(Re)placing the Terengganu Peranakan Chinese as “Mek Awang”: Making Chinatown and Heritagising the Peranakan Identities in Kuala Terengganu

Hong Chuang Loo,Puay Liu Ong,Giok Hun Pue

doi:10.21315/km2021.39.2.1

Hong Chuang Loo, Puay Liu Ong + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.21315/km2021.39.2.1

Copy DOI

Abstract

In 2017, the Terengganu Chinese Peranakan Association (TCPA) withdrew its participation in the 4th Annual Terengganu Peranakan Festival (TPF) organised by the Terengganu Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry (TCCCI) because of a dispute over the combined term “Mek Awang”. To TCPA members, Mek Awang is a derogatory term, which the Malays used to refer to someone as being “soft”, effeminate, or a cross-dresser. However, TCCCI has appropriated the term Mek Awang and used it as a brand name to promote the festival, and to highlight the “uniqueness” of the Terengganu Peranakan Chinese community. This case is an example of how local cultural terms or practices have been readapted to suit tourism interests. Tourism is often accused of reinventing culture for capital ventures. Consequently, many academics and social critics have come to regard official national heritage sites and heritage tourism with scepticism and disdain. Combining ethnographic data from our in-depth interviews with the Terengganu Peranakan Chinese and our participant observation during the festival, we argue that the dispute over Mek Awang is not only a simple change in reference, but is also an indication of a deeper contemporary global process that affects ethnic minorities and their identities. We conclude that various attempts to commodify the peranakan experiences and culture in Terengganu as well as the intention to place the peranakan as a marketable heritage in Chinatown can be interpreted as attempts to replace a heterogeneous community with a homogeneous, uniform, genetic and identifiable ethnic category with a Peranakan1 (with capital “P”) identity.

Highlights

An estimated 300,000 domestic and international tourists visited Kampung Cina, Kuala Terengganu in the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia during the 4th Annual Terengganu Peranakan Festival (TPF) from 25 to 30 August 2017
The label means “sarong-clad people”. We discovered this on 30 October 2017 during an afternoon conversation with one of the association members discussing how different scholars have referred to the peranakan communities in Terengganu, Kelantan and elsewhere in Malaysia in the following sequence:
Confronted with ambiguous cultural markers of the peranakan Chinese in Kampung Cina, we found that selected elements of identifiable cultural markers from the Tirok Peranakan Chinese and peranakan Chinese communities in the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia were combined and exaggerated for the festival in Kampung Cina without consulting the Terengganu Chinese Peranakan Association (TCPA), the representative of Terengganu Peranakan Chinese community

Summary

Introduction

An estimated 300,000 domestic and international tourists visited Kampung Cina, Kuala Terengganu in the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia during the 4th Annual Terengganu Peranakan Festival (TPF) from 25 to 30 August 2017. Given that tourism is often being accused of reinventing and reconstituting culture for capital ventures (Jenkin 2010; Wood 1997), branding “a living museum” such as the Terengganu Peranakan Chinese community as Mek Awang as part of Kampung Cina’s marketable Chinatown heritage for tourism purposes have to be carefully unpacked.

Results

Conclusion