The solid silver sarong belt is one of the most common accessories of the Straits Chinese. They were most popular from at least the second half of the 19th century, right up until the period after the Second World War in the 1940s and 50s. While mostly worn by women, Peranakan men also wore sarong, and sarong belts. You can usually tell the difference just based on size alone – men’s belts were usually significantly longer, but plainer, whereas women’s belts were shorter, but more elaborate.

These belts came in an endless variety of styles and materials, depending on location, influences, manufacturing techniques and materials available. They were almost always made of silver from almost any source that could be found. And when silver could NOT be found, then the belts were usually made of paktong (nickel-silver), or in rare cases, even brass! Styles varied up and down the Thai-Malay Peninsula, Singapore, and the Indonesian Islands, and over the years, distinctive types emerged – panel belts, layered belts, mesh belts, chain belts, and even cloth belts which were meticulously beaded by hand!

But what if you wanted a belt – really wanted a belt – a silver belt – but you couldn’t afford a fancy custom-made one? What if you wanted something more elaborate than just a length of silver chain with a buckle welded onto the end of it? As my old nyonya grandmother used to say – “…then how, ah!?”

Then how, indeed, Amah. Then how?

Assuming you didn’t want to slum-it, and just buy a nickel belt, or even a brass one (good lord, the neighbours would TALK!!), then the last option open to the cash-strapped nyonya, was to literally be strapped – or rather – belted – for cash!

Peranakan Cina Silver Coin Belts

The cheapest way for a nyonya to get a silver sarong belt of her very own, if she wasn’t able to get one by commissioning one custom from a silversmith, or inheriting one from ancestors (generally the only two ways in which belts were acquired), then her last resort was to use whatever scrap silver she had lying around as the raw materials for her local silversmith to fashion a belt for her. In most cases, the easiest source of such silver was coinage.

It was a very common practice in the 1800s and early 1900s, in places like Singapore, Malacca, or Penang, to have your chosen silver sarong belt made out of – not plates or panels of silver, or even silver mesh or chain, if you couldn’t afford it – but actual silver coins. During this time, in the 1800s and the very-early-1900s, the higher-value coins used as currency in the Straits Settlements – the Straits Dollar – were all solid silver of 80% purity (the early 1900s Straits silver dollar coin was 90% purity) – so 5c, 10c, 20c, and 50c. If you could afford to save up a few coins each week, then before long, you would have enough coins to not only make a belt out of them, but also have enough to pay the silversmith.

Belts like these were often made of coins riveted or chained together with silver loops soldered onto each of the coins, either in rows (usually two coins wide), or, more commonly – as just one long chain of coins, with a larger coin, like a 50c piece, or even a silver dollar, used as a buckle. Alternatively, if you didn’t want to use a coin as a buckle, you could use one that already existed, and simply fashion the belt so that it worked with your pre-existing buckle.

So how long were these coin belts around for? Pretty much for as long as Peranakan silver belts of any style had been around for. Examples exist which date back to the 1880s, and which date as recently as the 1940s and 50s, usually dated by the years on the coins which were used to make the belt. The one disadvantage of making a coin belt, however, was that the longer you waited to make the belt, the harder it was to find high quality silver to do it with. Coins from the 1910s, 20s, 30s, and especially, those postwar, had far less silver-content in them than similar coins from the 1800s or the early Edwardian era. As an example, the coins used to make the belt in this posting all date between 1887 – 1896, when silver content was high. If it’d been made in the 1920s or 30s, the silver content in the same coins dropped from 80 or 90%, down to just 60%!

So, are belts like this — common?

They can be, yes. As I said, it was the cheapest, easiest way to make a silver nyonya belt – and after all – having a belt made of literal money does sound kinda cool, right? So yes, they were fairly common, and various styles of such belts were produced, with overlapping or linked coins of various sizes and denominations to produce an almost endless array of silver-coin belts. Some belts could be extremely simple – just a length of chain or two, with a coin welded onto the end of it – but others could be incredibly elaborate, with dozens of 5c and 10c coins riveted or linked together to produce the final product – a process which would take a skilled silversmith or jeweler several hours, if not days, to complete.

Even a relatively simple belt like this has a lot of intricate parts to make it work – the dozens of little rings soldered onto the coins, and then the extra rings between them to produce a flexible, final product – and all done by hand – so even a silver-coin belt could be a lot of effort to produce.

Other Types of Peranakan Belts

Made of gold, or – more commonly – silver, there are of course, other types of Peranakan belts – over half a dozen styles, in all. Panel belts, layered belts, mesh belts, chain belts, coin belts…heck, there are even Peranakan belts which aren’t metal – beaded belts, with silver buckles! While I have seen examples of most of these, and have some in my collection, this one is the first one I’ve had that’s made almost entirely of silver coins.

My current collection of Peranakan Chinese belts. The first four are all solid silver.

The Peranakan Chinese of Southeast Asia (largely Thailand, Malaya, Singapore, and Indonesia) have been a source of fascination for decades. The rise of Peranakan cultural museums, societies, clubs, and events, over the past 100-odd years, have done much to try and preserve the culture, customs, and practices of the people, and explain and display what once was, how life was lived, and how families of a Peranakan background operated during their cultural heyday.

Peranakan culture was at its height in the roughly 200 years between the late 1700s through to the first half of the 20th century, even if the Peranakan had existed in Southeast Asia since as far back as the 15th and even 14th centuries. It was around this time that many staples of Peranakan culture were established, and propagated within the Peranakan community, which flourished under the growing influence of European colonial powers such as the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, who were colonising areas such as Malaya, Singapore, and Indonesia between the 1600s to the early 1800s.

THE PERANAKAN HOUSEHOLD

In the Straits Settlements of the 1800s and 1900s, before the Second World War, the Peranakan or Straits-Born Chinese, occupied a unique position in the colonial-era social structure of the times.

The Peranakan saw themselves as being above the status of “regular Chinese people” – the migrants from mainland China who had arrived in the Settlements in the 19th century, escaping war, famine and civil unrest in their homeland, people whom the Peranakan derisively called the Sinkeh Chinese (“Sin Kay“, from the Chinese “Xin Ke“, or “New Visitors”).

By-and-large, Peranakan families, most of whom were well-off, with family businesses or professional careers, typically lived in large, long, terraced townhouses, or, if they could afford it, enormous mansions built in cities like Georgetown, Malacca, and Singapore.

These houses were long and narrow, with living spaces, dining rooms, kitchens, bathrooms etc, on the ground floors, and bedrooms and boudoirs up above, usually set out in a linear arrangement, and with a mix of European and Chinese architectural and decorative elements.

It was extremely common for entire extended families to live together – with multiple branches and generations all residing under one roof – or under one row of roofs, as the family expanded, and purchased adjoining townhouses next door.

Intermarriage within the extended family was encouraged, to keep heirlooms, jewelry, and generational wealth within the household.

Peranakan families, like most Chinese families, were notoriously hierarchical, and everybody was expected to know their place, and most of such families operated under a similar structure.

THE PERANAKAN FAMILY

At the top of the family structure was the “towkay“, or “Master of the House”. Literally, towkay meant ‘Boss’ or ‘Master’, in Hokkien, a Chinese dialect often spoken by the Peranakan.

Below him was the “Bibik” – the family matriarch – usually the oldest, highest-ranking female, which might or might not be a grandmother, or a senior aunt (literally “bibik” means “aunt” in Malay, another language commonly spoken by the Peranakan). The Bibik might be (but was not necessarily) the towkay’s wife.

A “Bibik” might also be known as a “taitai”, meaning the most senior female or wife of a large, extended household or family. These days, “taitai” has rather negative connotations, and might even be used as an insult! Senior housewives, and other elderly Pernakan women or ‘nyonyas’ did not work, as a rule, and calling them “taitai” suggested a life of leisure, and luxury, but also one of unearned pleasure and laziness!

Below the Bibik came all the “nyonyas” – the young women of the household – younger sisters of the Bibik, daughters, daughters-in-law, granddaughters, and nieces. “Nyonya” is also the generic term for any Peranakan woman.

By tradition, nyonyas did NOT LEAVE THE FAMILY HOME until marriage – or at least, not except on very special occasions. Not that most nyonyas had long to wait – marriage was extremely young in those days – fifteen was a common wedding age, and any nyonya unmarried into her twenties was considered an old maid!

Below the nyonyas came the “amajie”, which was either called an “amah”, or a “majie”, as a shortened title. “Majie” were paid domestic servants or housemaids – always women – who were known for their uniforms of black trousers and white tunics. Usually from poor families, majie migrated from southern China to the Straits Settlements to work as domestic servants for wealthy Peranakan and European expatriate families. They used their wages to support each other, fund boarding houses for their collective welfare, and even took a strict vow of celibacy, refusing marriage and childbirth. Despite this, they were often hired as nannies.

Every Peranakan household had majie, if they could afford them. If you were rich, you had several, if you were poor, you only had one, which was the equivalent of the European “Maid of all Work” – or, in Cantonese, another language spoken by the Peranakan – “Yat Kiok Tek!” – “One Leg Kicking” – meaning a person engaged in an impossible task – a single maid to look after an ENORMOUS household which could consist of over a dozen family members.

But what about these children in the Peranakan household, then? What happened to them?

As a rule, boys were taken into the family business, or were sent to school, mostly learning English, and might even have traveled to the UK to study at university. Nyonyas, almost exclusively, stayed home and learned cooking, beading, sewing, embroidery, dressmaking, shoemaking, and other cultural and household chores and customs. Before the late 1800s, nyonyas never went to school – they stayed home and completed household tasks or other “feminine duties” until they were married off. The idea of nyonyas leaving the family home before marriage to get an education was a revolutionary idea in the late 1800s, when the first schools for nyonyas were opened by Christian missionaries in places like Singapore. A nyonya was judged on her suitability for marriage based on her beading, sewing, cooking, and other such intricate, detailed activities. With so much time to kill, they had literally all the time in the world to master these crafts, and their skills could reach incredible levels of beauty and talent.

Between steaming kueh, beading slippers, embroidering kebayas and sewing sarongs, nyonyas killed time between chores by eating, chewing betel nuts, and playing games with family and friends. They learned card-games like Cherki (invented in Malacca in the 1800s), played five-stones, Chongkat, or mahjong, to pass the hours away. Gambling was said to be endemic among nyonyas, who could win, lose, or pawn the family jewels at the mahjong table all within the space of an afternoon’s gaming and socialising with neighours and relations!

THE PERANAKAN TOWNHOUSE

The vast majority of Peranakan families lived in beautifully-appointed Peranakan-style terraced townhouses, usually of 2-3 storeys in height, and stretching back several hundred feet! Layouts from house to house were virtually identical, and very little changed from house to house.

First, you entered the veranda area, in front of the house. This was either the Five Foot Way, or a private veranda area, directly in front of the front door. The front door usually had a pair of gates in front of it, and then the door-proper, behind it.

If you rang the doorbell or knocked on the door, then you’d best watch your head, because directly above you is the overhang of the front room of the upper floor/s. Typically, a peephole was installed here so that anybody upstairs could observe visitors to the house, or communicate with passing tradesmen or door-to-door salesmen. A block of wood could be removed from the floor, and money could be dropped down to pay for things like fast-food deliveries…or even the house-keys might be dropped down here, so that you could unlock the door yourself, and come inside!

Entering the house typically had you stepping into the Ancestral Hall. This was where shrines to departed relations were situated, accompanied by portraits, or photographs.

Beyond this space was the first large interior room of the house, which was typically a living room or front parlour. This is where you might socialise or entertain guests.

Beyond this was, usually, a set of stairs, leading to the upper levels, and next to that, the lightwell.

Every Peranakan house had a lightwell or airwell in the middle of the house – especially large houses had two! In long, dark, narrow houses like these, airwells were essential for ventilation, cooling, and light penetration. They were also a holdover from the Chinese courtyard houses of old, or the “Siheyuan”. The lightwell pierced the house right up to the roofline.

Beyond the airwell came more reception rooms such as a back parlour, and/or a dining room. Large Peranakan houses might have a formal, and informal dining room, as well as a formal, and informal parlour. For special events like birthdays, wedding anniversaries, marriages, or the Chinese New Year, a Peranakan family would host a special dinner known as a “Tok Panjang” (literally “Long Table” in Malay), in imitation of European formal dinner settings, similar to those held by the British. For this reason, larger Peranakan households had an everyday dining room, with a circular or square Chinese table, and a more formal dining room, with a rectangular European-style dining table.

Past this was the kitchen (which may or may not be separated into “Wet” and “Dry” kitchens), the scullery, laundry, toilets, and bathroom.

Returning to the airwell – here is where rain would pour into the house during the rainy season. Rain was symbolic of wealth pouring into the house, since, like money, water was essential for life, and had to be collected. Water was stored in cisterns, or large porcelain jars called “kamcheng”. Some Peranakan houses had wells sunk inside their airwells, hooked up to underground springs. A pump allowed them access to fresh water whenever they wanted it. In houses without running water, this was often how water was collected, accessed, and stored.

Now let’s go upstairs.

Peranakan houses were almost always two or three storeys. The upper floors held spaces like studies, bedrooms, boudoirs, maybe a more private, upstairs sitting-room (usually the frontmost room, with loads of light!) for private activities, as well as space for storage, etc. A typical Peranakan family could be enormous – my grandmother was the eldest of FIVE children, and that was considered pretty middling, when it came to Peranakan family sizes!

The Peranakan family unit, housed in a residence such as this, existed in this way, for the better part of 150-200 years, until the start of the Second World War…

Since their settlement of the Malay Peninsula, Singapore, and the Indonesian Islands in the 1400s, the Straits-Born Chinese, Peranakan, or “Baba-Nyonya” developed a culture and customs which were as unique and as different from those followed by their Mainland-Chinese ancestors as it was possible to be.

Over the passage of centuries, the Peranakan-Chinese developed a way of life, and a type of culture and series of customs which were similar to, but also markedly different from the practices that their ancestors would’ve been familiar with in China back in the 15th century.

These differences were numerous, and ranged from subtle, to significant.

For example, the Peranakan did not prepare the same dishes, speak the same languages, or wear the same clothes as their ancestors who had left China centuries before. They used ingredients which the Chinese were unfamiliar with, to prepare delicacies which the Chinese had no knowledge of, and wore articles of clothing which would’ve been completely alien to the Mainland Chinese. All these changes, alterations and variations, caused by having to adapt to their new homeland, resulted in the Peranakan developing their own unique culture in Southeast Asia. While there were several similarities between the Straits-Chinese, and the Mainland Chinese, the Peranakan also had practices and customs which made them noticeably different from the residents of mainland China.

On top of that, the Peranakan did not speak Mandarin-Chinese. Instead, many would’ve grown up speaking Chinese dialects – either Hokkien, or Cantonese, or a variant of the Malayan language known as “Baba Malay“, a creole-style language using elements of Malay, Hokkien, Cantonese, and also later, English, which had no relation to the languages spoken in China. In the 1800s, the Peranakan also started learning how to speak English properly. This was largely thanks to schools established in the second half of the 19th century, which allowed an increasing number of Peranakans to both speak, read, and write English with greater proficiency.

One of the main ways in which the Peranakan were different from the mainland Chinese was in what they wore.

Before the widespread influence of European fashions in the 1900s, Peranakan women (nyonyas) almost exclusively wore tubular wrap-around skirts called sarong. For the longest time, most Peranakan men (babas) also wore sarong. In the hot, humid, muggy climate of the South Pacific, it was the most practical thing to wear. Easy to put on, easy to take off, easy to wash, and easy to dry. By the 19th century, however, most babas had made the switch to more European styles of dressing (adapted for tropical climates), while nyonyas kept their traditional outfits.

Sarongs don’t have any fasteners – they’re simply wrapped around your body, then tucked and rolled like a towel. To hold it in place, an optional belt was added beneath the rolled upper hem, around the waist, although this was a practice mostly adopted by the women or ‘nyonyas’ rather than by the men. By the late 1800s, these belts were elaborately fashioned from sterling silver, or 22kt gold (if you could afford it), or silver-plate (if you could not!).

On their feet, nyonyas traditionally wore “kasut manek” – Beaded Slippers. These were outdoor slippers, worn for everyday use. Intricately handmade, one pair of such slippers took weeks, or even months to produce. Men also wore kasut manek, but almost always as house-slippers, and never outside.

Up-top, Peranakan men wore traditional Chinese shirts or jackets known as “shan” or “changshan” (also known as “baju cina” or “Chinese Clothes”).

Originally, women wore a similar garment known as a panjang or “baju panjang” (literally “long blouse” or “long tunic”) – a long-cut, loose-fitting, long-sleeved tunic.

By the early 1900s, the baju panjang was seen as a very Victorian-era holdover – overly formal, and old-fashioned. This was when the much shorter, lighter blouse or “Kebaya” started taking over. By the end of the Edwardian era, it had pretty much replaced the older Baju-Panjang (although some older “bibiks” kept wearing them) in popularity.

Just like the sarong, the kebaya (and the panjang) did not have any fasteners. No buttons or zippers or clips. To hold them shut, a nyonya used a “kerongsang” (also spelled ‘kerosang’) – three brooches on a chain, fastened at the bust, the torso, and the waist. Again, like the belt which held up the sarong, the kerongsang was almost always made of either high-grade silver or high-karat gold, sometimes studded with diamonds.

Whether they were sarong (for the nyonyas) or shirts or tunics (for the babas), many Peranakan-style clothes were batik-printed. This hot-wax printing and dyeing process was invented centuries ago in Indonesia (specifically Java) and the style became very popular among the Indonesian Peranakans, and spread to those residing further afield in Sumatra, Singapore, and further up the Malay Peninsula.

Today, nyonyas still wear traditional sarong-kebaya outfits during special occasions, and men will wear sarong (usually at home, but not in public) or batik-print shirts to connect with their past and heritage.

This is probably one of the most interesting, unusual, useful, and, possibly – off-putting – pieces in my eclectic collection of antiques.

This was something that I scored on the great online flea-market we call eBay (remember folks! I’m on eBay now!). It isn’t something especially common, and I thought it’d make a great little novelty addition to my collection.

This solid silver rectangular pendant, with a ring-top and a pair of toggles on the sides was something that I stumbled across completely by chance on the internet, and once I realised what it was, I decided that I simply had to have it, even if only for the novelty aspect of the whole thing!

Very common in Chinese culture, these ear-curette and toothpick pendants were extremely popular in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and were commonly used by Chinese women to remove stubborn earwax from their ear-canals, or crud from between their teeth after meals. In an age before consistent, and quality dentistry, anything extra that you could use to keep your teeth clean would’ve been very useful!

This particular pendant has two slide-out implements: A curette (an earwax-spoon), and a toothpick. They were most commonly made of either gold (usually 18kt), or silver (800, 900, or 925 sterling), and were popular as trinkets, gifts and practical little doodads to carry around with you on a day out.

Here, you can see the toothpick. Fully extended, the whole thing is about 3 inches long, from the point of the toothpick to the end of the ringtop. The slide-toggles are shaped like flowers, and the sides of the pendant are also decorated with leaves and flowers.

On the other side is the little hook/spoon-shaped scoop for removing earwax.

Pendants like this one were commonly worn around the neck with a matching chain of either gold, or in this case – solid silver. My grandmother had a pendant like this in solid gold which I remember from my childhood. It was lost in a move and we never saw it again, but it is nice to have this little trinket – a unique piece of Asian silverware, not likely to be found manufactured anywhere else in the world!

Although this is probably the smallest antique I’ve ever bought, at just over 1.5 inches long, I think that it ranks up there as one of the most interesting, because of how unique it is. They aren’t common, and so far as I know, aren’t made in modern times. At least, not in this configuration! I hope you found this short posting enjoyable and got the chance to see something that perhaps, you’ve never seen before, or perhaps, not even thought might exist!

Well, now you do.