Nyonya night BY SHARON CHAN

Published: Saturday May 22, 2010 MYT 3:45:00 PM
Updated: Thursday May 23, 2013 MYT 2:48:44 AM

Nyonya night

BY SHARON CHAN

 

It’s funny how a themed party can rekindle one’s interest in one’s own heritage.

When we received an invitation from a good friend to attend a Nyonya Night at her new house in Taiping, I went on a frantic search for a kebaya, lest I get turned away at the door.

It wasn’t an easy task buying an authentic Baba-Nyonya kebaya ensemble at such short notice, so I settled for an Indonesian-influenced design which had a longer top. On the night of the party, a clear evening in September, I walked with small steps in my narrow sarong towards the house, my husband beside me in his batik shirt.

We were thankful that we were not found to be wanting sartorially and had no problems getting in.

Soon, more and more gorgeously-dressed ladies and their spouses streamed into Tan Siew Yong’s brightly-lit mansion for the much anticipated Nyonya Night. The ladies, young and not-so-young, were clad in intricately embroidered kebaya and batik sarong, their feet shod in beaded sandals. Some had their hair swept up in chignons decorated with flowers and gold pins.

Not to be outdone, the men wore colourful batik shirts.

This was during the Mid Autumn or Lantern Festival, one of the important days celebrated by the Baba-Nyonya who are Peranakan (or descendents of the Straits-born Chinese of Malaysia). Their ancestry can be traced back to the 15th century when diplomatic ties were established between imperial China’s Ming Dynasty and the Malacca Sultanate when Admiral Zheng He made many port calls during his great voyages.

Many of the Chinese seamen and traders, having left their wives behind in China, took local women as their second wives. Their sea voyages were long and, often, they had to wait for the monsoon winds to change direction, sometimes up to six months or more. They were thus regularly forced to reside in the three ports of Malacca, Singapore and Penang, which centuries later became the British Straits Settlements.

The Chinese heritage remained prominent in these inter-cultural marriages, as did the Taoist way of life.

A more romantic version has it that the Baba-Nyonya are descendents of Hung Li Po — supposedly a princess from China sent to marry Malacca’s Sultan Ahmad Shah — and her entourage of 200 maidens. However, this seems unlikely because there is no mention of Hung Li Po or any other princess despatched to Malacca in the Chinese records.

Moreover, Peranakan culture retains many Chinese festivals like the Lunar New Year and Chap Goh Mei, and their cuisine is mainly non-halal. Obviously, their ancestors did not convert to Islam, as anyone marrying the sultan and his men would have had to do.

However, the language spoken and handed down the generations is a mixture of Malay and Chinese, a patois unique to the Straits Chinese. The joget or ronggeng dance and the recitation or singing of pantun (four-line, seven-syllabic poems), while obviously of Malay origin, feature prominently in any Peranakan gathering.

Hotly contested

Those who arrived early to Tan’s house were treated to a private Baba-Nyonya exhibition put up by Doreen Quah, whose mother and grandmother were true-blooded Nyonya. The party became more animated as more and more guests arrived and the mingling, chatting and laughter grew louder.

The idea of this private party was inspired by the Singapore soap opera The Little Nyonya, a 34-episode TV series that has done more to promote Peranakan culture than any lecture, festival, celebration or commercial. Several contests were organised to enliven the evening, including for Best Nyonya Dish, Best Nyonya Dessert, Best Dressed and Best Pantun.

That the winner and runner-up of the various contests would be winning US$100 (RM324) and US$60 each, ensured that there was no shortage of entries. The cash prizes were sponsored by a Taiping-born-and-bred gentleman now residing in the US but back for a holiday.

The Pantun contest certainly attracted a lot of interest. My small group of lady friends had practised a short performance whereby we sang the Rasa Sayang chorus in Malay and interspersed it with three pantun in the Hokkien. The humorous lyrics evoked a great deal of laughter especially since we had distributed the song sheets to the guests beforehand.

The spontaneously composed pantun were equally funny, with some resulting in indignant responses — and all in rhyming couplets, mind you.

In the Best Dressed contest, Kebaya designs with Indonesian, Thai, Burmese or contemporary influences, though lovely to look at, did not win. So my long Indonesian kebaya was not even short-listed!

The competition to find the Best Nyonya Dish was keenly contested. The winning dishes were the Jeu Hoo Char (stir-fired shredded sengkuang and cuttlefish), Nyonya Noodles and Nasi Ulam (spicy rice stir-fried with leaves and spices). All the guests were served these dishes plus a wide variety of Nyonya delicacies and desserts.

This prompted many of the diners to recall their mothers’ or grandmothers’ cooking — such classic dishes as Babi Ponteh, Chicken Kapitan, Archar, Too Tor T’ng (soup with pork innards) and Kiam Chye Ark T’ng (duck with salted vegetable soup).

The Tok Panjang (long table) set up for the evening is a familiar feature of Peranakan culture. Invariably covered in red table cloth, the elongated table groaned under a seemingly endless array of delicious dishes. Sitting down for dinner at such a table, you would first eat what was in front of you, and then allow your eyes to roam further afield, requesting for distant treasures that catch your eye to be passed down to you.

I think I managed to taste 20 different dishes and desserts that evening!

National heritage

The recent revival of interest in Peranakan culture has caught the attention of the Information, Communications and Culture (ICC) Ministry. Deputy minister (Senator) Heng Seai Kie was reported as saying that his ministry was pushing for Baba-Nyonya culture to be recognised as a national heritage.

The late Tun Endon Mahmood, wife of the fifth Prime Minister, was a strong advocate of the kebaya, a heavily embroidered blouse made from French voile and worn with a sarong held up by a gold or silver chain belt. In her book, The Nyonya Kebaya, she had pushed for the kebaya to be declared a national heritage, too.

Interestingly, President Hu Jintao of China made it a point to tour Malacca when he was in Malaysia last November, stopping over for a look at the Straits of Malacca and the Baba-Nyonya Museum. This drew even more attention to Peranakan culture. There is now a growing interest in everything Peranakan, whether attire, ceramics, accessories, food or music.

The setting-up of Baba-Nyonya Associations in Malacca, Selangor and Penang has given it further prominence. Meanwhile, the inaugural national conference of the Penang Peranakan Chinese and Chinese Muslims in 2008 resulted in the Universiti Sains Malaysia Vice Chancellor Tan Sri Prof Dzulkifli Abdul Razak starting a collection of reference books and digital records on the Peranakan in the university’s main library.

This special USM collection, opened in May 2010, showcases the four Peranakan strains in Malaysia: the Baba-Nyonya (Chinese), Chitti Peranakan (Indian), Siamsam Peranakan (Thai) and Jawi Peranakan (Indian-Muslim).

This comprehensive collection of Peranakan references is accessible to USM students and staff as well as members of the public who will have to write in for library membership or use a day visitor’s pass.

Both my grandmothers and a few older aunts have always worn sarong as everyday attire, with the kebaya reserved for special occasions. It took this particular Nyonya Night to stimulate an interest in me in all things Baba-Nyonya. It’s nice to be part of a heritage which the Malaysian government is trying to preserve. - By Sharon Chan, Photos by Chan Ah Lak

For more information on the Baba- Nyonya, call Persatuan Peranakan Melaka, tel: (06) 286 8309. Enquiries regarding Universiti Sains Malaysia’s Peranakan collection should be made to, tel: (04) 653 3888, ext. 3700 (Md. Pisol Ghadzali, chief librarian) or (04) 653 3721, ext. 3721 (Siti Raudah).