Domestic Space

The bedroom of Hock Gwee Thian’s house in Singapore: Inside an intricately designed Peranakan home

A unique and vibrant culture has taken root in the bustling streets of Singapore, whose members are known as Peranakans. The term ‘peranakan’ originates from the Malay word ‘anak,’ meaning child and has come to signify being locally born.1 Yet it crucial to mention the freighted task of defining the term ‘peranakan,’ for their shifting political and cultural dynamics that have come to characterise this community has led to a rich and multifaceted history. In fact, in Southeast Asia there are Peranakan Indians who are Hindu and called Chitty Melaka, as well as Peranakan Indian Muslims called Jawi Pekan, in addition to Eurasian Peranakans and Peranakan Chinese, to name a few.

However, this discussion will focus on the Chinese Peranakans in Singapore. The history of the Chinese Peranakans in Singapore traces back to the arrival of traders from the southern province of China, who settled in the Malay Archipelago. Not only did they establish a trade network, but they married local Malay women. This intermarriage gave rise to a unique blend of cultural practices, traditions and languages.2 After Sir Stamford Raffles signed a treaty in 1834 which led to the establishment of trading posts in Singapore, these traders migrated to Singapore and left an indelible mark on its architectural landscape. The shophouses, bungalows, and mansions they established in Singapore reflected the rich tapestry of cultures and traditions in which the Peranakan Chinese community engaged with throughout their history.3

Indeed, one way to explore the rich history of the Chinese Peranakan community is by taking a closer look at their homes, which also helps reflect a relationship between identity, space and architecture. The Peranakan home is a tangible symbol of the cultural fusion that defines Singapore. These homes are often built with a blend of Chinese, Malay and European architectural influences, which reflect the multicultural fabric of Singapore and the peaceful coexistence of various ethnic and cultural groups. However, there is no architectural style that can be exclusively attributed to the Peranakan Chinese, like the Peranakan people themselves, housing developed with an array of variations each reflecting a specific place, time and economic circumstance in which it was created. Therefore, this discussion will look at the memoir of William Gwee Thian Hock’s whose narration provides an illustration on how identity was forged in their living space. Yet, as one steps into the world of the Peranakan home, it is a complicated space, thus this discussion will also focus solely on the bedroom as an example of how space and identity were harmoniously woven together.

 

Figure 1. An extraordinary presentation of a bridal suite in a Peranakan home.4

William Gween Thian Hock’s memoir, A Nyonya Mosaic, is set in Singapore in 1910 and narrates the childhood of his Nyonya mother through her own eyes. Throughout there are scenes of happy celebrations, as well as disease and death. Hock’s scenes of a wedding are particularly intricate and colourful, and does well to shed life on the lived experiences in these homes. Moreover, figure 1 helps capture the narrative in Hock’s memoir by presenting a reconstructed Chinese Peranakan bedroom, arranged to recreate the ambiance of a wedding day for the bride and groom. Together, these two sources illustrate a contact zone where a diverse array of cultures intersect and interact.

As stated in Hock’s memoir, ‘the bridal room was on of the focal points’ and as figure 1 illustrates significant preparation and thought had gone into its spatial layout.5. Figure 1 is a striking statement to the intricate beauty that characterises a Chinese Peranakan bedroom. Within this frame, one can witness a unique cultural fusion of Chinese, Malay and European traditions blending together to create a functional space. For example, the two canopy beds display European influence, whereas its ornate carvings are quintessentially Chinese.

Hock notes ‘I was rather taken aback when few days before [the wedding] I discovered that the beautifully carved wooden ranjang loskan would bot be used for the wedding. I have always associated this bed with weddings and there were even people who knew it by the name of ranjang kahwen (wedding bed). It seemed that it was no longer fashionable to use this ornate bed, and in its place, a Victorian four-poster brass bed had been chosen … the embroidered curtain around it, the embroidered bedsheet, the embroidered pillowcases and all thh other trimmings that festooned the bed had transformed it into a most charming wedding bed.’6

Indeed, in figure 1 on closer inspection ornate wood carvings are present and are quintessentially Chinese. For example, one can locate auspicious motifs such as dragons, phoenixes, magpies and mandarin ducks which signify harmony between the marrying couple. Furthermore, another interesting aspect of this bridal suite is the carpet. These rich tapestry-like carpets are referred to as ‘Irish carpets,’ which were produced in factories owned by Scottish textile manufactures in Ireland. They are made of velvet and have a smooth finish with saturated colours. The colours are exuberant, replicating the hues of tropical flowers that are important to Chinese culture.7 This spatial arrangement highlights their diverse identity.

It is interesting to note Hock’s statement that, ‘it seems so unfortunate that a wedding so oriental in flavour should suddenly find a western touch in it just for the pride of being “modernised”‘8 Hock’s statement reflects the disappointment felt in witnessing the groom’s attire change to a western-style lounge suit. But as stated in Elizabeth LaCouture’s influential work Dwelling in the World: Family, House and Home in Tianjin China, 1860-1960, this was a symbol of modernity. For individuals living in a Chinese urban home ‘modernity was not defined through Western and Chinese temporalities and cultures. To be modern meant to be comfortable dwelling in both of these worlds.’9 This perspective is crucial as it shows how such a community navigated their identities in a changing world. Clearly, they drew from their cultural heritage while incorporating aspects of Western culture, not as a contradiction, but as a means of adapting to the complexities of modern, cosmopolitan life.

This brief exploration of a traditional Peranakan wedding and the Peranakan bedroom effectively highlights how this community accepted, adopted and assimilated diverse cultures to form a cosmopolitan community of their own, based on their understanding of the world and conceptions of the modern.

  1. David HJ Neo, Sheau-Shi Ngo, Jenny Gek Koon Heng, ‘Popular imaginary and cultural constructions of the Nonya in Peranakan Chinese culture of the Straits Settlements,’ Ethnicities, 20:1 (2020), p.25. [↩]
  2. Patricia Ann Hardwick, ‘”Neither Fish nor Fowl”: Constructing Peranakan Identity in Colonial and Post-colonial Singapore,’ Folklore Forum, 38:1 (2008), p. 37. [↩]
  3. Roland G., Knapp, Peranakan Chinese home: Art and culture in daily life (2017), p.6. [↩]
  4. Figure 1, ‘Image of a reconstructed Peranakan bridal suite,’ in Roland G., Knapp, Peranakan Chinese home: Art and culture in daily life (2017), p.142. [↩]
  5. William Gwee Thian Hock, A Nyonya Mosaic: Memoirs of a Peranakan Childhood, (2013), p. 76. [↩]
  6.   Hock, A Nyonya Mosaic, p. 78. [↩]
  7. Knapp, Peranakan Chinese home, p.144.  [↩]
  8. Hock, A Nyonya Mosaic, p. 104. [↩]
  9. Elizabeth LaCouture, Dwelling in the World: Family, House and Home in Tianjin China, 1860-1960, (New York, 2021), p. 153. [↩]

Chinese Domestic Spaces: an analysis of how washing machines liberated women and raised living standards

The domestic space within Chinese households has changed drastically because of socialism and communism, but not all credit can be given the to the change of politics. Instead, credit must be given to the washing machine, which significantly reduced the time in which household chores took women in particular to complete. Although the introduction of the washing machine was an economic development created by the government, the extent in which it allowed women to become liberated could arguably not have been a part of the economic plan. However, consumption overpowered the gender dynamic set out within Chinese households and the washing machine and other household products such as the sewing machine and electric cooker succeeded in making households less restrictive.1

These types of changes became more common within East Asia because of the west’s consumerism influencing countries such as Japan, China and even the Philippines. These new inventions were not only taking over the world but also the domestic roles within households.  ‘The daily American newspapers, such as the Manila Daily Bulletin, Manila Times, and Cable news quickly delivered new ideas to Philippine cities through foreign products and lifestyles.’2 Change was beginning to take root within private spaces, a place which had been somewhat difficult to change through colonisation, but western products had unintentionally shifted the foundations of domestic spaces. Through the use of advertisements these western products enabled households to normalise the convenience and necessity of buy washing machines because they were labelled as sanitary and affordable.

‘The pasig river laundry is bound to go out of business. No one can afford to be without the Boss washing machine. It does the work, saves the clothes, is sanitary and economical.’3

By the 1980’s washing machines and televisions became an expected gift within wedding ceremonies because they were classed a essential products for a newly weds first home. This meant that even rural communities within China were experiencing the western influence and the extent of which this influence was modernising China. Not only that but by introducing televisions to the household, there would be no escape from advertisements. Newspapers, magazines, and televisions would become an essential product for the government to boost their economy through ensuring that people would be convinced to buy these products. However, as stated, it could be argued that the result of promoting these products was not to influence a change within the domestic space, which would shift the expectations placed on women. The washing machine was intended to benefit women and make their housework less time consuming, but the free time in which it provided enabled women to create lifestyle changes. They became restless and looked for employment and because they were able to watch television, a whole new world opened up to them.

‘The need for increased production and availability of consumer durables has been overtly linked by the political leadership to women’s liberation and to the widespread desire among the Chinese citizenry to raise their standard of living.’4

The issue that China perhaps did not predict by boosting their economy through western products was that by allowing households to purchase and watch television, they were enabling them to observe other lifestyles within different spaces throughout the world. This enabled a new demand for better living conditions and social standards. Therefore, the changes presented within the domestic space caused people to become restless because they wanted the same changes to happen outside the home. Furthermore, was even more predominant during Chinas decollectivization period which resulted in less work for villagers because of their work being mostly farm based. The lack of social activity outside of the home resorted in villagers remaining in the home. ‘Noticeably, Xiajia residents spent their increasingly abundant spare time almost entirely in their homes, either in front of the television or at a mahjong table, because there was so little to do in the community.’5 The lack of activities within communities caused households to become dependent on televisions and therefore, this enabled the influence of consumerism to take hold of households which would change not only the expectations place on gender, but also the traditional layout of Chinese homes. How they cleaned, cooked and socialised shifted because products such as the washing machine, television and electric cooker changed the dynamic of housework.

  1. Jean C. Robinson, Of Women and Washing Machines: Employment, Housework, and the Reproduction of Motherhood in Socialist China (The China Quarterly, 1985) pp.40-43. [↩]
  2. Kiyoko Yamaguchi, The New “American” Houses in the Colonial Philippines and the Rise of the Urban Filipino Elite (Philippine Studies, 2006) p.419. [↩]
  3. The Cablenews (1905) p.3. [↩]
  4. Jean C. Robinson, Of Women and Washing Machines: Employment, Housework, and the Reproduction of Motherhood in Socialist China (The China Quarterly, 1985) p.45. [↩]
  5. Yunxiang Yan, Private life Under Sosialism: Love, intimacy, and family change in a Chinese village 1949-1999 (Stanford University Press, 2003) p.29. [↩]

The American Clubhouse and Identity in the Philippines

In 1898, after U.S. forces had invaded during the Spanish-American War, the Philippines was ceded as a concessionary territory to the U.S. The American colonial period lasted until 1946. During this era, there was an increase in immigration to the Philippines, as U.S. forces attempted to “create a country and a people in the American image”.[1] Kiyoko Yamaguchi examines the Philippine architecture built under this influence, and argues that buildings constructed during this time labelled as ‘American’ were not built by U.S. colonisers, but by the elite urban Filipinos in what they interpreted to be the ‘American’ style.[2] In actuality, immigrants from America isolated themselves and their community through social clubs and viewed their residence there as temporary.[3] This post will examine how these colonial residents became uniformly ‘American’ by examining the spaces, both perceived and physical, in and around exclusive social club houses in the Philippines.

[4]

[5]

Much of the history written about the Philippines relies on oral and biographical histories, mainly originating from the memories of  American immigrants who grew up there during the colonial period. Consequently, narratives of the American lifestyle during the 1920s and 1930s in particular are often filled with idealistic notions of “serenity”, and take the social segregation of Filipinos and Americans as the norm.[6] Examine this 1939 excerpt by Walter Robb:

“Filipinos were accustomed enough to dealing with strangers… On their part the Americans displayed a remarkable adaptability; without destroying what existed, they set to building upon it and to patterning for the Philippines a government of the American type that was effective against a Latin background…”[7]

Or view these quotes from Merv Simpson, manager at the Corinthian Plaza in Manila, talking about his life in the Philippines in the 1930s:

“It was a peaceful life. We had parties, or at least my parents had parties, but nobody got bombed, at least as I can remember… Before the war we didn’t play with Filipino kids or associate with them very much. It wasn’t any snobbish thing; we just didn’t do it.”

“It was pretty sheltered. We went to the American School. No Filipino kids [but some] mestizos… I’d ask my mother – I’d want to go to the Polo Club, it would be Saturday morning – so she’d give me a peso. That was big dough back then. I’d take a taxi out there… At the Polo Club we used to swim, badminton, bowling, tennis – it was a nice life. We would just sign [for the bill]…”[8]

Recorded in this nature, the colonial spaces of the Philippines become subject to consumption through sentimental regard, which Vicente L. Rafael argues allows for a domestication of “what is seen as native and natural into aspects of the colonial, which is at once also national.”[9] He maintains that through these types of historical accounts, colonialism is invested with a sense of domesticity, allowing for the pervasiveness of Western gendered and racialized notions into the colonial experience.[10] Thus, the colonial experience recounted here simultaneously normalises and sentimentalises the racial divisions of the American period. One of the key ways in which this occurs is through mentions of the social clubs that American residents in the Philippines engaged in, but which Filipinos were barred from.

Yamaguchi recognises this, and through her discussions develops the idea of an ‘imagined America’ in the Philippines. She explores how the self-perception of U.S. citizens living in the Philippines evolved by analysing the exclusive social club houses set up by the colonial American community. Many of the Americans who arrived in the Philippines were second- or third-generation European immigrants to the U.S. themselves, and so their American identities became strengthened by the role they played in these colonial communities.[11]

“The Americans were not Filipinized by living in the Philippines; they became more self-consciously and assertively American, a fact most apparent in the club premises, where they confined themselves in particular buildings.” [12]

Yamaguchi argues that these exclusive clubhouses prescribed an American “uniformity” to the blurred identities of these colonial residents.[13] The diversity of the cultural backgrounds of these Americans meant it was likely they would have never befriended one another if they had met in the U.S.. Because of their location in the Philippines, and through the sociality of the spaces offered through membership to these clubhouses (spaces which became the metaphorical petri dish for colonial politics), these differences faded in the face of attachment to a specific U.S. identity.[14] The spaces within the clubhouse also solidified other identities, namely, that of the Filipinos who they excluded. The Filipino residents in these areas were barred from membership despite the fact that many Filipino urban elites were often just as wealthy as their American counterparts.[15] This exclusion also sought to define the Filipino identity categorisation, vis-à-vis what was not considered American.

Thus, the architecture of this period reflects the nature of the changing social groups in the Philippines, and articulates Filipino elite ambitions and interpretations of ‘American-ness’. These social clubs allowed for the standardisation of the American imperial lifestyle and identity, whilst simultaneously sentimentalising a social hierarchy based on race.

 

[1] McCallus, Joseph P. (2010) The MacArthur Highway and Other Relics of American Empire in the Philippines, Potomac Books. (page number unavailable).

[2] Yamaguchi, Kiyoko. “The New ‘American’ Houses in the Colonial Philippines and the Rise of the Urban Filipino Elite.” Philippine Studies 54, no. 3 (January 1, 2006): p. 413-14

[3] Ibid, p. 447

[4] Best, Jonathan (1994) Philippine album: American era photographs 1900-1930, Makati: Bookmark, p. 232

[5] ‘Lodge History: The Manila Elks Lodge 761 in its 114th Year’, https://www.manilaelks.org/about-us/manila-elks-lodge-761/lodge-history/ [Accessed 28/10/21]

[6] McCallus (2010) (page number unavailable)

[7] Ibid (page number unavailable)

[8] Ibid (page number unavailable)

[9] Rafael, Vicente L. (2000) ‘Colonial Domesticity: Engendering Race at the Edge of Empire, 1899-1912,’ White love and other events in Filipino history, Durham, NC: Duke University Press (page number unavailable)

[10] Ibid (page number unavailable)

[11] Yamaguchi, (2006) p. 424-26

[12] Ibid, p. 426

[13] Ibid, p. 425

[14] Yamaguchi, (2006) p. 426; Rafael, (2000) p. 56

[15] Yamaguchi, (2006) p. 431

Bibliography

  • Best, Jonathan (1994) Philippine album: American era photographs 1900-1930, Makati: Bookmark
  • McCallus, Joseph P. (2010) The MacArthur Highway and Other Relics of American Empire in the Philippines, Potomac Books. (page numbers unavailable)*
  • Rafael, Vicente L. (2000) ‘Colonial Domesticity: Engendering Race at the Edge of Empire, 1899-1912,’ White love and other events in Filipino history, Durham, NC: Duke University Press (page numbers unavailable)**
  • Yamaguchi, Kiyoko. “The New ‘American’ Houses in the Colonial Philippines and the Rise of the Urban Filipino Elite.” Philippine Studies 54, no. 3 (January 1, 2006): 412–51
  • ‘Lodge History: The Manila Elks Lodge 761 in its 114th Year’, https://www.manilaelks.org/about-us/manila-elks-lodge-761/lodge-history/ [Accessed 28/10/21]

*Limited access available to book online due to lack of institutional access, quotes taken from ‘Look inside’ excerpt available on Amazon listing: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B005CWJMFU/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 [Accessed 28/10/21]

**Limited access available to book online due to lack of institutional access, quotes taken from excerpt found through Project Muse: https://muse.jhu.edu/chapter/2618760 [Accessed 28/10/21]