Exploring the Peranakan culture in three hours

Posted by smyc1 under Blogging, Museums/Heritage Galleries, News, Personal
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Our first impression about Peranakan culture and museum:

• Peranakan Culture is only a mixture of the Chinese and Malays
• Peranakan Culture is only situated in Malacca
• Misunderstanding the gender of Peranakan people
• All of the Peranakan people are rich
• We did not know that they are a culture itself

What we realise and learn after the Peranakan Museum tour, play and short sharing session with the Peranakan Association:

• Peranakan People do not only consist of a mixture of Chinese and Malay but also mixture of Chinese, Indian, Malay and Eurasian.
• Peranakan Culture can be found also in Penang, Singapore and Malacca
• They have a large family tree with mixed marriage across their family
• Peranakan people also lead a similar way of life and tradition with other cultures
• It has been 109 years since the Peranakan Association was established
• It is important to know our origins and preserve it for the future generation because we are the one who are going to pass on the values and beliefs of our individual culture.

“Without us preserving our own culture, who else will do it?”

14th Singapore-Malaysia Youth Camp 2009

Izzat, Omar, Jenny, Farah

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Editor’s note:

20 participants from the 14th Singapore-Malaysia Youth Camp visited the Peranakan Museum for an institutional visit as part of the bilateral camp’s cultural exchange programme. The  youths, 10 from Singapore and 10 from Malaysia, used Peranankan heritage as a point of departure to compare their heritage and identities. By asking what are the differences between Peranakan influences in Singapore and Malaysia, the aim was to encourage the youths to better understand their own cultural identities and the importance of preserving their own heritage .

This first post from the Youth Camp’s participants’ aims to capture some of their reflections on what they have gained in this visit to the museum. The reflections and notes from the other participants will be posted on Yesterday.sg over the next couple of days, and we hope all other readers will likewise gain from them.

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