Tickets for the 33rd Baba Nyonya International Convention, 20 November 2021
Last month, we announced that the sale of our tickets for the convention would be launched in August.
We are hoping to launch it after National Day and the scheduled update by Singapore’s COVID-19 Task Force. It is important we try our best to manage the uncertainties that continue to bedevil our planning.
What is certain is that the convention will be held on 20 November 2021, come what may.
Last year, we pivoted the event into a hybrid convention – having it for a very limited on-site live audience at the Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre (SCCC) while simultaneously live streaming it to a larger online (virtual) audience.
As I have mentioned several times before, the convention comprises two elements – the play, The Matriarchs, and the symposium, themed Keeping the Culture Alive. We have been blessed with a stellar cast of performers, scholars and cultural practitioners.
However, we are also planning for other possible scenarios should circumstances turn unexpectedly bad as we get closer to November.
If we are compelled to make any last-minute changes, we appeal to you to come alongside us. As with The Peranakan Ball that was downsized, you know we are committed to do the right thing.
We continue to count on your understanding and patience.
The Passion and Angst of Peranakan Identity
We were pleasantly overwhelmed by the tsunami of interest shown when we announced that the Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS) would soon share its detailed findings in a joint webinar with TPAS in October.
My letter of 19 July, teasing out some of GIS’s detailed findings, received more than 18,000 views. Quite a record for us. The last record set was over 12,000 views for my 31 December 2020 letter, also about culture and identity.
Peranakan identity is clearly a very big thing for us. We have all been searching for an answer and a shared acceptance of what Peranakan identity is.
The General Committee has debated and deliberated it, in spurts, for many months. You can imagine that always, when the subject was raised, the sharing was very, very robust.
But we eventually settled on this: It is cultural.
Many scholars who have researched this in the past have reached the same conclusion: It is culture that forms one’s identity.
One’s DNA profile alone does not a Peranakan make. It is NOT a pre-requisite to being a Peranakan. Our DNA profile only corroborates our lineage and family histories.
It is why we are having this convention themed Keeping the Culture Alive.
If our culture dies, the community dies with it. Put it another way: If we ever lose our Peranakan culture, we lose our Peranakan identity. It is this simple.
Without our heritage – of Baba Malay, panton and dondang sayang, wayang Peranakan; ayam buah keluak, babi pongteh, babi ngoh hiang; kerosang, kasot manek, delicate hand-embroidered kebayas matched by equally exquisite Pekalongan and Hokokai hand-drawn sarongs; black mother-of-pearl, red and gold and brown and gold furniture; brilliantly coloured ceramics; and rituals and values – how does one distinguish the Peranakan Chinese from the other Chinese sub-groups – the Teochews, Hokkiens, Cantonese, Hakkas and others? And from the Malays, Indians and Eurasians?
The same applies to our Peranakan Indians, Jawi Peranakans, and other hybrid Peranakan communities outside the former Straits Settlements including those in Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, and possibly the Philippines.
This is why we must keep our unique hybrid culture alive. We and our generations to come must be open to continuous adaption and to changes around us while retaining our key values. We must be prepared to explore the outer edges of our heritage, times and space and see where our creative instincts lead us. If we stay rooted in the past, our culture will ossify and our identity along with it.
Your Support is Needed
It is therefore important that you be a part of the long-awaited convention that is scheduled on Saturday 20 November 2021. To test, understand and expand your perspective of who we are and can be.
An important aim of the convention is to ascertain where our culture, as known by our forebears, stands today.
More importantly, we want to identify those green shoots of the culture that will help sustain it for generations to come.
Tickets for both the live and online convention will be on sale in a few weeks’ time. They will be available through a ticketing agent.
In the meantime, please take care of yourselves and your loved ones. Also, please get your two vaccinations done! You will need them for the live convention.
Blessings
Colin Chee
Keeping the Culture Alive
31 July 2021