Death of the Peranakan Culture

Death of the Peranakan Culture How many times have you been to a Peranakan play in Singapore and lamented the fact that the average age in the theatre was about 75 ? The culture is dying and if nothing is done right now to check the decline ; all that will be left at the end of the decade will be Peranakan stuff in the Asian Civilization Museum. The Peranakan Association is hardly operational let alone "breathing". It seems like all it does these days is to organize one maybe two gatherings for the "old folks" to joget the night away. Other than that nothing else is done to keep the culture alive; even the website is "dead". It’s hardly updated and no one bothers with the rants and raves posted on it. Our children are not into the culture at all. They don’t even speak the language anymore and the cuisine is something that will soon become only available in specialty restaurants and you know how that tastes compared to the genuine home-cooked meals. The Government does nothing to preserve this culture which they ( The Tourist Promiton Board) shamelessly tout as being uniquely Singapore. Maybe they want it to “die”; didn’t someone say that dead things were more appreciated. Nothing is done in the schools to promote the culture. School-going kids today are required to learn their mother toungue but the assumption is that all Chinese speak Mandarin. Wrong!! Peranakan or Straits - born Chinese speak a patois but it would not be wrong to say that the Peranakan language is probably closer to the Malay language than to Chinese. So being “forced” to learn Chinese in school, Chinese peranakan children no longer understand the language of their forefathers. Why children from Perankan backgrounds were not offered the choice of learning Malay instead of Chinese is something beyond my comprehension. Language is the key to sustaining a culture; without it the Culture is doomed.
Labels: culture, language, Peranakan, Peranakan Association