The Peranakan Chinese Home. Ronald G. Knapp
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Set among a bounty of classical pilasters and arches amidst heavily ornamented plaster reliefs, Mandalay Villa was the home of Lee Cheng Yan, who was born in Malacca but moved to Singapore where he prospered in trading and finance. Constructed in 1902 as a two-storey bungalow in the Peranakan area of Katong in eastern Singapore, it was but one of several seaside villas built for the expanding family. The residence was demolished in 1983. A detailed discussion of family life in this residence is provided by Lee and Chen, (2006: 24–31). Artist: A. L. Watson. Courtesy of National Museum of Singapore, National Heritage Board.
While there is archaeological and historical evidence of Chinese traders reaching many of the lands that rim the South China Sea more than a millennium ago, as mentioned in the Introduction, it was not until many centuries later that Chinese immigrants were able to construct homes reminiscent of those in China. In the meantime, Chinese traders built simple homes for the local women they took as wives, starting peranakan families during their annual hiatus while waiting for the shifting of monsoonal winds that would allow them to voyage back home to China where they also usually maintained families. For the most part, these initial homes likely were indigenous-style timber structures with thatched roofs of attap (fronds of the nipah palm), with walls covered with matting made of palm-like pandan leaves. Probably little of the furnishings or ornamentation in these early homes was rooted in Chinese traditions.
By the beginning of the fifteenth century, however, Chinese immigrants began to settle in increasing numbers along the coasts of the Malay Peninsula, even as annual sojourning continued for others. Similar migration patterns took hold along the coasts of many of the sprawling islands in what is today called the Indonesian archipelago. By 1678, when Chinese represented one-fifth of Malacca’s population, they lived in 81 brick and 51 attap dwellings in the town itself, with more elsewhere along the shore and inland (Purcell, 1965: 241). According to Francis Light, there were about 3,000 Chinese in Penang in 1794 who “possess the different trades of carpenters, masons, and smiths, are traders, shopkeepers, and planters” while others were squatters and workers opening up virgin land outside of town (“Notices of Pinang,” 1851: 9). With skilled construction workers and an increasingly diverse population with different needs and financial resources, Chinese over time built dwellings in Malacca that were progressively substantial and permanent, indeed quite similar to those in their home communities in China.
Five-foot way passages: Jonker Street, Malacca, then three in Emerald Hill, Singapore. Lee Ho Yin’s drawing reveals the evolution of shophouses from the early nineteenth century through the 1930s (2003: 133).
A colorful row of terrace houses built in the 1920s along Koon Seng Road, Joo Chiat, Singapore, which have been described by Julian Davison as “Rococo with a dash of Chinoiserie” (2010: 130).
After Stamford Raffles signed a treaty in 1824 that led to the establishment of a trading post on the island of Singapore and the formation of the Straits Settlements in 1826, Chinese from both Malacca and China arrived in escalating numbers, reaching more than 100,000 by 1869. Yet, according to Siah U Chin [Seah Eu Chin], housing for newly arrived Chinese in the late 1840s in Singapore continued to “resemble in a great measure the houses of the Malays, but there is this difference, that the houses of the Malays are mostly raised above the ground, whereas those of the Chinese are low on the surface; the walls of the houses are formed, some of the bark of trees, some of kadjang, and others of dried grass; some cover their roofs also with dried grass; those who are in pretty good circumstances use thin planks for their walls, but there are very few such. Except for the temples, none of the Chinese houses are covered with tiles” (1848: 288). Residential and commercial construction nonetheless continued apace in Singapore as Europeans and Chinese transformed swampy lands into productive agriculture estates, increasing not only wealth but also the desire to transform wealth into fine homes. As architects and draftsmen planned residences for the wealthy to meet new social and economic demands, they incorporated structural concessions that acknowledged the tropical climate of the region. Self- designed dwellings gradually decreased in town while continuing to be built in rural areas (Lee Kip Lin, 1988: 53–85). Similar patterns occurred in the Dutch East Indies, Siam, Vietnam, Cambodia, and the Philippines, each with its own design and temporal characteristics.
By the late nineteenth century, five distinct house types had emerged throughout the Nanyang or Southern Seas region: shophouses, terrace houses, detached villas, courtyard mansions, and bungalows. None of these types was the exclusive residential form for any single group. While today some are identified more with Peranakan Chinese, others, such as pure Chinese, indigenous peoples, and British and Dutch colonialists, occupied similar residences as well. Peranakan Chinese, on the other hand, in time introduced layers of color, furnishings, ornamentation, and function that made many individual residences identifiably and uniquely Peranakan. Peranakan Chinese, arguably to a greater extent than even wealthy Chinese immigrants who were similarly cosmopolitan, enthusiastically embraced Western and Malay elements even as they expressed an inherent Chineseness in their homes. Peranakan Chinese residences thus often differ in their degree of eclecticism from the homes of non-Peranakan Chinese. Detailed discussions of the variety of residential types occupied by both Peranakan Chinese and non-Peranakan Chinese families are presented in my Chinese Houses of Southeast Asia: The Eclectic Architecture of Sojourners and Settlers (2010).
Both Western and Chinese elements appear on the façades of shophouses and terrace houses. From left: Tan Kim Seng residence, now Hotel Puri, Heeren Street, Malacca, Malaysia; Cedric Tan residence, Tranquerah Road, Malacca, Malaysia; Persatuan Peranakan Cina Melaka (Peranakan Chinese Association of Malacca, Heeren Street, Malacca, Malaysia; Blair Road, Singapore; Emerald Hill, Singapore.
The Blair Plain area was developed in the 1920s. With colorful façades and quiescent charm, the Blair Road neighborhood has undergone significant gentrification in recent years.
SHOPHOUSES
No generic architectural form is more characteristic of Chinese domestic life in the maritime towns of Southeast Asia than the shophouse, a form whose origins can be traced back to southeast China, the home region of most immigrants. Its narrow and deep shape punctuated by skywells, load-bearing party walls, and an overhanging upper floor that provides a covered walkway along the front together characterize the shophouse as a remarkably utilitarian, versatile, and economical building type. Moreover, shophouses afford conditions for making a living in which all members contribute to the enterprise while carrying out family life within a single structure. With commercial space on the ground floor opening on to the street and living spaces behind and upstairs, rows of contiguous shophouses were able to meet the needs of generations of Chinese immigrant merchants and artisans, some of whom formed Peranakan families. Other non-Chinese shopkeepers and tradesmen also came to value this type of building where they could display wares easily on outdoor shelves and where they could work in an area with better light and fresher air than inside. The earliest shophouses had nondescript façades with minimal ornamentation.
A modest two-storey shophouse from the late 1700s at No. 8 Heeren Street in Malacca, which has been restored, reveals well the functional components that were integral to later, larger shophouses as the form evolved to meet changing needs (Knapp, 2010: 42–5). Late nineteenth and early twentieth-century photographs reveal both the consistency of the early shophouse form as well as its many local variations. While the earliest forms of utilitarian timber shophouses with attap roofs disappeared long ago, temporary buildings using the same materials are found in small towns throughout the region. Extant examples can still be seen in small towns in Indonesia, such as Tanjung Pura and Medan on Sumatra, and Lasem, Rembang, and Semarang on Java, each of which had substantial Peranakan Chinese communities. Where economic development had not yet erased them, many old shophouses constructed of brick and mortar and covered with