The New Peranakan Museum

My Top 3

One of the profs at J’s program told me about this museum which just opened. Peranakan is the name for people of mixed ethnicities in the southeast Asia area if I understand it right. The descendants of foreign fathers marrying local women. Often this means Chinese fathers.

Given that the US is finally recognizing, officially in its census categories, the concept of mixed ethnicities, I thought it would be interesting to go to this museum.

The pictures of various Peranakan people were spectacular and each had a quote below it. There were also some excellent videos, beautifully placed on the walls, in frames as though they were pictures on the wall discussing the common connections that Peranakan felt with other Peranakan. But there weren’t enough of these encounters with real people. Most of the displays are thiings - dishes, clothing, furniture. But there are also diaries, books, letters.

But I’d say the museum has a way to go in terms of the depth it goes into. And the museum recognizes this in the narratives written on the walls. But this point it makes things seem all so rosy and wonderful. I didn’t see anything that even hinted at the problems people probably faced in the past because they were of ‘mixed blood.’

I also thought having an Anglo sounding narrator in the intro video talking about the Peranakan as “They” having a lot to teach “Us” to be a terrible choice. Even in their own museum they are not “us,” but “them.” The narrator should have been a Peranakan welcoming guests into their house.