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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