Ronald G. Knapp - The Peranakan Chinese Home: Art and Culture in Daily Life

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The writing of this book on Peranakan Chinese homes has been part of an intellectual journey that carried me from decades of field research in China to multiple field trips into unexplored territory in Southeast Asia that encompasses the extent of the Chinese diaspora. While researching our 2010 book, Chinese Houses of Southeast Asia , we found ourselves puzzling as to how to differentiate residences built and occupied by Peranakan Chinese from contemporaneous homes. It is our hope that The Peranakan Chinese Home will help clarify this. While this book in many ways resembles our 2010 book, a careful reader will see striking differences in both approach and scope of the narrative. The Peranakan Chinese Home takes an explicitly comparative approach, rather than the episodic house-by-house approach of our earlier book, in order to focus on generalizations that help illuminate similarities and differences.

Inspired by the organization of Peter Lee and Jennifer Chens fine 2006 book, The Straits Chinese House: Domestic Life and Traditions , which updated their 1998 book, Rumah Baba: Life in a Peranakan House , I decided to take a similar room-by-room view of Peranakan homes so that comparisons would be more explicit because of the juxtaposition of images and text. Moreover, this new book expands the geographic scope beyond Malacca, Singapore, and Penang to other areas occupied by Peranakan Chinese, especially Indonesia and Thailand.

Chinese Houses of Southeast Asia included a comprehensive Acknowledgments section (pp. 2814) that expresses our profound gratitude to a lengthy list of individuals and institutions who aided us. While many of these also were extremely helpful as we pursued this new book, some other homeowners and institutions were equally responsive as new questions were raised and new photographs were taken as we carried out additional field work.

I am indebted to those who read portions of the manuscript and offered criticisms and suggestions, especially Tan Chee-Beng, Peter Lee, Tan Siok Choo, and Patricia Bjaaland Welch. Whatever shortcomings remain are my own. We are especially grateful for the assistance of Director Alan Chong and Curator Jackie Yoong of The Peranakan Museum who generously made available twenty images of significant objects in their collection that add significantly to the architectural photography done by A. Chester Ong.

For permission to use photographs taken at their residences, museums, and archives, as well as those who helped us make contacts, we wish to thank the following:

Indonesia : Fon Prawira Tjong (Tjong A Fie Mansion); His Holiness Aryamaitri and Sutrisno Murtiyoso (Prasada Mandala Dharma); Robert Han (Han Family Ancestral Hall); Hartono Trisnohadi (Residence); Tan Tjoan Pie/P. W. B. Dharmowiyono (Residence); Ang Eng Hoat (Residence).

Malaysia : Tan Siok Choo (Tan Cheng Lock Ancestral Home); Dato Kee Phaik Cheen (Kee Family Manor); Loh-Lim Lin Lee and Laurence Loh (The Blue Mansion/Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion); Loh Joo Eng and Peter Soon (Pinang Peranakan Mansion); Cedric Tan (Residence); Chee Jin Siew (Residence); Khoo Salma Nasution (Sun Yat Sen Museum); Serge Jardin and K. C. Lee (Snail House); Betty Ong (Persatuan Peranakan Cina Melaka); and for wide-ranging liaison assistance, Josephine Chua and Colin Goh.

Singapore : Foo Soo Ling (National University of Singapore Baba House Museum); Johnson Tan (Residence); Alvin Yapp (Residence); Chan Tai Peo and Ou Eng Hwa (Nanyang Sacred Union); Asian Civilisations Museum; National Museum of Singapore; National Archives of Singapore.

Thailand : Poosak Posayachinda (Residence); Jaroonrat Tandavanitj (Chyn Pracha Mansion). In addition to the names above, a large number of anonymous individuals invited us into their homes to look around, talk, and take photographs, some of which appear in this book.