There will be a Peranakan Chinese New Year Mass on Sunday 22nd January 2012 at 11.00pm Church of the Holy Family, 6, Chapel Road.

This Sambot Kepala Taon Baru Naga mass will be celebrated in Baba Malay by Rev. Fr. Alfred Chan.

All Nyonyas are invited to attend the mass in their sarong kebayas and Babas in Baju Cina to usher in the Lunar Year of the Dragon.

The Auld Lang Syne will also be sung at the mass, and it will be in Baba Malay!

Join us for great food, entertainment, cheery company and an all-round jolly ol’ time!

Dress code: Peranakan attire / smart casual
Time: 11am – 4pm
Lunch buffet by Chef Nelson Li
‘Live’ music by the Locomotions
Attractive prizes to be won!
Price: $65 per pax (Members will be entitled to an immediate $20 angpow from the redemption counter at the function upon verification of membership) Please book early – seats are limited.

Fine wines are available at reasonable prices. A corkage fee of $20 will be charged should you wish to bring your own wines – this will go to the Association fund as part of the hotel’s contribution. So do indulge and help defray the cost of this subsidised event.

We hope to see you there!

Download the booking form now.

Dear Members,

We hope this message finds you in the pink of health!

The Peranakan Association Singapore (TPAS) is proud to announce a special initiative in celebration of our 111th anniversary: Peranakan 111 – a selection of songs with a contemporary twist! Sing along to evergreen favourites from our very own choir, The Peranakan Voices, groove to the harmonious tunes by renowned group, Vocaluptuous, and savour even more numbers arranged and sung by Babas Dick and John Lee.

Peranakan 111 Pre-Booking now on!

Song List:

1 Baju Panjang • The Peranakan Voices

2 Nonya Manis • The Peranakan Voices

3 Joget Gembira • The Peranakan Voices

4 Joget Java Jive • The Peranakan Voices

5 The Peranakan Voices • The Peranakan Voices

6 Baba Nyonya Lagu Cinta • Darren Seah & Noorlinah Mohamed

7 I Am Baba • Dick Lee

8 Come Home • Vocaluptuous

9 My Old Hometown, Katong • Vocaluptuous

10 Bunga Sayang • Vocaluptuous

11 It’s Time For Sayang Sayang • John Lee & Tan Kheng Hua

Bonus Track: Miracle Nights • Babes Conde & John Lee

Please, support our efforts. Buy this as a Christmas gift!

Order online today by completing the booking form and send your cheque to:

The Peranakan Association Singapore

Raffles City P.O.Box 1640

Singapore 911755

We have selected four themes for 2012, and are seeking your input. Please let us know of any subjects, ideas or specific topics you would like us to explore under each theme. We welcome your contributions by way of articles, photos, videos and/or illustrations. We need your help to grow this community and document our heritage, while ensuring that the magazine and website are resources that reflect a constant ‘live’ dialogue with all Peranakans and culture lovers.

The four issues are themed as follows. Please note the deadlines on each one; nonetheless, we would be happy to put your contributions onto our website should any miss the deadline.

· Issue 1 – Traditions & Taboos. Some ideas: Obscure recipes like ‘too-hay’ or ‘tee-hee char’, antique cooking utensils that are still being used, or innovative fusion cuisine like buah keluak bruschetta ( 08 December 2011)

· Issue 2 – Peranakan chefs and /or cookbook writers. Some ideas: Accidental cooks, or my cookbook dream ( 28 March 2012)

· Issue 3 – Anak Peranakan (Kids). Some ideas: Trails and travails of teaching the patois, the art of Peranakan. ( 29 June 2012)

· Issue 4 – Gifts and the custom of gift-giving. Some ideas: Creative suggestions for the festive season ( 28 September 2012)

The Peranakan magazine and website are resources that reflect a constant ‘live’ dialogue with all Peranakans and culture lovers. Mari laujiat with us!

Warmest regards,

The Peranakan Magazine Committee, 2011

We are a social group of interested persons dedicated to “Save Bukit Brown”. This group is lead by Raymond Goh co-founder of Asia Paranormal Investigators. For more of what API does, read here. Together with his brother Charles and with the ardent support of another member Victor, who created the Face book Heritage Singapore – Bukit Brown site; Raymond has been conducting tours, discovering and documenting the tombs of our forefathers at Bukit Brown, also known as “kopi sua” dari dula kala. Some of the residents of Bukit Brown are Peranakans.

Background
As you would have read in the press announcement by LTA as recent as 12th September 2011, some parts of BB will have to make way for the expansion of Lornie Road. The objective of this social group is to create awareness and hopefully save whatever bit of Bukit Brown if possible. Bukit Brown is a living cultural heritage, rich in bio-diversity as well. A legacy left by our forefathers, it would be a tremendous pity and painful loss if descendants of Peranakan and non Peranakans alike are oblivious to what their ancestors have contributed to make Singapore what it is today.

As a member of Singapore Peranakan Association, I take this opportunity to inform you that there will be a “Peranakan Trail” this coming Sunday 16th October 9am at Bukit Brown. This tour is free of charge. I attach the link for you to disseminate to members of the association- The name of the group is Heritage Singapore – Bukit Brown. The tour this Sunday 16th Oct 9am will highlight the resting places of Peranakans. You can say this part of Bukit Brown is akin to Bukit Cina in Melaka.

In the Facebook group page , there is an “Events” page in which anyone can join this group AND indicate their interest in attending this Sunday’s “Peranakan Trail”. You would be interested to know that amongst the tombs recently discovered is that of Koh Hoon Teck, one of the founders of the Dondang Sayang Association. A pantun expert and one of the old guards of the Singapore babas, his tomb is likely to be in the path of the proposed new road. Read about it here

This could be the last if not only opportunity also for descendants to locate and re-connect with their “lost” ancestors, without whom we will not be here. I hope this event will also serve as an eye opener to what we will lose in exchange for progress in the 21st century. For now, we will lose about 5000 tombs to road widening at Lornie. Recently, because of the awareness created by LTA’s announcement, some members of the public have begun to look for their “lost ancestors” buried in Bukit Brown. They have found.

I will be at Bukit Brown this coming Sunday 16th Oct at 9am. In fact, it would be a tremendous opportunity for the Peranakan community to gotong royong! Not only will we be meeting the living but also re-connecting with our past:)

Mari lau jiat!!

Rosalind Tan,
Member of the Peranakan Association,
Extracted from an email to the Secretary of the Association

Tan Peng Liang, however, has a conflict with Thio Boen Hiap, one of the leaders of the Kong Koan party, a party established by materialistic, profit-driven Chinese businessmen. Consequently, Tan Peng Liang and Thio Boen Hiap are involved in a battle of wits and deceits. Boen Hiap eventually outsmarts Tan Peng Liang, causing the latter to be imprisoned. Tan Peng Liang, however, manages to fake his death and escape to Macau.

Boen Hiap is not content with the news of Tan Peng Liang’s death, as he has lost his chance to fully take revenge on Tan Peng Liang. Hence, during the Japanese Occupation, he hands Tinung to the Japanese army as jugun ianfu, native women who are kept in the Japanese army base. Boen Hiap manages to persuade the Japanese army to give the Kong Koan party autonomy for he has offered Tinung.

Tan Peng Liang, who eventually returns to Indonesia after collecting enough money from his new involvement in illegal smuggling, rescues Tinung with the help of his half-brother, Rahardjo. Peng Liang’s rage on the Japanese who has abused Tinung becomes a monumental moment as he vows to support the Indonesian guerilla army to drive the Japanese away from his beloved land.

Read more.

There they are, the ancestors, solemn and studio-posed in sepia-toned photographs. There is grandfather, in suit ‘n tie, and there is grandmother, attired more traditionally. And there are the hairpins, kerosang, bracelets (both wrists), geland kaki (both ankles) and chin-chin (nearly all the fingers!).

But hopes of “chope-ing” any jeweled heirlooms are soon dashed. Like those who wore them, they are no longer with us.

Even before the Japanese occupation of Singapore from 1942 to 1945, some women, like Madam Josephine Tan, 89, had already sold their gold and diamond accessories for a noble cause- to raise money for the China Relief Fund. This was part of the local Chinese population’s endeavours to send money to the Mainland Chinese in their fight against the invading Japanese Forces. Other groups, like The Merrilads, staged productions for the same purpose.

When it looked like Singapore too was to fall to the Japanese, many families hid jewellery, documents and other valuables in all sort of places- under staircases, in attics, in secret compartments of cupboards, and even in holes dug next to some significant tree, hoping against hope that they would still be standing!). Then, when Singapore was Syonan, homes were emptied of owners as people either fled or were forcibly relocated into camps. The looters moved in and valuables were lost. One such house was Mr. Peter Wee’s family home in Waterloo Street.

The Japanese Military governement arbitrarily imposed a “tax” of fifty million dollars (thankfully in banana notes) to be raised by the local population for the Japanese war effort. It was, I am told, very systematically done, with each dialect group directed to collect from its members. The Straits Chinese community was not spared. My maternal grandmother, a widow with young children, sold some of her best pieces of jewellery as her “contribution” from the extended family.

In those harsh and perilous times, jewellery could make the difference between life and death. My mother, Mrs. K.T. Koh, 82, says, “I ate her jewellery. A whole diamond kerosang set paid for only a tin of milk powder for me, and piece by piece was given up for food at black-market prices”. From my aunt, Mrs. Theresa Ong Keong Hee, 77, comes this first-hand account:
“The British Military expected the Japanese forces to land on the beaches. So our family was advised to vacate the home in Marine Parade to our rumah abu at Thomson Road. I was still a teenager then, so I owned no significant jewellery to speak of. But my mother must have carried it, as many did, on her person, because I was given a few pieces upon my marriage two years later. Our sense of security in the Thomson Road house was misplace and short-lived. Little did we know that RAF planes were supposedly hidden in nearby MacRitchie Reservoir. I remember that day clearly. Out of the blue, the alarming wail of sirens filled the air. Japanese bomber planes had come to destroy those Bristish planes. The family members and servants who happened to be on the ground floor dashed for the air-raid shelter built into the hill slope beside the main house. But I was upstairs and could only dive under the bed. My uncle, who dived in after me, received a shrapnel injury to hisback. When the smoke cleared, half our house was destroyed, and with it, my eldest sister’s wedding jewellery.”

Nonya Mabel Tan, 86, of Dunbar Walk sewed a cloth belt with pouches to hold her diamond kerosang, earrings and other items. This she tied securely around her waist, where it remained undetected despite the forced march under Japanese orders from Tembeling Road to the concentration camp in Telok Kurau School. Widowed during the Japanese Occupation, she eventually parted with some items to buy a home for herself and her family.

What she will never part with though is a pair of truly impressive diamond earrings. They dangle and move with each turn of the head, throwing off light from the rows of large diamonds. Not surprisingly, the sheer value and the glamourous style earn pieces like these the term anting-anting kemantain (bride’s earrings). This particular pair has been worn by her daughter, grand-daughters and nieces on their wedding days. Her great-grand daughters are next in line.

But after the Occupation years, a significant amount of family jewellery changed hands to start businesses, rebuild careers or just to live- painful but necessary decisions. Clearly, when life deals some hard knocks, having some convertible assets does help to cushion the blows and is one reason to slash away some sparklers. I knew there had to be a moral somewhere.

This article was first published in BeMUSE, Volume 4, Issue 2, Apr to Jul 2011. BeMUSE is a quarterly publication by the National Heritage Board. Reprinted with the permission of the National Heritage Board.”

The early 20th century was the golden age of the Peranakan sarong kebaya, and in recent years the garment has experienced a major revival. Yet perhaps at no other moment has the sarong kebaya been so misunderstood. One of the most arresting images of Mediacorp’s hit television series Little Nyonya, set between the 1930s and the 1950s, was of the protagonist cooking up a feast in the kitchen. Simply but immaculately dressed in a sarong kebaya, she wore her hair neatly pulled up into a chignon. However, during that period, unmarried girls did not wear an expensive and delicate sarong kebaya into the kitchen, and chignons were only sported by their mothers and grandmothers, while they themselves preferred modern short crops, crimps and perms. And most of the batik sarongs shown in the series are of a type popular only in the late 1950s and 1960s. Such anachronisms are common – and have arisen because of the dearth of information on Peranakan fashion. A new exhibition at the Peranakan Museum from 1 April 2011 to 26 February 2012 aims to fill in the gaps.

Sarong Kebaya: Peranakan Fashion and its International Sources presents the historical and stylistic phases of the Peranakan sarong kebaya from the 1800s to 1950s. It reveals fascinating aspects about the origins of both components of the costume over five centuries. On display will be 131 objects, including 58 outfits presented in chronological sequence. Many of the cloths and kebayas belong to types that have never been published before, including rare treasures from the Peranakan Museum, from the collection of Mr and Mrs Lee Kip Lee, and from three Dutch museums: the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam and the Museum Volkenkunde in Leiden.

More below.

In his new exhibition Sayang, Desmond Sim opens wider the dusty forgotten tradition of Peranakan painting.

Is there such a thing as Peranakan Art? Do we have a painting tradition? Spying into the rumah abus of Malacca, Penang and Singapore, paintings are certainly not in short supply, although they are mainly portraits executed by non-Peranakans. The oldest ones seem to be Chinese-style ancestral portraits in watercolour on paper or silk, of rather grim looking men and women in Ming or Qing period costume. Then there are the many ‘naïve’ Western-style portraits by Chinese artists, representing the Chinese artists, representing the Chinese artisan’s pioneering attempts to deal with perspective and chiaroscuro (shadow and light).

Chronologically, these were followed by realistic portraits in oils by artists, many of whom we still know nothing about. The most recognizable names that keep popping up are Low Kway Song and Low Kway Soo, two Baba brothers who were known portraitists in the early twentieth century. Their subjects include prominent Peranakans such as Tan Jiak Kim, Oei Tiong Ham and Tan Cheng Lock. Both brothers are credited in local art histories as being modern art pioneers, and their works include accomplished, academic-style paintings such as Lynx (1921) and Thai Temple (1923). The Low brothers belonged to possibly the earliest Western art group in Singapore, the Amateur Drawing Association, which was founded in 1909 by a group of Babas including Dr Lim Boon Keng. It is also interesting to note that Low Kway Song’s son, the late Lucky Low, was for a brief period a committee member of The Peranakan Association.

But sadly, there is a huge gap of more than fifty years between these works and those of the next Peranakan artist, Martin Loh, whose expressive paintings in the 1990s captured the imagination of many Singaporeans. Depicting domestic Peranakan scenes and exploring the relationship between family members, lovers and friends. Loh’s colourful works on paper captured the sense of nostalgia that many Peranankans were feeling in the 1980s and 1990s for the halcyon days when life seemed both simpler and grander.

Sayang is Sim’s 6th exhibition explored the various nuances of the word saying- from the love between parent and child, as a term of endearment between lovers, and as an expression of regret, especially over something wasteful, unfinished or unexpectedly coming to an end. His first exhibition was held jointly in 1992 with Martin Loh, with whom he had been sharing an apartment since the last 1980s. “We were experimenting, sketching and painting a year before that,” Sim explains. In 1996, he moved to his own apartment in Tiong Baru.

The artistic connection between the two artists is still evident in their works, especially in subject matter. Where Loh’s works are more fluid, multicoloured and pictorially dense. Sim, however, has come into his own with eye-catching canvasses in luminous colours that echo the spirit of art deco portraiture. The emphasis is on fields of colour and pattern, which resonates with the traditional Asian method of creating pictures. One sees this especially in southeast Asian paintings and textiles.

Half the 19 paintings have been sold, and a gallery in the UK is looking at taking the paintings over to London for another show.

Sim is, as we all know, an award-winning playwright. Painting has been a relatively recent serious preoccupation, although he had learnt pencil drawing from a Chinese painting teacher when he was about 9 years old. While in the army Sim developed his interest in art and graphic design by attending part-time courses. During university holidays in the early 1980s he produced collages that were exhibited at bistros and cafes, selling quite a few of them.

On why he has ventured into this field, he explains: “Just because there has not been a history of Peranakan painting, doesn’t mean there can never be such a tradition. The Peranakan culture in southeast Asia was a totally re-constructed one. Our forefathers came as labourers, traders, businessmen… fighting for survival, fleeing starvation. All the beautiful porcelain, furniture, refinement, all came later. All were recreated in the image of a China they remembered. We can create art, culture and beauty in the image that we remember, appreciate and love. If there was no history in Pera-nakan painting… then we will make one.”
Watch out for his November exhibition at the same venue- Nativity Nonyas, which is timedfor the Christmas season. This show will present icon-like images of figures in Peranakan costume. These “Madonnas n kebayas” will be Sim’s take on Renaissance Christian imagery, which depicted biblical stories in contemporary and indigenous settings and costumes.