33RD BABA NYONYA INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION ON SATURDAY, 20 NOVEMBER 2021
Five Months to Go
We have only five months to November before The Peranakan Association Singapore’s (TPAS) long-awaited convention hits the runway!
And we are especially delighted to announce that President Halimah Yacob has agreed to grace the convention as our Guest-of-Honour.
The Play
We are revving up on key decisions around our one-hour play, The Matriarchs.
As mentioned in my previous Monthly Letters, The Matriarchs promises to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience! The recording of this historic play will NOT be posted nor made available on any social media platform.
It will bring together, for the very first time and ONLY time, two of our most outstanding Peranakan actors. Baba Ivan Heng, the darling of Singapore contemporary theatre, will reprise his epochal English-speaking role as Emily (of Emerald Hill). Also performing will be Baba GT Lye, the only iconic matriarch of wayang Peranakan in the region. GT will appear as the fiesty Baba Malay-speaking Mrs Gan, Emily’s mother-in-law. Mrs Gan’s character, scripted entirely by GT himself, has been specially created for the convention and adapted from Nyonya Stella Kon’s enduring play, “Emily of Emerald Hill”, with the celebrated playwright’s blessings.
This play extraordinaire is directed by the award-winning Baba Alvin Tan of The Necessary Stage and produced by Baba Colin Chee for TPAS.
The Symposium
The play will symbolically open a three-hour symposium themed “Keeping the Culture Alive”, which will assemble some of the region’s most distinguished deep thinkers, scholars and practitioners of Peranakan culture.
This symposium is not to be missed by anyone with an interest in Peranakan culture.
The keynote speaker will be renowned historian, author and editor Baba Kwa Chong Guan. Baba Kennie Ting, Group Director of Museums, National Heritage Board (NHB), will moderate the first panel discussion on “Peranakan Culture & Community: Challenges, Pitfalls & Opportunities”.
Kennie will be supported by panellists including the highly esteemed Professor Wang Gungwu, educator, scholar and historian with the National University Singapore; the urbane Associate Professor Farish A Noor from the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies and School of Humanities’ Department of History, Nanyang Technological University; Dr Vivienne Wee, noted anthropologist and director of Ethnographica; and Chong Guan.
Assistant Professor Nala H Lee, Department of English Language & Literature, National University of Singapore, will be the moderator for the second panel session on the topic, “Fading Heritage? Language, Literature & Rituals”. Panellists lined up are wayang Peranakan doyen Baba GT Lye; award-winning Peranakan author Nyonya Josephine Chia; well-known Baba Malay writer and language teacher Baba Kenneth Y K Chan; and Baba Pillay P Krishnan, Committee Member, Peranakan Indian (Chitty Melaka) Association Singapore.
Baba John Teo, NHB Deputy Director (Research), will moderate the third and last panel on “Living Traditions: Style, Food and Wayang”. On this panel are the elegant Nyonya Jackie Yoong, Curator (Asian Fashion & Textiles and Peranakan Art), Asian Civilisations Museum and The Peranakan Museum; household name Baba Raymond Wong, kebaya designer and embroiderer; award-winning food writer and author Baba Christopher Tan; and Baba Alvin Teo, President of Gunong Sayang Association (GSA).
Aim of the Convention: A Sustainable Living Culture
In my recent discussions with Chong Guan about the context of his keynote address for the symposium, we realised we shared the same thoughts on the sustainability of Peranakan culture.
Our culture, as our forebears knew it, reached its zenith in the late 1800s and remained there up to the pre-war years. It has been in rapid decline since the Japanese Occupation though we probably saw some hints of its past glory in the 1950s and ‘60s. But key elements of our culture have been fast disappearing due to rapid socio-economic changes in South-east Asia.
TPAS is not trying to revive the culture; it is just not possible to replicate the circumstances under which it had once flourished. What we are trying to do now is to faithfully record all that we can about it, celebrate it, and bring greater awareness to it.
More importantly, we can try to gently sustain some parts of the culture, notably the community’s key values and various cultural markers so that they can be transmitted to the next generation. They, in turn, can hopefully find relevance by contemporising the culture.
This is what we aim to do at the convention: to identify these still green shoots of our culture that can be nurtured by our young into a sustainable living culture.
Your Support is Needed! Tickets on Sale in August
We hope that Peranakans and non-Peranakans alike will rally around the association by being part of this convention when we open for participation in August.
Only a very limited number of tickets will be available for in-person (live) participation at the Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre (SCCC), to comply with safe distancing measures. But tickets for our virtual (live streaming) convention will be open to all through a designated ticketing agency.
I would like to close this month’s letter by thanking our partners for this convention – The Peranakan Museum, GSA and the Peranakan Indian (Chitty Melaka) Association Singapore. We also thank our supporters – NHB, Singapore Tourism Board and the SCCC. In addition, Nyonya Gwen Ong, my co-organiser who is TPAS’s Head of Events, and our other volunteers who will make the convention happen!
Until then, please be safe, be of good cheer and keep the flame alight.
Blessings
Colin Chee
Keeping the Culture Alive
30 June 2021