Chinese Houses of Southeast Asia. Ronald G. Knapp

      After having been used as a storehouse for antiques for thirty years, this two-storey terrace house along Heeren Street in Malacca was purchased in 2003 by a couple who have restored it and opened it as a bed-and-breakfast inn.

      Between the early nineteenth and the twentieth century, Singapore shop-houses were transformed in height and width as well as style.

      When the Portuguese arrived, they constructed a pentagonal fort on the south side of the Malacca River, while some joined Gujaratis and Tamils on the north bank where they lived in simple dwellings built from easily available materials such as timbers, mud, and thatched nipa palm called attap. Towards the end of the sixteenth century, successful merchants began to build more substantial houses in an area that was favored by cool breezes from the sea and came to be called Kampung Belanda or “Dutch Village.”

      After disastrous fires that accompanied the Dutch siege in 1641, in addition to constructing residences and other buildings in Malacca’s administrative and commercial center, the Dutch laid out along the north side of the river a somewhat rectangular street plan with two major roads running parallel to the coast, which were intersected by minor ones. In this area, increasingly wealthy Dutch and other settlers constructed brick and stone homes with their backs aligned along the sea and their fronts along a road called Heerenstraat or “Gentlemen’s Street,” which was later renamed Heeren Street by the British. In time, multistoried residences, which were narrow in the front and elongated as they receded towards the water, were built, then no doubt modified from time to time to meet changing needs. Similar, but generally less grand homes were built along Jonkerstraat, an inland road parallel to Heerenstrat. While some of the elements of these evolving houses drew upon experiences the Dutch had in colonies elsewhere in the tropics, the residences also reflected the designs known to Chinese masons and carpenters who did much of the actual construction using common building practices in use in China. The intersecting of Dutch and Chinese patterns in the organization of space, building structure, fenestration and roofing of many residences along these narrow old roads is indisputable yet still, to some degree, remains a puzzle.

      The successive arrival of Portuguese, Dutch, and British colonialists and the roles played by Indian and Chinese mercantile immigrants brought about Malacca’s transformation into one of the region’s most important entrepôt by virtue of its strategic location on the Strait of Malacca. The multicultural heritage of Malacca has bequeathed not only a remarkable vitality to an arguably significant historic city but also a mixed assemblage of heritage buildings. The destruction of old buildings, unbridled land reclamation, construction of high-rise buildings, and inattention to traffic management, all in pursuit of short-term commercial gains, have contributed to diminishing Malacca’s frayed multicultural past. While the preservation of Malacca’s exceptional material heritage remains imperiled, significant elements of the city’s Chinese heritage remain.

      The recently restored Cheng Hoon Teng Temple, whose origins go back to the 1640s, and Bukit Cina (Chinese Hill), an expansive cemetery that dates to the mid-fifteenth century, both exemplify the rich links between China and the Malay Peninsula. Marriage and concubinage involving males from China and local women gradually brought about a distinct community known as Peranakan Chinese, whose porcelain, cuisine, clothing, architecture, language, and literature are prominent aspects of their culture. Peranakan Chinese residences in Malacca as well as in Singapore and Penang, the original three Straits Settlements, include not only eclectic terrace homes, which are also called town-houses, but also ornate villas and mansions.

      Four Malacca residences are featured in Part Two, which together provide insights into the historical, geographical, architectural, and social aspects of life in Malacca from the eighteenth into the early parts of the twentieth century. The restored shophouse at No. 8 Heeren Street (pages 42–5), which once served as a kuli keng, literally “the quarters where coolies live,” provides a simple spatial template for the succession of larger homes built later. No Peranakan Chinese Malaysian is better known than Tan Cheng Lock, whose ancestral home, also on Heeren Street (pages 46–57), reveals Dutch features plus multiple layers of Chinese and Western influences. Two buildings associated with the Chee family are discussed: one was built in 1906 to memorialize Chee Yam Chuan, the notable forebear of the lineage (pages 58–63), and another the late nineteenth-century residence of Chee Jin Siew (pages 64–9) that provides a glimpse of a substantial home that has undergone only limited restoration. While each of the townhouses, shophouses, and villas in Malacca is unique, they share common aspects that can be gleaned from looking at their façades, floor plans, and ornamentation.

      Singapore

      Cities like London, Rome, Paris, and Beijing, and even younger cities such as New York and Singapore, are veritable museums of changing architectural styles in which old residences and other structures encapsulate in their physical forms the dynamic nature of individuals, families, and communities. Scattered homes and buildings together tell the story of each city’s evolution and, to some degree, national history in microcosm, from humble beginnings to their flourishing as commercial or governmental centers. Old residences, in particular, help tell the story of once prominent families, even the whole era in which they lived, giving contemporary visitors an opportunity to experience, within the confines of four walls, how life was lived in times past. Through the massing of architectural form and structure as well as building style, including external features and interior spaces, the tempo and character of daily life of times past can be made understandable for the curious visitor. Furnishings and ornamentation point toward what a family valued, providing windows into understanding what their hopes and aspirations for themselves and sometimes even their descendants. This is as true of the homes of the wealthy as it is for those struggling to find a place of modest comfort for their families.

      Established by the British East India Company in 1819 on the site of a fishing village on an island at the tip of the Malay Peninsula, the trading post that became Singapore emerged in the nineteenth century as a strategic hub of British commercial and military power in Asia. Sir Stamford Raffles, acknowledged as the founder of Singapore, outlined early on a town plan some three kilometers wide along the sea and two kilometers inland, with priority on creating efficient docking and unloading facilities along the Singapore River. In order to forestall the emergence of disorderly settlements, a plan was proposed that created a segregated layout defined by ethnic subdivisions: a European Town, a Chinese Campong, Chulia Campong for ethnic Indians, Campong Glam for Malays, and an Arab Campong. “Campong” is the Anglicized form for the Malay word “kampong,” which means a hamlet or village. As an entrepôt that welcomed traders, planters, and coolies, Singapore subsequently thrived with the arrival of immigrants from China, India, Malaya, and elsewhere, in addition to a significant number of enterprising Peranakan Chinese from Malacca and Penang.

      This view across the rooftops of Singapore’s Telok Ayer area, the heart of Chinatown, in 1870 reveals the nature of urban shophouses at the time.

      In the early years, in addition to Chinese merchants and artisans, Chinese peasants arrived in increasing numbers to open areas to the north and west of the port city for the production of gambier and pepper, which, as we will see, contributed to the wealth of Chinese businessmen resident in Singapore. An 1879 survey of the manners and customs of Chinese in the Straits Settlements tallied some 200 different occupations pursued by immigrant Chinese. While the intent of many Chinese newcomers was to return to China, many settled in the new homelands. “Many did not go back to China,” according to Victor Purcell, “because... they were too poor, but some did not return because they were too rich and dared to leave their property and their interests” (1965: 254).

      Many