destination focus: cities of the peninsula
Melaka’s Creole
Culture and Cuisine
BY SARAH ANNE LEE
NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH THE BABA NYONYAS OF MELAKA, THE ELUSIVE KRISTANG PEOPLE REMAIN
A BIG PART OF THE HISTORIC CITY’S CULTURE, WITH THEIR DISTINCTIVE CUISINE BEING SOMETHING
YOU’VE QUITE POSSIBLY NEVER TASTED BEFORE.
A
s one of Malaysia’s
core areas of
multicultural
history, the state of
Melaka is hearth
and home to some
of the most unique
cultures of the nation. One such is being
the Kristang community. Often times
the term Kristang has been incorrectly
used to categorise descendants of Dutch
and British ancestry, who are culturally
different to the Kristang.
THE PEOPLE
The Kristang people are descendants of
settlers from the Iberian Peninsula region,
a mountainous area between Spain and
Portugal, who came to the Malayan Straits
Settlements for trade business and married
locals of Malayan, Sumatran, and Javanese
origin in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Combined with the natural historical
progression of mixing with other settlers
including Chinese and Indian ethnicities, a
new branch under the umbrella of Eurasian
Peranakan community was formed.
Today, the Kristang people are mostly
found in the Portugese Settlement area of
Melaka, a tiny fishing harbour away from
the city centre known as Ujong Pasir. Their
names are remnants of their Portuguese
roots, having surnames like Fernandes,
Siqueira, Lopes, and Gomes, with the
combination of Christian first names.
THE CULTURE
Like much of Melaka’s many cultural
tribes, Kristang culture is most commonly
known through their distinctive language,
known as Papiá Kristáng (Christian
speech). The Portuguese colonisers and
Malay locals had developed a pidgin
language in attempts to communicate
early on during the settlement initiation,
which then grew into a full creole
language. Combining simplistic Malay
grammar and the melodic flow of Old
Portuguese, Papiá Kristáng carried much
of Portuguese vocabulary into the Malay
lexicon, adapting many words the rest of
Malaysia uses to this day.The name ‘Kristang’ comes from the
Portuguese word ‘cristo’ in homage to the
settlers’ religion of Christianity. Much
of today’s Kristang people still retain
their Roman Catholic practices, and hailChristmas and All Saints’ Days as their
most prominent holidays.Locals might even be surprised to learn
that one of Malaysia’s most popular folk
dances, theJingli Nona of PortugueseBranyo
form, comes from the Kristang community.
Some might even say that theBranyodance
fused with the likes of the MalayJoget and
the JavaneseRonggeng.THE FOOD
While Melaka’s Nyonya food already
sets a pretty high bar for being robustly
flavourful, Kristang cuisine has additional