The Peranakans - A Historical Part Of Singapore

The Little Nyonya, a Singaporean television serial about a Chinese Peranakan family that concluded in the middle of January, was told entirely in Mandarin, a language whose creeping bid for dominance in Singapore has lately eclipsed Baba Malay - the pidgin Malay at the heart of Peranakan culture.

The immensely popular serial triggered a boomlet in all things Peranakan - like the batik fabrics Peranakan women used to stitch their sarong kebayas, worn most famously by Singapore Airlines' stewardesses, or the lavender and purple coloured porcelain bowls from which they doled out their quivering, jelly-like sweets and spicy laksa soups.

Peranakan culture has been simmering since the Chinese began migrating to the Straits in the early 16th century. Originally small time traders under the Portuguese colonialists of Malacca, the Chinese Peranakans subsequently parlayed their mastery of Malay and English to become the main merchants under British rule, spawning a prosperous Anglophile and Anglophone class that aspired to attend Oxford and Cambridge but which, at the same time, spoke among itself in Baba Malay.
From the late 19th century onward, when waves of poorer and hungrier Hokkien and Teochew speaking immigrants began washing up in Singapore, the dominance of the early Peranakans began to slowly decline. But their culture hasn't vanished.

Those who want a glimpse of Peranakan legacy should begin on foot in the residential Emarald Hill neighbourhood of Singapore. The houses that wealthy Peranakan families built there are still adorned with the fretted arches and colourful ornamental tiles they borrowed partly from colonial Portugal.

Along Bras Basah Road, inside the premises of an old school, is the new Peranakan Museum, www.peranakanmuseum.sg, located within a walking distance from the Singapore River and the pubs and restaurant of Boat Quay. The museum it self - painted in the sun-splashed pastels that have seeped into the Peranakan fabrics, craftwork and confectionery. It is an airy delight, and its vivid recreations of Peranakan household life a pleasure to explore.

Peranakan influence has retreated from many areas of Singapore life, but its hold over the Singaporean stomach is still strong. Peranakan food can be sampled in the city's thousands of low-cost hawker centers. For connoisseurs, the East Coast neighbourhood of Katong is where the best laksa is served - traditionally enjoyed in chipped porcelain bowls while seated on plastic stools on the footpath.

Very often, in Peranakan cuisine, you see an infusion of a shrimp paste known as belacan. For desserts, it is not uncommon to see the use o gula melaka like the ever popular sago gula melaka, a mixture of boiled sago, warm coconut milk, palm sugar and shaved ice. Peranakan food are mostly spicy and invariably sedap. That's Baba Malay for 'delicious', a word that will hopefully live for a long time to come.