Chong Pang Food Centre | The Peranakan Museum | Ramen Keisuke Four Seasons

Today's Hari Raya Puasa!  Have a blessed Eid, all my Muslim friends!  (:  To everyone else, hope you're enjoying your public holiday.  I haven't really been doing much so a holiday doesn't feel like one to me, if you get what I mean.  My weekdays are holidays right now!  :p

I decided to spend one of my weekdays being a tourist in my own country.  Nowadays, more friends from overseas are coming to Singapore for visits, and while I have Zouk as my #1 destination to bring them to, sometimes some friends want to head out in the morning/afternoon, so I figured I should familiarise myself with the sights our little red dot has to offer!  Bryan was my test tourist buddy for the day.  :D

First we went to Chong Pang Food Centre and Market for brunch!


There was a queue for this duck rice stall!


Was pretty yummy, especially the herbal soup that came along with it.  Really liked how fragrant the braised sauce was!


B with sliced fish soup!

There're other yummy food stalls there, such as the Hokkien mee, fried assorted stuff with beehoon (Idk what it's called!  Something like economical beehoon, but not really), chee cheong fun, century egg porridge and oyster omelette but those only open in the late afternoon/night!  Chong Pang's one of those hawker centres where two eateries share the same stall and sell at different times of the day.  Do take note of when you want to head down lest you get disappointed when the stall which food you want to try is closed (like me, I was looking forward to a well fried plate of Hokkien mee)!

Then we took a little detour to Woodlands because I'd wanted to apply for my PDL (yes I've passed my BTT)!



But... Sadly I'd forgotten to bring my IC with me  ):  SOBS HOW COULD I HAVE BEEN SO FORGETFUL.  That morning was a particularly upsetting morning with many things not going to plan; that incident in the washroom, dropping my makeup everywhere and having to clean it, not getting Hokkien mee, travelling to an ulu industrial area then realising my mistake.........  Thank goodness Bryan was really understanding and we just went ahead with our plans and headed to town!

Whilst Bryan went ahead to get bubble tea from Gong Cha, I went to the stall next to theirs:


HAVEN'T HAD YOGURU IN SO LONG!  Remember when I was such a froyo addict I had it almost every week?  (:  Yoguru's my favourite, genuinely!  It's so milky and creamy.  I almost always regret my choice of adding the granola (though I love granola) because I feel that the taste of the yogurt alone is amazing and there needn't be any addition of anything!


HAPPY FROYO FACE

We then made our way to the Peranakan Museum!  It's located at Armenian Street, which is about a 10min' walk away from City Hall MRT Station.






Heheheehhehehe

We were initially worried that I couldn't get in without my IC, because Singaporeans and PRs are allowed free entry into national museums, but the front desk staff was kind and allowed me through with my NUS Student card!  So do remember your photo identification; if you're a tourist the entrance is also quite cheap ($6), and if you're a foreign student or senior it's cheaper at $3!

We started at the first floor with the 'Origins' gallery.  This was where they explained who Peranakans are.  I was still a little confused though - I initially thought that Peranakans are people whose fathers were foreigners who had arrived in Singapore in the past and married Asian women.  But apparently there are many kinds of Peranakans with different origins, such as from India, Java, and many other places!  *-*


Saw a familiar face, though!

Went on to the second floor to the other galleries.  We spent a while goofing about with this interactive screen: Catch a Blessing!


Hehehe

There was a special exhibition going on, titled Auspicious Designs: Batik for Peranakan Altars, which will be there till the 28th December!  It was really cool because the altar cloths were amazingly colourful and exquisitely designed!


This is one such example of a colourful altar cloth!


They feature many mythical creatures such as dragons and serpents, and gods too.


And here we have a qilin.


I didn't know what a Qilin was, but hey presto next to it was a useful information panel!


Qilin is a composite creature made up of various animals and myths, and it represents benevolence and longevity.  Also, no wonder so many Chinese like to have dragon babies.

In Galleries 3 and 4, ornaments, robes and other items and rituals carried out in Peranakan weddings were exhibited.


The bling that the bride had to wear on her!  SO MUCH GOLD AND SO MANY DIAMONDS!


This picture of a pair of bride and groom in 1939 shows just how much jewellery the bride was wearing  O_O  How could she have moved her head!


Ooh, there were also these cute little stamp machines around!  This one was for a dragon.  There were others for qilin, butterflies, ang ku kueh and phoenix.




Humongous mirror we saw!  They were all so ornately designed.




Bryan was tickled over this line: "A young boy was required to roll over the bed three times in a rite that spread male energy, with the hope that the firstborn would be a boy."

LOL imagine the granny going "Ah boy ah, come and roll on this bed, must be three times okay, cannot be more, cannot be less" lmao

Anyway, don't you sense the bias in the sentence!  It was quite evident that along with the traditional Asian cultures, the Peranakan culture favoured the male over the female.  On another panel there was information about how a bride would be checked on the last day of the 12-day wedding after her consummation with her husband, to see if she was a virgin before marriage.  Melcher had also gone to the museum before, so when I told him I'd gone as well, he asked me if I'd noticed that the women had to be dexterous at craft work, because they were judged by that criterion as well, how 'well' they succeeded at 'being women'.  I guess to a certain extent, in this heterosexual market, all of us are being judged by how well we perform our gender, regardless of whether we are men, women, or intersexed.  In any case, yes Peranakan ladies had to cook and sew well!  Or maybe, this was just a stereotype - after all, museums are meant to give you a general overview rather than contradictions, aren't they?  Oh I don't know *throws hands up


Bryan protesting the wedding proceedings "No I will not let thee pass, she is mine!"  The Peranakan wedding really is such an extravagant event.  It can go up to 12 days of preparation, and on the actual day itself, there are so many rituals to go through.  One thing I really liked about the museum was that they provided videos for visitors, making it more interesting, as they showed videos of actual proceedings from olden times, like the 1960s.  The wedding entourage usually was extremely large in numbers, because the more people there were, the more prosperity and festivity it represented!

Went to the next gallery: Language and Fashion.




Some of the craft work done by Peranakan ladies


I was really fascinated with this: "The glass beads used, such as the ones on this piece, are miniscule, some as small as 0.5mm in diameter.  These required very fine needles which would have been easily bent or broken.  It would therefore have taken a needle-worker of exceptional skill and eyesight to complete these purses."  I have difficult threading a needle, let alone even contemplate handling 0.5mm beads!!  ;_;

On the third floor, we then continued with the Auspicious Designs exhibition as that spanned two storeys.




The altar cloth in context!  This is what my granny puts out when we have to pray.








There it is!  Haha


For most of the altar cloths we saw, the colours were mainly rich and saturated hues, such as red, gold and yellow!  It was refreshing to see something different:


Bryan liked this most as he felt like the red and gold designs were too complicated.  I quite like this blue one too, because it's so calming to look at!  Such a pretty design  (:

I was a little disappointed with the Language gallery, as it was one of the things I was excitedly looking forward to, but it turned out to be quite tiny!


With only these books, and another panel on the side with a poem and an explanation of that poem.

Nevertheless, enjoyed myself at the rest of the exhibitions, especially the food one!

Here're the nyonaware porcelain that they used to serve their nonya fare  (:




So pretty, right!  Such colourful designs.

I only took photos of the things I liked, but there were other exhibitions such as the Religion and Public Life ones.  You should give it a go if you have time!  (:  It was an interesting afternoon.


Was trying to work it for an ootd but it was tough to do so with two girls from Anglican High waiting to take photos against the mural as well...... IM OLD SOBS  ;_;  Anyway, the Anglican High kids were there on an outing - goodness gracious, their Mandarin speaking skills are AMAZING  *-*  Basically they were all assigned to an exhibition and had to give a talk to their fellow students in MANDARIN.  It was odd to hear non-Singaporean-Chinese-accented Mandarin coming out of their mouths one moment, and Singlish the other!




Here's the website of the museum if you want to get more details: Peranakan Museum

The address is 39 Armenian Street  Singapore 179941 (:

Hopped outside into the warm sunlight!


B's ootd!  Really liked what he was wearing that day, especially the striped tee


Whereas Im just running out of outfit ideasssssssssssssssss *pullshair

Went to Sim Lim Square to get a hard disk, and I told Bryan that since I've met him, I've been to Sim Lim a whole lot more, lololol.  We both left with what we wanted!  *happy*  I really need a hard disk to back up my data because my MacBook pro's battery is pretty much dead now - it's shut down on me twice just blogging this entry AND IT SHUT DOWN ON ME THE THIRD TIME WHILE TYPING THIS SENTENCE OMG HOW CAN THIS BE I AM CURSED SOBS !!

Labels: Chong Pang Food Centre, happy days, little red dot, museums, Peranakan Museum, photolog, Ramen addict, Ramen Keisuke Four Seasons, running about, SG FOOD, Singapore, tourist stuff, visits

;11:28 PM

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