The annotated budak

What nubile Nonyas wear

Kebaya-inspired designs from the house of Bebe Seet at the Peranakan Museum Opening Festival.

Bibiks in the old days wore loose-fitting baju panjangs (long dress) similar to these, which resemble fussier interpretations of what makciks might wear to a kenduri. Later nonyas adopted shorter and more form-fitting kebayas, turning an Indo-Malayan costume into a richly embroided suit with European lace and Oriental motifs. The broad arms on this outfit are a modern touch, as traditional kebayas usually have narrow sleeves, the better to dine with delicate fingers.   

For some, the Nonya's kebaya is a tropical counterpoint to the qípáo – a display of feminine shapes in a sheer fabric of bourgeois respectability. For modesty's sake, the light voile or organdie used to create the outer garment comes with a matching camisole or brassiere. An ornamented brooch (up to three in true blue designs) called the keronsang fastens the front of the kebaya.   

The Peranakans favour colour combinations of relative contrast, frequently juxtaposing tones that seem non-intuitive or even incompatible to a contemporary aesthetic. Lavender is overlayed on ochre. Powder pink accompanies chinois green. And olive tops display sarongs of vermillion and gold. This affection for vivid shades also marks Nonyaware, which features kamchengs and utensils with exuberant finishes of enamel that easily distinguish Peranakan porcelain from the plainer patterns of Chinese ceramics.   

A special guest at the museum was Lim Swee Kim, a Penangite in her 70s who has been sewing since she was twelve. According to Mdm Lim, it takes three years to learn the basics of making a kebaya but a lifetime to get it right. The embroidery work is reckoned to be the life (or death) of the artisan, as its design and execution entails an ability to bring out the contrast of colours between the fabric and the embroidered patterns, the fine and fragile detail of the motifs and convey a seamless sense of unity. Using a foot-powered Singer, Mdm Lim gave demonstrations of her technique. Having drawn and traced with a pencil a design on the voile, she stretches the fabric taut using a hoop. Solid blocks of colour are sewn with satin stitch, while threads in multiple shades provide transitions of colour and depth of texture. Mdm Lim still holds sway over from her shop, Kim Fashion, in Georgetown, Penang.

To make one kebaya, a tailor needs about 1.75 m of voile, which is a sheer, plain weave fabric made of highly twisted yarns of cotton. Its delicate lightness belies a resilience that allows kebayas to be handed down across generations, with some decades-old outfits appearing to have been newly sewn. Mdm Lim is said to favour the material sold by the merchants around Arab Street in Singapore. 

The models here were demonstrating how one ties the sarong but for some reason my duck got too distracted to learn the technique. Kebayas are usually worn with a batik sarong, a rectangular cloth that forms a tube into which the lady steps, pulls up and grips at the waist. The loose end is folded right over left and secured with a belt. And to complete the outfit, nonyas would don a pair of kasut manik or beaded slippers (the ladies at the show wore heels to keel) featuring toe covers with a velvet base and silk-stitched Rocaille beads of coloured glass.

I was thinking, it'd only be nice to send the ladies some pictures. That'd involve asking for their number though, which I was about to do when my duck was suddenly assaulted by a rabid rabbit...

Source: Datin Seri Endon Mahmood, The Nonya Kebaya: A Century of Straits Chinese Costume, Periplus Editions, 2004.

Enigma of a puzzle

We saw this jig-saw box at the 'Junk to Jewels' special exhibition at the Peranakan Museum, which features personal memorabilia from Babas and Nonyas who managed to keep their heirlooms intact. It seems this particular game was never concluded and the owners never knew what the result would have looked like if all the pieces were to fall into place. And instead of the regular cuboid shapes with predictable notches and tabs that mark modern day puzzles, this antique consists of odds and ends that don't really give a clue to where they might fit. Perhaps it's better that way, for the resolution of this Edwardian enigma might well herald the colours of kingdom come...

Drama queens

Flea market film

The Thieves' Market at Sungei Road yields a unique shopping experience for the island's bargain-hunters. On the bare tarmac under trees too young to offer half a shade, goods that have seen better days are displayed on canvas sheets and makeshift tables by gold-toothed crones and bare-backed uncles. Stroller and shopkeeper scrutinise each other with mutual suspicion, as wares and worthiness are scanned with eye power.

On offer are discarded books, notes of non-legal tender, wind-up cars, faded hand-me-downs, shoes that have outlived their soles, tunes in magnetic tape and objects of utter uselessness in everlasting plastic and eternal porcelain. Inspecting these singular offerings are construction crews, ladies in shaky clogs and a rambling sangha of two. Sometimes there is even a duck, whose arrival draws the dubious attention of foul sorts who attempt to peddle dark bodies on what they assume to be fleecable birdbrains.   

Like slaves to serviced apartments, the fair continues with no regard for hours. But in the cool end of the Sabbath, a screen had been erected to distract more fortunate guests from foreign lands, who while away the evening with a show of low fidelity on a leaf litter of grass and garbage. We who thrive in boxed offices have long forgotten the drama and delight of such nights in decades past. And there are few and fewer reminders of life as it was lived and loved in this city where the past no longer has a future.

Bugs in the bathroom and botanic gardens

Beetle that waved at my duck while he was being watered.

A goondu told me it's a sac spider. Heard these have very nasty bites.

Shield bug nymph and Lycosid (?) spider at the Botanic Gardens.

Probably a soldier fly (Stratiomyidae). A number of this nearly inch-long species were perching on broad-leafed shrubs by the path, pretending to be wasps.

LOLZCyrene

Details from the Peranakan Museum

A love for colours that clash with harmony and an exquisite sense of aesthetics that prizes craftsmanship and minute detail distinguish the material culture of the Baba Peranakans. The heirlooms of wealthy merchants and their humbler kin are now gathered in the former Tao Nan School at Armenian Street, which now houses the Peranakan Museum.      

One of the stars of the galleries within is a beadwork tablecloth from early 20th century Penang, featuring a tapestry of exotic birds and flowers threaded with a million minute glass beads using silk and cotton. Measuring 126 x 118 cm, this is one of the largest pieces of Peranakan beadwork in existence and was probably used in the bridal chamber as a firmament on which fine silver, blue porcelain and betel boxes were laid.

At the Heritage Conservation Centre of the National Heritage Board, a conservator works on a Srekap Laok or food cover from Palembang, South Sumatra, circa 1900. Fashioned from Pandan leaves and held together with rattan strips, the food cover is elegantly decorated with gilded phoenixes (which symbolise marriage and fertility) and murai birds (representing love). With a velvet top sewn with myriad beads and a lacquered finish, the cover would have probably been reserved for ceremonial functions such as weddings.

Phoenixes also adorn the Ranjang Kahwain or wedding bed of Quah Hong Chiam, a Penang-born Nonya who moved to Singapore after her marriage early last century. Made from gilded namwood (said to be a rare hardwood tree), the bed is replete with ornate carvings and would have been dressed with rich beadwork and embroidered curtains during its use. The wooden parts are slotted together without nails, which allow the bed to be dismantled part by part. It's said that seven of Nonya Quah's 11 children were conceived born on this very bed.

More than a mere display of artefacts, the Peranakan Museum offers a post-modern narrative of identity and experience, from the second storey that is dedicated entirely to the 12 days of festivity and fertility that mark a traditional Peranakan wedding to a dim and narrow tunnel on the third floor (which comes with an advisory for the young and vulnerable) lined with claustrophobic sackcloth and the spine-chilling wails of weeping mourners.

For the masses who question not the mutability of culture, the museum provides few answers but merely raises a hall of mirrors in its lavish accounts of the lives (and death) of true blue Babas and Nonyas. In their seamless fusion of symbols from the East and West and embrace of a homeland far removed from their forefathers, the larger-than-life faces that greet guests and bid farewell from the museum's walls do so with a note of minor pride and the flavour of mixed bloodlines.

Begging is, I believe, an arrestable offence in Singapore, as the act suggests, it seems, a failure on all fronts: by the state which is offended by an economic insult, by families who should by nature (and by statute as well) relieve the state of the onerous burden of bearing the common good, and by individuals in their self-serving inability to move with the times and adapt to structural fluidities. 

Selling packets of tissue is probably one way of getting around the law, and this end of Waterloo Street at and around the gates of the Kuanyin Temple has probably the highest concentration of paper peddlers on the island. The neighbourhood feel more like Chinatown than Chinatown proper. The latter is now sanitised and serves not its own but casual shoppers from afar. Here, dingy hotels notwithstanding, the street abounds with locals who seem part of the place and blend with the bricks, for all their coarse unseemliness.

Under the shade of abalone brollies, stall-holders in Rolexes offer wilting lotus blooms and bunches of chrysanthemum and chat with buyers who appear to be old chums. A persistent lady hangs about the doorway, seeking contributions to a higher purpose. From motorised wheelchairs, sprawled on the ground or back to the temple wall, tissues are touted every few metres, their earnest hawkers hoping for a trickle of the mercy bestowed upon devotees within the shrine.

A stone's throw away and far quieter that day stands Krishna's abode. By the door, a barefoot guard tends the jar of incense, which passer-bys of all stripes refill with devout regularity. Banking on the luck of gods, a jolly bloke nearby displayed a board of tickets to the dream of fortune. On the benches and corners below the old market, old men gather to stare and stroll in this corner of the city that has forgotten to catch up with the present.

Perhaps sensing the zen of the area, a two-wheel tourer rolled up. The watching horde set down their legs to descend upon this novelty. The rider is a Belarussian both deaf and mute, who uses laminated placards to pass his message. The uncles and aunties hover around his BMW, strapped with ancient Samsonites and stickers of transnational passage. One audibly sought a favourable combination, but alas the number of this vehicle defies the digits of local luck. Between puffs and photo-opps, the traveller repeats a silent plea for fuel to finance his onward journey to Malaysia and Thailand, where he would find his last legs and perhaps the enshrined secrets of motorcycle maintenance in the age of anxiety.

In this time of deals subprime
when luck departs and mortgage suck
there's this gated property
of desirable realty

By the woods it sits and frets
to welcome bees and biting gnats
but Frank will sell it for a song
for it comes with a free kong.

By day he sits still on your gate
watching for your fat bald pate
and should you fist shake at his plate
in your bedroom he will wait.

He's here, he's there, he's everywhere but where
he should be safe and free
in whitley's pleasant custody

In the woods, in the water, in the wardrobe by your bed
there's no safe shed when he's about
and if you see a man limp shout

Take no pic and speak no wit
for terror has a writ so big
tis not a game of win lose draw
complacent minds are our big flaw

And should you bag of crispies see
by the road or in a tree
pray leave alone tis not for thee
it's meant for a man who thirsts for ghee

Live in fear and forget not
these men of horror want your thought
to shudder shake and scream blue murder
tis much simpler than good ol' terror