang," giving the Kueh coloring, wrapped in banana leaves and steamed. Chinese dishes would be added variations of fragrant seasonings to give an extra tang to the dishes--"Food which is neither hot nor spicy is considered unsavory to peranakan palate." Nonya cuisine has largely passed away, except for a revived interest and taste in it as an "ethnic food." Among the Hainese of Singapore, Nonya food became a part of their own style of cooking. "Until recently the Hainanese cake-vendor popularly known as the 'Otah' man was a familiar sight in Singapore. His daily visit was welcomed by most Straits Chinese women and children." (Png Poh-Seng, foot note, pg. 100)</p> <p>While residing several months in Penang, our street would be visited daily by an Indian man on a bicycle peddling Nonya "kueh," sweet cakes and curry puffs. My wife always delighted in his coming, and thereby first introduced me to the blue-green sweet rice cakes of the Nonyas. "The preparation of food in Nonya style, it should be noted in passing, is a complex and laborious process, and it may be for this reason too, that this sophisticated art might be irretrievably lost when the last surviving generation of elderly Nonyas passes from the scene." (Ho Wing Meng, 1976:30)</p> <p>Nyonya cuisine is said to have been similar to that of the Peranakans of Java. According to the ethnography of the Peranakans of Sukabumi by Tan Giok-Lan, the Peranakans preferred food basically Javanese in style--dry boiled rice, sate, goat, chicken, beef, pork, vegetables, especially "pete" and "djengko", a sourish vegetable soup called "sajur assem," a kind of salad called "gado-gado" served with fried bean curd or "tempe" and peanut-cake or "ontjom." My wife on occasion has made for me "gado-gado," served with "krupuk" or fried shrimp chips. "The popularity of this dish is indicated by the fact that it appears at the table of even the elaborate parties of wealthy Peranakans." (Tan Giok-Lan, 1963:42-5)</p> <p>Chinese elements incorporated into this menu include Chinese noodles, or "Mie," or "Hokkien Mi" or "mee," bean-curd, "tao hu" or "tahu," bean sprouts, or "taoge," bean sauce, or "taotjio," soya sauce called "ketjap", and dried shrimp called "hebi". All these imported items are known by terms derived from Hokkien--an indication of the Hokkien origins of the Peranakans of Java. "As with most of he food of Chinese origin, a Peranakan noodle dish looks and tastes different from a Totok one." (Ibid. pg. 44) </p> <p> </p> <b><u><font SIZE="4"> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="fifteen">Sireh Chewing, Tea and Cards</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> </font></u></b> <p>The chewing of sireh, or betel nut, is a common Southeast Asian trait adopted by the Nonyas, who are alone among the Nanyang Chinese in practicing this custom. A thin layer of quicklime paste was applied over the sireh leaf, along with a sprinkle of the astringent 'gambier' and thin slices of areca nut. The leave is folded into a small square and then chewed. Chewing the leaf has a slight narcotic effect, is bitter in taste, and stains the mouth a reddish color.</p> <p>It was customary politeness to offer sireh to guests, and the sireh service, "tepak sireh" was a standard accouterment of the Nonya household.</p> <p>My wife remembers these sireh sets, simple lacquered pieces not as ornate as the fancier silver ones found in the picture books. The set consisted of a small lidless box with four smaller caskets and cups on a tray. "No important social function went by without the presences of that ubiquitous 'tepak sireh.'" (Ibid. pg. 29) The exchange of betel nut was an important part of the prenuptial ceremonies of a nonya wedding. For the most part, sireh chewing was mostly a Nonya habit rarely adopted by men.</p> <p>Sireh-serving was typically accompanied by tea, a typically Chinese and un-Malay aspect of the practice--steeped in fine porcelain teapots and served in small, dainty teacups. The Malays customarily served coffee instead of tea. My wife remembers that her mother would brew up both coffee and tea for her guests.</p> <p>Nyonya women were noted for the frequency with which they were brought before British courts on charges of gambling. They played a card game called "chap-ji-ki" or "Cherki," that required four players. The games would last a long time, several hours running. Nonyas would pay little children to shuffle the deck. My wife mentions the long narrow cards that they would play with, and their special style of handling these cards. They would gamble with money, or even jewelry. One court case involved eleven Nyonyas, reported by a husband of one of players who had lost $50,000 in jewelry and had attempted to replace this by cheap imitations. "The other event was known as the 'Wong-tye-sin' case. Wong-tye-sin was a god of fortune that had come into prominence by prescribing medicine during an outbreak of the plague in Canton some fifteen years before. This god had been brought to Singapore and four shrines had been opened, whither a large number of <u>Nyonyas</u> went for advice as to lottery tickets..." (Song Ong Siang, 1967: 440-1)</p> <p> </p> <b><u><font SIZE="4"> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="sixteen">Architecture</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> </font></u></b> <p>Some evidence suggests that in some cases, an architectural variant in interior house design, in shop-house design and in the design of business fronts, existed among the Peranakans--incorporating both Malay, Chinese and European styles and designs. The interior usually contains a large central hall, for receiving guests and for the location of an ancestral altar. The altar is on the far side, facing the front doors and the steps up to the house. "While the staircase of the house is a cultural feature of the Malays, it is treated as if it were the main entrance of a traditional Chinese house and is built at the position which fits into Chinese architectural thinking."(Tan Chee-Beng, 1982: pg.34-8)</p> <p>Usually built on stilts, they are raised off the ground, and the spot on which they are built are also raised slightly. These houses vary slightly depending upon the affluence of the families living in them. But such adherence to traditional building styles is also uncharacteristic of either the Malays or the urban dwelling Chinese. Windows are small and barred, and the interior is dimly lit. Bedrooms lead off to either side of the central hall, flanking it. The kitchen may be located on either side or to the back of the house.</p> <p>My wife drew me a floor plan of her Grandmother's house. The floor plan is remarkably similar to that mentioned above, complete with the central hall, flanking bedrooms, front door and stairway, ancestral altar and kitchen. Like most of these rural homes, it was built up upon stilts, and had an atap and corrugated tin roof.</p> <p>Nineteenth and early twentieth century architectural design in Singapore and Penang, especially of the shop houses of Chinese businesses, suggest a distinctive "Straits" style that incorporates elements of an English tradition with those of a Chinese. It was a style sometimes referred to as "Chinese Baroque" or "Chinese Palladian"--"that unique neo-classical European architecture, characterized Greco-Roman columns, and the Peranakan-Chinese style originating in Malacca" (Ilsa Sharp, <u>The Straits Times</u>, April 28,1979.) The facades of these houses often presented a smallish appearance that belied the multi-floored spaciousness within.</p> <p>Interiors of wealthy Straits Chinese homes also showed traits typically Baba. "A whole new culture, reflected in quite unique forms, including the domestic interior, had grown out of the amalgam of Chinese, Malay, and European ways. Certainly in their desire to identify with their British overlords, the Straits Chinese; were the first to enthusiastically embrace Western fashions internally and externally."(Norman Edwards; 1990:122-3) Generally, in Straits Chinese terrace houses, guests were entertained in a front hall containing the principle altar of the household, "dedicated to the Goddess of Mercy, Kwan Yin, and the God of Wealth. Set behind the altar was a wall or screen to deflect the path of evil spirits and to demarcate the first hall from the second, immediately behind. Views beyond this screen of the interior of the house--its succession of courts and interior spaces--were only admitted gradually and under privilege. Distant acquaintances and visitors were allowed into the first hall only. Friends and closer colleagues were taken into the second hall. In the truly traditional Peranakan household, close relatives and other members of the family and lifelong friends were granted admission to the third or the fourth halls." (Ibid. pg. 154)  </p> <p> </p> <b><u><font SIZE="4"> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="seventeen">Furniture</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> </font></u></b> <p>Closely related to the architecture was the distinctive design of the furniture which completed the interior--ornately carved, inlaid wooden pieces were common in the homes of the wealthy, and simply but similar pieces could be found in the more humble homes. The "tu kacha," or glass cupboard, black and white wooden sofas and chairs, or "hup soo ee," a movable screen, the "kepong angin" or "blocking of the wind", a Nonya dressing table, or "mega sanggol rambot," and the reclining armchair, or "krosi sandah," jewelry boxes, and the elaborate, grand "ranjang kemantin," or "the bride's bed."</p> <p> </p> <b><u><font SIZE="4"> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="eighteen">Birth Customs</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> </font></u></b> <p>Nonya women were strict adherents of traditional Chinese customs and beliefs relating to childbirth. They observed taboos relating to the killing of animals, moving furniture in the home, digging gardens or repairs, "for fear that the baby might be born with disfiguring marks" (Png Poh-Seng, 1969:pg. 114).</p> <p>Women who had given birth were ritually confined for a month, and those who visited her risked "contamination." Medicinal foods were given during this time for the healing of the mother. At one month, food is given out, including nasi kyunit, curry chicken, red eggs, Chinese koay--the rice and curry are customs which other Chinese seem to have picked up from the Nonyas.</p> <p> </p> <b><u><font SIZE="4"> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="nineteen">Marriage Customs</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> </font></u></b> <p>Baba and Nonya customs of marriage are in some respects unique, and have both Malay and Chinese elements incorporated into an elaborate ritual ceremony. This ceremony, as well as the institution of marriage among the Babas, has been a central topic in the discourse about their cultural uniqueness. Chinese marriage practices are dominant. Both newlyweds adorn traditional Chinese marriage costumes. Match making was Malay in style, except for the exchange of horoscopes, which was traditionally Chinese. The "lap-chai" ceremony held three days before the wedding. The groom's family would send twelve attendants bearing gifts to the bride's family's home, or "rumpah abu" to the accompaniment of Chinese trumpets.</p> <p>These presents were carried on brass or red lacquered trays, and were all of Malay origin or which bore Malay names--"kian songket" (embroidered sarong), "belanja kalwin" (marriage expenses). These included several "ang pows" or red packets of money, the first "wang tetok" containing 12 dollars and called "nursing money," the second called "wang belinja" and called "expense allowance" and a third called "wang sireh" or "betel nut money", and "pinang mas" (golden betel nuts) and "pisang rajah" or "a comb of a species of bananas known as "royal bananas"(Ho Wing Meng, 1976:31<u>)</u>. There is also a tray containing the marriage agreement called "surat kahwin," written in Chinese characters. The bridegroom's attendant, the "Pak chindek" was dressed in Malay costume. Otherwise, there were no striking differences in marriage customs from those of the Hokkien Chinese.</p> <p>My wife mentions that in the wedding ceremonies of very wealthy Nonyas, Indian servants would be hired to carry large trays of the bride wealth along the streets, and that this was a big occasion attended by many spectators. The payment of bride price included a sum of money, or "pien kim," which ranged in the mid-nineteenth century from 60 to 100 dollars. "Business was frequently brought to a stop in Penang while traders and others craned their necks from upper windows to see the procession of a wedded couple's gifts. On large and nicely decorated carts were placed furniture, washstands, plates, other household utensils, jewelry, and so forth. Behind and in front marched the musicians, in all kinds of uniform with a variety of instruments, principal among tem being the ubiquitous drum...(John Balibain, <u>Hail Penang! </u>1932:pg. 131<u>)</u></p> <p>For a complete description of a traditional peranakan wedding, the reader is referred to the excellent account by Ruth Ho; (<u>Rainbow Round My Shoulder,</u> 1975:pgs. 6-28), and, somewhat surprisingly, by J. D. Vaughn; (<u>The Manners and Customs of the Chinese of the Straits Settlements</u>, 1879:pgs 22-29)</p> <p>The more modern Babas and peranakans have dropped many of the paraphernalia, and costs, of such elaborate wedding rituals. They have often adopted western style wedding dress, which can be seen in many wedding photos. Tan Giok-lan writes "One of the most radical changes that occurred was the discarding of the elaborate and heavy traditional Chinese robes; they were exchanged for the western white dress and veil for the bride and the dark or light suit for the groom. The wearing of western apparel was already taking place around 1920. The writer was informed that the last time a bridal couple was dress in traditional Chinese style in Sukabumi was around 1930, but this was only for the ceremony; thereafter they put on western style dress."(Pg. 86s) Tan goes on to note that wedding ceremony is one of the best examples of the incorporation of elements from all three cultural backgrounds--there are apparently no rigid rules and no strong consensus about correctness.</p> <p>A wide range of selection is possible, and no social criticism is attached to such selection. Selection of wedding elements tends to follow the amount of modernization, Westernization, or Chineseness or Indonesian acculturation of the newly weds and their families. "There is one ritual, however, which is never omitted, except in families converted to Christianity. This is the honoring of the groom's ancestors by both the bride and groom, which is essentially the traditional Chinese ceremony of presentation of the bride to the groom's ancestors, thereby incorporating her in his lineage." (Ibid. pg. 87)</p> <p>Matrilocality is a typically and distinctively Baba cultural trait which is noted by many authors. The husband of the newlywed usually goes to live in the home of the bride. This is a rather uncommon pattern among more traditional Chinese that became more prevalent among the Straits Chinese and which deserves some explanation. Surname exogamy, except for marriage between kin of different ranks, and tolerance of marriage between maternal first cousins were all Chinese practices that were in general carried on by the traditional Babas, but not as strictly adhered to.</p> <p>Matrilocality also sometimes became uxorilocality and matriarchy, especially when the brides lineage had no agnatic issue and thus depended upon bringing in a son-in-law to adopt the paternal surname of the bride. This type of matrilocal marriage was not an unknown practice among the more traditional Chinese. "But among the latter it is regarded shameful for a man to enter into such a marriage as in Hokkien colloquial he is said to 'sell his lantern' (Boe toa-teng) and in Tiechiu to 'have his ribs trampled upon' (thiam phian-li)." (Maurice Freedman, 1962) Freedman in fact referred to such a kind of husband as "as sort of male daughter-in-law." A more common form of matrilocal marriage was chin-tsin, in which a man on being married lived in his wife's home without prejudice to his rights as a father." (Png Poh-Seng; pg. 112)</p> <p>Freedman notes that the practice of uxorilocality had persisted until recent times. The children of such marriages take the father's surname and inherit property from him, but "are raised mainly among their matrilateral kin (people related to them on their mother's side) and in houses that tend to pass down the generations through women.</p> <p>My wife's sister's husband, whose family came from Singapore, and who did not have money, moved into the Nyonya mother's household in Penang, the mother having paid for all the wedding arrangements as well as the bridewealth. The mother helped the children, and the grandchildren, financially as well as care-taking, and treated the son-in-law quite well. The husband stayed with the household until the mother broke up with the father.</p> <p>Among the Peranakans of Sukabumi, Tan Giok-Lan (1963) noted that the ideal of patrilocality is strictly observed, except upon numerous occasions in which availability of accommodations or lack of money mitigate the arrangements. (Pg. 88)</p> <p>It is interesting that in Ruth Ho's account of the wedding; ceremonies, that if during the ceremony the bride managed to step on the bridegroom's toes, "it meant that she would be the more aggressive partner. It seems that some brides' mothers made it a point to tell their daughters to be sure to step on HIS toes!" (1975: pg. 20) She also notes that throughout the Peranakan wedding, "one is struck most forcibly not only by the dependence on astrology, symbolism or what some people might call plain superstition, but also by the great importance attached to virtue, filial piety, respect for elders and familial ties..." (pg. 26). G. Minchin, in another classic description of the Peranakan wedding (<u>Notes and Queries on China and Japan,</u> Vol. 4, no. 6, 1870, pg. 85), writes: "It is a strange fact, that when any real Chinaman is married in Malacca or Singapore, he is obliged to talk Malay to his wife in order to be understood."</p> <p> </p> <b><font SIZE="4"> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="twenty">Peranakan People</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> </font></b> <p>Ethnoculture exists within an historical stream, a human confluence of social change in the world. It is defined from without in interrelationship with a wider world as much as it is generated and defined from within by the people who compose and continuously reconfigure its patterning. The possibilities for development of this patterning always exists across time and space in a wider field of relations.</p> <p>We search for a so-called base-line called "Nonya culture"--some normative or ideal sense of a conventional, traditional center, and find only a continuous stream of variation upon a few basic themes--themes that are defined as much by the exceptions as by the rule. We then arrive at the conclusion that such a base-line conceptioning of an ideal cultural orientation possessing some kind of "center" is at best a statistical statement of averages, likelihood, and central tendencies, and at worst someone's reified, factitious fiction--a projection of our own superficial sense of reality.</p> <p>In searching for the external outlines of Peranakan social reality, there are four sets of variables which appear salient, and which may be upon a more general level of understanding somehow interrelated with one another in rendering the conception of Peranakan social reality significant within a larger world. These four variables include social patterning, religious orientation, language, and, finally, what has become known as ethnicity.</p> <p>In a more general sense, the convergence of these four salient aspects of peranakan culture is upon what has been referred to as the social construction of reality. It is a glimpse into the daily dynamics of the Peranakan world, and how its members interact to produce, individually and collectively, a socially constructed reality. Part of this process has to do with social praxis and performance, with the sense of 'presentation of self' in the everyday world. Part of it has to do with the process of social production. "Externalization" and "objectification" of a shared stock of knowledge, symbolisms and values, and part deals with the dialectically complementary process of social reproduction, with the problem of socio-cultural transmission of these externalized forms, and their internalizations, or subjectification, into the individual personality.</p> <p> </p> <p>These processes can be seen to be 'functioning' dialectically at several levels. These are the infra-structural levels of economic adaptation, the social structural level of social interaction and integration, and the super-structural level of ideology. These three levels themselves constitute a sort of parallel-processing dialectical system, a 'complex' self-organizing system with a robust sense of historical structure that involves numerous interacting and mutually limiting variables.</p> <p>It is important to see that this set of social processes is also occurring and impinging upon a larger stream of social reality. The social construction of human reality is also, concomitantly, the psychological construction of human reality. Social definition of self and the psychological definition of society are also part of larger processes of human civilization, processes which involve boundary identification, projection, psycho-social reference, accommodation, acculturation, assimilation, etc. Both self and society are defined in mutual interrelation with one another, and with a larger world of "otherness" that has both psychological and sociological components.</p> <p>Peranakan society, wherever it had taken root and flourished, wherever it had spread its seed, always had its own sense of order, organization, purpose and outlook upon the world. It has always had some kind of class structure within which each member's status-role identity has been shaped and measured. It has long had its hopes for the future espoused in its own way of bringing up its youngest generation, and a sense of present importance with the generation that has come of age in the world, and an orientation toward the past that is passing away with the oldest. If we look closely, we find that Peranakan society has always been composed of a seamless web of people caught up in the trials and tribulations of daily living, in the throes of larger events that shape the world around them, and in the fortunes and misfortunes of the grand game of life. This web of people stretches in time through many periods as well as across many places, and each person has some sense of what it means to be Peranakan in the world, each person carries a part of the Peranakan present, past and future, upon their shoulders.</p> <p>As a social phenomenon, Peranakan society stretches across many boundaries and zones, social and ecological, and includes many different habitats and niches. Its centers can be found in different cityscapes, and its tendrils can be found stretching out into the remotest of countrysides. Peranakan society may be a finite phenomenon, but its finiteness is too vast to calculate, too confusingly complex to neatly separate.</p> <p>If we take as our prototypical representative of Peranakan Society, the wealthy, spoiled, elderly Nyonya who has an incurable passion for gambling, chewing sireh, and hen-pecking her son-in-law, then we are leaving out too much of other peranakan social realities--too much of its range of human variation and historical possibility. The Babas of the seventeenth century were clearly not the same as those of the nineteenth century, and these were not the same as those who claim to be so today. If the urban elite of the Baba pyramid was only the somewhat ostentatious pinnacle of a larger social base, then what of its more anonymous social base? No History is purely a Great Man narrative--of Towkays, Kapitans, Bankers and Prime Ministers--but social history is also told of the many whose names are now forgotten, seldom remembered, but without whose combined efforts history would not have been made at all, Great or small--not even Chinese history.</p> <p>Before we seek to explain Peranakan society in jargonistic terms like "political economy," "social structure," "ethnicity," "pluralism," "acculturation," "assimilation," it is important to highlight several dimensions of their world that seem problematic and interesting from the standpoint of social science. First is the amazing apparent capacity for the Peranakans to adapt to their local environment, and to take full advantage of the opportunities within this setting. Secondly, there is the Chinese standpoint, the somewhat exceptional openness and syncretic orientation of the Peranakan culture which made of itself a curious amalgamation of different, and often contradictory, cultural models. Finally, related to the first two points, is the somewhat ambiguous and indeterminate status of Peranakan society within a larger pluralistic world.</p> <p>Peranakan society, fit within a larger framework, must be seen as both a "transitional culture" in a larger stream of cultural assimilation, and a "culture of transition" that emerged as a self-sustaining social pattern in the interstitial regions between different cultural orientations. Peranakan culture and character emerged as a distinctive configuration wherever and whenever the processes of assimilation that were occurring in the passing of Chinese into Malay or Indonesian society was systematically arrested. Incorporation into the larger, predominant host society remained incomplete and partial and was, for the most part, a relatively gradual process.</p> <p>It is likely that this happened more than once, in more than one place, and that therefore the reasons for its happening were not a matter of historical happenstance. The patterns were more structurally basic and therefore stable, such that when circumstances were ripe, the emergence of a Peranakan orientation was a little more than likely. "The whole process must, moreover, have varied greatly between different areas in Malaya, and it is theoretically possible that in some areas, depending on such factors as the supply of land, type of crop, and relative geographical isolation, some Chinese may have assimilated Malay women to their community."</p> <p>With its repeated occurrence, it was more than likely that these people would form distinctive communities with their own separate orientation, and that these separate communities would eventually become inter-linked and interrelated to form a larger region-wide socio-cultural phenomena.</p> <p>G. William Skinner; speaks of a socio-historical continuum in which different Chinese communities of Indonesia; "can be ranged along a gradient according to the degree of indigenous influence in their synthesized culture." (1963:104) Position along this continuum is held to have been a function of the length of time that elapsed between the social formation of the community and the "arrival of significant numbers of immigrant China-born women. Among the many other relevant factors one must note the comparative cultural level of the indigenous population. The Chinese found much that was attractive and valuable in a highly differentiated, rich, complex and literate culture such as that of the Javanese, considerably less in the simpler local culture of the Bangaka...and still less in the relatively impoverished, non-literate cultures of the Borneo aborigines." (Ibid. 105)</p> <p>According to Skinner, this process began in the sixteenth century in Java, the culture of which was stabilized by the eighteenth century. In Borneo and Bangka it began later in the Eighteenth Century and a culturally distinctive local society was formed only by the mid-1800's. In other communities, such as Bagan Siapi-api, the process began "as late as the last decade of the nineteenth century and cultural stability is only now being achieved." (Pg. 104)</p> <p>In another study, Skinner compared the differential rates of assimilation between the Chinese of Thailand and Java, who have been in both countries for similar lengths of time and who came from similar regions in China. In Thailand the rate of assimilation was three times more rapid than in Java, and Chinese in Thailand were incorporated fully into the Thai social world by the second or third generation, and it is uncommon to find a Chinese who can trace their lineage for more than four generations, while it was not uncommon in Java to find Chinese going back twelve generations. Skinner isolated six factors contributing to such a differential in rates of assimilation: cultural vigor, in which the unconquered Thai did not share the same "cultural inferiority" complex, as did the Javanese.</p> <p>The Thai defined themselves by culture, whereas the Javanese defined themselves by race and descent. The Thai elite was indigenous and local, the elite of Java were outsiders and the Javanese upper class was deprived of any real power. There was much less ethnic stratification in Thailand than in Java, in which Dutch policies ethnically stereotyped occupational categories that put the Chinese above the Javanese in socio-economic status. In Thailand the Chinese were relatively unrestricted in their activities, while in Java the Dutch put restrictions on their residence and mobility. Finally, in Thailand there was a recognized mechanism available to Chinese for passing from Chinese to Thai identities, in which a person, coming of age, would declare himself either under Chinese or Thai administrative control. No such mechanism for passing was available to the Chinese in Java.</p> <p>According to D. E. Brown, (1976) differential rates of Chinese assimilation varied directly with rates of upward social mobility--such vertical mobility was relatively open and available to the Chinese in Thailand, making the incentive to assimilate into Thai society much greater, while in Java the ethnic hierarchy was relatively closed and fixed. He combines this with the promotion of "false ethnic origin stories" which perpetuate ethnic pluralism and difference, to create a general proposition that "Ethnic diversity varies with the hereditary closure of ranking systems."</p> <p>More generally, in the structural processes of Southeast Asian civilization the formation of ethnic diversity and the establishment of a fixed hierarchy were complementary and dialectical processes. "If enhancing ethnic differences promotes the stability of the radically plural society, why couldn't Southeast Asia's indigenous radically plural societies have been created by fabricating 'ethnic' differentiation to complement a hierarchy which was established among essentially homogenous peoples?" (D. E. Brown, 1976:94)</p> <p>Another study by Juliet Edmunds (1968) of the relationship between Islam, intermarriage and rates of assimilation between the Chinese and the Malays, notes that though Islam has been widely regarded as a significant barrier to the assimilation of the Chinese, as compared, say to Theravada Buddhism in Thailand, conversion to Islam was a process which varied historically and socially "according to the state of relations between the two groups concerned as to any theological dictates," (1968, pg. 57) as well as to the degree to which such conversion imposed other conditions of assimilation upon the convert.</p> <p>Intermarriage is the key element of the process of assimilation. "The effects of intermarriage on the relationships between the communities depend not only on how frequently it occurs, but also on the type of relationship and how the children of the unions are defined." (Ibid. page 58) Formal marriage institutionalizes the "movement of individuals from one group to another. Alternatively, they can result in the growth of some intermediate category of persons. In general it must be the host society which imposes the rules on this as well as other spheres of social life, though this does not mean that the minority, in this case the Chinese, have been entirely without a say in the process." (Ibid. pg. 58) In sociological jargon, intermarriage is known as the process of "amalgamation," a part of the more general processes of acculturation and social/structural assimilation. From this standpoint, Peranakan society, constituting both a transitional category in the assimilation process as well as a pariah culture of transition, may be fittingly referred to as a "culture of amalgamation." Historically, intermarriage between Buddhist Chinese and Muslim Malays has always been infrequent, though the demographic pattern of such intermarriage has been difficult to reconstruct for a number of reasons.</p> <p>Somewhat paradoxically, Peranakan society, as a culture of amalgamation, has been centrally defined by such intermarriage. "In every case, the formative period for the locally rooted society began when immigrants settled on the land, formed alliances with indigenous women--Chinese women almost never immigrated over-seas prior to this century--and reared children who were taught to identify themselves as Chinese.</p> <p>Marriage among these mixed-blood descendants of immigrants led eventually to the development of a fairly stable society." (G. William Skinner, 1963: pg. 104) Edmunds notes that with the coming of European colonial administration, and especially with the rise of new ethnic nationalisms, the Islamic proscriptions became enforced in counter-reference to the predominantly Christian conquerors, and, combined with the emergence of strongly Nanyang immigrant Chinese communities, as well as policies promoted by both British and Dutch administrators, the barrier to intermarriage and thus assimilation of the two communities became more rigid. Thus a new pariah "peranakan" identity became established that was less 'transitional' in status.</p> <p>Not every scholar unanimously supports this thesis of intermarriage as being the principle basis in the formation of Peranakan society and social identity in the Straits. John Clammer notes that lack of evidence for such intermarriage; in the small pre-colonial Chinese community such as Malacca, which were internally self-sufficient and infra-communally balanced in terms of its sex ratios. "In fact, there is no evidence at all that peranakan culture emerged from a process of biological syncretism; rather, it is the result of cultural assimilation and adaptation to the host country, a process which did not begin in a systematic way until the nineteenth century..."(John Clammer, 1980:46)</p> <p>Clammer cites the near absolute negativity of the Islamic religion which presented a strong barrier to such intermarriage, as well as the shallowness of peranakan lineages which do not extend back before the nineteenth century. He claims that peranakan culture did not become a cohesive, internally coherent, phenomenon until this time, and attributes the principal basis for its emergence as being the British colonial system that promoted their marginal "pariah" status.</p> <p>The actual historical patterning and importance of such intermarriage has remained unresolved. There is a romantic facticity about the peranakan origin myth of low-status Malay women marrying higher status Chinese merchants and traders and becoming the famous Nyonyas who minded the store in their husbands' absence, cultivated strong domestic values and skills, nursed these values in their daughters, as well as lovingly cared for and commanded their baba and nyonya babies, and chewed sireh and gambled among themselves in their spare time, all the while unknowing that they were sowing the seeds for what would later develop into a full blown cultural configuration. Clammer refers to this argument, and to the Malay/Minangkabau origin of Matrilocality, as "folk arguments" which lack historical or social evidence. But this dilemma does point up the inherent ambiguity of identity of the Peranakans, of their inbetweenness, and of the possibilities, and impossibilities, of becoming either Chinese or Malay.</p> <p>What remains rather certain is that at some point such intermarriage ceased fairly early, and from the standpoint of its Nyonya orientation, the Peranakan society became a closed one? Chinese men and women, as well as some Malays or others were later incorporated into its ethos, through capitalizing on the marriage market in the Straits, but the society remained otherwise separate and distinct.</p> <p>Another social historical dimension of Peranakan society which may help to resolve this ambiguity of Peranakan identity is consideration of its regional/local variations and, especially, of a kind of rural-urban continuum. In the same work, John Clammer notes the hypothesis that the "frontier conditions" of Straits society inhibited the formation of deep lineages by requiring extensive cooperation between unrelated lineage fragments. Only where such frontier conditions do not exist does patrilineal ideology and lineage become predominant. Such lineages in the South of China are also correlated with wet-rice agriculture. According to Clammer, the urban orientation of the Peranakans as merchant men, and the frontier conditions of Peranakan society, discouraged the development of patrilineal/patri-focal identity, and encouraged the development of the distinctive matrilocal patterns which "bias was free to flourish" (1980:pg. 39).</p> <p>A number of studies have been done of rural based Peranakan communities in both Indonesia and Malaysia, and these 'frontier' oriented societies must be taken into account in consideration of the origin and development of peranakan social identity. Central in such pioneering development of the hinterland regions was the Kong Si system within which the urban based Chinese settlements financed and provided the organization and labor reserve, as well as the middlemen function and markets for the interior pioneering communities which depended upon a 'slash and burn' method of shifting cultivation and which produced an expanding agricultural frontier.</p> <p>Such a system depended upon establish trade and exchange relations and partnership based upon an ethnic Chinese ethos of reciprocal trust and the notion of "dependability." Crosscutting ties of dialect, lineage, village association, tended to reinforce these bonds, but even more importantly, kinship ties were the best available means of cementing a dependable network.</p> <p>Networking is one of the most important aspects of seeing how history and culture painted with a large brush articulates with, and is moved by, the day-to-day interactions of individuals along their many pathways of practice.</p> <p>We can see Straits societies as the pioneering forerunners of the later conglomerate Nanyang society, playing a pivotal role in the development of the Nanyang civilization in Southeast Asia. A Russian study of the Nanyang by Simoniya social structure reveals a vast financial-credit-market system that extends throughout Southeast Asia, with Chinese merchant-middlemen, within a colonial and neo-colonial framework, serving as the key articulators of the entire regional political economy. Within this system there emerges a resolute class structure in which plantation laborers and coolies are at the bottom, small petty merchants and planters range somewhere in the middle, and urban based professionals and financiers are at the apex.</p> <p>As established "culture brokers" and as the first Chinese to settle in the Straits, the Babas emerged on top of this developing Nanyang social structure during the colonial era, and helped provide the impetus and direction for its further development. They provided the leadership and local models of adjustment and accommodation that allowed the system to work as effectively as it had.</p> <p>Winzler notes a distinction in the Kelantan region between peranakan "village Chinese" and "town Chinese" "who perceive themselves as possessing a 'purer' model of Chinese culture." The so-called village Chinese in general showed more Malay and Thai influences in their Chinese culture. "The womenfolk, for example, wear sarong although girls do wear all kinds of modern dress especially when they go to town. Like the Baba, the women also wear the Malay-style blouse called <u>kebaya</u>. The men-folk wear sarong most of the time and in the village they usually do not wear any shirt. When they go to town they put on shirt and trousers. It is common for both men and women to carry <u>kain batik lepas</u>....a long piece of cloth which women use as head scarf while men tie it around their waist or use it as head-cloth (<u>semutar</u>). As for food, the village Chinese eat both Malay and Thai food as well as food prepared in Chinese style. Eating with fingers is common among these Chinese. (Tan Chee Beng, "Peranakan Chinese in Northeast Kelantan" in <u>Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society</u>, Vol. 55, 1982:pg. 28)</p> <p>These "village Chinese" do not identify themselves as such, and, while mostly rural, have spread into the local townships and, while retaining many Malay traits, have become more urban in orientation.</p> <p>Tan notes at some length the difficulty in finding a suitable label for these "village Chinese" whose patterns of acculturation was not quite the same as for the "Babas" of Malacca. Finally, he opts for the term "PeranakE"....</p> <p>Robert Winzeler (1983) emphasized the difference between the "rural Chinese" of Kelantan, whom he refers to as Peranakans on the basis of acculturation, and the Babas of the Straits and the Peranakans of Java. One important difference is the influence of Thai, and the intermarriage between Chinese men and Thai women. According to Tan, early Chinese accounts of the settlements in Kelantan mention that Chinese were not permitted to marry the locals, but when they did marry, took Siamese wives. "The descendants of those early Chinese settlers who married local women had close contact with Siamese and Malays who were the majority people. This eventually led to the acculturation of the Chinese and gave rise to the formation of Peranakan Chinese society. The Peranakan Chinese culture once formed perpetuated itself until today." (Tan Chee-Beng, 1981:32-3)</p> <p>Another difference is linguistic--they do not speak the Baba-Malay of the Straits, but are basically bi-lingual or tri-lingual. Finally, in terms of kinship organization he notes that these communities tend to adhere toward a partilineal/patrilocal system, observing principals of adherence to surnames and surname exogamy--or 'avoidance of common surname marriage." Otherwise, there is little evidence to suggest "extra-familial patrilineal descent groups of a social, economic or even ritual nature." (Ibid. pg. 19) He notices that kin-groups establish themselves in proximity to one another, but do not form corporate, patrilineal organizations. There is a bias towards a more bilateral pattern.</p> <p>Tan's conclusions were that "close interethnic interaction in northeast Kelantan is the main factor for good interethnic relationship and the acculturation of the Chinese. Interethnic socialization from childhood to adulthood has fostered a greater interethnic understanding and respect. As a result of such socialization, members of different ethnic groups have developed certain common values and "cultural taste". At the group level, he notes the persistence of '"structural" contradictions that tend to maintain group boundaries between the rural Chinese and the Malays. Overtly, the Peranakan Chinese appear more Malay than Chinese because of their dress and language, "which are exhibited everyday, are very much acculturated" (ibid. pg. 48), but on close scrutiny, they remain basically Chinese in orientation. Interestingly, it is in the area of religious differences, and syncretisms, that the strongest basis for difference and identity are to be found.</p> <p>L. A. P. Gosling's study on the rural Chinese of Trengganu, (1964) whom he calls "Baba Chinese" ("used in recognition of the popular usage of the term to apply to all Chinese in Malaya displaying a significant level of cultural and biological assimilation" (pg. 203)) focuses upon the pattern of pioneering settlement in the region by rural Chinese. Those Chinese who remained behind in settlements and did not move on to greener pastures, or those settlements that proved unsuccessful, were fully incorporated by the Malays.</p> <p>Gosling cited that among the rural Malays, there were few if any significant barriers of Islam to intermarriage. "Malay marriage partners were not difficult to obtain. The details of Islamic law were not well known to the rural Malays, and prohibition on marriage between Muslim Malay women and pagan Baba Chinese males does not seem to have been strictly applied." (Pg. 215) While most such intermarriage involved the incorporation of females into the Baba community, there was also a lesser reverse flow of Chinese into the Malay community, as households remained behind in the advance of the Chinese settlements, and became incorporated by the local Malays who were more sedentary in orientation. Babas could easily assimilate into the Malay communities because they were already partly acculturated "in physical appearance, language, costume, and behaviour." (Pg. 217)</p> <p>Furthermore, a premium may have been placed upon lighter complexioned Chinese Babas. In terms of physical appearance, which Gosling takes as primary evidence for such biological assimilation, the Baba Chinese varied over a wide range between Malay and Chinese. Older generation individuals looked more Malay in appearance. He advanced the hypothesis that areas most visible to external contact are the most acculturated, while the least visible areas show least evidence of acculturation. Acculturation seems also to have been a function of the relative isolation of the Chinese communities and members from other Chinese--attenuated contacts in rural areas promoted more contact with the local, host society. On the other, the onward resettlement of some Chinese tended to isolate these communities from contact with the Malays, thus reducing the amount of assimilation.</p> <p>Gosling divided the history of these settlements into three periods. The first, from 1820 until 1890, was a period of growth, "and the process of acculturation and biological assimilation proceeded rapidly" (pg. 215). The second period, between 1890 and 1920, was one marked by declining population, during which Babas were increasingly assimilated into surrounding Malay communities. From 1920 until the present, assimilation into the Malay communities has been all but completely arrested, and the size of the Baba community, identified as distinctly peranakan, has stabilized. There is recent evidence to suggest a more recent trend of resinification by a larger Chinese community.</p> <p>Social stratification exists within, defines, and is defined by, a continuum of social interaction, enduring relations and interpersonal experience that exist throughout time and across space. Social stratification is transmitted through the generations and between different groupings and sub-groupings. It delimits group boundaries and asymmetries of power, and, in the sense of transcending the lived experience of any single individual, must be considered to be corporate in structure.</p> <p>Social stratification; can be seen to underlie ethnic stratification, boundaries, groups and identities. Just as social stratification varies through time and across space, so too do ethnic differences vary continuously in a corresponding way. Such continuous variation is the basis for speaking of an ethno-cultural continuum of human experience. It sometimes happens, as in the cases of radically plural societies, that ethnic stratification becomes the defining principle of social stratification, with the resulting ethos of ethnos. In such cases, ethnic differences and ethnic identities come to take on a social significance, and a real potency, which they might not otherwise have had. Also, defining social ethos in primarily in terms of ethnos tends to constrain and shape its patterning in ways that it might not have otherwise been shaped.</p> <p>Though perhaps inextricably interrelated, the two kinds of phenomena--social stratification and ethnic stratification--are yet separable and potentially independent processes. Socio-cultural homogeneity within a society may preclude some of the organizational problems which heterogeneity causes, and ethno-cultural differences also entail its own kinds of dilemmas. Yet stratification occurs in either case, and in neither case does such homogeneity or heterogeneity preclude the potential for competition and conflict on the one hand, or cooperation and social integration on the other.</p> <p>Within the colonial framework of a plural society, immigrant Chinese communities were divided along sub-ethnic lines in both cooperation and competition--sub-ethnic identity delimited the field of opportunities and actions open to the immigrant. Although internal class distinctions existed, these were of far less significance in daily life than ethnic solidarity. "In sum, cleavages and alliances within Chinese immigrant society were both complex and of daily significance, whereas for all but the elite, contacts between Malays and with Europeans were few and relatively unimportant." (Ibid. pg. 242)</p> <p>In a landmark study in reference group theory, Alvin Rabushka's work <u>Race and Politics in Urban Malaya </u>(1973) reveals some of the fundamental differences between Chinese and Malay. Chinese tend to be more culturally ethnocentric than the Malay. More cosmopolitan contexts, inducing social extroversion, hence greater interracial social interaction, reduces such ethnocentrism, while social introverts tend to be much more ethnocentric in orientation. In terms of relative social distance, and the degree of tolerance between these groups, "Penang Malays are more tolerant of the Chinese than their Kuala Lumpur counterparts, but they are less tolerant on the question of interracial marriage. But omitting eating and marriage, the two associations affected by religion, we find (with one exception) that two-thirds of all Malay respondents are not opposed to crossing racial boundaries in employment, social activity or neighborhood of residence." (Ibid. pg. 62)</p> <p>In regard to Chinese attitudes, no religious obstacles interfere with Chinese eating with Malays in the same eating-houses. "Chinese in both Kuala Lumpur and Penang are more tolerant of Malays than Malays are tolerant of them. In greater degree, they are willing to eat, work, join and live with members of the Malay race." The study holds that racial stereotypes have little or not role in promoting social or political harmony, and that positive or negative attitudes are relatively independent of such stereotypes.</p> <p> </p> <p>Malay stereotypes of the Chinese; are that they are intelligent, ambitious, active, honest, thrifty, industrious and hardworking, yet ritually unclean and impure. The Chinese tend to see the Malays as clean, and yet lacking ambition, while "Intelligence, thrift, activity, and honesty are given approximately equal point values... and fall significantly below the scores registered for cleanliness and (lack of) ambition." (Alvin Rabushka, 1973: 67)</p> <p>Rabushka considers such stereotypes as economical means for storing large amounts of information, which might otherwise be costly. Stereotypes do not vary in relation with social introversion/extroversion; and are not correlated with expressed attitudes of willingness to interact. ".... The holding of narrow stereotyped views in Malaya has no visible impact on either social interchange or political unity."(Ibid. pg. 67)</p> <p>From these findings, a conclusion is drawn, among others, that "multi-racial living experiences do not necessarily promote racial tolerance or political unity" (ibid. pg. 101) The data tended to support a "transaction hypothesis" that higher levels of daily social interaction tended to promote higher levels of positive effect. On the other hand, evidence points out that social integration does not necessarily correlate with "democratic political stability"--"the transaction model does not clearly distinguish the political and nonpolitical aspects of "integration". Living in multiracial neighborhoods increases affect, whereas ethnic enclaves reduce it. Education enhances interethnic interaction, while age, religious and sexual differences have little impact "on the extent of racial integration."(Ibid. pg. 124-5)</p> <p>Non-Baba Chinese look down upon Babas because they do not speak well the Chinese language--they are perceived "as not quite Chinese," and as "like Malay", which for the Non-Baba Chinese, is a counter-reference group. Those who speak English, the language of an ascendant reference group, are more acceptable. This category crosscuts the Baba/Non-baba distinction. Outside of the Baba areas, there is not a great deal of understanding of their ethnic culture--when seen buying pork in the market; they are frequently mistaken for being Malay. (Tan Chee Beng, 1979:21) Non-Baba Chinese may call them "Baba siau"--a derogatory name meaning "Baba semen" (crazy baba)--and "Baba kia" meaning "Baba kids." Babas often experience direct insults by Non-Babas in many social contexts. Babas complain that they are looked down upon by the Non-Babas.</p> <p>Baba Chinese, on the other hand, have traditionally looked down upon the Singkehs, or 'newcomers', who in an earlier period were generally poor coolie laborers. "Cinageh" is heard among Babas when they talk unfavorably of non-Baba Chinese.</p> <p>Nevertheless, in reference to a host Malay community, both Babas and non-Baba's share a common sense of Chineseness, a common Chinese cultural core, a common religious orientation, and a common ethnic and existential context of structural and social discrimination. "Now the common perception of discrimination unites the Babas and the non-Baba Chinese in a common political sentiment." (Tan Chee Beng 1979:22)</p> <p>They also share as certain degree of social relatedness--marriage across these sub-ethnic boundaries is quite common and normally unconstrained, in which extended kinship alliances can be cultivated. Such kinship linkages extend to "ritual kinship"--adoption of a child by a Godmother or Godfather. My wife took me to see her God-mum, whom she called "Lau Mak" which means "old Mom", an old Cantonese woman who was her amah as a child--she was the only person who gave us ang pao and ritual offerings for our wedding. Religious ceremonies and rituals are an important means and locus of such sub-ethnic interaction that helps to define and reinforce a common "Chinese" identity.</p> <p>Non-Baba Chinese frequently disdain Malays, and completely avoid them. They are seen as untrustworthy and are not extended credit. They feel Malays "are decidedly different from themselves in ways of thinking and feeling--<u>xinli butong</u>--and the assumption seems to be that the differences are irreconcilable."(Judith Strauch, 1981:254)</p> <p>Chinese tend to see Malay behavior in the local context as childlike, with a lack of ambition--"traits that can be smiled on with some condescension." (Ibid. pg. 254) These attitudes are somewhat separate from feelings of structural discrimination as "second class citizens." "Government officials, by contrast, may be viewed as heavy-handed tyrants spoon-feeding the Malay peasant on the one hand and constricting natural Chinese rights on the other." (Ibid. pg. 254)</p> <p>According to Judith Nagata, though there is a great deal of irregular subethnic diversity, the most salient element of Malay ethnic identity; is cultural--a Malay is a Muslim, habitually speaks the Malay language, and follows Malay <u>adat</u>, or customary law. (Nagata, 1974:335) Malay Muslims, whether Malay, Arabic or Indian, situationally define themselves according to different reference groups varying along three dimensions: simple comparison of social distance and solidarity; immediate expediency; and normative statements regarding comparative values of social status. (Nagata, 1974:340, in Judith Strauch, 1979:256) Individuals may oscillate flexibly between identities without negative psychological or social consequences--such oscillation may be both personally and socially adaptive.</p> <p>In terms of interaction between Babas and Malays, the same perceptual categories of inferiority do not hold--rather stereotypes are common which contain negative and positive attributes. From the standpoint of Non-Baba Chinese, both Babas who are "like Malays", and Malays, are often seen as less hard working or industrious as the Chinese--a core value of Chineseness. Neither were Malays seen as trustworthy--such trust in business interaction being another central tenet in the economic underpinnings of ethnic Chinese identity. For the Baba community, if they identify more strongly with the Chinese, then they are apt to view the Malay in similar terms--if they identify more with a separate Baba identity, they are apt to distinguish themselves from the Chinese and identify more strongly with the Malays. (Tan Chee Beng, 1979:25) "Malays, when questioned about their perception of the identity of the Babas, will often reply that "They are just like us." (John Clammer, 1980:133) Babas interact more closely and frequently with Malays, than do other Chinese, and yet they are separate in the spheres of kinship and religion from the Malay--spheres which they share with other Chinese. Malays perceive the Babas as easier to interact with than the Non-Baba Chinese.</p> <p>On the other hand, many Peranakans have picked up many values and views that can be considered traditionally Malay, such as the distinction between refined, "alus" or "halus" and rough or crude, or "kasar." This is a distinction that is brought out in the way that a peranakan may speak to another depending upon the social category that the peranakan identifies the person with. Also, Nonyas have picked up many of the superstitions that were Malay. I have frequently heard my wife say under her breath "I 'pantang' that" only to learn later that it meant a strong "dislike," and specifically, an omen of ill-fortune.</p> <p>In spite of the structural differences between the two communities, there still exist many interethnic social ties between them. People were customarily invited to and attend friends' weddings, parties, and ceremonies as a token of interethnic solidarity. In such situations, discussion of issues of structural discrimination or difference may be avoided or else joked about. "This points to the fact that where there is structural conflict between two ethnic groups in a multi-ethnic country, the interaction between individuals of the two ethnic groups need not necessarily manifest conflict." (Tan Chee Beng, 1979:27) In such multi-ethnic conflicts, certain norms, of avoidance, of not offering pork for instance, are mutually worked out to smooth interpersonal social interaction in the wake of structural difference and inequality. To some extent, personal identity is separate and independent of ethnic-group identity.</p> <p>We are left to consider ethnos as a function of reference and as such subject to an intrinsic kind of psychological and social relativity of our self-awareness in relation to others. Identity is built up from enduring social interrelation and frequent social interaction. In this sense, the psychological awareness of the self and the social perception of others are inextricably entangled, and overlap in an intermediate region that is not quite internal and not completely external. In this sense, relative deprivation, cognitive dissonance, social difference and distance, are all phenomena that have both psychological and sociological facets in experience. In this regard, status-role ascription, identification, projection of collective representations--all symbolic processes--and labeling serve to reinforce and articulate this region of interethnic, psychosocial consciousness.</p> <p> </p> <b><font SIZE="4"> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="twentyone">The Social World of the Straits Chinese</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> </font></b> <p>The center of Baba and Peranakan culture must be found somewhere along a continuum of possibilities between what it has meant to be traditionally Chinese, on one hand, and traditional Malay or Indonesian on the other. It was situated somewhere between being a sub-cultural and inter-ethnic orientation barely distinguishable in its basic components from the dominant cultures in which it was born and became situated, and being its own, fully grown Creole culture with its own distinctive orientation to the world; its own basic patterning of cultural sanctions, views and values, and characteristics of personality that become enculturated and transmitted with each subsequent generation.</p> <p>There is another corresponding continuum of language in which the speech of the Babas and Peranakans lies along a continuum between spoken Amoy Hokkien, on one hand, and vernacular Malay, on the other, as well as between Chinese/Malay and English. Baba and Peranakan culture has also existed along a continuum of traditional versus modern, as well as along a continuum of urban versus rural. In all, we can distinguish these basic dimensions which intersect somewhere in the center that we would define as the locus of Baba/peranakan culture.</p> <p>If we can refer to the social construction of reality, in which processes of externalization, objectification, reification, subjectification and internalization are, in that order, dialectically interdependent and convergent in the critical moment of social reproduction and transmission, attendant especially upon the processes of primary and secondary socialization and discourse, then we can also talk about an antithetical "psychological reconstruction of reality" that, from an historical point of view, becomes somewhat independent and primary in the ongoing patterning and processes of cultural development and social history. Once internalized in the form of such cognitive models, psycho-cultural orientations become in a sense "naturalized," "habitualized," "subconscious" and also, most importantly, self-fulfilling in rebounding back upon the social processes which led to their original constitution and constraint in the first place.</p> <p>There is a sense in which ethos and ethnos represents an internalized frame of mind of the participant. Though there is a wide range of divergence and variability between individuals, there is also some form of convergence upon common ground in core values, cognitive and normative orientations and collective symbolic representations upon which a consensus of shared ethnos is based.</p> <p>To a great extent, a person's attitudes and outlook is a function of that person's social and structural positionality and situational context within this continuum. It is also a function of that person's capacity to negotiate and intermediate between alternative positions. People commonly adopt and internalize status symbolisms that reflect not so much the reality of their status positionality within a society, but the ideal direction and expression of where that person ideally wants to be, as well as where that person may somewhat fictitiously believe him/herself to be. But cognitive orientation and positionality also become dialectical in the articulation of social action and historical happenstance--to a large extent, given the appropriate circumstances, such values and orientations do become 'self-fulfilling,' albeit in ways that most participants may not anticipate.</p> <p>Furthermore, in entertaining the possibility of a variety of alternative positions within the cultural continuum, some of which may be mutually incompatible or contradictory, the ability to negotiate new positions and intermediate between them is a function of a person's past experience in doing so, as well as a function of that person's capacity to effectively mediate the boundaries between different positions, status-identities, roles, and internalized states of being. Past experience with diversity results in openness to new varieties of experience, whereas an 'introverted' orientation to one or a few positions results in decreased capacity to integrate or deal effectively with a wide range of plurality. Furthermore, the ability to negotiate boundaries demands the mastery of certain social skills--the ability to linguistically, emotionally, cognitively and behaviorally code-switch and code-mix; the ability to function along a number of parallel continuums of cognitive orientation, and to adopt the "other's" point of view.</p> <p>In this sense we must see psycho-cultural identity as a function of a kind of cognitive pluralism." An individual is able to maintain a number of different cognitive orientations in relation to one another within a single universe of experience, and we may properly refer to an "ethno-psychology" of social experience. There is a suggestion for a weak form of the linguistic relativity hypothesis in that code-switching between Malay, English and Hokkien requires the adoption of different conceptual codes and cognitive orientations which have different foci, different dimensions of significance and salience, and that exclude some elements that possibly are central in other cognitive orientations.</p> <p>Though the basic cognitive structure may remain the same in each of the cases, the cognitive style of orientation and operation between orientations may be quite different, and even contradictory. Furthermore, the internalization of code-switching/mixing in complex social situations to accommodate for diversity acquires a mode of social functioning that becomes habitual and automatic, based on a wide latitude of "native speaker/hearer intuition" which must not only fill in the many gaps, but cross-over the many switching points.</p> <p>There is in this sense that such a complex, heterogeneous orientation, is based upon a kind of minimal structure, like a pidgin or Creole, which is in many of its features reduced in the amount of constraint or redundancy it requires. Code-switching/mixing discourse must have a structure that is open to many variables and quite flexible in its applicability. And what is true on a linguistic level is reflective and representative of a deeper symbolic and culturally encoded level of cognition and experience--people are not only switching and mixing codes in a quasi-regular but informal way on a linguistic level, but also upon meta-lingusitic and cultural levels as well.</p> <p>Language, religious orientation in both values and world-view, and ethnic identity are all interrelated in certain important ways. Language comes to reflect our symbolic universe of understanding, and our language becomes a primary vehicle for the expression and realization of such symbolic understanding. Who we are and what we are become defined by the words we use, and the words we use become framed within the compass of our social knowledge and the kind of social understandings with which we approach the world. Ethnicity and ethnic consciousness are a kind of relative "psycho-social" identity that falls somewhere within the dialectic between the spoken and textual realities of the language we use, and the social and symbolic contexts of relation in which we use that language.</p> <p>The problematic understanding of ethnoculture comes to rest upon the nexus of relations between language, religious beliefs and values, and ethnic identity. Language has a tremendous internal consistency and order--it has its own separate sense of history, change and directionality of development. Religious orientation is also a kind of living, performed symbolic system--it has a traditional momentum which, through processes of socialization, shape and reshape human character and culture in a constraining and conservative way. Ethnicity, and ethnic stereotypes, reemerges time and again with amazing persistence in spite of the social processes and historical forces which always threaten to disintegrate them, despite ideological prejudices which seek always to deny them, stigmatize or euphemize them, or even efface or eradicate them.</p> <p> </p> <b><font SIZE="4"> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="twentytwo">Baba Malay Language</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> </font></b> <p>One of the most visible aspects of any society is the language. "Even more striking than Malay physical appearance is the Baba's general Malay behavior: hence they not only look like Malays, but they walk, gesticulate, shake hands, eat, chew betel, sit, squat, expectorate, defecate, laugh and talk like Malays."(L. A. P. Gosling, 1964: pg. 212)</p> <p>Malay, particularly the bazar or "pasar" Malay, has been the primary lingua franca, or "business language" of the Malay Peninsula and Indonesia between the many different ethnic groups. Before the coming of the British, Dutch and Japanese, each of whom promoted their own language curriculum, Malay was the preferred language of choice in doing business with other people outside of one's own community. It is therefore reasonable to expect that this language, as a primary index of acculturation and assimilation, should be spoken by any community which has achieved some degree of successful adaptation and accommodation within the larger Malay social world. Tan Che-Beng, in his study of the "rural Chinese" of Kelantan, notes.</p> <p>Part of the reason for this assimilation has been the proximity and convenience of Malay schools and the lack of availability of Chinese or English-medium schools. But linguistic acculturation is also a normal and expected aspect of accommodation to a host society--children acquire the socially predominant language quite naturally through indirect means, whether it is spoken in the home as a primary language or not.</p> <p>The early article by Chia Cheng Sit ("The Language of the Babas" in <u>"The Straits Chinese Magazine"</u> Vol. II, 1898) noted that though in religion, manners, customs and though the Babas remain Chinese, for the most part they speak Baba Malay with little Chinese infusion, except for the Penang Babas. The article claimed that the Baba spoke a "patois" of Malay adulterated with many borrowed idioms and words. The grammar was greatly reduced, dropping the many particles of proper Malay speech, and, similar to Chinese, without prefixation or affixation and with the syntactical significance of words defined by their relative positioning. In somewhat condescending manner, Chia noted that the patois was sufficient for everyday business and practical matters, though insufficient for the expression of ideas on social, ethical and philosophical subjects.</p> <p>A more informed linguistic analysis by Sonny Lim (1982 <u>Baba Malay: The Language of the Straits Born Chinese</u> Master's Thesis, Australia: Monash University), comparing Baba Malay to Pasar Malay Chitty and Portuguese Malay, places it along a continuum bridging the gap between Baba Malay and Standard Malay. Baba Malay is primarily used intra-communally--i.e. spoken between themselves. It is defined situationally by a number of elements, including accommodation, and is variably mixed with English and Chinese. Literacy and illiteracy has been an important factor in the history of the language. "The Rising Star" was an awkward Baba attempt at standard Malay. The rise of Baba Malay as a lingua franca in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries reflected the economic importance of the Chinese--it represented the growth of a pidginized Malay to a Creole Malay featuring a syntactic reduction and simplification. Thus Baba Malay is a special creolized form of the wider form of Bazaar Malay, arising from the latter as an early pidgin or pidginized variety.</p> <p>According to Lim's analysis, Baba Malay has a reduced topic-comment structure featuring the "Punya" article meaning literally to "possess" and is semantically related to the Hokkien form "e". This particle has three functions, as a possessive marker, as a marker of temporal and locative modifiers and as a relativizer, all of which correspond exactly to the Hokkien word "e" but which are foreign to standard Malay. Similarly the particle "kasi" or "to give" is related to the Hokkien "ho" and has the same functions of benefactive, causative-benefactive, causative and passive marker. Also "kena" corresponds almost exactly to the Hokkien "tioh?" with overlapping semantic fields. Similar particles include "Mau" (intention), "Pigi" (to go), "Nanti" (to wait) and the sentence final "la" which is originally a Hokkien form and which is an emphatic marker signaling "rapport, solidarity, familiarity and solidarity between speakers."</p> <p>The word order of Baba Malay is Hokkien, in which noun phrases preceded by a marker will embed a sentence with an obligatory "punya" relativizer. Lim summarizes the admixture of Malay and Hokkien as strictly syntactic-semantic in nature--meanings and syntactic functions have been borrowed from Hokkien but not the forms, and mostly constitute direct substitutes for parallel and convergent Malay forms. Lexicon is mostly Malay with Hokkien elements borrowed which cover those Chinese aspects of Baba culture--kinship, marriage, religion, birth, death and some moral precepts. The pronomial system has also been modified by Hokkien.</p> <p>"Baba Malay is essentially the Malay language pared down to the minimum, with the expected morphological and some syntactical features of Malay altered or missing, and with radically modified phonology." (Lim, 1982:p. 11) The sentence structure of Baba Malay reflects the passification or topicalization, or a "topic-comment" structure of Standard Malay. Information "is arranged such that the part of the information that is given, or the part that is already familiar, is placed at the front of the sentence (and thereby highlighting it as well)." (Ibid. p. 116)</p> <p>Robert Winzeler, in his study of the village-Chinese in Kelantan, notes that these communities never completely lost use of their Chinese dialects as the Baba and Peranakan communities of the Straits and Java had, but usually became bilingual or even trilingual. Code switching and code-mixing is a common pattern in radically plural societies. In Penang, fused and independent bilinguals with competence in three or more languages are not unusual, but, on the contrary, are to be expected. Ann Pakir's linguistic study of the natural discourse patterns of members of a Baba community in Singapore reveals a pattern of code switching; between Malay, Hokkien and English in which speakers attempt to negotiate "a collective social identity" and accommodate to other speaker/hearers. I have observed extensively a similar pattern among Penang Chinese--many speakers being quite expert in code-switching/mixing between several different languages. Such linguistic skills seem to be acquired quite early and remain permanent part of speakers' linguistic facility.</p> <p>Several brief studies on "Baba Malay" are extant. There seems to be about as much linguistic variation across Peranakan societies as anything else, and in general a "Peranakan" dialect can be said to rest along a continuum of creolization between mainly Hokkien, Malay or Indonesian, as well as a third or more languages, whether English, Dutch or another Chinese dialect or another regional language--for instance Siamese, or Dayak. It appears that the degree to which Chinese or Malay is the predominant language of discourse is a measure of the extent of acculturation of the particular peranakan community. But for the majority of Hokkien peranakans of Java and Malacca and Singapore, Malay appears to be the base language. "Baba Malay" is structurally and lexically the same as other vernacular dialects of Malay, with only a few phonological "dialectical" variations in the form of glottal stops, dipthongs, final alveolars and fricatives.</p> <p>There are numerous Hokkien loan words, associated with Chinese-derived institutions, which has had otherwise relatively little effect on the phonological system (Anne Pakir, 1986) According to Pakir, Baba Malay stands as a unique dialect of Malay, in which the influence of Hokkien has been overestimated by other scholars. Hokkien borrowings are present in extent limited to certain semantic and cultural fields, including value judgements and emotive terms. Though other Malay dialects have incorporated Hokkien terms, the way that Baba Malay uses Hokkien is unique.</p> <p>According to Tan Chee-Beng, Penang Hokkien is also unique due to its Baba cultural influence, by its incorporation of many Malay words. Baba Malay spoken in Penang is also held to be different from the variety spoken in Malacca and elsewhere because of the greater influence of Hokkien and English. The Hokkien of Kelantan that is spoken by the "village Chinese" is also dialectically distinct in intonational patterns, due to the alleged influence of Malay and Siamese.</p> <p>Victor Purcell, in his book <u>The Chinese in Malaya</u> (1948), declared that Baba Malay was different from Malay in many important respects, and is "practically a different language." He stated that a great many Malay words were unknown to the Babas, as well as the "more polished syntax of the Malay. They are ignorant of the words connected with the Mohammedan religion. Also they mispronounce many Malay words..." (pg. 294)</p> <p>He goes on to state that the greatest divergence between Baba Malay and Malay is in its construction, in which the former follows the Chinese pattern in a reduced form. It is possible that the sources of data between Ann Pakir's analysis and that of Victor Purcell, or Rev. Shellabear's, are different, reflecting substantial areal variations in the pattern of the 'patois' as different speakers range along different parts of the continuum. If Purcell's interpretation was accurate, it would reflect speakers who are using Chinese as the basolect, and Malay as the mesolect. On the other hand, Pakir's source suggests just the reverse--Malay remains the base language only slightly modified by the superimposition of Hokkien lexicon.</p> <p> It is evident that Purcell based part of his study on the earlier study made by Reverend W. G. Shellebear, published in the <u>Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society</u>, (Vol. 65, 1913), which was reprinted as an appendix in John Clammer's work <u>Straits Chinese Society (</u>1980). Shellabear emphasized the influence of the Chinese idiom, and the distinctiveness of Baba Malay from either the High Malay of the literature of the Malay Peninsula, or the low Malay spoken in Indonesia. "It is true that the number of Chinese words which have become assimilated with this dialect is not very large, and that many words have been borrowed from English, Portuguese, Dutch and Tamil, and from other neighboring tongues, but it is rightly called 'Baba Malay,' for it is largely the creation of the Baba Chinese, and is their mother tongue, so that it belongs to them in a sense that no other people can or do claim it as their own." (Ibid. pg. 156)</p> <p>Tan Chee Beng takes a more restrictive definition of Baba Malay as that dialectic spoken by the Baba's of Malacca, that became the 'business dialect' of the three Straits Settlements--Penang, Malacca and Singapore. The Malay learned by members of each of these settlements was dialectically different--and the bazaar Malay or "Melayu pasar" from which Baba Malay developed was a lingua franca for commerce.</p> <p>Hokkien loan words are more salient in areas of customs, religion and kinship, for things related to the house, furniture, food, utensils, personal effects and other things. "In general it may be said that Chinese loanwords are used mostly for things and concepts which are of Chinese origin or which have no Malay equivalents." (Tan Chee Beng, 1980:156)</p> <p>Maurice Freedman, who made an important study of the kin terms in Baba Malay, stated that "in general, Malay words were used for junior relative and Hokkien-derived terms for senior. And this usage appears to correspond with that of the analogues of the Babas across the water in Java, the Peranakans, among whom both Malay and Javanese terms come into play for junior relatives." ("Chinese Kinship and Marriage in Singapore," 1962)</p> <p>Tan Chee Beng concluded by noting that "Linguistic acculturation does not necessarily mean that a people have to speak the same dialect or language of the "host" group. In fact, a new dialect may develop, giving the people a distinct dialect which also serves as a crucial symbol of ethnic identity..."(1980:165)</p> <p>Language serves as one of the most important agents and vehicles of social integration. In a plural context, it can be both a barrier and a facilitator to interethnic interactions. Racial, ethnic, and class differences are all reflected in linguistic differences, and linguistic difference is an important indicator of an individual's social status, orientation toward the larger social world, background, and ability to successfully interact in the world.</p> <p>The contribution of a unique genre of Peranakan literature from Java is noteworthy. It was a genre of fictional novels, poems and plays that have not been well studied. The Babas of Singapore made their own contribution to Peranakan literary development in the form of stories translated from the Chinese and English in Baba Malay, newspaper and journal articles, as well as a few original works in English. "Baba Malay literature; continued to be printed in Singapore until about the Second World War." (Maurice Freedman, 1962)</p> <p>John Clammer points to several interrelated social factors in the relative paucity of this literature. Many Peranakans up until the turn of the century were basically illiterate. Furthermore, as an interstitial community, there was a fundamental ambivalence of cultural identity which precluded any such great literary florescence--even what language to primarily publish in Chinese, Baba Malay or English, remained a critical trilemma. Due to the basic ambiguity of their cultural identity "at the nexus of three civilizations" and their lack of any clear political culture, except that framed by the colonial administration, the Peranakans lacked the appropriate developmental or cultural context conducive to the cultivation of a refined literature. "The mutual reinforcement of socio-political-cultural and literary values of this kind was absent from Straits Chinese society at its outset. Indeed, what peranakan culture had to do was to find or create precisely such a nexus of interrelated influences."(John Clammer, 1980: 68)</p> <p> </p> <b><font SIZE="4"> <p ALIGN="CENTER"><a NAME="twentythree">Baba Religion</a></p> <p ALIGN="CENTER"> </p> </font></b> <p>Religious orientation has always been an important factor in the Southeast Asian setting, especially to the extent that religion becomes implicated in the mediation of cultural and ethnic boundaries. "Religion is one of the main mechanisms that defines and maintains ethnic boundaries in Southeast Asian societies." (John Clammer, 1980: 45)</p> <p>The negativity of the boundary to intermarriage and cultural assimilation that Islam has maintained, the fundamental incompatibility with basic Islamic values and Buddhist values, as well as basic differences between a Muslim cultural orientation and a traditional Chinese one, have all been pointed out as contributing to the maintenance of a separate Peranakan community. In this regard, religious conversion can be a mechanism of assimilation, just as religious orthodoxy can be a mechanism of boundary-maintenance.</p> <p>A survey conducted in Malacca in 1976 (John Clammer, 1980) revealed that 70 percent of the Babas professed faith in the traditional Chinese Religious orientation. Twenty percent comprised a "no-religion/free thinker" category; eight percent were nominally Christian, and the remaining two- percent "being members of minority religious movements." There were no Muslims. Of course, people who would have professed their faith in Islam would probably have become fully incorporated into the Malay community.</p> <p>One basic difference between the Peranakan communities of Java and the Baba communities of the Straits Settlements was the number of the former who were Muslim, in part constituting the basis of their peranakan identity. In L.A.P. Gosling's study of the assimilation and migration of rural Chinese of Trengganu, movement by Baba Chinese into the Malay community posed no real problem, as outwardly they were already very assimilated, genetically they were mixed. Because of their general social positioning at an attenuated and tenuous distance from their own Chinese cultural tradition, the geniality and general acceptance of the Baba's by the Malays, the rather simple process of conversion by profession of faith, the relaxed and secure pace of life among the Malays, all contributed to the pull of Peranakans into the mainstream of the host society. "The major element in the loss of population was the increased assimilation of Babas into the Malay community."</p> <p>Rates of assimilation between different religious communities vary--it is greater between Chinese and Christian, Hindu and especially for Theravada Buddhists, than it has been between Chinese and Muslims, or between any of the other faiths and Islam. Perhaps the most important difference is that in order for a Muslim to marry a person who is non-Muslim, then that partner must convert to the faith, even if only nominally. This alone creates a barrier around Islam such as does not exist for other religions.</p> <p>In this regard must also be noted the great degree of mutual tolerance, even respect, for the deities, temples and ritual practices of people of different faiths within the plural societies of Southeast Asia. People may be nominally one faith or another, and regular attend its ceremonies, and yet also frequently pay homage or attend ceremonies of other faiths. The degree of religious syncretism commonly found in Southeast Asia is unusual in the World. In such religiously plural contexts, religiosity, holiness, spirituality and sacredness are common values recognized in the deities, icons, beliefs, and ritual practices of many different faiths. A local spirit, a kramat, or whether a deity that is in origin Hindu or Theravada Buddhist or Mahayana Buddhist or Taoist, is given the same degree of passing respect as any other.</p> <p>The prevalence of new religious movements and minority religious cults, and their popularity in Malaysia, is another indication of the basically syncretic religious orientation to be found there. The only exception to this rule is the Mosque, which remains effectively closed off to outsiders' participation or visitation. "Islam.... Has two leading characteristics which contrast with this--it is exclusive (as opposed to syncretic and eclectic), and it is closely tied to a particular social structure, so much so that in Malaysia the idea of a non-Muslim Malay is quite unthinkable." (John Clammer, 1980:47)</p> <p>Evidence of this syncretic orientation among the Peranakans is also available--part of what it means to become a good Malay and a good Moslem is in a sense to accept only one God and to close the doors of one's imagination other possibilities.</p> <p>Traditional Chinese religious orientation can be defined by the "Conflation of the Three Teachings." Tan Giok-Lan, in her ethnography of the Peranakan Sukabumi, (1963, records an important peranakan religious organization --"Sam Kauw Hee"--one which is predominantly composed of peranakan Chinese families.</p> <p>"Sam Kauw" means literally "Three Religions"--referring to Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism. This organization was oriented towards the promotion traditional Chinese religious values. (Tan Giok-Lan, 1963:158) A strong syncretic religious movement in Singapore, one of many organizations there, was called the "Red Swastika Society."</p> <p>Baba religious orientation shares with other Chinese religious orientations its tolerance and syncretism, often under the same roof, of many, competing, often Non-Chinese religious orientations. Babas observe, but in general do not adhere as strictly to, the Chinese festival calendar, and they also regularly participate in other traditional magico-religious systems, such as temple worship, ancestor worship, consultation of the Chinese horoscope, geomancy, etc. They have also adopted a number of more indigenous Malay magico-religious beliefs and customs--worship of kramats or local deities, Dato Kramats, or spirit-mediums, consultation of Malay bomohs, or traditional medical practictioners, use of magical charms, etc. Malay elements, such as the offering of satay, sireh or lime, are also incorporated into Chinese religious rituals.</p> <p>The first Chinese temple built in Malaya was the Cheng Hoon Teng Temple in Bukit China in Malacca. In 1704 Chan Li Lock built the main hall of the temple and placed there the figure of the Goddess of Mercy, or "Kwan yin" or "padma-pani." (Yeh Jen Fen, <u>Historical Guide to Malacca, </u>pg. 81-2) The preeminence of the Goddess of Mercy in the Straits Settlements is important to a consideration of early Chinese religion in Malaysia. J. D. Vaughn details the design of the Goddess of Mercy temple in Pitt St. in Penang, which dates to 1848, still the main and most active temple of worship by the Chinese in Penang. We had offering made during our wedding day there by my wife's God Mom, her old Amah who cared for her when she was a child.</p> <p>Victor Purcell, in his work <u>The Chinese in Malaya</u>, gave a long account of the origin of Kwan Yin as " one of the most popular goddesses in the Chinese pantheon. "</p> <p>The Chinese of the Straits must not be mistaken as taking their religion lightly or not seriously--the pragmatism of their religious devotions has fundamental spiritual, moral and utilitarian efficacy which is taken quite seriously by the Chinese.</p> <p>In an uncertain world, conversion to Christianity has been increasingly seen as a viable option for many Straits Chinese. Conversion to Christianity actually "promotes interethnic marriage or inter-communal marriage, in the former case between Chinese and Eurasian, and in latter case between Baba and non-Baba." (John Clammer, pg. 55)</p> <p>The religious component is separate from other components of language, culture, and race in the ethno-cultural identity of the Chinese. Among the Malay, being Muslim is central to that identity."...The religious factor, far from being a peripheral one, is actually central to the study of the assimilation, integration or lack of assimilation of Chinese minorities to their "host cultures" throughout Southeast Asia. (Ibid. pg.59)</p> <p>Another aspect of religious syncretism notable among the Peranakans are particular beliefs, ritual-religious practices and ceremonies. A striking example is the use of water with flower petals and cut lime as a purifying or cleansing agent. A friend wanted to give us this ceremony while in Malaysia because of a small streak of misfortunes we had been having. My wife gave me a variant of the same bath during a later period in which we were having a run of hard times. She mixed the flower petals from seven different kinds of flowers, and cut half a lime, and poured the water over my head three times. "The client or the person on whose behalf the client sought the spirit medium's help, has to have a bath including a hair wash before taking a ritual bath. The lime is squeezed and the juice is then poured over the body of the person. The spirit medium stresses that the pulp of the lime must be thrown away after the ritual bath. (Cecilia Ng Siew Hua, "The Sam Poh Neo Neo Keramat: A Study of a Baba Chinese Temple", 1983: pg. 118) Ritual baths with water only are a common part of Malay animism--water is interpreted as a 'boundary weakener, which, therefore allows passage from one state to another. (J. Endicott, 1970)</p> <p>The Chinese believe that the lime, petal and water concoction clean impurities from the body. Lime is seen also as a cleansing agent--the impurities becoming concentrated in the lime pulp. Lime is also used for divination by a spirit-medium in trance. In this case, seven lime pieces are cut, just as the petals of seven flowers are used--seven "transcends distinctions based on differences in colour" (Endicott, 1970:pg. 137) It too, becomes a boundary weakener. "Though the Malays seem to have no unified symbolic classification based on colour, differences of colours are often used to establish or indicate particular boundaries between significant categories." (Ibid. pg. 137)</p> <p>Cecilia Ng, in her analysis of the practices of a Baba temple, notes that the spirit deities of the temple are "ethnically ambiguous" which parallels the ethnic ambiguity of the Baba Chinese. "The consultation, however, is conducted in both the ways of the Malay Animist and the Chinese Religionist; ritual paraphernalia limes, petals and benzoin are often used in Malay animism while the red dye, charm papers and the seal of the deities are characteristic of Chinese Religion. The Peranakans have accepted the "keramats" who "can be either people, animals or inanimate things which have supernatural powers," (1983: pg. 124) but in the case of this particular study they are not inclined to seek the services of "bomohs" or healers, "who they perceive to be evil sorcerers conjuring spells and creating trouble." (Ibid. pg. 124) Ng compares her study of the Baba temple with an earlier study, the only of its kind, by Rosie Tan of a spirit medium who was probably a peranakan and who served the Baba community.</p> <p>Rosie Tan's study (1958) deals with "kramats" as local shrines dedicated to honored spirit deities, marking often the graves of local holy men or founding fathers, and the more popular of which attract a great many pilgrims and supplicants. Private "kramats" do not have a "Datu Kramat" and therefore require a spirit medium to call upon and intercede with the spirits on behalf of the worshippers. Worshippers beseech the advice and aid of the Datu Kramats for a variety of reasons--for husbands, for children, for health, or for information.</p> <p>Ng concludes her study by stating that while the Datuk Shaik Ismail shrine had more overt Malay elements, the Sam Poh Neo Neo temple was Chinese religionist at the structural level, at the periphery of the Chinese religious system, with many borrowings from Malay animism. "The religious system under study is not syncretic, but borrows certain elements from Malay Animism and incorporates these into an essentially Chinese religious system."(Ibid. pg.129)</p> <p>The Baba's choose Malay rather than Chinese religious elements, because the important reference group against which they must distinguish themselves is not the Malay, but the Chinese. "It is therefore logical that Malay elements were used as emblems to accentuate their differences from the ethnic Chinese." (Ibid. pg. 129) The earlier study of the more Malay shrine differed from the later example of the Sam Poh Neo Neo temple because "the Baba Chinese no longer enjoy the favoured position of social brokers and indeed with the multi-racial ideology which was widely publicised in recent years, the Baba Chinese are faced with either not fitting into the publicly accepted model of society or alternatively to redefine their ethnic boundaries and identify themselves with the Chinese." (Pg. 129)</p> <p>The fact that the Baba's of the temple "bai" all the deities as if of the same "Chinese" pantheon is not convincing counter-evidence against the thesis of the inherent syncretism of Chinese religious orientation. In fact if anything, it is a demonstration of just such syncretism that the Chinese would treat all deities as if their own. "It would appear that these Malay elements are but emblems to distinguish the ethnic Baba Chinese; from the ethnic Chinese.... In more general terms it can be said that a section of the Baba Chinese population practice a religion that is the religion of many Chinese in Singapore." (Ibid.130)</p> <p>While living in Penang, I attended with my wife and her friends a "Birthday Party" for a local Malay deity. The party went for three days straight and was attended by numerous Chinese, many of who were quite respectable and well off. The spirit medium was a Chinese man dressed in the outfit of a Malay bomoh. It was conducted in a Chinese home in which the Shrine had been erected. The Birthday was given for the benefit of children who had been born with handicaps. Many Chinese attended and gave offerings of donations in exchange for talismans. Food was served freely--nasi kunyit, chicken curry, bee hoon. No pork was served--the food was cooked in brand new pots and pans for purity. The Datuk smoked "Cheerot" a heavy Malay cigar, and went into a trance, danced the "ronggeng" with Malay dancing girls as well as with Chinese. There was a Malay band. He performed "automatic writing" on the ground--giving numbers which people kept note of what he would mark upon the ground--the number spreading through the crowd like wildfire. An older Chinese matron went into a trance and began dancing--becoming the focal point for the audience. The show would last from evening until 12:00. In the morning there were prayer sessions which people would randomly visit. Not all of these people were Peranakan--many were very traditionally Chinese, yet the indigenous Malay elements, the structure of the whole ceremony, and the syncretism of the event, its spiritual importance for a larger urban community, could not be ignored.</p> <p>Tan Chee Beng, in his account of the Peranakan Chinese from the same area (1982), describes the same kind of celebration, but as a Hokkien ceremony, which, like with the Penang Hokkien, refer to the ceremony as "Ang Kong su;" or "The Affairs of the Deities." The patron god of the local town has no temple, but is taken care of by different families in rotation. The ceremony takes place in the compound of the home that holds the altar. Each year divination is employed to select a committee to take care of the Deities altar. "The celebration usually lasts for three or four days. Part of the celebration involves a spirit-medium going into trance. In the evening, <u>menora</u> drama is staged. This is a kind of Thai dance-drama in which songs are presented in Kelantan Thai but comic verses are usually presented in Kelantan Malay...."(Ibid. pg. 42)</p> <p> The menora, or "Nora Chatri," is a local Thai-Malay folk dance form that derived from the Sudhana-Manohra tale of the <u>Jatakas</u>. Its features and associated beliefs are strongly linked to animistic and shamanistic orientations "upon which the Sudhana-Manohara" story has been planted."(Ghulam-Sarwar Yousof, "Nora Chatri in Kedah: A Preliminary Report," <u>JMBRAS </u>Vol. 55, no. 1, 1982: pg. 53) The dance lasts for three consecutive nights, and is performed for ritual occasions as well as for entertainment. Part of the performance involves an opening trance session in which performers and non-performers participate to the rhythms of the Gamelan music which slowly and steadily increases its tempo. The trancer is possessed by a local spirit who descends to take possession of the trancer's body. The trance state involves a noticeable change in behavior--shivering, sometimes violent behavior, and the name of the possessing spirit is revealed. Following the trance session are the presentations of sets of Lakons, or plays, by the manora dancers.</p> <p>My wife had attended one of these dances in Penang, taken by her mother, held by Peranakans in a local town. She went every year. Mostly Chinese, except for a Malay man who had married a Chinese. They would attend all three days. The musical instruments would begin around 10:00 in the morning, breaking only for lunch and dinner, and quitting late, after 12:00. Everyday the "Gaku" in charge would go into trance, in the morning, and again in the evening, everyday of the performance. He would sit on the floor cross-legged, to enter the trance. This is a typical Malay way. He would wear a Malay shawl, chew sireh, and put Malay tobacco into his mouth. People would consult him for their problems. Donations were given voluntarily outside in a box. Different deities would possess him--speaking Thai or Malay for the respective deities. An older brother always acted as the interpreter. The last spirit to enter him would be a tiger--crawling around the floor, picking up food that is given as offerings, and pointing at people to give the food to--so that everyone who is related to him gets something.</p> <p>Tan Chee Beng also notes the presence of a "Chinese bomoh"--a spirit-doctor and magical practitioners who learned their art from the traditional Malay or Thai religious specialists. Tan expresses the conviction that "Perhaps the component of Peranakan Chinese culture that best expresses the Chineseness of the Peranakan is their Chinese religion."(1982, pg. 42)</p> <p>Tan maintains that Chinese religion draws an ethnic boundary between the Peranakan Chinese and the Malays. Between the Chinese and the local Thai's, there is no such boundary between religions--"thus religion does not act as a barrier of interaction between the Chinese and the Thai." (Ibid. pg. 49)</p> <p>It is interesting in this regard that Tan Giok-Lan's study of the Peranakan Chinese of Sukabumi, in Java, supports the thesis for the basically Chinese religious orientation of the Peranakans in general. There, patrilineal descent and patrilocality; are still predominate, if flexible to local circumstances. No where among the Peranakans are there deep lineage trees.</p> <p>How much Chinese culture or religion presents a barrier to crossing ethnic lines, or Malay, or both, seems to be a matter of some conjecture--as well as what constitutes a genuinely syncretistic orientation, versus a "non-exclusive" openness to incorporate diverse elements while preserving a traditional base in belief and ritual.</p> <p>The study of trance and spirit possession within the Malaysian social context reveals the differential expression of states based upon a kind of "cognitive pluralism". Stereotypes help to maintain role expectations in the performance and reactions of actors within an interethnic context. Stereotypes and categories facilitate the process of communication of intention and significance. Cognitive diversity reflects ethnic diversity. "Social actors can respond appropriately and predictably to each other without sharing the same meanings and interpretation of events. Complementary, reciprocal expectations of behavior--what Wallace has termed "equivalence structures"--emerge over time despite cognitive heterogeneity."(Susan K. Ackerman and Raymond Lee, "Communication and Cognitive Pluralism in a Spirit Possession Event in Malaysia", 1981:790) "All societies are, in a radical sense, plural societies." (A.F.C.Wallace, <u>Culture and Personality</u> 1970:109-110)</p> <p>The organization of cognitive diversity into stable role behaviors becomes problematic, and there is no necessary correspondence between collective representations and equivalence structures. Participants with a diverse range of motives and orientations share equivalence structures, and a potentially unlimited number of such equivalence structures can be 'mapped' onto collective representations.</p> <p>At one level of communication, the anticipation of role behavior implies that individuals create for themselves a model of common group structure that is based upon a conception of a 'generalized other'. Participants' can locate each other's position on a behavioral map. Although the behavioral gestures are mutually predictable, they do not require the participants to hold the same motivations, intentions or definitions of the behaviors performed. Upon another level, people internalize these enactments and evaluate them variously and differentially, giving rise to the cognitive diversity. Conversation between actors further modifies retrospective and on-going responses and role behaviors. "The sequences of complementary interaction performed on the primary level are continuously reconstructed through ongoing conversation between the participants. This reconstruction of accounts is the major mechanism by which primary-level interactions are objectified or made "real," and it extends secondary-level communication indefinitely through time. Such events as spirit possession, and their social significance, emerge as ongoing possibilities of social action from this process of communication of "retrospective interpretations." (Ibid. pg. 791)</p> <p>Spirit possession in Malaysia has been interpreted as a traditional and culturally elaborated style of stress-management. Such spirit-possession, a popular form of entertainment in Northern Malaysia, is viewed as a symbolic representation of personality and polity that connects illness and possession to other power-laden contexts. The symbolic language of spirit possession can be regarded as a conceptual system through which abstract power relationships (related to Malay royalty) are represented. (Kessler, 1977)</p> <p>There are a number of reactions which belong to a 'broad category" of spirit-possession in Malaysia which are not as contextually well defined or formalized as the "main puteri" seance. Latah, running amok, "Malay hysteria" and mass hysteria are common instances of relatively spontaneous and uncontrolled possession which emerges suddenly in response to some discrete stimulus and involves the enactment of normally intolerable aggressive behavior "that can range from uncontrolled verbal abuse to physical violence." (Susan K. Ackerman and Raymond Lee, 1981:792)</p> <p>Ethnic stereotypes emerge as inter-group "equivalence structures" in complex events of multi-ethnic spirit possession, which enable a degree of management and mutual adjustment to such events. They can be seen to function as "self-fulfilling prophecies" which mutually reinforce, and implicitly legitimize, such events. They do not direct decision-making, except perhaps indirectly, nor are they "instrumental in shaping the rules of the implicit contract." Whatever direction social process would take, alternative equivalence structures would emerge which allow for the mutual behavioral accommodation of the different groups--different sets of equivalence structures would emerge from social interaction process.</p> <p>We are left to consider the role of symbols, and their linguistic expression, in the articulation and mediation of experience upon several parallel levels of social reality. It is an internal dialectic of consciousness, meaning and affect, an internal-external dialectic between internalized frames and externally derived experience, and the dialectic between self and other in the construction and maintenance of psychosocial identity. Religious symbols largely mediate the boundaries between these different levels of experience, and provide an adaptive mechanism for the resolution of conflict and contradiction, in social relations, in phenomenologically derived experience, in one's own internalized frames of reference/inference. In this regard, ethnic symbols, and the ascriptive labels that articulate these symbols, can be appropriated psychologically and culturally for service of maintenance of a sense of ego reality. Face-to-face discourse, and the discourse functions of code switching/mixing, serve to maintain and reinforced internalized/external frames, to bolster ones subjective orientation in the world, bringing this into alignment with the objective social world.</p> <p>Such symbol systems serve the function of the transmission and mediation of cultural forms, values and orientations. In the social construction of reality, we can speak of primary and secondary socializations, and of possible discrepancies between these two levels of basic and derived experience--disjunction creates dissonance and potential conflict. We can see in this regard ethnicity and culture working simultaneously, culture in terms of primary identity, and ethnicity in the form of secondary and derivative forms of socialization which nevertheless become internalized and have a shaping influence upon one's primary identity. It can be seen that several alternate, even contradictory secondary forms can become partially internalized without the concomitant level of commitment or affective, subjective identification which accompanies the subjective inevitability of primary socialization--allowing an individual to manipulate and alternate between different status-role identities and social realities.</p> <p>Also, it is important to understand that the socialization process itself is always open-ended, partial and never complete--only complementary cultural closure can provide a measure of completeness and unequivocal finality to one's subjective sense of the world. It is this fundamental unfinished quality and partiality of socialization and identification that makes secondary processes influential upon the development of personality, allowing for the possibility of both adaptive change and regressive pathology.</p> <p>Finally, it is the very fact of its psychological internalization that confers such power and strength to the process. It has great realizing potency that it tends to be realized in the process of becoming internalized. Identification is likely to accompany closely internalization, and internalization is likely to accompany identification. The social construction of reality, via symbol systems that are normatively religious, ethnically referential, and linguistically encoded, becomes the psychological reconstruction of reality that is experiential, affective, perceptual, cognitive and normative in expression, and vice versa.</p> <font FACE="Book Antiqua"> <p ALIGN="JUSTIFY"> </p> </font> <p align="center"><font face="Times,Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="http://www.lewismicropublishing.com/Publications/Peranakan/">Peranakan Ethnoculture: An Introduction to the Straits Chinese</a></font></p> <font FACE="News Gothic MT" SIZE="3"> <p align="center"><font face="Times,Times New Roman" size="2">2001</font></p> <font FACE="Times,Times New Roman" SIZE="2"> <p align="center">Hugh M. Lewis</p> <hr> <p><a name="Copyright">Blanket Copyright</a>, Hugh M. Lewis, © 2005. Use of this text governed by fair use policy--permission to make copies of this text is granted for purposes of research and non-profit instruction only.</p> <p>Last Updated: 08/17/06 </p> <hr> <p> </p> </font></font> <p align="center">  <p> </p> <p align="center"> <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"> s="na";c="na";j="na";f=""+escape(document.referrer) </script> <script language="javascript1.2" type="text/javascript"> s=screen.width;v=navigator.appName if (v != "Netscape") {c=screen.colorDepth} else {c=screen.pixelDepth} j=navigator.javaEnabled() </script> <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript"> function pr(n) {document.write(n,"\n");} NS2Ch=0 if (navigator.appName == "Netscape" && navigator.appVersion.charAt(0) == "2") {NS2Ch=1} if (NS2Ch == 0) { r="&size="+s+"&colors="+c+"&referer="+f+"&java="+j+"" pr("<A HREF=\"http://www.TheCounter.com\" TARGET=\"_top\"><IMG"+ " BORDER=0 SRC=\"http://c1.thecounter.com/id=515383"+r+"\"><\/A>")} </script> <NOSCRIPT> <a HREF="http://www.TheCounter.com" TARGET="_top"><img SRC="http://c1.thecounter.com/id=515383" ALT="TC" BORDER="0" width="88" height="31"></a> </NOSCRIPT>  </body>