In Search of the True Baba
 

Adventures in Puzzlement

 So I went, in desperation to amazon.com, which is supposed  to list all known published works as my last resort, for I am no computer expert. Again it was a futile search. Were they mythical or mystical persons or creatures of fiction or were they such secret persons that they could not be listed in such open files as in the Internet subject to amendments or deletion by hackers or computer wizards?

Or perhaps they were really not humans but escapees from another world or science fiction subjects. Ah ha, perhaps they were not human beings after all! And their actual identity has been fobbed off by vague mysterious  references and they could be catalogued somewhere?

In truth, I wondered if, in reality, there were such persons still in existence or were they truly fictitious persons. Were they Dodos? I suppose if you want to find out what a Dodo is and if they are still in existence, you have to go to Dodo land.  Dodo Land, in case you are not aware, is in the island off Africa known today as Madagascar. The Dodo is a factual creature, not a distortion but it is now extinct. It was a bird, a pigeon which did not have to fly away from predators and so, by evolution, according to Charles Darwin's theory, had developed into a huge ground strutting bird which had lost its ability to fly and had become so succulent that the last,  not so long ago had probably been felled by sailors for food . Perhaps the Baba and Nyonya were, like them, no longer in existence.

I am essentially a lazy person, physically, so imagine my immediate gratification when I found out, on my first inquiry at an old coffee shop, now popularly known as the Kopi Tiam, that they do still exist and are in thriving and prosperous condition, though I was told,  all the more ambitious and brainy of them had migrated to more modern and greener pastures. 

But though I was told they existed, there was no consensus as to their definite identification. There were some ten persons in the shop, and all they were able to say was that if I saw one I would immediately know who they are. They were Hokkiens, and they mostly spoke English.  But one person warned me to be careful as they were shy and so wary of strangers that I would not get anywhere until they were sure I was one of them.

But  I was also told that  even those who could not speak English could very well also be Baba and Nyonya, and so I did not go very far with that definition. In fact the first stranger I met along the road after my experience in the Kopi Tiam who spoke English and looked Chinese corrected me for assuming he was a Baba.

"I beg your pardon," he said abruptly, correcting me, after I had asked, "Who are you?"

" I am a Teochew and therefore not a  Baba", he replied,  and went his way in a huff. The rebuff was salutary; I could not assume anything, not even in the looks. 

I began to wonder how stupid my quest was. Perhaps I should give myself a self effacing identity in order not to surprise or affront anyone. So, on the spot, in order not to stir up suspicion and I decided to give myself the name of Ah Gong Kow. The "Ah" because it was a true Baba prefix. It signified that I did not come from a learned family. "Gong", the middle name, meant stupid and it showed I was self effacing and humble; and, "Kow," a dog, which meant I could be insulted and still wag my tail. With a name like that I was sure I would be accepted in any Baba and Nyonya company and ask any question and discover the truth for myself.

The Dodo could be defined easily, but not the Baba and Nyonya. Everyone seemed to know who they were but yet were unable to clearly define them. It seemed that each had his own view yet seemingly appeared to disagree as to who was or wasn't.

Ask anyone who was a Baba and everyone seemed to know the answer. Yet, pick up someone and he could easily be one or not. "Are you a Baba? you ask and, if you are lucky, you can be answered by answers that tell you he is Hokkien and you can be rewarded by being told that  "you are a Baba if your father and mother were Nyonya and Baba too. And you come from the island of Penang". 

But that is the easy part. Some will go on to tell you that Hokkiens in Malacca are included because we were all from the Straits Settlements. But what about those from Singapore? You might ask. Well some include them but others from Singapore are too aloof and proud to connect themselves to the Hokkiens from Penang and do not include themselves.

Some with mixed Cantonese or Teochew or Hakka and Hokkien parentage have a mixed reaction. Some deny any connection whilst others claim they are all Nyonya and Baba because they were Hokkien and you begin to believe them only to be told by someone else that it depends on whether the father or mother was a Hokkien. Again, if one of them was a foreigner, then they were Quai Lo and therefore not eligible.
 

It's all very confusing. So I went to the Straits Chinese Association. There, I was sure I would find a genuine definition. They all sing the kronchong on the Chap Goh Meh  in Malay, though most of them no longer can sing those songs because they had been superceded by the songs of the karaoke lounge,  and they eat (since most of them no longer know how to cook) otak-otak,  assam prawn and gulai tumis, laksa, nyonya koay such as koay talam and sweet curry puffs, and all sorts of cakes now superceeded by Kentucky Fried Chicken and MacDonalds, at one time frowned upon.

It gets more and more confusing. I had been rightly warned and close questioning was frowned upon. A good mannered Baba does not ask embarrassing questions. In that way they hide behind a veil of good manners.   Only real researchers, preferably English, could ask those questions because then they know they can say anything in reply without the embarrassment of contradiction as the foreigners would never know the real truth anyway,

The true Baba and Nyonya, I learnt anyway, should come only from that island of Penang which thus excludes Province Wellesley on the mainland which is not within the definition of Penang until it was added in by the British, was it in 1786? No one can remember the turbid history.

Bingo, to the true Baba and Nyonya, they do not include Cantonese and products of mixed marriages even if such marriages were getting more confusing in the process of time as jungle meranti trees get more and more mixed as a result of cross pollination. How does one ever dictate to his children who they should be married to?

If I was confused, I was told, I had only to remember the fundamentals. But fundamentals were more than what I have written. All Baba spoke Hokkien and mostly now speak in English, unlike the Cantonese who stubbornly speak Cantonese. But what of those growing groups that now speak only English? Well, if one spoke English with Hokkien accent, he was a Nyonya or Baba. The Nyonya and Baba took to English more readily. Well, I chose to ignore that, as it was not a definition, but described  a trend.

Yes, I had to remember a Nyonya essentially could wear sarong kebaya.. Well, like Kentucky Fried Chicken had superceded inchi kabin so also had the blouse, gown and dress superceded the sarong kebaya.. I once saw a mother and daughter on the street, the daughter in a dress and her mother (or perhaps it was her aunt?) in sarong kebaya, so tremendous was the change in one generation. 

They thought I was a Baba because I could speak Hokkien. But my name confused me. It did not sound anyway Hokkien. Was my mother a Nyonya?  I came from Indonesia, I explained. My father was a Baba, so he told us. Would that not do? Had my mother to be a Hokkien too?  What if my mother had come from South America and was a Hakka and knew not one word of Hokkien when she first landed on the island?  Well, if she had adopted Hokkien before her death, I suppose you could pass the test somehow, came the pontificated reply, and the question: Did your mother wear a sarong kebaya?

It was getting more difficult than I had imagined. Do they all have to wear such costumes? I asked, well knowing that many Baba I knew from Malacca wore English coats and ties, like Sir Tan Cheng Lock, who was fond of claiming himself as a Baba. 

The Hokkiens were very adaptable, it was meticulously explained to me. Provided the  wife performed the  tea ceremony and accepted the Chinese rites as accepted by the Baba, it did not matter who she was or where she came from. Rubbish, exclaimed someone else, a Nyonya must be not only be a Chinese but a Hokkien; and a Hakka was excluded from that definition even if her children qualified.

So, with  that Winstedt's claim that the Baba married Malay women because they did not bring their women along from China. Did the requirements of matching of birthdays and omens, of the tea ceremony and all those rites and ceremonies that had to be performed for a Chinese marriage by the bride exclude the Malay?

There was also a seemingly impossible story of Nyonya and Baba in the story of a Kelantan man marrying a Malay somewhere in Kelantan or Trengannu. In the first place, how could the marriage have taken place against all rites and Chinese traditions? Besides, what has the Kelantan man got to do with the Baba and Nyonya which terms refer only to those who were from Penang, especially in those days when travelling to Kelantan from Penang through creeks and jungle through tiger country was more difficult than sailing to China in a junk to fetch a bride from China? 

Well. I suppose, like all histories and customs, the culture and the history of Baba and Nyonya are riddled with legends. There were still indefinable barriers I had to reach into further to solve the mystery.

There had to be something more. What about looking into their culinary habits and how they  ate and drank that made them different? 

Kensu Wanandi
 

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