~ The Woman who Breathed Two Worlds, by Selina Siak Chin Yoke ~
This novel rather grew on me. At first, the sentences read rather flatly, pedestrian in their construction, and even the local cadences of the non-English educated (or non-educated) Nyonyas coming across as a little awkwardly rendered. However, it turns out that that the second, third and fourth sections (of the five sections of the novel) grow in strength and interest, drawing the reader in, the writing voice growing in confidence and earthy charm. Siak writes in the first person, but the first person narrator in the novel is actually Siak’s great grandmother whom she never met. The novel is not always gripping because there is not a plotline as such; Siak seems to be trying to stay faithful to the life-story of her great grandmother, and therefore, sometimes things are related which go nowhere and which don’t necessarily tie back in, but which happened and therefore are included. Better editing would have made this a better read.
The first person narrator, the woman of the title is Chye Hoon, second daughter of a Nyonya household in Penang, born in 1878. The novel describes the culture of Penang Baba Nyonyas with faithfulness to detail, particularly their culinary aspects. Chye Hoon’s family moved from Songkhla to Penang when she is still quite young, where she discovers there are many types of Baba Nyonyas, the people of mixed race and culture, Malay and Chinese.
Before Penang, I had assumed all Nyonyas and Babas were the same; meeting Hooi Peng taught me otherwise. She spoke mainly Hokkien, while we spoke more Siamese and Malay. She ate with her hands like we did, but several of our dishes surprised her, as did our penchant for drowning vegetable salads in lime juice.
p33
As Chye Hoon tells her friend in her particular mix of languages typical to so many Baba Nyonyas and indeed to Malaysians at large:
‘We so lucky,’ I said. ‘We cook Chinese style, Malay style. We make pork dishes, spicy dishes. We use wok to cook, hands to eat. We are really champor-champor, a mixture of things. I very much like.’
p35 [‘champor’ or ‘campur’ in Malay literally means to add; in this case, it can mean to mix up.]
This novel tells us that Chye Hoon is brought up strictly and modestly, in the tradition of Nyonyas, taught to sew well, to cook their intricate dishes, not sent to school, expected to marry young and marry whom her parents choose for her. As a Nyonya woman, she expects to run the household, and indeed, her husband although a Chinese man, obliges by giving her his entire salary every month and leaving the household and family finances in her hands. Indeed, there is what Nyonyas refer to as a chin-chuoh marriages, where the husband joins his bride’s family household at the start of the marriage. The Nyonya woman typically wears a very colourful sarong, a baju panjang – a long tunic to her calves, and clogs for casual wear, leather beaded slippers with their famous intricate beadwork for more formal occasions. Sometimes, the more modern ones wear kebayas, but both bajus and kebayas are fastened with expensive brooches, possibly even diamond studded. Her hair is pinned up elaborately, using 5 large pins, which could be made with precious metals and precious stones.
Chye Hoon is a spirited young woman who finds her demands to be educated, to be taught to read and write, unfulfilled, and instead, she is taught to cook. She finds her vocation in making kueh.
“Kueh is Malay for ‘cakes’, but Nyonya cakes are different from Western cakes, Chinese cakes or any other type. Out cakes assault the senses with their colours and their textures. We use no wheat flour, only rice or tapioca or green pea flour, and no milk other than the milk of the coconut, which we squeeze by hand from the flesh of the grated fruit. Not all our kueh are sweet; there are savoury radish and taro cakes, and even spicy rolls of glutinous rice. More kueh are eaten cold, but some, like our yam cakes, are best warm. The result, after centuries of trial and error, is a riot of blues, greens and reds that stop people in their tracks, and contrasts which delight the tongue.
p35
Chye Hoon’s very traditional wedding is described in lovely detail by Siak, and after 6 months of living with his wife’s family, Chye Hoon’s husband moves her to Ipoh, 180 miles south-east of Penang, to take up his job there. Their marriage is a happy one, they have 10 children, before her husband passes away prematurely. Left a widow with so many little ones to bring up, Chye Hoon knows that all her frugality and good management of the plots of land and shophouses her husband left her, would not be enough. She starts a business making and selling kueh in Ipoh. The story flows on of her acquiring servants, bringing up her children, worrying about their education and marriages, etc.
In the background of Chye Hoon’s life, is the increasing British colonialization of Ipoh and beyond. There are discussions in the novel of the British responsibility for opium addiction, the relationship between ‘white devils’ and locals, and the friendly relations amongst the Chinese and Malays. For instance, Chye Hoon has complete trust in her Malay bidan or midwife, Soraiya, and later, Soraiya’s daughter, Siti Aiysha, who delivers all her children. Later, when she seeks a bidan for her daughter, she trusts to one recommended by Soraiya’s daughter, another Malay lady called Noridah. Chye Hoon’s best friend, Siew Lan, works for one of these ‘white devils’, becomes his mistress, and later, after two children, marries him. ‘See-Tu-Wat’ [‘Stuart’ is unpronounceable to Chye Hoon] is at first an object of dislike and distrust, but after many years of See-Tu-Wat being good to her friend and to her own family too, Chye Hoon realises he is a very good man, his whiteness not withstanding, and that her friend made a good decision to marry him. There are hints – all too few, alas – of how difficult it is for Siew Lan in a mixed race marriage, especially when she visits London, and how her Eurasian children are regarded.
The Malaysian society of the 1900s, despite its intermingling of races and cultures, comes across as a society with a lot of decorum and ceremony, formal and reserved, despite its easy friendliness, warmth, and outpouring of generosity. The conversations between Chye Hoon and Siew Lan are amongst the most distinctively ‘local’. They sit drinking tea or coffee and chewing betel nut, and open their hearts to each other in a way they can do with almost no one else.
Chye Hoon: ’So they marry that time, your boy must come here live. Also, got other important things like wedding dowry. The boy I like, but Siew Lan, not as easy as you think-lah!’
p225
Siew Lan: ’Only if you anything also no need to do’, […] ‘We now no strength already-lah, cannot here go there go, like before.’
p401
Often, they chide each other openly, exclaiming, “Good heart” – which is not an endearment, but a direct translation from Chinese, which roughly translates to for goodness sake. Their Chinese incorporates several dialects – Hakka, Hokkien, Cantonese. Many Baba Nyonyas also speak English and Malay.
In this novel, Indians hardly seem to feature, only seen in the distant landscapes on rubber estates working tapping rubber, called ‘Klings’ – the rather racist term Chinese in Malaysian typically use for Indians.
After a very full life, Chye Hoon dies of illness and age, just days before the Japanese invasion of Malaya. There is no doubt but that she must have been a formidable woman in her time, and a stickler for the Nyonya tradition. She was a business woman and a survivor, and undoubtedly a matriarch, but although respected, she did not manage to endear herself to all her children. The novel renders a very faithful portrait of this community and era. The craftsmanship leaves something to be desired, but given the paucity of novels written in English on the Penang Baba Nyonyas of the 1900s, this effort is to be welcomed as a window into this colourful ‘champor-champor’ culture.
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