A new generation of Peranakans find a way back to their roots in Australia
Members of the Peranakan Association Australia, Melbourne, performing in a street festival in the Australian city. (Photo courtesy of Margaret de Silva)
Glenda Chi remembers the morning she could not recall the taste of her Peranakan grandmother’s curry. “I panicked,” said the Malacca-born 48-year-old, who moved to Melbourne with her family when she was 14 years old. “I went to look at recipe books. I started calling Mum.” Then Glenda, recipe in hand, went to buy the ingredients needed to make the dish. “Before long I had the keroncong music going on, and the whole house smelled like my grandmother’s kitchen,” she said. “I felt like, ‘Phew, the memory’s still there.’”
Like many immigrants, Glenda’s cultural identity — as a nyonya — had taken a back seat as she immersed herself in her adopted home. “At that time, I was looking forward to living a new life,” she said. “The Peranakan thing wasn’t in the forefront of my mind. It was more about a whole new lifestyle and settling here in Australia and becoming Australians.” But losing a precious childhood memory — and a core connection to her heritage — for that fleeting moment in 2021 made her realise it was time to do more to keep her culture alive for a new generation of Peranakans far from their ancestral homes.
Her parents, Alfred Chi and Soo Neo Tan, were already members of the Peranakan Association Australia (PAA), Melbourne — an association Alfred co-founded in 2008 — but Glenda had not been particularly active. Most of its members were retirees (80 per cent were over 60 years old), and its Sunday gatherings catered mainly for their social needs with activities like line dancing and choir practice. So Glenda set out to woo a younger generation of nyonya and baba.
Peranakan Nyonya & Baba
A photograph of Peranakan wedding couple from a museum in Singapore
Immigrants from the southern provinces of China arrived in significant numbers in the region between the 14th and 17th centuries, taking abode in the Malay Peninsula (where their descendants in Malacca, Singapore and Penang are referred to as Baba–Nyonya); the Indonesian Archipelago (where their descendants are referred to as Kiau–Seng); and Southern Thailand, primarily in Phuket, Trang, Phang Nga, Takaupa and Ranong. Intermarriage between these Chinese settlers and their Malay, Thai, Javanese or other predecessors in the region contributed to the emergence of a distinctive hybrid culture and ostensible phenotypic differences.
The Peranakans are considered a multiracial community, with the caveat that individual family histories vary widely and likewise self-identification with multiracialism as opposed to Chineseness varies widely. The Malay/Indonesian phrase "orang Cina bukan Cina" ("a not-Chinese Chinese person") encapsulates the complex relationship between Peranakan identity and Chinese identity. The particularities of genealogy and the unique syncretic culture are the main features that distinguish the Peranakan from descendants of later waves of Chinese immigrants to the region.
Peranakan Dressings
