By Khoo Salma Nasution.

In maritime trading areas, cultural and family ties tend to spread along coastlines and concentrate at townships and ports. The evident similarities in language and cultural practices in Penang and Phuket are a case in point. Khoo Salma Nasution explores the rapport between Malaysia’s north-western coast and Thailand’s south-western coast which stretches beyond national borders and political time.

When I first walked down Thalang Road in Tongkah, the old town of Phuket, several years ago, I was reminded of the streets of Penang. Thalang Road is lined with shop houses, fronted by five-footways, in a style which the Thais call “Sino-Portuguese” but which we know to have originated in the British Straits Settlements.

The women in the short blouses and sarongs resembled the Penang Nyonya. When I peeked into the shop houses and ang-moh lau (mansions), I saw the grandma and grandpa portraits hanging high up on the screens of the front halls. The women in those portraits were attired like Penang Nyonya – mid-length long-sleeved blouse (tng sar, baju panjang) fastened with a set of brooches (kerosang).

The Penang Nyonya’s hair was worn in a high bun (sanggul Nyonya) secured with a set of six hair pins (cucuk sanggul) and encircled with a string of jasmine. For jewellery, she wore studded earrings (anting) and necklaces (lian-tek), bracelets (gelang) and anklets (gelang kaki). For shoes she preferred gold-thread or beaded shoes (kim sua eh, manik eh). That was how “high-class” Nyonya used to dress when they went out. At home, the Nyonya wore a long-sleeved round-necked short top (tay sar), fastened with gold shanked buttons. In the 1950s, the modern Penang Nyonya stepped into a Nyonya Kebaya, a long-sleeved figure-hugging blouse made of translucent cloth such as voile or organdie, with lace trims. In contrast, the Phuket Baba women donned the ya-ya – a short-sleeved blouse made of lace fabric. Both were partially “see-through” and definitely seductive.

Nyonya identity
If you were to ask someone in Penang, why one would consider herself or himself a Nyonya (or Baba), the reply might be as follows: “My grandmother wears the sarong, chews sireh, and cooks Nyonya food.” Phuket Nyonyas also had the habit of chewing sireh, and would always have a fully-equipped sireh set somewhere in the house. This reminds me of the saying told to me by Tun Lim Chong Eu:

Or Eo Or Eo, Tng Sua Mah Bo Chia Lau Heok
Or Ark Or Ark, Huan Peng Ma Bo Pak Kha

This simply means that one’s grandmother from China does not eat sireh and the grandmother from the Nanyang does not bind her feet.

The Baba Nyonya community was formed during a time when single male migrants married local women. The Baba community in Malacca is the oldest, while that of Penang was formed in the late 18th and 19th century. Who were these local women? In Malacca, the local women were assumed to be Malays. The local wives were called “huan” which merely means non-Chinese. However, these early wives were not necessarily Malay; they were more likely non-Muslim slave women from the Dutch East Indies. In the case of Penang, the local wives were often Batak, Burmese or Siamese. A few Baba went back to China to marry or brought their Chinese wives out, but these were few and far in between. Chinese women only began emigrating in larger numbers in the early 20th century.

In the 19th and early 20th century, Chinese living in the Straits Settlements (Penang, Malacca and Singapore), were called Straits Chinese or Straits-born Chinese. In Malacca and Singapore they are also known as Peranakan Cina (local-born Chinese). The common dialect of the Penang Straits Chinese was Hokkien, as the majority (but not all) of the Baba Nyonya were Hokkien (from Southern Fujian). The Straits Settlements ceased to exist as a political entity in 1957. Through social mobility, class distinctions between the old Straits Chinese families and the sinkeh (working-class Chinese who had just “come off the boat”) have also disappeared.
 
However, it is of historical interest to note that as coastal traders, the Straits Chinese Baba built a network of business interests in many small ports along the Straits of Malacca and northwards all the way to Rangoon. This coastal network covered a region approximating that which we now call the Indonesia-Malaysia-Thailand Growth Triangle. From the 19th century onwards, the Straits-born Chinese of Penang ventured into the Phuket frontier to mine tin.

Baba culture or Hokkien culture?
Phuket was an important tin-mining frontier for the Penang Hokkiens since the early 19th century. It preceded the expansion of Penang Chinese tin enterprise and secret societies into the Malay states, a movement that was dominated by the Hakka and Cantonese in Perak. The Penang secret societies controlled the tin mines in Phuket, just as they did those in Larut. The Penang Riots of 1867 was in fact sparked by the tin wars in Phuket.
 
In the 19th century, Tongkah was virtually a satellite Chinese colony of Penang. This relationship can be seen in the religious links between the two settlements. The Goddess of Mercy Temple with the bamboo oracle sticks is found in both Penang and Tongkah. The cult of the Cheng Chooi Chor Soo flourished in the tin-mining frontier of Phuket, and the Chinese of Tongkah were important donors to the Snake Temple in Penang in 1873. The Phuket-based tin-mining towkays of the Tan surname were principal donors and managing directors of the Tan Kongsi in Penang. A few Phuket Tan families erected the Teng Kwang Tong or Saengtham Shrine in Tongkah. Many Hokkien cultural practices and festivals were transposed from China to Penang and then from Penang to Phuket. However, the Nine Emperor Gods Festival is thought to have been practiced among mine workers in Phuket since the early 19th century, before it spread in a big way to Penang and other parts of Malaya.

Family alliances
Phuket became a regionally important town after Phraya Rassadanupradit Khaw Sim Bee came to serve as Royal Commissioner of Monthon Phuket (1900–1913). Khaw’s achieve-ments deserve to be featured in a separate article. He was the man responsible for attracting Penang Chinese to help modernise Phuket.

The Baba and Nyonya elite of Tongkah were the cultural nucleus of the Hokkien community of Phuket, and the well-bred Penang Nyonya were highly desired as daughters-in-law for the wealthy local-born sons of Phuket. Among Baba families, marriage and family alliances were an important means of generating economic as well as social capital. The rich married the rich, but those who were not as well endowed had to accept their lot.
 
As the saying goes, “Leng Kau Leng, Hong Kau Hong, Ungku Kau Tombong (The dragon marries the dragon, the phoenix marries the phoenix, the hunchback marries the humped back)”.

Some Baba and Nyonya people may not have been rich, but they were measured by how well they upheld Baba Nyonya values as well as by their kinship ties to wealthier Baba families. That is why in Penang and Phuket many Nyonya and Babas do not ask “Who is that?” But, rather “Whose son or daughter is that?”

Marriage alliances were forged between families of Penang and Siam. The Baba entrepreneurs established trading networks by creating relationships of trust cemented by marriages among their own relatives. The late Khun Pracha’s grandfather, Tan Ma Siang (Phra Phithak Chyn Pracha), studied in Penang, and returned to Phuket in 1900. He was an important tin-mine owner and government officer. As a symbol of prestige and luxury, he built the first Penang-style mansion in Phuket. According to Khun Pracha;

“In 1904, Mr Tan Ma Siang began to have his house constructed at number 98 Krabi Road in the Town District of Phuket. This house was to be used for his married life. He adopted a plan of the style of housing in Penang. He even brought a lead carpenter from Penang and supervised the construction himself. He spent B500,000 which was an enormous amount of money at that time on the house. The construction was completed in 1907… Not only was the lead carpenter brought from Penang, but as well lots of materials for construction were ordered from Penang except for the mother of pearl chairs and China porcelains which his father had brought from China. There were also a lot of things that were imported from Europe – steel fence with steel flower in the middle from Holland, marble and floor tiles from Italy, lintels and clocks with a lady holding a torch from France, cupboards, sinks, and some pieces of silverware from Britain, vaults from Germany, and steam fans from USA1.”

Tan Ma Siang’s son (Khun Chyn Sathan Phithak) studied at St. Xavier’s Institute in Penang. After finishing school in 1928, he married Lucy Goh Seok Choo, a Penang Nyonya and a schoolteacher at St. George’s Girls’ School. The young couple moved to Phuket and resided at the Penang-style mansion built by Tan Ma Siang (Phra Phithak Chyn Pracha). Goh Seok Choo was the grand-daughter of Lim Leng Cheak, and came from a very prestigious family, whose enormous wealth was by then on the decline. The family thought that Goh Seok Choo would do well to marry the son of the very rich tin-miner Tan Ma Siang.
 
Marriages involving women from Baba Nyonya families helped strengthen links between Penang and Phuket. These helped to consolidate business interests in trading and tin-mining. Life was not easy for the women who had to move from Penang to Phuket and vice versa. In their own way, they were also pioneers of the Penang-Phuket connection.

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In 2005 the author spent three months in Phuket, sponsored by the Nippon Foundation’s Asian Public Intellectual Programme. She interviewed some of the old Phuket people in Hokkien. The Hokkien spoken in Phuket is similar to Penang Hokkien, which is the lingua franca among Penang Chinese. This Hokkien is closely related to that spoken in Haicang (Hai Teng) and Zhangzhou (Chiang Chiu) in China, but incorporates many loan-words. Her article “Hokkien Chinese on the Phuket Mining Frontier: The Penang Connection and the Emergence of the Phuket Baba Community” recently appeared in a special Penang issue of the Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (JMBRAS) Vol. 82, Part 2 (2009), pp. 81–112.

** Reproduced with permission. This article first appeared in the July 2010 issue of the Penang Economic Monthly. This 11-year old magazine published by the Socio-economic and Environmental Research Institute (SERI) is being overhauled and commercialised. This endeavour is in response to the growing insight among Penangites and Penang lovers that the downward trend in the state's fortunes cannot be succesfully reversed unless they themselves get seriously involved. The goal is to inspire positive action among readers towards attaining a "Penang Renaissance".

For more information, please visit the Penang Economic Monthly site or contact the Socio-economic and Environmental Research Institute (SERI) at 604-2283306.

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