Peranakan Singaporeans, what are your views on Lee Kuan Yew as
baba?
Do you feel proud of him?
I have always admired my father
for his dedication to Singapore, his determination to do what is
right, his courage in standing up to foreigners who try to tell us
how to run our country.
But my father was also the eldest
son in a typical Peranakan family. He cannot
even crack a soft-boiled egg - such things not being expected of men,
especially eldest sons, in Peranakan
families...
http://hongjun.blogspot.com/2009/04/dr-lee-wei-ling
A significant category of Chinese, although one not listed in
the census reports, were the Baba Chinese or
Straits Chinese.
They were Chinese who after long residence in Southeast Asia
spoke Malay or English as
their first language, and whose culture
contained elements from China, Southeast Asia, and sometimes Europe
as well.
An indication of the size of the Baba Chinese community was
provided by the 1980 census report that 9 percent of Chinese
families spoke English at home. Stereotypically the Baba were the
offspring of Chinese migrants and local women. In the nineteenth
century, they tended to be wealthier and better educated than the
mass of immigrants and to identify more with Singapore and
Southeast Asia than with China.
In spite of their language, the Baba considered themselves
Chinese, retained Chinese kinship patterns and religion, and even
when speaking Malay used a distinct Baba dialect of Malay with many
loan words from Hokkien.
Never a large proportion of
Singapore's Chinese population, in the late
nineteenth century they took advantage of opportunities for
education in English and promoted themselves as loyal
to Britain.
In Singapore, many Baba
families spoke English as a first language and produced many of the
leaders of Singapore's independent political movements,
including Lee Kuan Yew.
Although the Baba, in a sense, provided the model for the
current Singaporean who is fluent in English and considers
Singapore as home, the community fragmented in the early twentieth
century as Chinese nationalism spread.
After the 1920s its members gained no advantage, economic or
political, from distinguishing themselves from the rest of the
Chinese population and tended increasingly to become Chinese again,
often learning to speak Chinese as adults. In the 1980s, Baba
culture survived largely in the form of a well-known cuisine that
mixed Chinese and Malay ingredients and in some families who
continued to use English as the language of the home...
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+sg0044)
What makes one a 'baba' or a 'nyonya' ?
According to Answers.com -
which provides comprehensive details that largely
described a group of Chinese migrants as the 'Peranakans'
- who have settled in the 'Nusantara region' during the
Colonial era, assimilated into local communities, and have adopted
partially or in full Malay customs.
Those who have settled in the British Straits Settlement of
Penang, Malacca and Singapore - are also called Straits
Chinese.
However, although the 'babas' and nyonyas' in the
Peranakan community are mostly of Chinese origins, the
term will also include those who arrived from India.
Can LKY be considered to be a 'baba' - as a fourth generation
son of an early immigrant from China ?
References taken from his
memoirs had shown that his 'Hakka' great-grandfather - Lee
Bok Boon (born 1846) had emigrated to the Straits Settlement in
1862, and since had a blurred lineage leading to his own
father.
His mother born in 1907 and probably a third
generation immigrant was already considered a "Hokkien Nyonya"
- and was a housewife well known for her great culinary
skills in Chinese cooking with a light blend
of Malay recipes that has become a
characteristic signature of the 'Baba-Nyonya' cuisines, and
published in her own cook book.
LKY could probably be considered a 'baba' - considering
that by the time of his own generation, he could
hardly speak a word of Hakka, and would have been subjected to the
greater influence of his mother especially when his
relationship with his father was known to be frosty - (from 'No Man
is an Island' - James Minchin).
At the end of the day, does it matter if he is a 'baba' or
even belonging to any ethnic group, when he does not even
acknowledge his own origins - as the son of a Salesman and a
Housewife ?
Does all this matter when he hold so dearly to his
beliefs concerning the eugenics of the intelligent ?