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ISSUE 2 • 2014 EDITORIAL SHOWCASE 3 Ancestry in Motion 22 Harmonious Offering

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ISSUE 2 • 2014 EDITORIAL SHOWCASE 3 Ancestry in Motion 22 Harmonious Offering MEMORY * FAMILY * LEGACY ccontentsontents 24 8 4 ISSUE 2 • 2014 www.peranakan.org.sg EDITORIAL SHOWCASE 3 Ancestry in Motion 22 Harmonious Offering FEATURES BOOKS ON THE COVER • Vintage 4 Remembering Ancestors 23 Bittersweet Secrets photographs courtesy of Peter Wee 8 Rediscovered Relations Art Direction by John Lee 13 My Ah Kong’s Hometown DALAM DAPOR Photography by Colin Chee 16 600 Years of the Ongs 24 Blooming Cuisine 17 The Ancestors’ Way or the Highway EVENTS 18 Ancestral Feasts 27 Picturing Peranakans 29 Good Fortune For All CHAKAP CHAKAP High on Sunshine 20 Collecting For Future Generations NOTICEBOARD 20 30 Peranakan Associations in the Region DIRECTORY 31 The Peranakan Guide, Singapore CHAKAP HABIS 32 Siapa Kong Mama Lu? THE PERANAKAN ASSOCIATION SINGAPORE President: Peter Wee • First Vice-President: Alan Koh • Second Vice-President: Bebe Seet • Honorary Secretary: Lim Geok Huay • Assistant Honorary Secretary: Ee Sin Soo • Honorary Treasurer: Chan Eng Thai • Committee Members: Linda Chee, Angeline Kong, Emeric Lau, Edmond Wong, Alvin Yapp • For enquiries please contact Katong Antique House at +65-6345-1220 THE PERANAKAN MAGAZINE Editorial Advisers: Lee Kip Lee, Peter Lee • Editor: Linda Chee • Assistant Editor: Emeric Lau • Art Director: John Lee • Editorial & Photography Committee Member: Colin Chee • Designer: Michelle Yap • Advertising Manager: Alvin Sng • Administrative Manager: Low Whee Hoon For advertising enquiries, please contact Alvin Sng at 9839 8188 The Peranakan is published by The Peranakan Association Singapore, Raffles City PO Box 1640, Singapore 911755. Email:[email protected] • Printer: Lithographic Print House Pte Ltd. MCI (P)019/10/2013 1 | ISSUE 2 • 2014 2 | ISSUE 2 • 2014 e ditorial Ancestry IN Motion ut a few babas and nyonyas together in the same room and chances are they P will end up talking about their parents, grandparents, uncles, aunties, cousins, the numerous intermarriages amongst families and eventually, how one another could be related by marriage or even blood ties, no matter how distant! Have you heard the term bau bau bakchang (the aroma of glutinous rice dumplings) being used as an expression of the pervasiveness of blood ties among Peranakans? I know of many Babas with the remarkable memory for names and how so-and-so’s grandmother’s second sister was married to so- and-so’s eldest brother whose offspring was some prominent person, and so on. Among such Babas are my brother, through his pure passion for genealogy, and my father who, despite his moderate dementia, maintains an encyclopaedic memory with regard to a person’s family relationships. My father is not the exception. His was a generation where archival memory was probably the only means of passing down knowledge of the complex web of relationships spun out from paternal and maternal bloodlines. In recent years there has been much interest in genealogy amongst Peranakans both old and young. Many families have historical records of both males and females, but in some families it was only the men who were counted for. There is one Baba I know who is investigating the lineages of the lost women in his family. I do not know whether he has succeeded. But it must have been no mean task tracking down wives and daughters. In this issue we look at the investigative efforts of three Peranakans to find their roots, making new discoveries either by serendipity or through dedicated searches in China, the ancestral origin of most Peranakans. We also focus on the Confucianist principle of filial piety towards the living exhuming his ancestors’ graves at Bukit Brown, sacrificing and the dead, articulated in numerous forms which to what was thought to be their final resting place, for a the extreme, involved cannibalism and even infanticide! multi-lane highway. Such is the significance of ancestry that respect for the Like Bukit Brown, our own family history is our dead stretches from the daily prayer at the household altar precious heritage. Take a moment or two to think about to elaborate rituals such as the semayang abu which you your forefathers. And the women behind them. can learn about in the following pages. We also feel the angst of one Peranakan who was tasked with the duty of Linda Chee, Editor Copyright is by the publisher. All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. The Peranakan magazine and The Peranakan Association Singapore disclaim all responsibilities in the articles herein, and state that the views expressed in them, if any, are those of the writers and not theirs. They assume no responsibility for unsolicited materials or articles published herein and state that the writers are wholly responsible for the veracity and authenticity of their articles. 3 | ISSUE 2 • 2014 feature Remembering Ancestors Detail of the Jee Chap See Hao ( , Ershisi Xiao). The tenth paragon of filial piety, Tong Hoo Jin, feeds her own breastmilk to her mother-in-law. 4 | ISSUE 2 • 2014 feature Remembering AncestorsBaba PETER LEE muses on an ancient concept lying at the heart of the Peranakan universe erhaps no principle was more fundamental and Pimportant to a Peranakan family of old than that embodied in the Hokkien term hao ( , xiao) or filial piety. Hao encompassed devotion, duty and respect towards one’s family’s elders, living or dead. One of the greatest compliments one could give to a person was to praise him or her as ut hao ( , youxiao), or filial. From Jee Chap See Hao the Confucian perspective, filial piety daily squirts of Lady Tang’s breast milk ( Ershisi is the basis for not only understanding during a period of illness when she Xiao), or Classic of the Twenty-Four Paragons one’s place in family and society, could not consume anything else. Now, of Filial Piety, a engendering universal harmony, but dear lactating nyonya readers… imagine painting on silk by Soh ultimately, of the cultivation of teck , de) approaching your neo (mother-in-law) in Gee, Singapore, 1917, or virtue, and jin ( , ren) or benevolence. her bedroom, removing your kerosangs, mounted on a teak screen. Collection of Mr & Mrs Practically, it was the basis for so much then your kebaya, followed by your choli Lee Kip Lee, Singapore. good in Chinese history and society, but (bra), then gently drawing your neo’s it was also the root of an equal amount of head towards your chest, and sweetly evil. Every Peranakan family dysfunction whispering to her, “Neo, makan? Breakfast can perhaps be traced to an obsession time, eh.” Oh, what better way to win your with filial piety. Filial piety and all its neo’s affection. Just pray she has no teeth. Confucian connotations have had a Then there was the dreadful “hero”, tough time in the 20th century. Mao made the impoverished Kwek Kee ( , Guo it a crime to enact ancestral rites. In Ju), paragon number 13, who decided Singapore, it just lost relevance in the to bury alive his only child, a young boy, early years of the republic, as everyone so that he could take care of his elderly abandoned any sense of family history. mother. The toddler was miraculously Look at all the abandoned graves at Bukit saved by a pot of gold unearthed while Brown, like Angkor Wat, with banyan Kwek was digging the little hole in the trees growing on tombstones. Seems like ground! But the paragon who, literally, the only kind of piety that can excite a takes the cake, as well as the global, Peranakan these days is kueh pie tee. historical, all-time fear factor award, must be none other than Jee Keen Loh A classic on filial piety ( , Yu Qian Lou), who willingly The reason for this terrible decline tasted a lovely dollop of his beloved can perhaps be attributed to a ghoulish father’s excrement. Doctors needed a life- Chinese book. The bible of the populist or-death answer to the question about approach to filial piety is the Jee Chap whether daddy’s brownie was sweet or See Hao ( Ershisi Xiao), or bitter, which would determine the correct Classic of the Twenty-Four Paragons of life-saving treatment. Well, after giving it Filial Piety. Written by Kwek Kee Keng a good swirl in his mouth, Jee declared ( ,Guo Ju Jing) a Hokkien official that it was sweet. And how absolutely during the Yuan period (1260-1368), it sweet of him too. Now, would you do is the most terrifying compilation of something like that for your father? the most extreme forms of devotion to parents. It is the veritable bible Ways of commemorating of family emotional blackmail. The Beyond the expression of love and “morally uplifting” tales of these 24 devotion to living parents, filial piety individuals in fact read like twisted, extended to commemorating deceased macabre horror stories, involving forebears, embodied in the term twee wan infanticide, cannibalism, galactophagia ( , zhuiyuan), remembering ancestors. and even coprophagia (google these This term is a reference to a line in the last two terms yourself). For example, Analects of Confucius (1:9): paragon number 10, the noble Tong Hoo Jin ( ) or Lady Tang, is To be prudent in mourning, and to reflect remembered for her great devotion on those who have passed away, is to to her mother-in-law, who enjoyed enhance the virtue of the people. 5 | ISSUE 2 • 2014 f eature This tradition goes back to the dawn of Chinese civilisation. The See Keng ( , Shi Jing) or Classic of Poetry, which has odes dating to the early Zhou dynasty (c.1046-256 BC), makes reference to ancestral sacrifices.
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