Baba Nyonya
In Search of the True BabaAdventures in Puzzlement
Part 3 (Conclusion)
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Baba Nyonya
In Search of the True BabaAdventures in Puzzlement Part 3 (Conclusion) |
I WAS GETTING FRUSTRATED. I was getting nowhere. Was there such a thing as a Nyonya? Could I not like our socalled "experts" come to some conclusion and get on with my life? Could I not say that the term Baba and Nonya refer to the Chinese who had come from China many years ago who had little or no Chinese education but their own Hokkien dialect and therefore developed culturally by speaking the lingua franca of South East Asia like the Chinese of Singapore who married nyonyas who mostly spoke no Chinese but Malay and conclude that they were those who came many years ago and married the local women of South East Asian origin, probably Malay women and choose Winstedt as my support and let things be? Of course not. That would pass as scholarship but it would be cheating and I could not cheat. So, when I was taken to a terrace two story house built in 1895 and met the owners, I threw myself almost at their feet and to their mercy. As soon as I was introduced and my name announced, I said, "I give up. I thought I could find out who is a Baba and who is a Nyonya was but I was always contradicted at every turn". "Ah" said the husband, indicating me to a hup soo ee, a traditional chair with a marble seat without any cushions. "That is because you looked for the proverbial generic person. If you do that, you are bound to get as many contradictions as listeners. What you should have done is to ask any specific person the question are you a Baba, or a Nyonya. Then you'd get the answer!" "Ah, I get it. Just like the hup soo ee" I replied. "As soon as you ignore the need of any chair to have cushions you forget the need for cushions and no longer feel the hardness of your seat." I was not sure if they understood and thought I was joking or I really no longer felt how hard my seat was but I was no longer really feeling my seat. |
"What will you have for a drink" asked the wife. 
"I'll have a tea" I said, not thinking. "With or without milk" she asked, getting up to prepare the tea. "I'm sorry" explained the husband. "We don't drink plain tea in this household. I originally come from Indonesia, Medan precisely and we drink coffee there, not tea. Tea with milk and sugar is what my wife drinks because she is a Penang Nyonya and they follow the English habit". "But my mother drinks plain Chinese tea without milk or sugar as a typical Chinese nyonya". "I see" I was no longer trying to argue if nyonyas drink coffee but I seem to remember sometone telling me that there was always a pot of tea to quench the thirst of the workers in the house. But I suppose that must have been before the advent of the electric kettle and the fridge. "The way to distinguish the Nyonya is to find out what they eat at home. It's the fare that counts?" said his wife on her return from the kitchen with coffee. By that time I had really forgotten what I had asked for. "Do they have a special fare?" I asked in innocence. "Oh, I'm sorry" she replied." That was long ago. Now fast foods have taken over. But we do see those foods still - once in a way. Salt and curry fish or chicken, fried cuttle fish and banquan, lorbak, fried shrimp paste, stewed pork legs, yam and pork, salt fish curry stewed duck and yam, and so on and so forth". "With moderation, of course. Not everyone eats all those dishes nowadays". |
| "By the way,"interrupted the husband, not wanting to contradict her with criticism, "What did you say your surname was?" "Wanandi" I replied sensing something was amiss. "Wanandi? What name is that?" he insisted. There was no way out. I had to come out with my fiction. "It's a Javanese name of forest. Its a Lim which is written with two trees. You know, Lim - forest. Forest - wanandi in Javanese. I use that name to show that I came from Indonesia and because I understand that Winstedt wrote that Chinese men married Malay women. So why not they use Indonesian names?" said I meekly. "Oh?" they exploded in unison and in surprise. "Actually I came from Sumatra" the husband added solo. "My grandfather came to Penang and a marriage was arranged for him to marry someone's daughter from China and a junk was used to take her from China to marry him. I never heard of anyone marrying Malay women!" "Well" I said meekly. "Winstedt said Chinese never brought their women out South and so the Chinese men had to marry local women". My voice was getting smaller. "Haven't you heard of Hang Lee Poh who has a street after her name at Bukit China and have you not heard of Bukit China, a cemetery named in honour of the five hundred maidens brought from China to accompany the princess who was marrying a royalty in Malacca in the time of Cheng Ho?" "And could not the Chinese return to China to find a bride?" asked the wife, her expression innocent. "I understand that Princess Hang Lee Poh was a legend. A fiction." I was defiant. But so was my name and I did not tell them that. I could not say that I had to pretend that I was a baba from Indonesia and did not know local custom. It was all a fiction. If it was so, were the names baba and nyonya also fiction. The local man was Ah Ba and the woman was Ah Nya and could it be that the towkay became the Baba and his wife became a Nyonya? I withdrew from their home no wiser. Except in the belief that the term came from Penang, which was established earlier than Singapore and it applied to the Chinese here of hokkien parentage because they were predominant and they soon developed a culinary taste for certain foods with curries and thus came the babas and nyonyas that spread to Malacca and certain parts of Singapore and, like all human social beings, identification by labels was bound to contradictions now and then and my Wanandi disappeared and I became a Lim again.# Kensu Wanandi |
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___________ Editorial Note hup soo ee: rosewood chair with mother of pearl |
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___________________ The Penang File Issue 20 |