Word: peranakans
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...irony is both sad and delicious. 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. But in a sly act of revenge, 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-colored porcelain bowls from which...
...Like laksa - a coconut-milk-and-prawn-laden broth thickened by the spices of China, Malaysia and India - 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 compradore 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. (See 10 things to do in Singapore...
...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, and those who want a glimpse of the Peranakan legacy should begin on foot in the residential Emerald Hill neighborhood of Singapore. The houses that wealthy Peranakan families built there are still adorned with the fretted arches and colorful ornamental tiles they borrowed partly from colonial Portugal. (See pictures of Singapore...
...Less polished and more popular with the older crowd is Guan Hoe Soo at 214 Joo Chiat Road, tel: (65) 6344 2761, one of Singapore's signature Peranakan restaurants fusing Malaysian, Indonesian and Chinese cuisine. It's been serving fish-head curry and sotong, or squid, sambal since 1953. Even Lee Kuan Yew is rumored to order takeout from here. With dishes like these on Singapore's menu, eating for two has never been so easy...