Babas And Nyonyas
German scholar JURGEN RUDOLPHhas produced the latest, and
possibly most
comprehensive, social history of the Babas in Singapore. We
publish an
extract here on his account of the two key turning-points of
their recent
past
THE Japanese Occupation was a crucial turning-point for the
Babas. This is
already obvious in an analysis of the terminology.
After World War II, the previously respectable designations such
as "Baba"
and "Peranakan" became almost terms of abuse if used by the
"non-Baba
Chinese".
The non-Baba Chinese gave the Babas condescending names, which
implied that
they were not "complete Chinese" because of their (supposed)
inability to
speak "Chinese", their alleged adoption of "foreign" (i.e.
non-Chinese)
cultures and their British orientation.
The Japanese Occupation turned the Peranakan world upside-down
by
triggering important changes in the political role of the Babas
as well as
in their cultural identity.
Many Babas fell victim because they were among the groups
targeted during
the Japanese sook ching operation. Hastily arranged
"intermarriages"
between Nyonyas and non-Baba Chinese were to lead to radical
changes in the
Baba way of life and to "sinicisation". The British patronage of
the Babas
was interrupted in 1942 and was never again fully
restored.
The decline of Baba culture is usually thought to begin with the
Japanese
Occupation. The Babas lost fortunes and much of their "material
culture"
during this time. Much of the previous Nyonya and Baba material
culture
disappeared or deteriorated in the '40s and '50s.
In addition, many ceremonies which were too time-consuming and
expensive in
the new "environment" had to be abandoned or at least
simplified.
The Japanese Occupation also forced many Nyonyas into the labour
force,
with the result that these true bearers of Baba culture became
less
domestic-bound. Other factors in the decline included
conversions to
Christianity (which usually conflict with ancestral rites), the
dispersion
of demographic concentrations and the trend from extended family
units to
nuclear ones.
In an interview, Tan Kong Wee told me that he and
other Babas realised
their "Chineseness" during the Japanese
Occupation:
"The Japanese did not discriminate between the
Peranakan and the
China-Chinese. I remember my fellow Peranakans
were shocked because they
suddenly realised that there was one thing
missing. They did not know their
roots.
"They could not speak Chinese. They said: 'The Japanese called
me a
Chinese. But all along, I would say I'm not a Chinese. I was 11
years
old... it dawned upon me that I am a Chinese. For this, I have
to thank the
Japanese.' "
Although Tan's realisation may not have been shared by many
Babas (the
Japanese, in fact, distinguished between the
Straits Chinese and the
China-born Chinese, at least for the collection
of the $50 million "gift"
extorted by the Japanese),
it is a fact that the Chinese-speaking Chinese
were becoming more influential and insulted the Babas mainly
because of
their inability to speak "Chinese". Consequently, many Babas
made an effort
to learn "Chinese".
Whereas many English-educated Babas re-emphasised
their
allegiance to the British Empire and were afraid
that full independence
might harm their still privileged position, the
vast majority of
Chinese-educated Chinese were vehemently
anti-colonial and
anti-imperialist.
A HIGHER CLASS OF CHINESE
AS "sons of the soil", the Straits
Chinese British Association's Straits
Chinese defended their citizenship (or
subjecthood) rights against the
China-born Chinese and those first-generation
Singapore-born Chinese who
had a dual
loyalty.
The chasm between the Babas and the sinkehs (literally "guests",
or recent
immigrants from China) may also be illustrated by the typical
occupations
of the China-born Chinese which self-conscious Babas would have
shunned.
As S.C. Wong wrote, in a letter to The Straits Times in 1948:
"Our
China-born brethren are very useful in
Singapore. Without them, we must
look to automatic machinery, for few Straits-born Chinese care
to take up
the following trades: tailor, shoe-maker, launderer, barber,
farmer,
butcher, fisherman, grocer, market stallholder, carpenter,
bricklayer,
painter, machine-shop artisan, boiler-maker, blacksmith,
lumberjack,
sawmill worker, stevedore, lighterman, lorry-driver,
taxi-driver, omnibus
driver and conductor, mining coolie, tapper, and the
indispensable
night-soil coolie."
Despite some signs of "resinicisation", many
Babas tended to reciprocate
the insults and teasing of the non-Baba Chinese
by calling them "country
bumpkins" and low-class
guests.
With the increased ambiguity of the status of the Babas,
many of them
neither dared to admit they were Babas nor spoke
Baba Malay in public. The
days of Baba Malay as an inter-group language of commercial
value were also
gone, and Baba Malay stagnated and became confined to the
domestic domain.
The once flourishing literary activities in Baba Malay came to a
grinding
halt and wayang peranakan and dondang sayang were in crisis.
Thus, the most
important "Malay" aspect of the previous Baba
identity was indeed in
decline.
On a political level, the good
relations between the Babas and the
Malays
also deteriorated somewhat
when, during the pre-independence struggle for
Merdeka, the Malays were infuriated by secessionist Babas.
To the Malays,
those Babas were "puppets" or even "pariahs" of
the British Queen.
In contrast, the British, using eulogistic terms for the Babas,
referred to
their loyalty to Singapore and their pioneer status.
During the twilight years of British rule here, between 1945 and
1959, the
SCBA appeared to continue with its successful tradition of
providing
leadership. In its
midst were not only city councillors, executive
and
legislative councillors, but also the presidents
of the then leading
political
parties.
The British
openly viewed the "King's" or "Queen's Chinese" of the SCBA
as
the "natural leaders" of the Chinese of
Singapore.
THE SECOND TURNING-POINT
HOWEVER, there were early warning signs of the Babas' loss of
influence.
Eventually, with the waning British influence, the failure of
the
secessionists, the death of conservative "Baba politics" and the
rapid rise
of the People's Action Party which led to self-rule in 1959, the
Babas
reached the second crucial turning-point in their social
history. This
usually ignored turning-point was marked by self-rule and the
takeover by
the PAP. Although leading members of the PAP, such as Lee
Kuan Yew, Dr Toh
Chin Chye and Dr Goh Keng Swee, were publicly
described as English-educated
Babas, the Babas as a group were openly belittled
as "deculturalised".
As a result, the Babas' influence as a group further declined in
every
respect. Many Babas were in a state of shock and attempted to
behave less
conspicuously in the immediate post-1959 period.
With the British no longer holding the reins of power, and the
PAP's
victory, the SCBA
and its successor organisations, the Singapore
Chinese
Peranakan Association and the Peranakan
Association, became politically
impotent.
While the aims of the SCBA had been to serve Straits Chinese
interests
politically in the context of British colonialism, the PA
officially
emphasised values such as inter-racial and inter-cultural
harmony,
religious tolerance and a common national identity.
Unofficially, though, the PA turned apolitical and revived its
somewhat
dormant tendency to preserve the Babas' cultural heritage, a
tendency which
became more marked with the so-called "revival of Baba
culture".
The post-1959 period highlighted the relative unimportance of
the Babas as
a politically, legally and economically defined group. The
Babas, who were
formerly a rather heterogeneous group were affected by political
interests
and an emphasis on a particular "Chineseness", and soon lost
their
rationale for existence.
With the disappearance of this rationale and the heavy stress
placed on the
political correctness of a "Chineseness" other than that of the
Babas, we
not only observe radical changes in Baba culture but also an
ever-increasing number of intermarriages between Baba and
non-Baba Chinese.
Marital unions between non-Baba Chinese and Babas had been
facilitated
earlier by the Japanese Occupation and the anglicisation of
Singapore
society. Baba cultural traditions or values no longer tended to
be
transmitted to the children of these unions.
Other important factors which led to radical changes in Baba
culture were
the erosion of demographic concentration and the subsequent
disruption of
interactive networks, the advent of modern communications and
the
simultaneous processes of "sinicisation" and
"Singaporeanisation".
As a result, former courtship and marriage practices as well as
other
customs and traditions such as ancestral and funeral rites were
largely
abandoned. From
the end of World War II, many Babas abandoned
Chinese
religion and a syncretic system of beliefs, and
embraced Christianity,
particularly
Catholicism.
Moreover, Baba Malay and dondang sayang standards
deteriorated, the sarong
kebaya was less seen in
public and the art of Nyonya cuisine was at
least
simplified, if not abandoned.
BEADED SLIPPERS MAKE A COMEBACK
THIS is not to deny the possibility of unexpected comebacks,
such as the
current renewed interest in beaded -- and even beading! --
slippers in
Singapore or the recent revival of dondang sayang in Malacca,
according to
William Gwee, an expert on Baba culture.
Baba Malay as a lingua franca had been on the
decline from the '20s
onwards, and after Merdeka, English became the
most important lingua
franca.
In addition, a
gradual and incomplete switch in mother tongue from
Baba
Malay to English occurred among the Singapore
Babas.
Although the level of Baba Malay tended to be still high among
the older
generation, it was deteriorating among, and not transmitted to,
the younger
generation. The
younger Babas, in particular, showed little interest
in
Baba culture and were often reluctant to conceive
of, or at least to openly
identify, themselves as Babas or Nyonyas.
Occasionally, there was an
outright rejection of one's "Babaness", as in
this view of one Baba who
declined to be
named:
"My brother thinks the Baba culture is chaotic... it is
completely out of
touch. You are
a Chinese living in a community of Chinese, so how
to
survive?
"My grandmother, grand-aunties, according to my brother, are
such misfits.
My brother hates it with a passion. When he makes fun of the
Peranakans, he
will always speak in a fake Malay accent saying, 'I not Malay, I
Chinese.'
He finds that most humiliating, hard to break away from a
'non-culture'."
The same informant told me about a middle-aged Nyonya and the
perceived
impracticality of the way of life of the older
generation:
"One of my aunts purposely denies her 'Peranakanness'. To the
Peranakans,
[it is] 'just enjoy', happy-go-lucky, almost ostentatious,
leaving things
in the hands of God. To this auntie, materialism is more
virtuous,
frugality, more to take charge of the future and welfare of your
family,
investments. This is conceived of as more 'Chinese'.
"Auntie said, 'I'm glad that I married a Chinese. Mother is
impractically
meticulous. [She] wants to go to church every day.' She curses
her mother
right in front of her. 'My mother is good for nothing. She
doesn't seem
able to cope, and she considers work a burden.' "
Generally, the younger generation became less and less
distinguishable from
non-Baba Chinese.
In 1984, the then Prime Minister Lee
Kuan Yew remarked: "In the generation
that is under 40 years, the differences between
the Chinese-educated and
the English-educated have been blended and
blurred by interaction in
integrated schools, the schools that first
started to teach Chinese-stream
and English-stream students in the same
school.
"Then there were many integrated families where some children
went to
English-stream and others went to Chinese-stream schools. So the
cultural
differences have almost disappeared."
The most important move towards a single Chinese
identity among the Chinese
Singaporeans was the Government's equation of
Mandarin with the Chinese
language. In 1981, a new educational policy for
ethnically Chinese pupils
was put into effect, which makes the learning of
Mandarin as their "mother
tongue"
compulsory.
ADOPTING AN ALIEN 'MOTHER TONGUE'
FOR the Babas, the significance of the new policy was that they
no longer
had the option to elect Malay as a second school language, but
were obliged
to study Mandarin, a language which many of them
regarded as rather alien.
A good number of Babas were in disagreement with the notion of
Mandarin
being the "mother tongue" of the Babas and other Chinese
Singaporeans, and
the equation of Chinese ethnicity with the ability to speak
Mandarin was
contested.
They also felt strongly that their culture was no less Chinese
than that of
other Chinese Singaporeans. However, by force of circumstances,
the Babas
have accepted the heavy emphasis placed on Mandarin and have
done what the
Babas have always been particularly good at: They have adapted
to the
situation.
With the younger Babas becoming less and less distinguishable
from non-Baba
Chinese, the former's need to separate themselves from the
Malays was no
longer a problem.
Significantly, it was in Malaysia rather than in Singapore that
the Babas
were seen as in a "unique position" to bridge the gap between
the Malays
and Chinese.
In Singapore, only the traditional Baba wedding was perceived by
observers
such as Seow Peck Leng of the Young Women's Christian
Association in 1968
as a "concrete proof that the spirit of co-operation, tolerance
and
compromise did exist between the early Chinese immigrants and
the early
Malay residents of Singapore".
Although the British as colonial masters were history,
a leaning towards
British traits could be observed among some
younger Babas.
For instance, Dick Lee (an internationally acclaimed Singaporean
pop star),
in a newspaper interview in 1993, said he had suffered an
identity crisis
for all of his life. "My
[Nyonya] grandmother was very British. She
drank
tea at four and read Jane Austen. I thought I was
a character in an Enid
Blyton novel."
He only realised he was not English when he
visited England at age 14.
In my description of the social and cultural history of the
Babas, I have
refused to apply a modern, culturally-based definition of the
Babas.
While the public focus until the electoral
victory of the PAP was clearly
on Baba politics, there began -- after a decade
of silence and the
Peranakan Association's intermittent attempts to
restore some political
weight -- a public emphasis on Baba
culture.
Ironically, this switch of emphasis occurred at a time when
aspects of Baba
cultures not only began to disappear or be diluted, but they
were also
commercialised and used to promote tourism.
The new cultural definition, which necessitated a deviation from
the
equation of "Baba"
with "Straits Chinese", is thus, in historical
terms,
rather recent.
This assessment is not contradicted by the justifiable
assumption that the
synonymous usage of the terms Straits Chinese, Peranakan and
Baba in
written records was trailing behind the rapidly changing social
reality of
Singapore and was becoming increasingly ambiguous.
In my interpretation, the Babas' newly-published distinctions
between
"Straits Chinese" and "Babas" along cultural lines have to be
taken
seriously when accounting for the time of their appearance and
the more
recent past, but not further back (namely, the period preceding
the
Japanese Occupation).
According to the new cultural definition, a Baba should also be
a Hokkien.
According to some purist Hokkien Babas, who regard themselves as
true-blue
Baba jati, non-Hokkien Babas are only Baba chelup.
The expression suggests that the Baba chelup are only
superficially dipped
in the paint of Babaness and are at best "nominal" Babas. Apart
from the
conceptual history until the late '50s which contradicts such a
narrow
conception of a Baba, we have a few examples of prominent
non-Hokkien
Babas.
First and foremost, there
is Hakka Baba Lee Kuan Yew (who regards
himself
as a Baba only
technically). Others are the Melaka dondang
sayang singer
and serunee player Yeo Kim Swee, who is a Hainanese Baba, and
Ambassador to
Germany Walter Woon, who is a Cantonese Baba.
With the new public focus on Baba culture between the late '60s
and '70s
onwards, many
Babas conceived of their culture as
dying.
Unlike these prophets of doom, less fatalistic Babas
acknowledged the
decline, but were more optimistic, contending that Babas should
become more
conscious about, and more action-orientated towards, their
cultural
heritage.
Signs of a so-called revival of Baba culture were many: mock
traditional
Baba wedding ceremonies, television documentaries,
Nyonya fashion
contests,
the commercialisation of so-called
Nyonya food, Peranakan festivals, the
Baba "material cultures" turning
antiques and museum exhibits, the
preservation of the so-called
Peranakan architecture, books, popular
magazine and newspaper articles, the
revival of plays in Baba Malay, annual
Baba Conventions and so
on.
In addition, efforts were made to promote cultural tourism via
the "exotic"
and glorious aspects of the "unique" Baba culture.
However, it soon became clear that the "revival of Baba culture"
was
nothing more than just a nostalgic curiosity item, an exotic
tourist
attraction and a museum showpiece. These developments
notwithstanding,
there is a minority of Babas who still follow what they perceive
as the
"essence" of Baba culture and who attempt to transmit this
"essence" to the
younger generation.
The writer, a German, is a senior researcher with the Friedrich
Naumann
Foundation here. Reconstructing Identities: A Social History Of
The Babas
In Singapore (Ashgate/507 pages/$108) is based on his thesis for
his PhD
from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany. Field work
was done
here between May 1992 and October 1994.
- extracted from Sunday Times (3/1/1999)
http://www.asiawind.com/pub/forum/fhakka/mhonarc/msg01319.html
