V. A. POGADAEV

Candidate of Historical Sciences

University of Malaya (Kuala Lumpur)

Keywords: Malaysia, native Malaysian Chinese, "peranakan", "baba-nenya"

  
  
 Baba and Nenya,all in red and blue,  
 Run to get caught in the sheer sun.  
 The purchases are done, everyone sits down at the table  
 And takes a fiery gulp of mi goreng*. 
  
 

Vsevolod Vlaskin

When I read about "Peranaki meat" in one of the Russian-translated foreign travel guides to Malaysia (I think it was Le Fute), I couldn't help but smile. Well, what can this phrase say to an ordinary tourist who is not experienced in the intricacies of Malaysian cuisine? Meat in African, meat in Kazakh, meat in French - this is more or less clear. But meat in Peranaki seems, at first glance, some abracadabra, although there is a whole culture behind it. And this phrase, of course, needs clarification.

Peranakan means "born here"in Malay. This is the name of all Chinese people born in Malaysia. But the Chinese, who were born here and adopted elements of the local Malay culture, are called "baba-nenya" ("baba" - about a man, "nenya" - about a woman). These two concepts coincide only partially (every "baba-nenya" is a "peranakan", but not every "peranakan" is a "baba-nenya"). However, in everyday life, these two concepts are often identified: after all, most Huaqiao (not "baba-nenya"), although they were born here, still call themselves Chinese. Thus, Peranak cuisine is Baba-nenya cuisine.

The first Chinese arrived on the territory of modern Malaysia in the early 15th century during the Ming Dynasty with the fleet of the great Chinese Admiral Chen Ho. At that time, a powerful Malacca Sultanate was formed around the port city of Malacca, the rise of which was associated with the development of international trade in the Strait of Malacca zone, successful conquering warriors and the adoption of Islam. Malacca itself was called the "Babylon of the East" - so many languages and nationalities mixed here. And Jong Ho's visit to Malacca wasn't a surprise.

* Mie goreng, literally "fried noodles", is a popular dish in Malaysia and some other Southeast Asian countries.

Out of curiosity, he was on a delicate mission, bringing the Chinese princess Han Li Po to the Sultan of Malacca as his wife, along with several hundred young men and women from noble families who were supposed to brighten up her stay in her new homeland.

The Chinese settled in Malacca initially in the area of the big hill, which is now called Chinese (Bukit Cina). Many men later married Malay women, beginning the creation of a new Baba-nenya community and an original culture that combines elements of Chinese and local Malay cultures. The Baba Nenya are not Muslims, they still practice traditional Chinese cults, worship ancestral spirits, and culturally follow many Chinese traditions that have already been lost among the non-Baba Nenya Chinese. Their beliefs are a mixture of Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism, although there are now many Christians among the Baba Nen. From Malacca, the Baba Nenya spread to Penang and Singapore (formerly part of Malaysia), but the classic Baba Nenya culture, of course, remains Malacca.

At first, I was interested in the Baba-nenya cuisine, but my first attempts to get acquainted with it were unsuccessful. The first time I went to Malacca with a Malay friend-he decided to help me and drove me in his car. But when we went to a well-known Peranak restaurant, the Malay refused to eat Peranak dishes, even though he was assured that they were "halal" (i.e. allowed for Muslims). It was inconvenient for me to eat alone, so I contented myself with taking pictures. The second time I took a bus to Malacca was just in time for Chinese New Year, and all the restaurants were closed.

Some time passed, and I decided that I would like to get to know the culture in general, meet with the living "baba-nenya", talk about them, about their past, and at the same time-and with their cuisine. But you can't just walk into someone else's house - you need your own Virgil, and it turned out to be my Russian-language student, Chinese Ong Sue Yin. Her father is a merchant who owns a small shop, and among his clients is "baba-nenya".

And here I am again in Malacca. First we visited Ong's father to pay our respects to the man who had helped me, and then to my aunt, with whom we later spent the night and who was very much involved in the venture. Since the meetings with the right people were scheduled for a later time, we went to visit the Baba Nenya Heritage Museum. This private museum is located in three buildings belonging to the same Chinese family. The owner, we are told, currently resides in Singapore and is managed by his distant relatives here. This is a typical house of a wealthy Chinese man in Malacca in the Chinese Baroque style. Two double doors lead to the house. The exterior doors are free-swinging, carved teak wood, and the interior doors are heavy, which are open during the day and locked at night. Two large lanterns hang on the side of the doors - one with hieroglyphs denoting happiness and prosperity, and the other with the owner's name.

The outer door was also locked, and we had to use the bell. A tall, rather pretty Chinese woman in a baba-nenya costume (a long Malay kain skirt and kebaya blouse) asked about the purpose of our visit before opening the door. We bought tickets, and another woman in the same suit took us around the house, droning on memorized (and generally not very informative) the text is in English. The interior of the rooms is designed to reproduce the interior of a rich residential building. At one time," baba-nenya " were quite rich and influential people in business. Heavy Greco-Roman columns, black wood furniture decorated with carvings, lacquer screens with mother-of-pearl, rocking chairs made of rattan are striking.

Some pieces of furniture - tables, chairs, cabinets, mirrors - bear traces of Dutch and English influences from the Victorian era. There are porcelain dishes in the cabinets. Baba-nenya's typical colors are green, pink, dark blue, and yellow. Baba-Nenya porcelain features-

It differs from traditional Chinese and has a pattern: there are never any images of people or animals on it. It is also decorated with plant ornaments, birds, and insects. Previously, dishes were ordered from Guangdong Province in China. Imagine what a long journey it was in those days from China to the Malacca Peninsula! In addition, the dishes should be in perfect order - no cracks, no nicks. The Chinese never use defective dishes, because they believe that it brings bad luck.

At the back of the house, you suddenly find an open courtyard where you can bask in the sun in good weather. And in the bedroom, I was fascinated by the hole in the floor, which, as it turned out, was just above the entrance of the house. The owner could look through it and find out who came to him. And if the guest was uninvited, like a persistent beggar, they could also pour a tub of water on him. Although the rooms were all antiques, they gave the impression of being residential. This impression was reinforced by the bustle of adults and children running around in the back rooms and in the courtyard. At parting, our guide even treated us to Chinese tea and willingly allowed us to take pictures of her, although it was strictly forbidden to take pictures in the museum itself.

But now it was time to meet with the first representative of the Baba-nenya community. It was Mrs. Vee. We drove up to a modern "terrace" house - that's what they call separate two-story sections-apartments that are stuck to each other. The first thing that caught my eye was the home altar (we saw it later in every house we visited). This is a high table (sometimes a shelf), draped to the floor with a piece of red cloth, embroidered with gold threads (images of lions and dragons). On the table are vessels with smoking incense sticks, several small single-colored (white or blue) cups with offerings. On the wall is a portrait of the last deceased owner of the house.

Mrs. Vee, a dry, energetic middle-aged woman, was busy making pineapple cookies , a traditional baba nenya treat that can only be bought in Malacca. She was making it for sale, so there were trays of ready-made or still-raw cookies in every corner. Nevertheless, she also managed to talk about herself. It turned out that she did not know her ancestry very well, thus confirming the opinion of the historian Victor Parcell, expressed in his book "The Chinese in Malaysia", that it is difficult to trace the history of Baba-nen's development due to the lack of documents, including a marriage certificate. Ms. Vi repeated several times that "we are Baba - nenya," but she could not say where the family came from. All she knows is that her father worked as a bus driver, and her mother made products from bamboo and palm leaves, and that they used to live in the town of Pulau Gadung. By the way, her parents had thirteen children, and she has only four.

She herself cooks, and her husband raises chickens and sells eggs in the bazaar. Once they had beautiful, almost antique things - some furniture and clothing, as well as porcelain, but all were sold in difficult years. True, the wedding suit still remained, and she would have liked to show it off, but her friend borrowed it for some performance for a while. Traditional Chinese costumes, according to her, "baba-nenya" are worn for weddings, on ordinary days they go in simple European clothes, but on holidays women wear a Malay costume - kain and kebaya. The men, however, except for the sarong, did not learn anything from the Malays. Ms. V brought us her modest holiday wardrobe to show off. During our conversation, a butterfly flew into the house through an open window. "Fortunately," the hostess commented, and I was struck by the coincidence - my grandmother in the village said exactly the same thing when a butterfly or bird flew into the house. At parting, Mrs. V gave us her pineapple cookies, which were really delicious.

And one more important thing - we spoke Malay. "Baba-nenya", as a rule, does not speak Chinese. Their main language is broken Malay, but now, of course, English has been added to it. However, sometimes Malay in their mouths sounds completely incomprehensible. The fact is that once they began to rearrange syllables in words so that they would not be understood by Malays. For example, malay-

The Japanese word ketawa (laugh) became waketa. And the Malay phrase mari kita cakap terbalik (let's talk by turning the words around) sounds like rima taki kapca lekterba. Replacing a with o and adding the word au at the end also complicates the understanding of their speech.

The baba-nenya are very adept at composing Malay quatrains-pantoons (like our ditties). And if their usual speech is full of many mistakes and errors, then they compose and perform pantoons according to all the rules, having won the recognition of the Malays themselves:

  
  
 Singapore is called a new city 
   by everyone,  
 and Mr. Raffles rules 
   it by law.  
 You are my jasmine! Champaka 
   my blue!  
 You are like a delicate flower 
   in the dragon's teeth. 
  
 

Mr. Li, who we visited next, is retired. He lives in a small but separate house that he inherited from his parents. He's an old bachelor. He says that his father was born here, and his grandfather came from China and married Malaika, so the family dynasty has no long history. He worked as a truck driver in the army. He speaks Malay, English, and a little Chinese. According to him, the Baba-nenya traditions are preserved, but not everyone follows them. The room has a traditional altar, photos of parents. When asked if he was bored by himself, he said that he works for the Baba-Nenya Association , a public organization that aims to preserve the culture of the community and publishes a special magazine. In addition, he often helps his sister, who owns a small restaurant. Since we were going to have lunch soon and finally (!) taste the Peranak cuisine, we asked what dishes he would recommend to us.

Mr. Li became very animated and talked enthusiastically about Peranak cuisine. This cuisine, like Malay, is very spicy with a great variety of spices. Peranak cuisine takes a long time to prepare, but the result always lives up to expectations. They eat "baba-nenya", just like the Malays, they don't use their hands or chopsticks. But wands are available in every family and perform a ritual role. They, for example, lie on the altar during prayer or during a wedding ceremony, reminding "baba-nenya" of their roots. Sticks are carefully preserved and passed down from generation to generation. Our conversation with Mr. Li whetted our appetites, and we hurried to the same Peranakan restaurant on Jonkers Street that I had tried so unsuccessfully to enter earlier. The restaurant building was once a typical home of the rich "baba-nenya". Massive doors, above the entrance hieroglyphs meaning "happiness" and "prosperity". A spacious hall with an altar, ancestral portraits, marble floors, teak sofas and armchairs. After crossing the high threshold, we find ourselves in a restaurant hall-it probably used to be a living room. The hall is quite crowded, there are a lot of foreigners, but there are still free tables. A waitress hurries up to us, sits us down, and brings us a menu designed to look like an album. Following Mr. Li's advice, we take duck soup and papaya in pepper broth (as the waitress suggested). And, of course, a plate of blue rice. It was really delicious and not at all like Malay or Chinese cuisine. In a word, Peranak cuisine!

Thomas Stamford Raffles (1781-1826) was an English colonial leader and founder of Singapore.

The food tasting continued in the evening, when the two main streets of Chinatown turned into a vibrant bazaar and a huge open-air restaurant. This time we tried chicken with rice balls, and for dessert the so-called ABC (ABC). This is an abbreviation of the Malay phrase air batu campur (mixed ice). Externally, this dish resembles ice cream. Frankly speaking-for an amateur. Very sweet.

We spent the night with my student's aunt, Ong Yong Choo, in a terraced house similar to the one Ms. Wee lives in. My aunt, a full-blooded Chinese woman, showed us albums with photos of her relatives. When I was surprised to see that some of them were dressed in kain and kebaya like "neni", she explained that in the 1950s, "baba-nenya" clothing was in fashion among Chinese people (especially Chinese women), who considered it a special chic to appear in kain and kebaya on a holiday or weekend days.

The next morning, my aunt took us to breakfast in a cafe owned by Baba, where the baba-nenas like to gather for a cup of tea or coffee. We had rice porridge with pork slices for breakfast, and toast with srikaya (jam made with eggs, coconut and butter) was served with coffee. At the cafe, my aunt met some friends who invited us to visit them, and when we were already there, we met their neighbor, Mrs. Wang, who, when she learned about the purpose of our stay in Malacca, proudly announced that her family was already in the seventh generation of" Baba Nenya". She even showed wedding photos of her son Cheong Soon Lai, who, as it turned out, currently works at the Malaysian Embassy in Moscow. An amazing coincidence!

The wedding ceremony at Baba-nenya, as Ms. Wang said, is very complex and sophisticated. "Baba-nenya" consider adults only those who have a family. Basically, the wedding is typically Chinese, but with elements of Malay. Once the wedding lasted up to twelve days, but now no more than three. The day and hour of the wedding are set according to the horoscope of the young, and the invitation card used to be a betel pepper leaf with areca palm nut - "baba-nenya", like the Malays, liked to indulge in betel gum. Each day before the wedding has its own name.

The wedding, like the Malays, takes place in the bride's house, the main ceremony near a specially constructed altar of three tables standing on top of each other. On the sides of the altar are long red candles with images of a dragon and a bird cut out of foil. Between the candles - a vessel with a large incense stick. Young people sit on upside-down vessels for measuring rice. The symbolism is obvious - the new family will never have problems with food. Next to the mirror-their life should be just as clean and bright. On a small table - ruler, razor and scales. The ruler represents the wisdom of judgment, the razor reminds you of the caution that must be observed in life, and, finally, libra - about the need to be fair to each other.

During the festive dinner, the bride and groom exchange pantoons, professional Malay dancers are invited to dance, and the toastmaster (and this is again the influence of Malay culture) must be either a Malay or a Chinese dressed in a Malay costume! (I must say that dancing and pantoons are now a rarity even at a Malay wedding, which is increasingly acquiring an Islamic, and in fact Middle Eastern flavor.) The clothes of the young people, with the exception of the bride's headdress, are of purely Chinese origin.

The funeral ceremony is just as complex. Whatever "baba-nenya" may have been in life, they die like real Chinese. One of my acquaintances "baba" suddenly disappeared for a long time, and when he showed up, he said that he had participated in the funeral of his uncle. The coffin was kept in the house for five days, and all relatives had to stay awake until 9 o'clock in the morning, surrounded by candles and aromatic incense. "We went to bed when others were just getting up," he said. On the 49th day, everyone gathered again for the wake-prayers were read by the invited monks. My friend observed a month of mourning (no bars or parties!). It's still, thank God, he's just a nephew. Children of the deceased observe annual mourning and always wear black or dark clothing at this time. Few families follow this tradition, but the descendants of one of Malaysia's most famous "babas" have made it their duty to do so. As they say, the origin obliges.

While we were talking, Mrs. Wang's husband, Mr. Chong, came in. He was on his plot (we would say-in the country) and brought fruit-rambutans, as well as some greenish shoots, which, as it turned out later, were inflorescences of clove spice. We met. He's a retired ex-cop. Unlike his talkative wife, he is shy and taciturn. However, I smiled when I learned that I was from Russia. Now this country, thanks to the son's stay there, is no stranger to his family. Then I noticed with sadness that the era of "Baba-nenya" is becoming a thing of the past, traditions are being lost, rituals are being forgotten... Weddings are now more and more modern, and a real wedding suit is still to be found...

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